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IPCC Report Fails to Capture Media or Public Agenda

Friday's IPCC report represents history's most definitive statement of scientific consensus on climate change, yet despite the best efforts of scientists, advocates, and several media organizations to magnify wider attention to the moment, the report still only scored a modest hit on the overall news agenda. Generating major attention to the report's release stood as an almost impossible task. First, it's a technical backgrounder, a massive literature review of the state of climate science. As exciting as that might sound to the small number of Americans who closely track the issue, it's…

Beware of Crickets Bearing Gifts

The insects scandalously embracing in this picture are decorated crickets (Grylllodes sigillatus), which can be found in the southwestern United States, among other places. The droplet on the male's tail is--for want of a better word--a gift. After producing this glob he sticks it onto the package of sperm he places on the female. After the crickets are finished with their encounter, the female will grab the gift and snack on it. In an age when penguins can become role models for traditional family values, some people may be tempted to celebrate the decorated cricket as everything a gentleman…

Supertaskers, The Act of Doing Nothing, and Other Recent Papers of Interest

There are a few fascinating papers to come out recently that I won't have time to cover in detail, but which people may find interesting. References and abstracts after the jump: Watson & Strayer (2010). Supertaskers: Profiles in extraordinary multitasking ability. Psychon Bull Rev. Abstract: Theory suggests that driving should be impaired for any motorist who is concurrently talking on a cell phone. But is everybody impaired by this dual-task combination? We tested 200 participants in a high-fidelity driving simulator in both single- and dual-task conditions. The dual task involved…

Flags Don't Wave in a Vacuum; Or: NASA Reboot

Last November, in Florida, I had the opportunity to see my first Space Shuttle launch. For the hundreds of millions of people who don't pay more than a passing notice to the fact that human beings still go into space on a regular basis, this is a fairly banal thing. But to those who camp out all day, plan trips around Cape Canaveral launch windows, and scrupulously follow the ins and outs of NASA politics, this is the bread and butter. Unless you score tickets to the Kennedy Space Center, which has the official ambiance and a giant countdown clock, the best place to watch a NASA Shuttle…

First New Last New Frontier

The following is the first in a two-part distillation of a cover story about NASA, politics, and the new power generation that I just finished for the LA Alternative. From this surreal atmosphere, as close to the belt of the equator as we can get in this country, we send people into outer space. Few Americans think of Cape Canaveral in their day-to-day. They are consumed, not wrongly, by the machineries of life: raising gas prices, magazine subscriptions, college tuition, first dates, dinner plans. Outer space is already an abstract enough concept for humanity to grasp; couple that with a…

The structuralist heresy

Larry Moran has heard the words of Michael Denton, and has come away with a creationist interpretation of structuralism. I have to explain to Larry that Denton, as you might expect of a creationist, is distorting the whole idea. Here's the Denton/Intelligent Design creationism version of structuralist theory. As Denton says, the basic idea is that the form (structure) of modern organisms is a property of the laws of physics and chemistry and not something that evolution discovered. He would argue that if you replay the tape of life you will always get species that look pretty much like the…

Coelacanths illustrate the difference between real science and creationist science

Ken Ham says something stupid and dishonest again. https://twitter.com/aigkenham/status/662450677625569280 The fish that forgot to evolve? Here’s the difference between observational and historical science: ow.ly/Ug1wU If you bother to read the awful article, it includes a standard creationist canard: Coelacanths haven't changed a bit over their long history, and this disproves evolution. Well, this fish apparently forgot to evolve for 65 million years! You see, the living coelacanth is easily recognizable from the fossils. Despite having supposedly “primitive” features, many of these…

Why Open Access?

Timo Hannay just responded, over at one of Nature's blogs, to the hordes of bloggers who were somewhat displeased with the tone and content of Declan Butler's recent Nature article. Now that someone from Nature has returned fire, and other bloggers have fired back, it's likely that this whole thing is going to turn into one of those multi-day, multi-article kerfuffles that do so much to maintain blogging's reputation as the WWE of the scientific world. Which is cool, as far as I'm concerned. It's been a while since I've grabbed a folding chair and climbed into the Cage of Death. I'm ready to…

Morals vs. Pragmatism, Part 2

As I promised, here is the email I received from President Lewis Duncan of Rollins College after I wrote a blog post on his comments on the Karpova-Tonegawa affair. My commentary on his email is in brackets and italicized. Email and my commentary after the jump. Dear Ms. Frank, [sic] I take strong exception to your misleading interpretation and extrapolation of my quote in the Boston Globe. How disappointing that a fellow scientist would be so presumptuous in her perspectives. [This is lame. 'You're a scientist, so you're supposed to be rational, and you aren't being rational, so are…

Catholic Health Minister gives Church pregnancy counselling service

In yet another attempt to Catholicise the Australian options on health, Minister Tony Abbott, a Catholic, continues his reckless quest by assigning to the Catholic Church in Australia a contract to provide pregnancy counselling services. This is in part because he wants to reduce the number of abortions. Under the fold is the text of the Canberra Times editorial, which gets it exactly right. Having failed to control access to abortifacients, stem cell research, and the like, Abbott really ought to be removed from his office for this blatant grab for control of Australian polity. There's a…

History never repeats

One of my favourite bands of the 80s was Split Enz, out of which Crowded House evolved. And one of their best songs was titled "History never repeats", a sentiment that seems to be fairly widespread. Recently, I started Dawkins' latest book (what is it with established writers on evolution? Gould's brick was immensely in need of editing, and so is The Ancestor's Tale). The first epigram is attributed to Mark Twain: History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes Compare this with the somewhat later claim by American philosopher Georges Santayana: Progress, far from consisting in change, depends…

Explaining religion 2 - what is religion?

I now turn to the question of explananda - what is it that explanations of religion are adduced to explain? Similarly to the general classification I gave before, there are several things that seem to need explaining. 1. The sociological explanandum: the existence of organised religion Religions are salient objects in modern and historical societies. All of them have social structure, and it is that which calls for explanation. There are basically two approaches here, one tied to Weber's sociology and the other tied to Durkheim's. Weber believed that religion was symbolic, and founded…

Why do scientific theories work? The inherent problem

In an interesting post, Think Gene poses what they call "the inherent problem" of scientific theories: The inherent problem of scientific theories is that there exists an infinite equally valid explanations. Why? Because unlike in mathematics, we never have perfect information in science. ... OK, so our world understanding improves as we verify models, like if the Large Hadron Collider finds the Higgs… right? Theoretically, no. An infinite number of theories that are just as “probable” as the others still exist to be tested. All that was done was eliminate some of the theories. Subtracting…

Implicit attitudes: How children develop biases about race

[originally posted on February 2, 2006] In connection to Monday's posting, Other-race faces: Why do they seem different?, I thought readers would be interested in a post from early last year concerning implicit attitudes on race. The link to the original post is above if you would like to see previous comments. Twelve years ago, Greta and I were awakened by a rattling on the door of our Bronx apartment. It was about three A.M.; our children were asleep in the next room. "What should I do?" Greta whispered to me. She had woken first and was holding the deadbolt on the door locked so the…

A few thoughts on "Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor"

I just watched the BBC's documentary on "Ida" (Darwinius masillae), "Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor", and to be honest I was not very impressed. Rather than dissect the show second-by-second, though, I will only discuss some of the main points that occurred to me while watching it. Heaven knows I have spent plenty of time on Ida already... While I surely appreciate the show's efforts (however fleeting) to describe the paleobiology of Ida, the show's real hook is the conclusion that Darwinius is one of our earliest primate ancestors. This is a tantalizing hypothesis, but is it true? The…

Dryopithecus, the tool-wielding ape

A cast of the lower jaw of Dryopithecus available through Ward's Natural Science Establishment. For most of anthropology's history tools had been thought to be the exclusive hallmark of humanity. That only our species could use and manufacture tools was a sign of our superiority, be it the result of evolution or divine fiat, at least until it was discovered that apes could make tools, too. Though anecdotal accounts of tool use by primates had existed for centuries it was Jane Goodall's research at Gombe in Tanzania that truly shattered the "Man the Tool-Maker" image. When told of her…

A little more whine for your Darwin Day

From his instance that human evolution has halted to his rather crummy review of Stephen Jay Gould: Reflections on His View of Life (see my thoughts on the book here), Steve Jones has been raising the hackles of his colleagues more than usual lately. Given that I am not a scientist I cannot count myself among his frustrated peers, but I was aggravated by Jones' latest op-ed "Can we please forget about Charles Darwin?" Jones is worried that this year's celebration of Darwin's work will overshadow modern evolutionary science. Jones writes; I hope that, by its end, its subject's beard, his…

Life Among the Mammoths

It is another busy day, and since I am again left with little time to write here I have decided to post another "follow-up" excerpt from my book.** A few days ago I mentioned that many paleontologists were skeptical that humans had lived alongside extinct mammals until discoveries made in Europe between 1858-1859 convinced them otherwise. Below is a brief summary of how the scientific consensus began to change on this issue; The plan of Brixham Cave, from Geology: Chemical, Physical, and Stratigraphical by Joseph Prestwich. Several months after Koch's presentation, and over 4,000 miles…

Academic foolishness

Oh lord, what fools these mortals be. Especially that one down there named Alice. I've had two particular moments of foolishness in the last few days that have smacked me upside the head. And because the Scientiae theme for April (shockingly) is "fools and foolishness," I feel compelled to share them with you. There will be drama, politics, famous names, remorse, public humiliation... I tell you, it's worth looking below the fold. Yesterday, the president of our university came to visit our new building. She spoke with all kinds of people throughout the college from NAE members to recent…

Alois Alzheimer's first case

On November 4th, 1906, during a lecture at the 37th Conference of South-West German Psychiatrists in Tubingen, the German neuropathologist and psychiatrist Alois Alzheimer (1864-1915, right) described "eine eigenartige Erkrankung der Hirnrinde" (a peculiar disease of the cerebral cortex). In the lecture, he dicussed "the case of a patient who was kept under close observation during institutionalisation at the Frankfurt Hospital and whose central nervous system had been given to me by director Sioli for further examination". This was the first documented case of the form of dementia that…

Near-death, rehashed

The story so far: Mario Beauregard published a very silly article in Salon, claiming that Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) were proof of life after death, a claim that he attempted to support with a couple of feeble anecdotes. I replied, pointing out that NDEs are delusions, and his anecdotal evidence was not evidence at all. Now Salon has given Beauregard another shot at it, and he has replied with a "rebuttal" to my refutation. You will not be surprised to learn that he has no evidence to add, and his response is simply a predictable rehashing of the same flawed reasoning he has exercised…

"Sizzle": a meta-mockumentary?

This morning, a plethora of Sizzle reviews will saturate Scienceblogs. I've no doubt that the film's science will be thoroughly dissected by more informed reviewers than I. So I'm going to steer clear of temperature trends and timetables, and instead consider how the film pitches its message. Sizzle is billed as "a global warming comedy"; the official website claims "Sizzle is a novel blend of three genres - mockumentary, documentary, and reality." Personally, I think the film suffers from an identity crisis: it tries to fit all three genres at once, and it gets a little scrambled in the…

"College Town 'Poverty' Exposed:" Exposé or Rant?

"College Town 'Poverty' Exposed:" Exposé or Rant? The Cleveland Plain Dealer ran a story a couple of weeks ago, which dealt with the issue of Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) going to college towns.  The article ran in Sunday's Ann Arbor News, which is where I saw it.  The article itself is available on the Internet, href="http://www.newhousenews.com/archive/koff091806.html">here. The gist of the story is this: the CDGB program is a federal program that provides block grants to communities based upon their poverty rates.  College towns tend to have a high proportion of college…

Socializing promotes survival of new nerve cells & may preserve memory

Photo by Einat Adar  Our feathered friends provide us with some beautiful examples of the link between brain and behaviour. In some bird species, groups of cells involved in seasonal behaviours die after they have performed their function, but are regenerated by neurogenesis as and when they are needed. Male songbirds, for example, serenade females; the brain nuclei which produce the vocalizations die when the mating season ends, and regenerate as the next one approaches. Similarly, the Clarke's nutcracker stores tens of thousands of pine seeds in many different caches spread across a…

The line between chemistry and physics during the chemical revolution.

Following up on the earlier discussion here and at Chad's about the "fundamental difference" between chemistry and physics, I wanted to have a look at a historical moment that might provide some insight into the mood along the border between the two fields. It strikes me that the boundaries between chemistry and physics, as between any two fields which train their tools on some of the same parts of the world, are not fixed for all time but may shift in either direction. But this means that there are sometimes boundary disputes. One locus of the dispute about boundaries is the chemical…

Does thinking like a scientist lead to bad science writing?

In his book A Short Guide to Writing About Science [1], David Porush suggests that the mindset useful for doing science isn't always the best mindset for communicating science. (It's more than a suggestion, actually -- the second chapter of the book is titled "Why Good Scientific Thinking Can Lead to Bad Science Writing.") Since it's connected to our prior discussion of ambiguous scientific writing, let's have a look at Porush's diagnosis of bad science writing and the ways he thinks it could be better. Porush notes that most people learn to write scientific papers by reading a whole mess of…

Friday Sprog Blogging: Kids Day at SLAC 2009.

Thanks again to the generosity of Free-Ride friend LO, the elder Free-Ride offspring will be partaking in this year's Kids Day at SLAC today. And, once again, the younger Free-Ride offspring is chagrined to be too young to participate. Since next year both sprogs will meet the age requirement, though, the younger Free-Ride offspring got to participate in this year's review of the workshop safety information. Dr. Free-Ride: You are workshop option B. So, the first activity: paleontology. Do you know what that is, younger offspring? Younger offspring: Yes. Dr. Free-Ride: What is…

A tremendous Luddite celebrates Ada Lovelace Day.

Today is Ada Lovelace Day. Regular readers of this blog may recall that I am a tremendous Luddite. Obviously, this should not be taken to mean I am against all technological advances across the board (as here I am, typing on a computer, preparing a post that will be published using blogging software on the internet). Rather, I am suspicious of technological advances that seem to arise without much thought about how they influence the experience of the humans interacting with them, and of "improvements" that would require me to sink a bunch of time into learning new commands or operating…

The Refusers attack Orac's readers

I was thinking of taking Memorial Day off. There are several reasons. First, it's a holiday. Second, the blog still isn't functioning quite up to snuff after the transition to WordPress. In particular, we still have a major spam infestation that is unlikely to improve before Tuesday. It also doesn't help that I have a whole bunch of grant writing to do. Then I saw this. I became aware of the post through a TrackBack, and that TrackBack came from the website of a rock group—yes a rock group, and a bad one, at that—made up of antivaccine loons. Those antivaccine loons call themselves The…

Praying for an anti-vaccine "advantage"?

A couple of months ago, right before TAM 9, I took note of a rather disturbing post by one of the regular bloggers on the anti-vaccine crank blog Age of Autism. Basically, the post was worrisome because in it Kent Heckenlively portrayed those who oppose anti-vaccine pseudoscience as "wicked," even quoting Psalm 94, which is a psalm that calls upon the Lord to bring his vengeance upon the wicked and destroy them. He also invoked Stephen King's novel The Stand. Normally, this wouldn't be such a big deal, except for its timing. Most skeptics will know that The Amazing Meeting is a yearly meeting…

A vaccination tool every parent could use

Regular readers know that I lived in Chicago for three years in the late 1990s. Indeed, Chicago is probably my favorite city in the world, and my years there count as three of the happiest years of my life. I lived in a cool neighborhood near DePaul in Lincoln Park; never again in my life am I ever likely to live in a place with such a fine mixture of residential houses, businesses, restaurants, bars, and parks. Moreover, I still have family there, which, combined with my knowledge of the city, leads me to continue to feel a connection to the city. It's that connection that guarantees that I…

The University of Arizona Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health teams up with quacks

Naturopathy is quackery. I like to start most, if not all, posts about naturopathy with that simple statement. The reasons are simple. First, it's true. Second, most people—including doctors—are unaware of this simple fact. Finally, it irritates naturopaths and their fans. It also has the benefit of setting the tone I want to convey whenever I hear about naturopathy being granted the appearance of academic legitimacy by being embraced by a real academic medical institution. Such were my thoughts when I was made aware of this press release entitled SCNM Offers Dual-Degree Program for Master's…

The Hand of Doom

I hate flying these days. I'm almost certainly not alone in this dislike of what air travel has become. After all, between widespread flight cancellations and delays, service that would make even cell phone tech support seem attentive and pleasant by comparison, and the necessary but degrading security gauntlet, in which old ladies are treated with the same level of suspicion as someone wearing an Osama bin Laden T shirt, that one has to run before boarding the plane, flying has become downright ugly. The only time it's tolerable these days is on the rare occasion when I can score first class…

Antivaccination crankery on the CBS News website

While I'm back on the topic of vaccines and autism after a long hiatus, thanks to the Atuism Omnibus, don't know how I missed this article by Sharyl Attkisson, entitled Autism: Why the Debate Rages. I can't recall the last time I saw so many logical fallacies and doggerel packed into an article on an ostensibly "mainstream news" site. In fact, I don't think I've seen such antivax idiocy on a mainstream news site ever, but it's possible that I blocked it out of my mind. I don't have time to do a thorough fisking, but I will hit the main points. Here are the "reasons" that Attkisson lists as…

Whither the weather? Linux CLI solutions

The command line is a great place to get weather information. Here, I discuss one cli-app for current conditions and forecasts, in the larger context of why you would ever want to use the command line anyway. There are several ways to use your computer to check the weather. One is to use the Nakob Weather Rock method. Suspend the computer using a rope from a tripod of sticks. If the computer is swaying, that means it is windy. If the computer is wet, that means it is raining. And so on. Like this: That is a very amusing way to tell the weather, but it is not convenient because your…

Don't be a Jew

Joseph and Mary, and Little Joe and Mary, and Grinker and I, sat around the table where most of the dinner had been laid out. Additional bits and pieces of the dinner would be brought out as needed shortly, but now it was time to pray. So we held hands and bowed our heads, and Mary led a prayer to Jesus for the bounty we were about to receive and stuff, and we all said Amen and were about to dig in, when Mary interrupted with a tone of voice and a hand signal that made everyone stop with their forks in mid air. This is a Repost in celebration of Missionary Weekend "We have a new tradition we…

Will the Earth be sucked into a tiny black hole in June?

It is said that scientists involved in the Manhattan Project to engineer and implement the first nuclear bombs seriously considered the possibility that such a bomb could initiate a chain reaction that would destroy the Earth. Now it is being claimed that the production of miniature black holes by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland could do the same. The LHC is scheduled to go on line in June. This thought occurred to me the first time I heard that the LHC might be able to produce tiny black holes. Apparently someone else had the same thought. Walter Wagner and Luis…

The price exacted by the anti-vaccine movement

As 2009 ended and 2010 began, I made a vow to myself to try to diversify the topics covered on this blog. Part of that vow was to try to avoid writing about vaccines and the anti-vaccine movement for more than a couple of days in a row. Unfortunately, even in the middle its very first full week, 2010 has already conspired to make a mockery of any "plans" I thought I might have for the blog, with a flurry of vaccine-related news items relevant to the pseudoscience that is the anti-vaccine movement coming fast and furious. Oh, well. I might as well just go with the flow and do what I do best--…

A summary of the MnCSE Science Education Saturday

My day was spent in the Twin Cities attending the inaugural public meeting of the Minnesota Citizens for Science Education (MnCSE), and I can safely say now that Science Education Saturday was a phenomenal success: a good turnout, two top-notch talks, a stimulating panel discussion, and an involved audience that asked lots of good questions. You should have been there! I expect that, with the good response we got today, that there will be future opportunities to attend MnCSE events. I'll just give a brief summary of the main points from the two talks today. I understand that outlines or…

Rosegate

Imagine, if you will, that the emails stolen from CRU had included fawning comments from an MSM journalist to a climate scientist like this: As a veteran member of the MSM (Vanity Fair and the UK's Mail on Sunday) may I state for the record: Sir, I salute you. Bravo! or this: without Steve's brilliant work and this magnificent website, it could not have been written. What do you think the denialists would have said? Since a perfectly innocuous query from Seth Borenstein in the stolen emails lead to Anthony Watts calling for "AP to remove Seth Borenstein as 'science reporter'", you can bet…

I hang my head in shame for my profession a second time

Lately, I've been frequently lamenting how easily physicians can be seduced by the pseudoscience known as "intelligent design" (ID) creationism (or even old-fashioned young earth creationism). Yesterday, I even hung my head in shame after learning of a particularly clueless creationist surgeon, to the point of speculating that I might not be able to show my face in ScienceBlogs for a few days. Then, just as I was getting set to show my face in ScienceBlogs again after only a one day absence (having decided not to let one clueless surgeon deter me), I see this on Bill Dembski's blog.…

Some Philosophy, a Few Autumn Photographs, and a Canal

Is a place timeless? Is a hill the same hill after a hundred years, or a thousand? For instance, this black and white photograph on the right shows a canal along the Front Range. But how old is it? Does it matter? In many of the photographs I've compared lately, there have been striking or subtle differences appearing over time. This scene, however, has hardly changed in the past 150 years. Before then, there wasn't a canal here, nor a lake in the distance, but there weren't cameras around to capture the scene, either. A few centuries back, we might have seen a herd of buffalo grazing along…

Metaphorically speaking...

It's a dimension of chaos! Shall we battle, or ride the waves? They say it's a catchy phrase, but I know what they're thinking. They hear words like, "dimension", "chaos", or "battle", and think laser guns and villains with curling mustaches and deep, evil laughs. They hear "ride the waves" and think of blond-haired muscular heroes being cooed at by girls in polka-dot bikinis. They smile, and thus cheered, move on with their lives. Maybe that's what they think. If so, I'm inclined to let them be. Others, who understand why I obsess over fractals and philosophical notions of existence and…

A Visit to Lillybridge in 2006

Note: I originally planned to post this along with the Friday Fractal. Then, like chaos, fractals, and life, it didn't turn out the way I expected. Considering the length and tone of this piece, it will stand better alone. Never fear, the fractal is still on the way. "They paved paradise, and put in an interstate freeway..." In order to visit the place where the studio/shack of Charles Lillybridge once stood, I have to drive down the I-25, the interstate freeway which runs parallel to the Front Range. It already looks like a gloomy day, with thunderheads looming ominously to the west. As…

Nothomyrmecia: that handsome ant in your sidebar

Those of you who haven't got an ad blocker installed have probably seen this ant floating about in a promotional banner in the ScienceBlogs sidebar: I can't speak for how others react to this image. Most, I imagine, filter it out as yet more clutter on the screen. But for a picture of an insect it's kind of personal for me, and rather odd it to see it splattered across the ScienceBlogs. Sort of like seeing photos of one's relatives in the news, or the family dog used to advertise pet food. To set the scene, let me explain that when I took this photo I was road-tripping across southern…

Scientists call for changes to personal genomics based on comparison of test results

Four scientists - including the omnipresent J. Craig Venter (left) - have penned an opinion piece in the latest issue of Nature based results from five individuals genotyped by two separate personal genomics companies. The article highlights some deficiencies in the way that genetic data are currently used by direct-to-consumer companies to generate risk predictions and to present them to customers. The identity of the tested individuals isn't made explicit in the article, except to note that there were two males and two females from the same family and one unrelated female. All of the…

From the Archives: My 9/11 Story

Last year, I recounted my personal experience on September 11, 2001, and I offered some commentary about what that day--and the events of the ensuing year--meant to me and to American politics in general. I've reposted my 9/11 story again this year, below. (11 September 2006) When I was a freshman in college, at Texas A&M University, on Tuesday and Thursday mornings I had two classes back-to-back in the same lecture hall. Because of a weird scheduling fluke, these classes were about 45 minutes apart, though. During that break, sometimes I would go eat breakfast, other times I would do…

Bill Foster's Letter

By now you all know about Bill Foster, an outgoing council member in St. Petersburg, Florida, who has very strong creationist leanings. Foster had written a widely cited letter linking Hitler and the Columbine shooters to Darwinism. I thought it would be fair to have the ENTIRE letter written by foster available, rather than allowing this quote mining to go unanswered! This is a transcription of a PDF file available at the St. Petersburg Times. The Honorable Nancy N. Bortock, Chairman All Pinellas County School Boared Members P.O. Box 2942 Largo, Florida 33779-2942 Re: Evolution…

Global Warming, the Blog Epic ~ 04 ~ Forcing

This is the fourth in a series of reposts from gregladen.com on global warming. "Climate Studies" is a "causal" science. Most sciences are "causal" in nature, which is why the sciences and scientists are often loathed and distrusted by people in the humanities and some of the soft sciences. There is not the time or space right now to address this issue, but I'll just say this: People who criticize science for its interest in causality usually do not understand what scientists are talking about. I think this is partly because people in the humanities and social sciences have gone gaga…

You said one thing wrong, therefore everything you ever said is also wrong

In lecturing about behavioral biology (in any of a number of classes) it has been hard for me to avoid the lion story and the languar story. Both involve infanticide and selfish strategies by individuals. In both cases, females do things that are unexpected from the middle class heternormative Caucasoidowestern perspective. Babies die. For all these reasons, the stories wake up the students, get the students interested, and stuff gets learned. The key pedagogy here is this: If you are presented with a counter intuitive situation (and you are alert enough to recognized its…