Dear Skeptic Mag: Kindly Fuck Right Off

 So, over at Skeptic, we find an article criticizing "experts" (read academics, researchers, etc) for being "too political".  

Put kindly, this is complete stupidity - from people who should be much more adept at delving into the psychosocial history involved. Instead, they descend into the usual tropes of accusing academics and researchers of "being condescending", and "not listening to the concerns", blah blah blah.  Of course, this is all the fault of those meanies who call themselves "progressive", right?  Wrong.

The Attack On Science Continues

Scientists in Canada have rightly complained about the Harper Government's politicization of the communication of research results, whether that is stripping funding from the the Experimental Lakes Area or sending "minders" to accompany scientists attending conferences.

Well, the degree of politicization goes further.  It seems that when a lab found a virus in farmed salmon, they found themselves stripped of their reference lab status.

Kibenge is not alone in finding positive test results for ISAv in BC salmon.  Several other labs have reported the virus.
 

• Dr. Kristi Miller reports finding ISAv in farmed salmon on the west coast of Vancouver Island, Cohen exhibit 2053, and sockeye, Cohen Exhibit 2060
• Dr. Are Nylund reports positive ISAv test results
• Dr. Kyle Garver, Cohen Exhibit 2043, 2056
• Dr. Sonja Saksida -, BC Centre for Aquatic Health Services, reported ISA PCR positives to the CFIA in the farm Chinook salmon from Creative Salmon, Cohen Exhibit 2055.
• A 2004 draft paper coauthored by Drs. Molly and Fred Kibenge and Drs. Simon Jones and Garth Traxler (DFO) reporting 115 ISA virus positive results. These results demonstrate up to 99.7 per cent identity to an ISAv isolate from Norway. Sequence was produced. Positive samples included farmed Atlantic, wild salmon from Alaskan waters, throughout BC and Cultus Lake sockeye, Cohen Exhibit 2045, (See video – “DFO scientist suppresses positive ISA virus test results”)

Interesting, when the CFIA makes the following rather elliptical claim:

What exactly did Kibenge do wrong? Neither OIE nor CFIA will say exactly why they removed Kibenge’s OIE status, but they do make reference to non-repeatable results, which means the lab the CFIA is using isn’t getting the same results as Kibenge.
Do not seek and you shall not find
Nearly every lab that doesn’t have direct ties with either the government or salmon industry seems to be able to find at least segments of the virus. Meanwhile, every lab that has a vested interest in not finding the virus can’t seem to detect it.
It’s easy to not find this virus if you don’t want to. Here is why: If a virus is imported to a new country, it doesn’t stay the same for long. Influenza viruses like ISAv are known for their rapid mutations, which is precisely what makes them so dangerous.

If you use a PCR test that only reports an exact match as a “positive” you could easily miss the virus, since even a slight change will make it “invisible” to a probe that is looking for an exact sequence. Kibenge's lab was using a technique that was reading the sequences of the virus, rather than just using a probe that only reports an exact match of a very specific sequence. This is how Kibenge was able to pick up on viral sequences that contained slight variations of the virus, as well as fragments.

Hmmm...so you find different results than the government wants, and you suddenly find yourself stripped of credentials?  To paraphrase Shakespeare, something is rotten in Ottawa.

Think I am exaggerating?  Take a look at this e-mail from the CFIA:

This entire case is a clear example of the kind of politicization that the Harper Conservatives have been engaging in on all fronts.  They are enabling a large scale propaganda campaign to an extent which Canadians have never experienced before, and is drawn from some of the most oppressive regimes that this planet has ever seen.

If they are willing to politicize on this scale, it isn't hard to imagine that recent changes to passports in Canada represent something nefarious.

... oh yes ... Happy Canada Day

The Quest For Knowledge Continues

While correlation doesn't equate to causation, this is definitely interesting indeed.

Transsexual differences caught on brain scan

Antonio Guillamon's team at the National University of Distance Education in Madrid, Spain, think they have found a better way to spot a transsexual brain. In a study due to be published next month, the team ran MRI scans on the brains of 18 female-to-male transsexual people who'd had no treatment and compared them with those of 24 males and 19 females.

They found significant differences between male and female brains in four regions of white matter – and the female-to-male transsexual people had white matter in these regions that resembled a male brain (Journal of Psychiatric Research, DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2010.05.006). "It's the first time it has been shown that the brains of female-to-male transsexual people are masculinised," Guillamon says.

I like seeing such results appropriately framed with a sense of clarity about what they really tell us:

Guillamon isn't sure whether the four regions are at all associated with notions of gender, but Ivanka Savic-Berglund at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, thinks they might be. One of the four regions – the superior longitudinal fascicle – is particularly interesting, she says. "It connects the parietal lobe [involved in sensory processing] and frontal lobe [involved in planning movement] and may have implications in body perception."

What an interesting bit of research - I hope that there's more like this to come.

This Will Get The Creationists Going...

One of the often repeated saws out of creationists is that science has never successfully produced life in a laboratory experiment.

There is a certain amount of reasonableness to that argument. Although science in general has a pretty good idea of how life got started on this world, those ideas have been largely unprovable, since the most that scientists have seemingly been able to do is form some of the basic proteins that are part of RNA.

But then again, unlike scripture, science isn't standing still for anybody. Sure enough, someone has put aside the "you can't do that" rulebook, and done some very interesting experiments that we should take note of.

However, though researchers have been able to show how RNA’s component molecules, called ribonucleotides, could assemble into RNA, their many attempts to synthesize these ribonucleotides have failed. No matter how they combined the ingredients — a sugar, a phosphate, and one of four different nitrogenous molecules, or nucleobases — ribonucleotides just wouldn’t form.

Sutherland’s team took a different approach in what Harvard molecular biologist Jack Szostak called a “synthetic tour de force” in an accompanying commentary in Nature.

“By changing the way we mix the ingredients together, we managed to make ribonucleotides,” said Sutherland. “The chemistry works very effectively from simple precursors, and the conditions required are not distinct from what one might imagine took place on the early Earth.”

Is this life created in a lab? No. But it has established one more piece of the picture, and as you add pieces to the picture, the number of unknowns drops off, until you are left with a fairly coherent sense of the possibilities.

Not Good Enough, Mr. Goodyear

I've tried to ignore Gary Goodyear's idiotic tirade over being asked if he "believes in evolution". Frankly, it was a poorly phrased question, and Mr. Goodyear's response was childish, immature and off-topic:

Science minister Gary Goodyear now says he believes in evolution.

“Of course I do,” he told guest host Jane Taber during an appearance on the CTV program Power Play. “But it is an irrelevant question.”

That's a different answer from the one Mr. Goodyear, a chiropractor and minister of state for science and technology, gave The Globe and Mail when asked the same thing during an interview published in Tuesday's paper.

“I'm not going to answer that question. I am a Christian, and I don't think anybody asking a question about my religion is appropriate,” he said at the time.

Frankly, I don't care if Mr. Goodyear wants to believe in the Tooth Fairy. The real issue here, besides Mr. Goodyear's obvious religious fundamentalist sensitivities (his outrage is enough to convince me that underneath all that bluster, he really would prefer not to think too hard about such questions), is whether or not Mr. Goodyear understands the basic concepts of theory (as opposed to hypothesis) and the evidence that supports the theory.

It would seem that he doesn't actually understand. His recent attempts to clarify himself make my point for me:

“We are evolving every year, every decade. That's a fact, whether it is to the intensity of the sun, whether it is to, as a chiropractor, walking on cement versus anything else, whether it is running shoes or high heels, of course we are evolving to our environment. But that's not relevant and that is why I refused to answer the question. The interview was about our science and tech strategy, which is strong.”

If Mr. Goodyear really understood the science, he would not have used those examples, because they do not represent the kind of long term picture that the broad theory itself represents.

Between this, and Mr. Goodyear's attempts to defend a brain damaged approach to science on the part of the HarperCon$ by being a complete drama queen, we can safely conclude that Goodyear really is in the wrong place - in large part because he clearly neither understands nor supports the actual day to day work that science involves.

I suspect that like Bush II, the HarperCon$ are fundamentally opposed to science. Science represents knowledge and thought - and modern era political conservatism has been very opposed to people thinking for themselves. Conservatives succeed when they can keep people in the dark - just look at Alberta's government.

Putting Down "But It's Soooo Improbable" Arguments

One of the favourite - and utterly brain dead - criticisms of evolution that is often raised is the "sheer improbability" of the world - and the universe we live in - having "simply occurred" as a result of highly unlikely events coinciding.

Fundamentally, this is an emotional reaction - one firmly rooted in the same insecurity that gives religion its foothold in our world in the first place. There's something very unsettling to humans about the notion that we are in many ways simply a part of nature, and not divinely privileged in any respect.

However, one has only to look as far as the complex computer systems that we have today to get some idea of how these seemingly infinitely small probabilities line up.

A number of years ago, I was tasked with finding a bug in a piece of software I was responsible for at work. Every so often a handful of projects would pop up with exactly the same fault occurring, but we could never reproduce it in our test lab.

Eventually, we did track the fault down to a single line of code that had a small, but significant coding error. However, the coding error was not likely to cause a serious problem unless the following combination of failures happened to coincide:

1. The faulty line of code executed and produced a fail condition.
2. The program received a 'page' of memory that just happened to have a meaningful value in the correct location from the last execution of the loop
3. The correct sequence of related programs executed, and left the system in a state where 1 and 2 could in fact occur and coincide.

When we found the error, one of the team spent a few hours working out what the likely combination of events was that was necessary to coincide for this result to occur - and the number was surprisingly close to 1 in a million - quite literally. When we sat down and ran the numbers, the average time between errors happened to be awfully close to when the millionth execution of that could would likely have taken place on that system.

With the exception of the code error, the rest of the events that had to coincide were quite beyond our control - effectively random for all intents and purposes. While one might argue that the computer system itself was the result of intelligent design, that misses the point. The systems in question were never designed to produce the result that was observed. The second point is that the various aspects of the computer environment were acting as independent, but interacting, systems - not unlike those we see in the world around us (admittedly the computer software involved exists on a far smaller scale than the world we live in).

So, if one were to draw out the analogy a bit further - especially when considering the fundamental concept of evolution - we find ourselves examining the probability that random biological events would be occurring, some more successful than others at propogating themselves. So, let's consider that any particular biological event (e.g. DNA mutation) has a probability of 1 / 1 x 10^7 of occurring (my estimate of the probability here is arbitrary). Now consider how many biological events occur in the world every second of every day. Cells split and reproduce all the time - think about the number of cells in our world - even in one body - the numbers are unimaginably huge, far more than 1 x 10^7 - which means that the odds are that somewhere, any one arbitrary event has occurred.

Now, thinking beyond that, then the question is whether that event occurs in a context which makes it significant? Well, if the event itself can occur, and has a pretty reasonable chance of occurring, then it is hardly an unreasonable assertion that the events could occur in the correct context to become significant.

Is this guaranteed? No. Is it impossible? No - which is by far the more significant point.

Does this preclude the existence of some metaphysical being and their involvement in our universe? No - of course not. By definition the metaphysical being is unprovable until we ourselves become peers to that being somehow.

However, it does provide us with a knowable explanation that does not require the intervention of an unknown and unprovable entity. This produces a logically consistent explanation - one which stands to scrutiny.

For some, what I postulate here is going to be emotionally unsatisfying - but that's not surprising - statistics and the mathematics of probabilities are seldom emotionally satisfying. Science in general isn't about sating someone's emotional needs.

I Think The Correct Term is 'Standards'...

Apparently, in Outer Wingnuttia, they think that the University of California is discriminating against "Christian" courses.

As WND reported earlier, the University of California system adopted a policy last year that basic science, history, and literature textbooks by major Christian book publishers wouldn't qualify for core admissions requirements because of the inclusion of Christian perspectives.

Yeah, well if the books they are talking about are as horrendously badly written as Darwin's Black Box, I'm not surprised.

"Christian schools will have to decide: teach from a Christian worldview and eliminate your student's ability to attend a UC school, or teach from a secular worldview, so that the kids can enter the UC school system," he explained.

"Essentially what's happening is the UC has to pre-approve courses taught in high school," Tyler said. "It's pretty shocking, because in depositions UC reps made it clear: whether it be English, history or science, the addition of a religious viewpoint makes it unacceptable."

Ummm...not quite. There's a couple of points to be considered here. Public school curriculum is visible to the University structure, and they know what they are getting. Many of the so-called "Christian" private schools are quite deliberately off the accreditation radar so they don't have to be accountable for their courses.

I don't know about you, but anytime someone says that they refuse to participate in the formal structures established for inter-college credit sharing, I have to be somewhat skeptical of both their motives as well as the veracity of their academic courses.

After reviewing textbooks from major Christian publishers Bob Jones University Press and A Beka Book, UC officials deemed them insufficient, specifically because the books supplemented the basic material with a Christian perspective.

Burt Carney, an executive with the Association of Christian Schools International, said he's met with officials for the university system, and was told that there was no problem with the actual facts in a BJU physics textbook that was disallowed.

The question I would have to ask is just how much of that book presented the facts, but then couched them in scriptural terms or contexts that made the resulting presentation sound like the science was incomplete or otherwise ambiguous - the usual half-baked horse apples that are often used to justify the "debate" around evolution.

It may well be that the facts were fine - there just weren't enough of them to constitute an adequate text in the field.

"Here's the very university that talks about academic freedom," Carney said. "It's very discriminating. They don't rule against Muslim or Hindu or Jewish (themes) or so forth, only those with a definite Christian theme."

I don't know about anyone else, but I've never encountered science texts with religious themes except for cases where 'Christianists' pop up and start trying to spin the facts to match their scriptural interpretation.

Digging around, I found a few interesting bits and pieces on this lawsuit. First is a PDF from the Calvary school that is one of the plaintiffs, which provides some more concise insight into why some of the courses were rejected.

The second is an article published in a UC Berkely publication on the subject.

UC also disallows science courses that rely solely on BJU and A Beka Books textbooks. At issue, the fact sheet says, "is not whether they have religious content, but whether they provide a comprehensive view of the relevant subject matter...." In the BJU Press and A Beka Books science textbooks, it goes on, "the publishers themselves acknowledge that the primary goal is to teach religious doctrine rather than the scholarship that is generally accepted in the relevant fields of study."

The introduction to Biology for Christian Schools (2nd Edition, BJU Press) clearly states, for instance, that students' conclusions must conform to the Bible and that scientific material and methods are secondary: "The people who have prepared this book have tried consistently to put the Word of God first and science second.

Somehow, I think I can understand why the UC organization is hesitant to accept these books and courses as valid foundations for study in established fields. This isn't discrimination against Christianity - it's called academic standards - UC has a right to insist that its students enter their courses with a reasonably known and consistent foundation. If you want to teach a course on biology and derive it from scriptures, that's fine, but call it that (e.g. 'Scriptural Biology' or some such) and admit that outside of a very limited subset of the world, very few people are going to accept the course as being representative of modern science.

They Appointed Whom To The "Science Advisory Panel"???

Okay fine, Preston Manning is a smart enough man, but he isn't exactly the sort of person I'd put into a board discussing how science should be interpreted with respect to public policy.

The group is supposed to “build public confidence that policy and regulatory decisions are being based on broadly accepted scientific knowledge and evidence.”

I'll believe that this group isn't a bunch of CPoC hacks and ideologues when I start seeing something from this government that demonstrates a modicum of respect for facts and evidence instead of ideology.

"Dr." McVety's Wisdom...

It would seem that all of the degree mill diplomas that "Dr." Charles McVety claims to have earned (paid for) haven't exactly enhanced the man's critical thinking skills.

For example, consider the following bit of drooling stupidity published on http://www.charlesdarwin.ca.

Entitled "Sexism in Schools" sexism in schools, it attempts to portray evolution theory as outright sexist, and all of the evil things that it says to put women into a second place status in society:

Darwin’s theory of natural selection as the process for progress of a species places the developmental responsibility on the male; therefore, man is further developed than woman. The stronger, more fit man will out do the weaker man and win the woman, ultimately producing stronger offspring, contributing to the evolution of man. This conclusion that the woman plays little or no part in development leads to the belief that women have not evolved as far as man.

Ummm...no, it doesn't Mr. McVety. Even the most egregious abuse of what Darwin wrote in 'The Origin of Species' could justify that particular position.

However, even if Darwin had written precisely that in The Origin of Species, it hardly reflects the current day understanding of evolution - or science in general for that matter.

You see, unlike raving nutballs like Charles McVety, science long ago figured out that it must change as new data emerges - and plenty of data to refute whatever piece of Darwin's writing McVety is nitpicking about has come along. (Remember, Darwin wrote much of his material long before women were considered equal citizens in our society - if some of it has undercurrents of what today we would call sexism, we shouldn't be surprised).

However, I suppose McVety can be forgiven such failings, as he comes from a tradition where reading and actually interpreting things is verboten - after all scripture is the "unchanging word of God", is it not?

But, then he goes on and proceeds to drop an even better turd out of his intellectual orifice:

Evolutionists also teach that the woman resembles an eleven-year-old male therefore is clearly lesser developed than man is. This type of superficial conclusion only reveals the ignorance of so-called scientists that propagate such nonsense. They obviously do not look beyond outward appearance and have no understanding of women.

Another “brain storm” of evolution is that women are over burdened by strong senses to the point that they have no ability to develop intellectually. Evolutionists compare women to lesser developed species like dogs that have such strong noses that their minds are constantly overwhelmed by the sense of smell, so that they cannot progress mentally. This is utter nonsense and highly offensive to all mankind.

I don't even want to know where he derived that bit of nonsense from. It's beyond stupid, and lands firmly in the realm of just plain crap. If one were to make an utterly ridiculous extrapolation from observed evidence, you could probably derive whatever McVety is dribbling on about (it's fairly well known that women have more sensitive senses of sight and smell than men do - on average - but I don't think anyone with half a brain views that as anything other than a difference, especially in the context of science classes).

As for what is supposedly taught in high school science courses, I don't think it comes anywhere near to spouting the kind of drivel that McVety is manufacturing. He's actually being somewhat less coherent in his arguments than Behe was in Darwin's Black Box - a feat that I find somewhat surprising.

Mr. McVety might want to do a couple of remedial exercises - actually read "The Origin of Species", as well as one or two current day books that talk about evolution. Shouldn't be a difficult thing for a man with a PhD. to do ... if he actually earned that PhD the old fashioned way...

Still More Evidence

For years, scientists have been finding little bits of evidence that suggest that there is a lot more to someone's sexual identity than 'personal choice'.

In the early 1990s, Simon LeVay made one of the first important observations about differences in brain structure.

This small observation (and I am cautious about treating it as conclusive) blew open the whole "nature versus nurture" debate around homosexuality. LeVay's finding was one of the first things that pointed to validating the assertion that so many in the GLBT community had made for years - 'they were born that way'.

Then, in 2005, another study popped up, this one analyzing brain response to sweat. Again, not a hard-and-fast finding by any means, but another piece of evidence that suggests strongly that there are in fact differences in how brains work.

Most recently, Antonia Zerbisas notes that Swedish researchers published another study of brain physiology that looks quite significant, as it demonstrates differences in brain structure which show gay male brains as being more consistent with straight female brains.

This last study strikes me as particularly important, as it has the potential to provide considerable insight into the vast dynamic range of human sexuality, but it also goes an enormous distance towards providing some degree of explanation for the existence of cross-gender identity (transsexualism) as well as potentially providing some means to understand that homosexual and bisexual behaviour is somehow related to differences in brain structure. I'm reluctant to say that it is "caused by brain structure", as I believe such an explanation is overly simplistic, but the presence of structural similarities that are cross-gender consistent (e.g. A gay male showing a brain structure that is consistent with a straight female) is intriguing.

When I wrote this series of essays, it was with a predominantly psychological perspective that I was working. To add to the mix the influence of physiological brain structures goes a huge distance to explaining the "I always knew I was different" narrative that is common among both homosexuals and transgender people.

Do these kinds of findings "prove" the idea that sexual and gender identity are genetic? Not entirely, because we don't fully understand much about how the brain develops, and when these differentiations occur; nor do we have sufficiently meaningful understanding of how brain structure influences individual personality and behavioural traits. What we have is an emerging correlation that suggests that brain structure is involved somehow.

This growing body of evidence is gradually leading down a path that is consistent with other parts of science - namely that the human body is vastly diverse in its individual expression, even in areas that are not readily seen from outside.

Politically, these findings have huge implications - particularly for the gay-hostile religious lobby. (Who I am sure will be working hard to find some supposed "expert" to denounce this latest study) These findings suggest that sexual identity has physiological anchors to it, and that tends to fly in the face of the oft-raised complaint that GLBT people are trying to "recruit" others - especially children. As the GLBT side of that argument has often claimed, you either are part of that population and know it or you aren't.

Those who can "swing either way" (Bisexuals) likely have brain structures somewhere in between those of strictly heterosexual and strictly homosexual individuals - and are likely the people for whom "reparative therapy" manages to "convert" to being straight (mostly).

If you have a strong biologically-based explanation, then it becomes much easier to understand the frequency of occurrence (relatively rare), and much harder to justify enforcing 2,000+ year old scriptural prohibitions as a reason to marginalize GLBT people as a whole.

Deriving Bad Conclusions From Good Science

Alberta's Stephen Boissoin has linked to this Lifesite article from his blog.

The article references a paper from 1997 published in the International Journal of Epidemiology. The study itself is actually an interesting piece of work, as it estimates the impact of HIV/AIDS on gay male life expectancy. The data from the article ranges from 1987 to 1992 - near what many would consider the peak of the AIDS epidemic.

The study is an interesting exercise in statistical projection and modelling techniques.

Of course, from this, the Lifesite article then goes on to derive that it is perfectly valid to suppress GLBT people in society:

This morose reality makes a strong case for a fitting redefinition of so-called "homophobia," that being "Homophobia: The rational fear that 'gay sex' will kill you!"

The fact that we don't have mandatory surgeon general warnings on the side of condom wrappers is a testament to the power and influence wielded by the radical homosexual lobby. (Warning: Male-male anal sodomy has been proven to shorten your lifespan by up to 20 years.)

Hmmm...well, given that condoms are in fact intended to provide some degree of protection from HIV and other STIs for both men and women such a warning seems to be rather missing the point, doesn't it?

Of course, that's all just worthless fluff. All the political spin in the world doesn't change reality, nor does it eliminate the study's disturbing conclusions or practical implications. The research left ZERO wiggle room for anyone who would argue that homosexuality is a "perfectly normal and healthy alternative sexual orientation."

No, actually that research didn't conclude any such thing. It presented the impact of HIV infection on life expectancy for Gay Males. The study did not address safer sex practices, nor did it attempt to make any assessment as to whether being gay was a normal part of the human experience.

In fact, a careful read of the study shows that it was designed to address the problems that underreporting of HIV (and related risk activities) present for those attempting to understand the public health implications for HIV. (Strangely, that underreporting correlates directly to the kind of social suppression that GLBT folk have experienced historically)

In light of the irrefutable medical facts, it should be considered criminally reckless for educators to teach children that homosexual conduct is a normal, safe and perfectly acceptable alternative form of sexual expression (or "sexual orientation").

But instead, the "gay" lifestyle is vigorously promoted in our public schools. Sexually confused children who suffer from gender identity disorder and same-sex attractions are told to "embrace who they are," and are encouraged to entertain deviant and dangerous sexual temptations. "But always use a condom!" liberal educators bellow. (Forget that condoms have a perilously high failure rate and are incapable of preventing numerous STDs such as the HPV virus.)

If there is one thing to be learned from the HIV/AIDS epidemic, it is not the disease that is the problem - it is ignorance that is the problem. Being gay should not be something that has to be hidden. Having to hide means that youth will make foolish choices out of ignorance.

Oh yes, the canard about how condoms can fail utterly misses the point. Condoms are surprisingly effective at stopping a host of different infections - whining because HPV isn't one of them is silly - especially when these same idiots are the ones who figure that an HPV vaccine shouldn't be made available because they're afraid it will promote promiscuity.

But then, logic doesn't stop a fundie in the midst of a rant, does it?

The "Day of Silence" (DOS) is organized by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), one of the most militant and well-funded of the powerful homosexual pressure groups. DOS purports to confront the alleged systematic harassment and bullying of children who self-identify as homosexual, bisexual or "transgender." ...

To be sure, bullying and harassment should not be tolerated against anyone, anywhere for any reason, and those who engage in such activities should be firmly disciplined. However, DOS has very little to do with "bullying" and has everything to do with propaganda.

During DOS, children and teachers are encouraged to disrupt the school day by refusing to speak, in a show of support to self-described "gay," "lesbian," "bisexual" and "transgender" students. ...

If this was any more asinine, it would be mind-boggling in the stupidity of its conclusions. Essentially, the author, "Concerned Woman" Matt Barber, has concluded that the kinds of systemic discrimination that GLBT people face on a daily basis is valid because of a study which examined the impact of HIV/AIDS on male homosexual life expectancy. Perhaps even more offensive, he figures that GLBT people should sit back and quietly accept it, on the basis of his "irrefutable medical evidence". (Actually, I think the Day Of Silence is one of the most brilliant protests out there - because it so effectively represents EXACTLY what the bigot crowd wants, and they know it calls them on it - without getting into a yelling match)

Of course, we shouldn't point out to Mr. Barber - or Mr. Boissoin, for that matter - that GLBT civil rights have exactly nothing to do with gay male sex or HIV transmission per se. (and, if it does, then I'd love to see them explain away what's happening in Africa these days - where a lack of knowledge is quite successfully killing off an entire generation of straight people)

Ha Ha Ha Ha !

Over at Pharyngula, we find out that blog owner PZ Myers tried to attend a screening of the movie Expelled, which is supposed to show us all of the evils of Evolution theory. Prof. Myers was denied entry to see the movie.

I can only imagine how truly awful Expelled really is, but you really do have to chuckle at the reality that its producers are so thin-skinned that they have a list of people that they don't want to see the movie.

Oh - I see that the New York Times has a story on this.

It doesn't say much for the "argument" that the movie is making when they are so afraid of someone poking holes in it (and thus making it look bad) that they specifically ban that person from the movie. Granted, Myers is sometimes less than gentle in his critiques, but that's the blogosphere - it's not necessarily the most genteel of places. (and I've seen my own share of the kind of unreasoning hostility that some are quite happy to dish out)

God Is Not A Testable Hypothesis

Every time I hear some religious advocate such as Ben Stein, producer of "Expelled" ranting off about how science excludes God, or the notion of a God, I get a little annoyed.

On CBC's "Where Is God Today"
feature this morning, they were interviewing Ben Stein about how hard done to some researchers he knows of are because they were pursuing research to demonstrate the existence of "intelligence" in the design of life.

Science is about what we can know and demonstrate with facts. I don't care what spiritual knife you use, it is simply impossible to tangibly test any hypothesis that is based on invoking supernatural forces that may or may not exist. Hypothesis like Intelligent Design fail as "science" because of this very basic precept.

Any hypothesis has to be testable - that is a fundamental underpinning of science. Anytime you invoke the supernatural, even in the abstract sense that "Intelligent Design" does, you guarantee that the hypothesis or model you are working with is no longer testable because anything you cannot explain rationally is automatically subsumed by the external, unverifiable "intelligence".

Testing a hypothesis always contains the prospect that you will find the hypothesis is falsified by the test. The presence of "meta beings" in such circumstances inhibits further inquiry as the "meta being" becomes an explanation for any data points that "don't fit".

Critics of science of complain that "the goalposts move" because the details of theories change and refine as new evidence comes into the picture (or leaves it). Michio Kaku does a lovely job of describing the often tortuous path that String Theory has taken in Parallel Worlds. If you want to talk about "god" or other metaphysical beings, go for it, but don't expect science in general to take you seriously.

An Intriguing Development

While social conservatives have often scoffed at the notion of a "gay gene", or other models that lean towards sexual behaviours having discrete roots in biological underpinnings such as genetics, nobody has actually disproven the notion either.

Well, in Fruit Flies at least, it seems that some genetic triggers have been isolated.

Featherstone found the gene interesting initially because it has the unusual ability to transport the neurotransmitter glutamate out of glial cells -- cells that support and nourish nerve cells but do not fire like neurons do. Previous work from his laboratory showed that changing the amount of glutamate outside cells can change the strength of nerve cell junctions, or synapses, which play a key role in human and animal behavior.

But the GB gene became even more interesting when post-doctoral researcher Yael Grosjean noticed that all the GB mutant male flies were courting other males.

"It was very dramatic," said Featherstone. "The GB mutant males treated other males exactly the same way normal male flies would treat a female. They even attempted copulation."

This is a very interesting experimental result indeed. Skeptically, one can trivially claim that this has little or no bearing on humanity, after all we are much "more complex" creatures than a mere fruit fly. However, to do so would ignore how much fruit fly based research has contributed to our understanding of genetics, and how that work has contributed to greater knowledge and understanding of the human genome.

Far from being conclusive in the seemingly endless debates over "nature versus behaviour", this little tidbit of research suggests strongly that sexual orientation and sexual behaviours have at least some of their basis lurking in genetics and and assortment of biochemical responses to things like pheromones.

Most interesting indeed.

Confusing Correlation With Causality

I'm always amused by various attempts at linking birth control and abortion to cancers in women. Inevitably, some combination of statistics come out and and some people start trying to claim that there is a causal relationship, and therefore both should be outlawed.

The first article cited is this article which describes a statistical correlation between hormone-based birth control pills and cervical cancer. The correlation is interesting in itself, but of course no story is ever so simple:

For women in developed countries who took the pill from age 20 to 30, the number of cases of cervical cancer by age 50 rises to 4.5 per 1,000 women, from 3.8 cases per 1,000 in women who did not take the pill.

The incidence rises to 8.3 cases per 1,000 for pill users in less developed countries, compared with 7.3 cases per 1,000 for women who did not take the pill.
But this extra risk is outweighed by a reduction in the risk of ovarian and endometrial cancers, the researchers said in a statement.

In other words, one risk is traded for another risk. Unsurprising, as this is true of most medical treatments these days. However, it is important to note that the researchers are quite clear in pointing out the "other side" of the risk coin - a factoid that is conveniently ignored by the so-called "pro-life" advocates.

The second article is more egregious as it is a purely statistical analysis which suggests a relationship between abortion rates and breast cancer rates in women. The sad part about this is that the trends shown do not necessarily imply any kind of causal relationship. The trends are parallel, but there are also a myriad of other factors that could be at play.

I will grant that statistical correlation is a valid point from which to launch more in-depth investigations to establish whether there is any causal relationship. However, it is folly in the worst sense of the term to simply assume causality.

Additionally, when an article by one person is only cited by people with obvious "axes to grind" politically speaking (and Patrick Carroll is certainly in that category), it's worthwhile to start digging a bit to see what can be found about the researchers involved.

It's hard to tell what Mr. Carroll's credentials really are. He seems to have a fairly solid background in statistical analysis, which fits with references to actuarial research, but it's not clear if he holds an advanced degree in that field, or has any significant medical research background. He's clearly not exactly "widely published", and certainly not as a co-author of papers in journals of Oncology, which should give anyone reading his work pause before placing too much weight on the conclusions or inferences made.

However, I would be reluctant to make any kind of policy decision based simply on these limited points of data, without significantly more in-depth causal analysis being made.

"Einstein Was Wrong" ???

Via Pharyngula, we learn of the latest in a long line of crackpots - this one trying to make a film to debunk Einstein's science:

I have spent over 13 years trying to show the scientific community what I have found, but they refuse to listen. During this same time, everyone who has no emotional or financial ties to the idea that Einstein's theory of relativity is wrong, have all turned into healthy skeptics after being exposed to what I have discovered. This film's goal is to do the same on a global scale.

Ask yourself this: would your life change if Einstein's theory of relativity were wrong? The answer is yes, but not only because of what you would lose - the wasteful spending of billions of dollars on deadend experiments - but for what the world stands to gain without relativity blocking the way."
--David de Hilster
Director

Sort of smacks of the standard creationist line, doesn't it?

The funny bit is that science already recognizes that aspects of Einstein's works have their limits - so does Newtonian mechanics. But it's quite a leap to claim that because Einstein's theories have limitations, which is why physicists have been exploring String Theory and other areas in an effort to achieve a more unified set of physics. It does not, by any means, demonstrate that Einstein was "wrong".

You might start off by claiming that this is a movie, and thus primarily a matter of fiction. Except that the director is claiming that this is a documentary - which implies that he takes himself seriously - even if he is making unintentional comedy. While it's possible that this director has actually found something of interest that refutes Einstein, but somehow I have my doubts - his website just reeks of the usual neo-religious lines about science - and rational thought in general.

Along with "Creation Museums" and other attempts to debunk perfectly good science, this movie strikes me more as further evidence of a rising dark age in Western cultures - especially North America.

Let's Get This Straight ...

Creationism is mythology, not science. It's not even bad science. A few clowns like Michael Behe have tried to dress up creationism as "science" by calling it "Intelligent Design".

There is no "debate" to be had around the scientific validity of creationism - and never will be. The weight of evidence that supports evolution theory is simply overwhelming, no matter what "doubts" creationists may put forward.

Apparently, the Winnipeg Sun's Joseph Quesnel thinks that the appearance of "Creation Museums" and other attempts to legitimize creationism as a form of "legitimate science" are a sign of a debate we should be having.

Quesnel complains:

When Liberal Party strategist Warren Kinsella presented his purple dinosaur on a television program to mock Day, he was upholding a strong prejudice against evangelical Christians permeating our society.

Should it be any surprise Christians who hold fast to the biblical account of creation are treated this way?

Witness the case of Stephen Meyer, a proponent of intelligent design in the United States. Meyer wrote a peer-reviewed academic article in a scientific journal affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution about his ideas and almost lost his career. This is a scientist who is not a young earth creationist and yet he faced blacklisting by a prominent scientific organization.

Hold on a second here, Quesnel. If you put forth a paper that claimed that PI was in fact a whole number, would you not fully expect to be laughed out of the journals you submitted it to? I'm sorry to say, but it is not "prejudice" for a peer review journal to trash what is obviously monumental junk science.

The claim that science should "accommodate" religion is a bad joke at best. If your religion leads you to believe that the earth is flat, or the moon made of cheese, that's just fine - but don't ask science (and scientists) to validate your beliefs when the evidence says otherwise.

In many respects, science is not "hostile" to theism so much as it disregards theistic notions (it is "atheistic" in the very classical sense of the term - science simply doesn't regard theism as relevant). If various people wish to create "Creation Museums", that's fine - just don't ask the rest of us to take them seriously.