Both sides of the story

When I was young, before I realized I would be far to short and unattractive to ever seriously contend for a beauty pageant, I dreamed of being Miss USA. I'm pretty sure almost all girls dream of being that glamorous, that talented, that poised; of being so beautiful you light up the stage, and the television cameras can't help but follow you around.

Not that I've watched a beauty pageant in a while, but I don't think I realized how dumb most of the girls sound when they open their mouths.

So, if you were to ask me the question, "should evolution be taught in school?" my answer would be something along the lines of, "YES! Evolution is a basic scientific principle that helps us understand much about the world around us and so it should absolutely be taught in schools."

According to many of this year's Miss America contestants evolution should be taught in schools only as a contrast to creationism, you know, so kids can decide for themselves what to believe.

Seriously? What schools did these girls go to where creationism was taught? Did they not pay attention in science class, or were their teachers that terrible or misinformed themselves that only a handful of them (almost exclusively from the coasts, you may note) even seemed to recognize evolution as science? And what is it with "both sides should be taught?" There are no "both sides" to evolution. There's a well-tested theory with an awful lot of evidence backing it up on one side and on the other...religious dogma.

While these young women may be exceptionally poorly educated, I have my doubts they're very different from most of their generation. I find it intriguing they seem to think the information presented in school is something one chooses to believe or disbelieve. Sure, there are interpretations one can choose to accept or not accept (though it really takes more education than you get in high school to be able to discern between interpretations), but the vast majority of what you're taught in school (including evolution!) isn't so much stuff you choose to believe or not; more like that's the stuff we're all expected to know and understand in order to be educated, reasonably thoughtful citizens of our nation. Having that knowledge may open up more choices, particularly educational, social, and (hopefully) employment opportunities, but believing what your taught in a secular school or not isn't really the choice you have before you.

Arsenic-based life

Earlier this week a friend of mine posted on facebook about an exciting astrobiology-related announcement NASA was about to make once the embargo was lifted. He was very excited about it, but also very, "I can neither confirm nor deny." Not that his refusal to hint anything deterred any of us from posting wild speculation, from creating new life (d-aminos and l-sugars?) to new models that predict the energetics of life on Titan.

Yesterday, it was announced bacteria capable of using arsenic in place of phosphorus was discovered in Mono lake. Mono lake (which is extremely basic) hosts a number of bacteria capable of living off weird elements (tungsten, and now apparently arsenic) because it has such weird chemistry. Apparently, some people were disappointed.

Affirmation

I'm a little slow about reading Science (the journal). Sometimes there's good stuff, but more often than not, I'm just not that interested, and there are other journals that have many more articles of direct relevance to my research. Sometimes, though, Science gives exposure to articles that, while outside my research area, are still interesting and even useful. Last week's (which I finally got around to skimming today) included this article, in which physics students were asked to either write an essay about their most important values (the affirmation group) or an essay about why something they don't value might be important to others (the control group).

Women (but not so much men) who wrote about their own core values did better on exams and better on the tests than those who wrote about someone else's values. The effect was particularly pronounced for women who start out believing men are better at physics than women. The thinking of the authors is that when people reaffirm their values while in a hostile environment, they basically remind themselves of their own worth and that allows them to perform better. Men apparently don't find physics classes quite such a hostile environment, so the exercise did nothing for them.

So, if you, or a girl you know, is entering into a learning environment that might be considered hostile in some way, perhaps a little directed journaling at the beginning of the experience, focused on core values and why she finds them important, will remind her what a talented, awesome woman she is and provide a buffer that will aid her in learning.

The lost women

As a female working in science, it's sometimes discouraging to see how little women have contributed historically. Admittedly, there are very few people who make it through the filter of history to begin with, but the erosion of names that leaves behind only a few pillars makes it seem like the only people who have been involved in science were those male pillars. Here is a summary/review of a book that details the lives and contributions of the women the Royal Society refused to admit to its hallowed halls but who nevertheless were important contributors to science in their day.

One quote, from Maria Mitchell, struck me especially. She said,

"The laws of nature are not discovered by accident; theories do not come by chance, even to the greatest minds, they are not born in the hurry and worry of daily toil, they are diligently sought… and until able women have given their lives to investigation, it is idle to discuss their capacity for original work."

The discussion below the article contains the typical, 'men are more accomplished because the distribution of intelligence is flattened, leading to more smarter--and more dumber--men' (debunked--entertainingly--here and here. Personally, I think Mitchell comes much closer to the mark. My experiences tell me cultural factors, especially expectations regarding women's roles, are far more important. Women are responsible for so much, especially for children. Having a small child prevents one from giving their lives to investigation completely, so as I'm struggling to finish my dissertation the tension between my two lives--my life of the mind and of investigation, and my life of the home--is quite stark. I've been extraordinarily lucky to have people supporting me through my graduate career, especially post-Sylvia, but it's much, much harder. In the end, there is nobody who can (or, perhaps more accurately, is willing to) do the job a mother can for her own children.

Promiscuity and cooperation

So, I just posted recently about bonobos and their matriarchal society and apparent deficit of aggression. Bonobos are apparently very sexual creatures, who use sex in part to sort of grease the wheels of social interactions and keep people happy.

People don't really do that. In fact, we pretty much reject that model of society except in some science fiction universes. In a study that reinforces traditional family values, monogamy was found to increase cooperation and the complexity of society. Turns out birds are more likely to help one another if they're pretty sure they're related, which is more likely if monogamy is the norm. It's always interesting to see scientific hypotheses to explain social structures.

Obviously there must be multiple ways for complex societies to evolve since bonobos also live in fairly complex, cooperative groups. I wonder if the gender that monopolized resources makes a difference. Females are more likely to know who sired their offspring, and their parentage is pretty clear. If females are more in charge, then, are they more likely to cooperate with each other and with their sisters' offspring? Too bad I don't know more about birds to be able to ask that question more critically.

Women in science

So, I'm not really sure I buy this argument that there are more men than women in science because there are more men in the tails of the IQ curve. After all, being smart doesn't mean you're going to go into science, or that you'll be successful. An awful lot of other skills and aptitudes go into determining whether someone will be successful at any given career, including interpersonal skills, drive and ambition, dedication, and self-denial (just to name a few).

My suspicion is that the structure of a scientific career weeds out a lot of women who would otherwise make great scientists. There aren't enough spots at the table for all of us--women and men--and I suspect a lot of us women are simply more likely to take ourselves out of the running (many because of work/life balance issues) than men are.

I wonder what those female science-trained but no longer scientists end up doing once they leave. Do they come back? Or is a leave of absence pretty much an exit?

Hmm, are we in So Cal yet?

I think we just had an earthquake. Not very big--maybe 4.5 or 5--we'll have to see where the epicenter was. I'm thinking it wasn't terribly close since there was probably 5 seconds between the S and P waves.

According to Derrick (and the USGS) it was actually a 5.9 near Ocotillo, CA (so, about 90 miles east and a bit above the US/Mexico border. We're actually approximately 120 miles from the epicenter since it wasn't in Ocotillo).

Good geologists that we are, we woke up Sylvia to share this experience with us. Silly parents. She's now telling us "no" to everything we ask. Especially, "do you want to go back to bed now?" This is going to be a fun night.

Oh, now it looks like it's a magnitude 5.7 quake. Wonder if this'll be downgraded to a 5 by tomorrow morning.

Hi-ho stable isotopes, away!

The thought of anything being poisoned by evapoconcentration of ones own excrement is pretty gross; nevertheless, it's cool that stable isotopes can be used to reveal when suspected foul play is simply fouling of a water source.

Republibot interview

While searching for a community in which I could mourn the end of "Defying Gravity," I found Republibot, which is a blog for science fiction geeks who also happen to fall on the conservative end of the political spectrum. When I opened my big mouth about having once worked at JPL (for a summer), R3 asked to interview me. Here's the resulting interview. Enjoy!

Peer review

I've heard a lot of complaints about peer review, mostly from people who don't have to deal with it. I am not well-versed with peer review, since I've only published one article and my advisor did all the shepherding through the review process. From my perspective (as a now published author), it seems to work okay. Your peers give you comments, most of which (in my case at least) reveal places in the text that are unclear and need to be strengthened. I thought my paper was much improved by the peer review process.

I'm guessing in response to everyone else out there who claims the peer review process sucks and either doesn't catch everything bad or let through some "valuable contributions," the newest open source Earth Sciences journal, Earth System Dynamics is modifying their peer review process. The description on the website reads:

In the first stage, papers that pass a rapid access peer-review by the editorial board are immediately published on the ESDD website. They are then subject to Interactive Public Discussion, during which the referees' comments (anonymous or attributed), additional short comments by other members of the scientific community (attributed) and the authors' replies are also published in ESDD.

In the second stage, the peer-review process is completed and, if accepted, the final revised papers are published in ESD.

I'm wondering how well it'll work. It's hard enough to get reviews when people are asked directly to review a paper. I have a suspicion what will happen is most papers will only get the fast review and will languish with nobody paying much attention. Controversial topics, on the other hand, will bring the cranks out of the woodwork and will see lots of comments.

I hope this experiment works. I hope this is a valuable improvement to the peer review process. I am simply skeptical that the time restraints each scientist faces will undermine the addition to the vetting process. But hey, I'm excited to see what happens!

How cheap do you think I am?

I was talking with some people last night about my research and from their reaction to the news that I study climate change it was pretty clear they think global warming is a vast conspiracy perpetuated by the scientific community on society at large. I know there's no conspiracy--there's no way in ache-ee-double-hockey-sticks the cantankerous, disagreeable, argumentative bunch of scientists I know would go in for that. But it got me thinking, exactly what would motivate scientists to perpetuate fraudulent science? Most claims I've heard revolve around grant money, which sounds almost plausible when you consider the 6 billion dollar budget of NSF. That's got to be enough to pay all of us off, right?

Okay, so 6 billion (6x10^9) and we divide it amongst the approximately 50,000 (5x10^4) scientists who work in education.

6x10^9/5x10^5 = 1.2x10^4

or about $120,000. That's before considering that about 1/3 of the money NSF pays out in grants goes to universities (called overhead). Of course, not all of the 50,000 scientists working at universities are working on global warming, nor is all of NSF's budget going to studying climate change. So this is just a back of the envelope calculation (as it's meant to be). But it does show just how little money there really is floating around for science in general and begs the question, just how cheap do you think I am that I would keep quiet about a vast global conspiracy for a measly 120K a year?

cool science

Sometimes I come across a title to an article and think, "that's just cool." For instance, this little gem that talks about the theoretical underpinnings of biogeobatteries. Apparently you can, with some types of contaminant plumes and in some types of geology, set up electrochemical potentials on the order of tens of millivolts. Small, (and perhaps unsurprising) but neat!

black or white

Today is the 150th anniversary of the publication of "The Origin of the Species"--a book that changed the world, changed our understanding of our place. And I've never actually read it. I should, but it's one of those books I've just never gotten around to reading. I've buckets of other evolutionary research, but have never taken the time to read more than a few excerpts of the books upon which that other research is based. (That may sound bad, but it's really surprisingly common--it's usually faster and easier to learn the conclusions of basic research from textbooks and reviews than it is to go read all the basic literature yourself.)

Over at BCC, there are a series of posts on the relationship between evolution and faith, particularly Mormonism. In this post, SteveP argues the God of the gaps embraced by ID (and by too many Mormons who want to embrace ID) is not just bad science, it's bad theology.

I have to agree. If you assume God is in the gaps, science truly is constantly pushing God into a smaller and smaller space. Which it's not.

I don't know what God is, other than my creator, but I do believe s/he/it exits. My religion says God is a man who was once as we are, who created us, who had a literal son who died and in so doing atoned for my sins. That teaching, as many others, resonates in my being in a way that makes me believe it is true. But it could be wrong. The teachings of the temple resonate in a way that makes be believe them. But it too, could be wrong. Other stuff I think could as easily be made up as true. Even the stuff I believe I acknowledge could be made up or wishful thinking (though that's as much the doubt of a scientist speaking as anything else).

Even with that uncertainty, I'm okay having faith, understanding what I believe may be very different from the truth. I don't think that uncertainty means there is no God, only that we humans have an incredibly incomplete understanding of God, and since we don't like uncertainty, we've filled in the gaps in our understanding with stories that sound good--at least until some evidence comes along that contradicts the story, forcing a re-examination of beliefs. I would rather hold to the stories, acknowledging their potential weakness, than hold to an either-or philosophy that claims either we have it all right (which is highly doubtful) or it's all wrong (which is unsatisfactory).

Fairness

CEO's make a lot of money. Really, it's understandable--the top dog should get paid the highest wage. Top management decisions are very important to the proper functioning of a company and I'm sure the job of a CEO is very time consuming and high pressure.

But is it really fair that a CEO makes more than 100 times the salary of the lowest paid employee? Are they really working THAT much harder; are they really worth THAT much more?

Free market economists would probably say sure. The free market (as free as it is) values them that highly, so that must be what they're worth.

This paper argues differently. Using thermodynamics as a base and equating fairness with entropy, it estimates a CEO is worth about 8 to 16 times what the least valuable employee is, and so should be paid accordingly.

It's nice to know the outrage so many have expressed at the magnitude of CEO pay packages is based on sound principles of fairness. It's also really cool fairness in an economic system can be expressed mathematically.

Mass wasting

Inspired by a story I heard on Radiowest about the Extreme Ice Survey, I baked this cake:






I call it the mass-wasting cake. It's very tasty--pumpkin spice cake sliding around on cream-cheese frosting. I keep thinking there's got to be a lab in here somewhere--something about viscosities and angles of repose. Mmm, yummy science.

Experimenting with food storage

I can just imagine how this experiment started.

BYU professor/grad student: "Hey Mom, how long have you had this stuff in food storage? The layer of dust on these dried apples is pretty thick. And the label on the oatmeal here is so faded I can hardly read it."

Mom: "You know, that's the food that's going to save us in an emergency. We've probably had it since the year your Dad and I got married. A lot of people gave us food storage items for the wedding, and it was hard to get you kids to eat a #10 can of applesauce before it went bad, even with nine of you."

BYU P/GS: "Gag. Do you really think something from 1973 is any good?"

Mom: "You're a food scientist. You figure it out."

Why doctors aren't scientists

Derrick took this picture yesterday when he and Sylvia went outside to enjoy the wonderful weather. Of course, today, when I get to spend the day with Sylvia, it was rainy and miserable all day, and consequently I had no desire to spend time outside, soaking up the sunshine and taking cute pictures of my daughter. Oh well, perhaps next week. In any case I thought I'd start this post with a cute picture and my (tongue in cheek) grousing so those of you who don't want to read further don't have to.

The next part of this post isn't likely to be as cheerful.

I have a friend who has spent the last seven years trying to treat her infertility and, after all that time, has decided she's done with medical treatments and is going to adopt. I applaud her decision--I'd wondered for a while why she didn't have any children because she'd obviously be a very good mother, but never asked because it's not really my business. I hope the process goes smoothly and well for her. I'm quite sure she'll enjoy motherhood and the children she's blessed with will have excellent lives under her care and tutelage.

The internet is a wonderful, terrible tool that I sometimes (okay, frequently) use to distract myself. I am curious, but have a remarkably short attention span. So, after discussing my friend's infertility with her, I started looking stuff up on google scholar. One of the first papers I came across contained this graph:The three graphs show the concentration of sperm, the percentage of motile sperm, and percentage of sperm with normal morphology for populations of infertile men (white) and fertile men (black). Notice that the distributions for the first two sets of measurements (concentration and motility) are nearly identical for the infertile and fertile populations. There are minor differences between the fertile and infertile populations evident in morphology, but the similarity of that distribution as well means that realistically, you can't tell if an individual is fertile or infertile based on these measurements--assigning them to one population or another won't be possible in many, many cases. It does not inspire my confidence in the medical community that typically a measurement of the above features is what's used to determine whether a male is fertile or not. I am particularly not comforted by the final conclusion of the article, which claims,

...our data from a large group of couples with well-documented fertility or infertility provide clinical standards for semen measurements that may be useful for diagnosing male-factor infertility and for distinguishing between subfertile, indeterminate, and fertile ranges. These thresholds can be applied in clinical practice and research, provided that there is strict quality control.

In my estimation, their data show pretty conclusively there's no way to determine whether a man is fertile or infertile based on these observations. Makes me wonder how many other couples have spent years chasing after (potentially) the wrong cause of their infertility, convinced the man can't possibly be the problem.

random crawl

Sometimes I read articles like this one about women in science and think to myself, maybe I don't want to buck the trend. I like science and all, but some days it just seems like life would be simpler and easier and just plain more enjoyable if I gave up on my science ambitions and settled for a different, and probably just as enjoyable career. Maybe, if I were in a different profession, I wouldn't miss things like the first time my baby crawls--something I did indeed miss, but Derrick graciously captured in the photos below.

O




At the same time, I do like science, and I am particularly glad I'm married to a fellow scientist with whom I can be nerdy. The other night we had a red cabbage slaw that we made with a vinegar dressing. The pigment in red cabbage is an acid-base indicator, so we played around with baking soda and the vinegar dressing to change the color of the dressing.



The other day Sylvia woke Derrick from a nap, and they played for a few minutes. (now we enter into the more random part of this post.)


This ladybug found a home on a bean plant we've got growing in the kitchen.

My old roommate got married and I went to her reception. I didn't take too many pictures, but I did get a picture of the display they'd set up because I thought it looked nice and was appropriately nerdy for these two math-o-philiacs.

And finally, after my exploits making cupcakes that Derrick wouldn't eat, I thought I'd make some he'd enjoy. So, these are white cupcakes with strawberry filling and white chocolate frosting. I intended to take them to a St. Patrick's day picnic, but we ended up not going. Given how quickly we went through the cupcakes, I don't think Derrick minded keeping them.

Supernatural

Ever have a conversation where you think you're communicating, and yet at the end of the discussion you realize you've been talking past one another for an hour or more? Yeah, tonight Derrick and I had one with Tad Colver about intelligent design and why it isn't science. The crux of the misunderstanding was that we were claiming a hard and fast boundary between the natural world and the supernatural world--taking "God off the table," so to speak. Tad seemed to think that division somehow required atheism, or implied science requires that God not exist. It took us a while to convince him that really all we were saying was that science can't test God, and religion can't refute science. God, and all the supernatural, are outside the realm of the testable by science. We will always have the unknown, the time before time, the existence outside the universe to contemplate; it's just that some things that today fit into the category of "supernatural" will eventually be explicable by natural laws. The inevitable clashes with religion will come as we move things from supernatural (like the creation) to the natural with the corresponding scientific explanations (evolution).

Dinner was quite nice--it was good to see Mary, and great to hold her nearly one month old son, Eddie. Sylvia's really grown up, and seeing her next to a younger infant shows just how much she's grown. She's much stronger than she was a month ago, able to hold her head up much of the time, has better control of her muscles in general, and is so much more interactive. She smiles and laughs, and is really quite social (at least, as long as she isn't tired).