Obama's science envoys for the Muslim world

A few months ago, President Obama announced an outreach effort to bolster science & technology in the Muslim world. Three science envoys have now been appointed and they will travel to different Muslim countries to forge collaborations and to develop a deeper understanding of the challenges facing the Muslim world. This is an ambitious undertaking and can have a significant positive impact. At the same time, for long-term sustainable benefits, I hope they expand their focus to include basic research as well. But this looks like a good beginning - and lets see how this program unfolds.

The U.S. Science Envoy program is part of President Obama’s “New Beginning” initiative with Muslim communities around the world that he launched in a June 4 speech in Cairo, Egypt. He pledged that the United States would “appoint new science envoys to collaborate on programs that develop new sources of energy, create green jobs, digitize records, clean water, and grow new crops.” The initiative received key support from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Senator Richard Lugar.

In the coming months, the first Science Envoys will travel to countries in North Africa, the Middle East, and South and Southeast Asia. They will engage their counterparts, deepen partnerships in all areas of science and technology, and foster meaningful collaboration to meet the greatest challenges facing the world today in health, energy, the environment, as well as in water and resource management. Additional U.S. scientists and engineers will be invited to join the Science Envoy program to expand it to other Muslim countries and regions of the globe.

Dr. Bruce Alberts is widely recognized for his work in the fields of biochemistry and molecular biology. Dr. Alberts is a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco. As president of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) from 1993 to 2005, he was instrumental in developing the landmark National Science Education standards that have been implemented in school systems throughout the U.S.

Dr. Elias Zerhouni, M.D., was director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from 2002 to 2008. Dr. Zerhouni is currently a senior advisor to Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and was instrumental in creating the University’s Institute for Cell Engineering. Dr. Zerhouni received his medical degree at the University of Algiers School of Medicine and completed his residency at the John Hopkins School of Medicine.

Dr. Ahmed Zewail is the Linus Pauling Chair Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Physics at the California Institute of Technology and Director of the Institute’s Physical Biology Center for Ultrafast Science and Technology. Dr. Zewail was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1999 for his pioneering work in femtoscience, which allowed observation of exceedingly rapid molecular transformations. Most recently, Dr. Zewail was appointed to the Presidential Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

The envoys will be supported by new embassy officers who will also engage with international partners on the full range of environmental, scientific and health issues, from climate change and the protection of oceans and wildlife to cooperation on satellites and global positioning systems. They will work with multilateral institutions, non-governmental organizations and private sector partners to promote responsible environmental governance, foster innovation, and increase public engagement on shared environmental and health challenges.

Read the full announcement here.

Accept the mystery - go see "A Serious Man"

I know some people cannot stand films by Coen brothers and others absolutely adore them. I have to confess that I fall in the latter category. Their latest, A Serious Man, is again a fantastically crafted film with a story that centers on uncertainty and death, and also on the rational and the mystical. The protagonist, Larry Gopnik, is a Jewish physics professor whose life has started to unravel - from his marriage to his tenure. The film centers on his search for explanations. He believes in the certainty of mathematics, and yet he mathematically demonstrates the Uncertainty Principle. Go check it out. And no, unlike No Country for Old Men or Fargo, or Miller's Crossing, this film does not contain any violence (well, almost any). The prologue of the film is in Yiddish and it sets up the movie perfectly. There is another phenomenal sequence in the middle of the film that deals with numerology and dentistry - and somehow it illustrates the theme(s) of the story wonderfully. I will leave it at that. When you watch the movie, also notice the score for the film. It has two melodies. It almost always starts with a light, bouncy music, but is quickly overlaid (and then often dominated) with a heavy, foreboding sound. Comic and dark. A perfect way to illustrate the world created by the Coen brothers.

Here is the preview of the film:

A wind farm vs sacred rituals

Here is a messy case of an effort to develop a wind farm on Cape Cod (the picture on the right is of a Danish wind farm) and how it affects the rituals of the tribe, Wampanoag. As usual, here is a mixture of politics, science, business, environmental issues and Native property rights:

The Wampanoag — the tribe that welcomed the Pilgrims in the 17th century and known as "The People of the First Light" — practice sacred rituals requiring an unblocked view of the sunrise. That view won't exist once 130 turbines, each over 400 feet tall, are built several miles from shore in Nantucket Sound, visible to Wampanoag in Mashpee and on Martha's Vineyard.

Tribal rituals, including dancing and chanting, take place at secret sacred sites around the sound at various times, such as the summer and winter solstices and when an elder passes.

The Wampanoag fight to preserve their ceremonies has become the latest obstacle — some say delay tactic — for a pioneering wind energy project that seemed at the cusp of final approval.

"We, the Wampanoag people, who opened our arms and allowed people to come here for religious freedoms, are now being threatened with our religion being taken away for the profits of one single group of investors," Green said.

The Mashpee and Aquinnah Wampanoag claim Nantucket Sound is eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places as a Traditional Cultural Property. The tribes say the designation, which would come with new regulations for activity on the sound, is needed to preserve not only their pristine views but ancestors' remains buried on Horseshoe Shoal, where the turbines would be built.

Of course, things are not that simple:

Cape Wind supporters say the tribes' claim for a National Register listing for the sound is baseless and was sprung late, in league with the project's most vociferous opponents, the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound.

"I think this is clearly a tactic for delay, for delay's sake," said Mark Rodgers, a spokesman for Cape Wind. "I think it's fair to say, looking at the past eight years, that opponents to Cape Wind have tried every conceivable strategy to slow down or stop the project."

But the question hinges on what can be included as Traditional Cultural Property?

A parks service decision that the sound should be listed a Traditional Cultural Property wouldn't kill Cape Wind, but it could add months to the approval process by forcing developers to comply with the designation's various standards.
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Two Massachusetts environmental and economic development officials, Ian Bowles and Greg Bialecki, produced a list of commercial activities — from commercial fishing to sand mining — they said would be hurt by the ensuing new regulations. They also argued the Supreme Court has ruled that a vast, unenclosed body of water such as the 560-square mile Nantucket Sound isn't eligible as a Traditional Cultural Property.

"It seems clear that this request for such a designation, coming at this time, is an attempt to block or further delay renewable energy development in Nantucket Sound," their letter said.

Read the full article here.

Darwin conference in Alexandria - some pics

The conference was wonderful but then we have the usual pleasures of travel. I left Alexandria for Cairo at 4am and and now I'm sitting at London, Heathrow, as I missed the connection to Boston. Oh well. In any case, here are some pictures from the conference below, and check out the first and second day reports of the conference by Riazat Butt in the Guardian. And another interesting one on Darwin's reception in China. Plus, here is a report in London Times and on Islamonline.

But of course, you want to see some pics. So here are some snapshots from the conference:

Eugenie Scott, Ron Numbers and Jason Wiles

Hmm...dinner. Did I tell you that food was plenty and excellent? Well, here is a sampling.

Josh Rosenau and other (unidentifiable) people in front of the phenomenal library

Planetarium and the three suited Musketeers. Note the artsy blurriness (out-of-focus) introduced by the photographer.

Darwin in Alexandria - I

Two days have passed and the verdict is in. The quality of speakers (excluding some crazies) and food (excluding coffee) is phenomenal at Darwin's Living Legacy conference in Alexandria. Some quick thoughts: There have been some anti-evolutionary comments made in the sessions that dealt with religion and evolution - but overall, the reception seems to have been quite positive - both in Egyptian newspapers and among the local participants. Ultimately, it is fantastic to see leading evolutionary biologists and historians of science presenting their cutting-edge research in Egypt! Excluding the people on my panels, my two favorite talks so far: Richard Wrangham on Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Humans (basically arguing that pre-humans started to control fire and eat cooked food somewhere around 2.6 million years ago and that there is good evidence for the resultant reduced gut size and reduction in molars by 1.6 million years ago - somewhere between Homo habilis and Homo erectus) and James Secord on Darwinism and the Global Circulation of News (stressing the importance of newspapers in the dissemination of Darwin's ideas - though he talked about a number of other things including the mention of first Arabic translation of Origins in 1918 - pretty late, but not as late as in Turkish in 1970).

Yes, there have been some depressing moments as well. In particular the TV debate organized by BBC Arabic. It featured Nidhal Guessoum, Ramez Maluf, and...and...and...Zaghloul El-Naggar. If you are wondering who is Zaghloul El-Naggar. Well, he was responsible for the bizarre Al-Jazeera coverage of the discovery of Ardi - and yes, he made plenty of crazy claims in the debate as well. The debate was in Arabic but I listened to it via (bad) live translation into English. I think a discussion between Nidhal and Ramez and a subsequent interaction with the audience would have been terrific and probably would have brought out not only a discussion of evolution but also about other science-related topics. However, the presence of El-Naggar totally polarized the debate and evoked an equally polarizing reaction from the audience.

What a waste of an opportunity. But this craziness has been balanced by a very high quality of talks.

Some pics coming up in the next post.

A question about Darwin and Muhammad biopics

I was posed the following question by the folks at Science and Religion Today: Would a Muhammad biopic be more controversial than a Darwin movie? Here is part of my response:

I’m not even sure if the Darwin biopic Creation has really been controversial (beyond speculations on the blogosphere). Yes, it was not immediately picked up for U.S. distribution, but, as far as I know, it was not because of any protests or opinion pieces in newspapers. It may have been a self-imposed reluctance on the part of distributors, but then it’s a bit odd, as far more controversial films get picked up regularly (Currently, Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist is playing in theaters and is distributed by IFC Films in the United States.) Furthermore, Darwin’s biopic did get picked up for U.S. distribution within a month of its premiere at the Toronto Film Festival. Does this really qualify as being controversial?

The Muhammad biopic, on the other hand, has the potential of being controversial. However, from what I have read so far, it won’t be. It is quite clear that the movie is going to portray nothing but a glowing picture of Muhammad and the early days of Islam. One place of potential controversy, of course, would be the character of Muhammad on screen. If the filmmakers do that, then yes, the movie will become very controversial. However, I’m pretty sure that Muhammad will not be on the screen, nor will his son-in-law Ali (revered by Shia as well as Sunni Muslims) or his wives.

This is not unprecedented. The 1976 movie The Message starring Anthony Quinn told the story of early Islam. The character of Muhammad was never shown on the screen—though sometimes, he was the camera’s point of view. In addition, none of the first four caliphs of Islam (Abu-Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali) were shown on screen, and the new biopic will most likely follow this principle.

Here is the link to Science and Religion Today.

In Alexandria for Darwin's Living Legacy conference

I have just arrived in Alexandria, Egypt for Darwin's Living Legacy: An International Conference on Evolution and Society (Nov 14-16), organized by the British Council. It's a big conference (over 250 participants) and is taking place in Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Here are three areas that are the focus of this conference:

Cutting Edge Evolutionary Science
Current research focusing on: Genetics; Genomics; Speciation; Origin of Adaptation; Epigenetics; Evolutionary Microbiology; Molecular Biology; Evolutionary Ecology; Biodiversity.

Applications of Evolutionary Science
Agriculture and Plant Sciences; Biomedicine; Engineering; Anthropology; Economic development.

Social and Cultural Impacts of Darwinism and Evolution
Historical debates; Reception of Darwinism across cultures; Evolution and Education; Evolution and Ethics; Science, Religion and Society.

Of course, I fall in the last category. It is incredible that this conference is taking place in Egypt. I don't know what will be the reaction here. Simply by its location, it may remove some of the stigma regarding evolution in the Muslim world, or it may end up generating a backlash. Frankly, I have no idea about the reaction.

I'm scheduled to be on the opening panel on Evolution and Faith in the 21st century, and I'm very excited that I will be sharing the stage with John Hedley Brooke and Eugenie Scott! The chair of the panel is BBC's Bridget Kendall and other panelists include Nidhal Guessoum and Samy Zalat (I briefly met Bridget at dinner and have never met Nidhal and Samy). A portion of the panel will broadcast on BBC (radio) on November 22nd.

On Saturday evening there is an interesting open forum organized by BBC Arabic. Here is the description:

This will be aired as a BBC Arabic's Open Agenda programme. This special episode, will discuss the freedom of knowledge and scientific research in the Arabic world on 14 November during the British Councils Darwin's Living Legacy conference at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. The panel will include two speakers from the conference Prof. Nidal Guessoum and Prof. Ramez Maluf.
...
Issues to be debated will include: How much the Arabic society will accept the freedom of knowledge? What is allowable and what is not? What is the limit of the science research in our society? Is there any struggle between the freedom of knowledge and the restrictions of religion?

The Open Agenda programme will discuss also the degree of development and participation in scientific research in Arab countries.

I will be in the audience (they will have live english translation) - and again, I have no idea what to expect here. But it is fantastic that this sort of debate is taking place on BBC Arabic. Will report on that later.

Also - I will be going to a panel on evolution and education. Eugenie Scott is chairing the session and the panel includes Reverend Michael Reiss, Jason Wiles (go Jason!), Touria Benazzou, and Amy Sanders (I just met her on the shuttle from Cairo to Alexandria - the shuttle that took almost 4 hours to get to our respective hotels!). So stay tuned - if there is wireless at the conference (hey - there better be - its the Bibliotheca!), I will try to send updates.

Nature editorial on Darwin through a cultural lens

Nature (Oct 29) has an excellent editorial (may require subscription) that urges scientists and policy makers to frame their arguments in way that takes value systems, cultural backdrops and local knowledge gaps into account when communicating ideas like evolution. This is not something completely new. Nisbet and Mooney wrote about Framing Science a few years ago. However, this Nature editorial uses historical cases from other cultures to provide support for their argument, and the journal plans to publish a series of articles over the coming month that will cover the international reception of Darwin's ideas in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The public reception of scientific ideas depends largely on two factors: people's ability to grasp factual information and the cultural lens through which that information is filtered. The former is what scientists tend to focus on when they give popular accounts of issues such as climate change. The assumption is that if they explain things very, very clearly, everyone will understand. Unfortunately, this is an uphill battle. The general public's average capacity to weigh facts and numbers is notoriously poor — although there is encouraging evidence that probabilistic reasoning can be improved by targeted education early in life.

Even more crucial, however, are the effects of the cultural lens. Over the coming month, Nature's Opinion pages will explore particularly vivid examples of these effects in the world's widely divergent reactions to Charles Darwin's ideas about evolution in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

And here are some examples:

In China, Darwin's ideas were seen as supporting Confucians' belief in the perfectibility of the cosmic order. Evolutionary theory also became fodder for political movements of revolution and reform, and eventually laid the groundwork for communism. Latin American politicians initially reacted to Darwin's ideas by attempting to entice white Europeans to emigrate and intermarry with local populations, believing that this would 'improve the stock'. But after two world wars had made European culture look less impressive, Latin America began to see its racial diversity as an advantage, and moved towards a social view that favoured a homogeneous blend of cultures.

In nineteenth-century Russia, meanwhile, a tendency to distrust rabid, dog-eat-dog capitalism helped incline naturalists away from a view of evolution that emphasized competition between species. Instead they embraced a 'theory of mutual aid', an account that focused on the role of cooperation in ensuring survival in a harsh environment.

And here is the bit about framing:

The lesson for today's scientists and policy-makers is simple: they cannot assume that a public presented with 'the facts' will come to the same conclusion as themselves. They must take value systems, cultural backdrops and local knowledge gaps into account and frame their arguments accordingly. Such approaches will be crucial in facing current global challenges, from recessions to pandemics and climate change. These issues will be perceived and dealt with differently by different nations — not because they misunderstand, but because their understanding is in part locally dependent.

I think this is a crucial point. Also, remember that this framing is a supplement - not a replacement of factual information. For the Muslim world, where religion plays an enormous role in societies, it would be prudent (actually necessary) to highlight that evolution does not equal atheism and that there are a number of Muslim evolutionary biologists who are also practicing Muslims. This approach is not much different than the one adopted by the National Center for Science Education(NCSE) and should resonate with Muslims as well (with Muslim examples).

Measurable and the unmeasurables

Alan Lightman has written a new book-length poem, Song of Two Worlds. If you don't know his work, you should check it out. He is an excellent novelist as well as a top-notch physicist. By the way, his technical writing is also very good. We used his book (co-written with Rybicki), Radiative Processes in Astrophysics, in our first year of graduate school and it provided a fantastic foundation. In case you are wondering how can he be so productive - well he doesn't use e-mail (what?!!).

Back to his book/poem, Song of Two Worlds. Here is a brief note from last week's Nature:

In Song of Two Worlds, he writes from the perspective of a man reassessing his life after a tragedy. Lightman splits his epic into two sections; in the first, he marvels at the measurable world, the glory of geometry and fact. In the second, he explores the unmeasurable, the pleasure and pain of love, the beauty of a sunset and the night sky. An excerpt from the latter section is reproduced here.

Excerpt from Song of Two Worlds

I am a fragment
That hurtles through space
While the breeze of the universe
Ruffles my hair.

Evening. I gaze
Through my telescope,
Searching the colors of stars.
Some are the hues of goats' wool,
Some ochre olive,
Or pink bougainvillea.

In chasms of space
I see stars born from gases,
Great thrumming furnaces oozing their heat,
Convective motions, electron opacities —
Elsewhere stars dying,
Cold cinders
Or giant explosions, eruptions of light,
Cities consumed in a nuclear blast,
Billions of years dimmed in a second.

I have learned
That the heavens are violent and fragile
And doomed to destruction,
Just as this thimble the earth.
All in the cosmos is failing,
And nothing remains,
And we measure the hour of the stars,
As I measure one morning's light.

Here, in the glass of this eyepiece.
------------

Absolutely love it! Here is a link to his book.

Off-topic: Fashion week in Karachi - an apt answer to the Taliban

Well..here is one way to respond to the Taliban idiocy in Pakistan: host a fashion week. It was held in Karachi last week and, perhaps as expected, got some good worldwide coverage. Here is an article from The Independent, Pakistan fashion week begins under the shadow of Taliban and you can see more pictures here and here. And of course, it is the Miami Herald that had to take the headlines just a bit too far: Dresses, not suicide vests, parade at Pakistan's Fashion Week.

Very cool. At the same time there are some interesting musical experimentations going on in Pakistan. Here are two videos that recently caught my attention. The first one is by Overload. It is a psychedelic-inspired video and the women that sings in the first half is imitating the singing style of the 60s. But I like the drums-dhol combo in the second half.


Here is Chal Bulleya from the highly acclaimed Mekaal Hasan Band. A fantastic use of classical singing, guitar, and flute. (update: 11/10 - Or for a more direct sample of their music, you may want to check out their 1o minute live version of Ya Ali)

Washington Post on Creationism in Turkey

It appears that this is the season for newspapers articles on creationism in the Muslim world. Here is a recent one in Washington Post, and it focuses primarily on Turkey.

Sema Ergezen teaches biology to Turkish students interested in teaching science themselves, and she has long struggled with her students' ignorance of, and sometimes hostility to, the notion of evolution.

But she was taken aback when several of her Marmara University students recently accused her of being an atheist, or worse, for teaching anything but the doctrine that God created the Earth and everything on it.

"They said I was a liar if I called myself a Muslim because I also accepted evolution," she said.

What especially disturbed -- and amused -- the veteran professor was that the arguments for creationism presented by some of the students came directly from the country where she was educated in the biological sciences years before -- the United States. Translated and adapted for a Muslim society, the purported proofs that Darwinism and evolution were wrong came directly from American proponents of Christian creationism and its less overtly religious offshoot, intelligent design.
...

To John Morris, president of the Institute for Creation Research in Dallas, however, the news could hardly be more encouraging.

"Why I'm so interested in seeing creationism succeed in Turkey is that evolution is an evil concept that has done such damage to society," said Morris, a Christian who has led several searches for Noah's Ark in eastern Turkey. Members of his group have addressed Turkish conferences numerous times.
...
Speaking in his home and television studio overlooking the Bosporus, Oktar asserted responsibility for "defeating" Darwinism in Turkey and said that Americans had helped him do it

Oh - what strange bedfellows. Read the full Washington Post article here. But how big is the creationism issue in Turkey? We had some mixed views on this at our conference on Darwin & Evolution in the Muslim World - some believed that this is the symptom of increasing religiosity of Turkey, while others considered it a relatively marginal issue within the Turkish cultural context. I think that the issue of evolution is perhaps playing a proxy in the political battle between the secular and Islamic-leaning parties in Turkey and its quite possible that it may get untangled - especially if mindless rejection of evolution only brings international ridicule without much political payoff at home. But this remains to be seen. And Razib on Gene Expression, perhaps correctly, does not view Turkey as becoming more religious - rather that the more religious population is becoming more assertive over the secular elite:

Without more longitudinal data it is hard to say, but I think this is wrong to view this a renaissance of Creationism driven purely by the government or outsiders. Turkey isn't becoming more religious, the majority of Turks who have always held to Islam as it is practiced in most of the Muslim world are becoming more assertive at the expense of the secular elite. Kemal Ataturk was an autocrat who leveraged his incredible victories against European powers in the wake of Word War I, which preserved the Turkish state from being cannibalized, into enough personal authority to wage a one man culture-war in which he was mostly victorious. But he's been dead for 70 years.

Read Razib's post here.

The Hajj and the swine flu

Well...a gathering of 2.5 million people from 160 different countries may be ideal for making Swine flu a full-scale pandemic. This is the concern for the Hajj later this month - and its good to see a serious effort to deal with it:

The Saudi authorities, fearing that the hajj could turn their holy city into a petri dish for viral mutations and a hub for spreading a new pandemic wave around the world, are working hard to head that off. They have asked some worshipers, including pregnant women and the elderly, not to make the trip, which is scheduled for the last week of November.

“The hajj is a central ritual of Islam, and our country tries to make it easy for everyone to come,” said Dr. Ziad A. Memish, the country’s assistant deputy minister for preventive medicine. “We’ve said we won’t turn away anyone who arrives at our borders. But we are recommending to other countries whom they should let come.”

Although the Saudis have turned to the World Health Organization and other health agencies for help in previous public health threats to the hajj, this year the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American government’s lead disease-fighting agency, is more deeply involved because it has so much experience with this new flu strain. Consultants for the centers have gone back and forth to Riyadh, flu experts at American medical schools have been called in and the United States Navy’s medical laboratory in Cairo is preparing to help with any complex flu testing that is beyond what Saudi laboratories can do.
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The Saudis reacted because this new strain is the first pandemic flu since 1968. Any new flu carries the risk of gene-swapping that can form mutant viruses, and this one has some swine and avian genes that, before this April, had never been seen in humans. Both the new strain and seasonal flus will be circulating in the world, increasing the risk of flus mixing in Mecca.

By the way, not to distract from this very serious issue, but this is exactly the reason why good biology education, that includes evolution, is essential in the Muslim world. Otherwise, Saudi officials will always have to call-up American medical schools to understand the evolution of the flu strain.

Read the full story here. Also, hear the story on NPR here.

Robert Boyle - a gullible fool?

Was Robert Boyle (1627-91) a great scientist or a gullible fool (not because of his religious beliefs)? I did not know that his first biographer, Thomas Birch, destroyed all the papers that he thought may impact Boyle's reputation as a great scientist. Well, here is a review of a new biography, Boyle: Between God and Science, by Michael Hunter:

What on earth are we to make of Boyle? For the simple truth is that he was something of a prize fool. He was completely taken in by Valentine Greatrakes, who went around apparently curing the sick by stroking them. He spent much of his life trying to turn base metal into gold (he is claimed as a founder of modern chemistry, but rather he was, with Newton, the last of the magicians); indeed he seems to have thought he had succeeded, or at least he was close enough to success to think it prudent to campaign (successfully) for a change in the law, which threatened anyone making gold with the death penalty.

And so, of course, Boyle was the perfect target for the sophisticated con artist. A Frenchman called Georges Pierre persuaded Boyle that he (Pierre) was the agent of the Patriarch of Antioch, the head of a society of alchemists that had members in Italy, Poland and China. To become a member Boyle had to hand over his own alchemical secrets, and also valuable gifts - telescopes, microscopes, clocks, luxurious fabrics, large sums of money. In return, Pierre reported on the manufacture of a homunculus in a glass vial. Pierre told a good story - one meeting of his secret society had, he assured Boyle, been disrupted by disgruntled employees who had blown up the castle in which the society was meeting. And Pierre went to great lengths: he planted stories about the Patriarch of Antioch in Dutch and French newspapers on the off chance that Boyle would come across them. Unfortunately it turned out that when Pierre was supposed to be in Antioch, he was actually in Bayeux, having a jolly time with his mistress. And his wild stories had already acquired him the nickname in his hometown of Caen of 'honest Georges'.

And may be this will shed some light on Boyle's motivation:

Why did Boyle fall for Pierre? Because, Michael Hunter tells us, Pierre had an extraordinary understanding of Boyle's personality, in particular of his insatiable need for deference, admiration and sympathy. If Hunter's biography has a fault, it must be that he shows Boyle just a little too much deference himself. Was Boyle a great scientist? Perhaps, or perhaps not: his air-pump experiments were designed and performed by his employee, Robert Hooke, who was surely a greater scientist than Boyle. There is considerable dispute about who first formulated Boyle's Law, but the one thing that seems certain is that it wasn't Boyle. And alchemy, for goodness sake - you only have to remember Ben Jonson's play The Alchemist to know that for a century or so most sensible people had realised that it was a game in which con artists separated fools from their money. Yet Boyle's experience with Pierre did nothing to shake his faith.

Well...Boyle doesn't come off very good here. But the reviewer makes an interesting point the way modern historians of science treat alchemy and astrology and problems with approach:

The convention in modern history of science is that alchemy and astrology should be treated with respect, as if they were genuine sciences (although strangely, the most successful historians of science avoid writing histories of alchemy and astrology - Shapin, for example, has yet to write a book on Boyle's alchemy). But there were plenty of contemporaries who could tell the difference between sense and nonsense. Galileo, to take one example, was never confused (at least not after 1611, when he gave up astrology). He had friends who were astrologers and alchemists, and he let them get on with it and avoided discussing such subjects with them. He was constantly being presented with perpetual motion machines - he soon recognised that they all depended on harnessing changes in temperature and atmospheric pressure. So there is nothing anachronistic about saying that Boyle, unlike Galileo, was a gullible fool.

Oh..and we only happen to know about this Pierre episode by chance:

We would know even more about his foolishness (or, if you prefer, his esoteric learning) had his first biographer, Thomas Birch, not gone through the extensive archive Boyle left at his death and destroyed all the papers that he thought might detract from Boyle's reputation - we only know about the Pierre episode because Birch's assistant, Henry Miles, could not read French, so Pierre's letters to Boyle survived by chance. Since Birch, the scholarly world has been waiting for a proper biography of Boyle. Michael Hunter, who has been the leading figure in Boyle scholarship for many years, has now provided it - but readers will have to supply their own measure of scepticism and worldly wisdom, according to taste.

Read the full review here.

NYT on Darwin & Evolution in the Muslim World conference

Today's Science Times has a nice article that brings up our last month's conference on Darwin & Evolution in the Muslim World at Hampshire College. Just in case you didn't see all the the participants, here is the group picture again and read the full NYT article, Creationism, Without a Young Earth, Emerges in the Islamic World.

From left to right

Back: Amina Steinfels, Sarah Bean, Anila Asghar, Jason Wiles, Laura Wenk, Saad Shafqat, Thomas Glick, Uwe Vagelpohl, Laura Sizer, Andrew Dole, John Schoeberlein, Martin Riexinger, Taner Edis, Don Everhart
Front: Betty Anderson, Berna Turam, Monica Ringer, Ron Numbers, Pervez Hoodbhoy, Saouma BouJaoude, Salman Hameed, Ehab Abouheif, Aykut Kence

Is Darwin a problem for Hollywood?

Darwin biopic, Creation, had a hard time landing distributor in the US. The likely explanation is that Hollywood is squeamish about the topic and does not want to offend religious sensibilities of the US movie going audience. I'm not sure if I buy all of this explanation. Among other things, Hollywood thrives on controversy. For example, US distributors have been picking up gay-friendly films for years and religious opposition in the US has not really been a deterrent). But may be the distributors did get conservative regarding Darwin - I don't know. In any case, Creation has now been picked for distribution by Newmarket - which also released Memento and The Passion of the Christ (Hmm...yes, Mel Gibson's movie). Now here in an interesting article by David Kirby tracing Hollywood's discomfort with Darwin and evolution - detailing censorship efforts in the 20s and 30s:

After the highly publicized Scopes Monkey trial in 1925 the notion of a human/primate connection changed from one of comedy to one of horror in cinema. Several post-Scopes films, beginning with The Wizard in 1927, feature “mad evolutionist” characters who design evil experiments in order to prove their “crazy” evolutionary theories about humanity’s connection to the animal world. Likewise, the goal of the mad evolutionists in The Beast of Borneo (1934) and Dr. Renault’s Secret (1942) is to prove humanity’s link to the animal kingdom. In front of a chart detailing the evolutionary “ladder of life,” the mad evolutionist Dr. Mirakle (played by Bela Lugosi) from Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) informs an unbelieving carnival audience that “the shadow of the ape hangs over us all” and that he will mix human and gorilla blood to “prove Man’s connection with the ape.” While this evolutionary-minded scientist is ultimately punished for his heretical conceptions, the film actually conveys the human/primate connection through Mirakle’s grotesque appearance and his clearly “animalistic” actions. In mad evolutionist films, the only human beings with a clear connection to primates are the evolution spouting evil scientists and their simian-like assistants.

Despite the comeuppance these mad evolutionists received for their beliefs, many of these films actually ran afoul of censors for their inclusion of evolution and Darwinism. The 1922 Lon Chaney, Sr., film A Blind Bargain was re-cut after test audiences found the movie too favourably disposed to Darwin and evolution. This included changing the original book the mad scientist uses to reach his secret lair from Origin of the Species[I1] to a less controversial tome. Murders in the Rue Morgue was not shown or was severely edited in several states because some censor boards objected to the theme of “Man’s descent from the Apes.”

and here is the conclusion that Kirby reaches:

Given the treatment of Darwinian thought in these horror films it is not surprising that Creation faces an uphill battle in American theatres.

This may be the case, but I'm not sure how much we can trust drawing a straight line from Hollywood's early censorship days to the cinema in the late 20th and early 21st century. After all evolution has been mentioned quite neutrally (however superficially) in blockbusters such as Jurassic Park and the X-Men franchise. But even if we leave that aside, David Kirby should not get to his conclusions without addressing Stanley Kramer's Inherit the Wind from 1960 - even though its not in the horror genre. It starred some top Hollywood actors of the time (Spencer Tracy, Gene Kelly), it was a successful mainstream film, and was nominated for four Oscars, including for best actor and best adapted screenplay. But the protagonist in the film is Clarence Darrow (ok - Henry Drummond in the original play) is clearly on the side of Darwin & evolution and is portrayed in a very positive light. Sure, the movie is looking at the 1925 Scopes Trial through the cultural lens of the 1950s political scene - but the basic premise is fully in support of those who accept biological evolution.

Similarly, looking at the sci-fi/horror genre for evolution can be a bit tricky. The inspiration for many of these films is Shelley's Frankenstein (1818, written before Darwin) or Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896) with an emphasis on humans playing God with nature. This is a rich premise and because evolutionary experimentation provides an obvious means, the Mad Scientist often happen to be an evolutionary biologist (though chemists are not that far behind - oh the things they can brew in their beakers).

I think Kirby's piece is interesting - but he has cherry-picked evidence to provide a neat and clean narrative. The reality, as usual, is messy and complex. I'm looking forward to Kirby's forthcoming book where I'm pretty sure he deals with Inherit the Wind and other related films.

Read the full article here.

Other related posts:
Idiocy around Darwin's biopic - Creation

Tropical diseases in the Muslim world

It seems that neglected tropical diseases extract a heavy toll on many of the Muslim countries. In fact, members of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) account for "40% of the global burden of intestinal helminth infections". Here is an editorial from the Public Library of Science (PLoS) with a very descriptive title, The neglected tropical diseases and their devastating health and economic impact on the member nations of the Organization of the Islamic Conference:

Unlike better known infections that occur in North America and Europe, the NTDs represent the most common infections of poor people living in developing countries, causing chronic and debilitating conditions that result in impaired childhood growth and developmental delays, poor pregnancy outcome, and reductions in agricultural worker productivity [5],[9],[10]. As a result, the NTDs not only adversely affect health, but they also represent a major reason why poor people living in the OIC and elsewhere cannot escape poverty [9],[10]. For example, between 200 and 300 million people living in OIC countries are infected with one or more intestinal helminth infections, i.e., ascariasis, trichuriasis, and hookworm.
...
Together, the OIC member states account for up to 40% of the global burden of intestinal helminth infections. Children living in the affected countries on average harbor the largest number of intestinal helminths compared to any other age group, and as a result suffer growth stunting, reductions in physical fitness, and developmental and delays [5],[9],[13]. Intestinal helminths impair the ability of a child to learn in school [9],[13], which probably accounts for the observation that chronic hookworm infection in childhood reduces future wage-earning [14]. High rates of hookworm infection also occur during pregnancy, and represent a major cause of anemia among African women [15],[16].

The editorial also brings up a lack of tropical disease medical schools in these areas:

The impressive establishment of new and distinguished universities in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, and elsewhere [34],[35] could also be tapped to provide training in tropical diseases. Currently, no school of tropical medicine exists in the Middle East, i.e., one which is similar to either the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine or the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine [36]. Establishment of such an institution in the Persian Gulf region in order to specifically target health disparities in the OIC countries would represent a breakthrough in medical and public health education in the Middle East. A comprehensive assault on NTDs represents one of the most cost-efficient mechanisms to improve health among the poorest people living in OIC countries and to simultaneously lift them out of poverty [9].

It is quite incredible that no school of tropical medicine exists in the Middle East. By the way, I'm often asked why should we care about teaching biological evolution in the Muslim world. Well this provides a good reason: strong background of modern biology will be essential in such medical schools - and evolution is the foundation of modern biology. Sure enough, one can learn much about medicine without explicitly learning about evolution - but that will be like driving a car with one hand tied behind the back. Not to mention that any mutations of diseases (such as the bird flu virus) may simply elude a general explanation in the product of such an education system.

In any case, please check out this slightly grim editorial in PLos.

More on KAUST

Science (Oct 16) has a good piece on King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST). It considers it as one of the most ambitious experiments in higher education and, if successful, can start transforming education in the Middle East. It also raises concerns about the intrusion of "corporate culture" in a university setting since the oil company Aramco is playing a dominant role in the university's affairs (both financially and administratively). Nevertheless, we'll have to see how KAUST shapes up in practice. Here couple of highlights from the article, The Big Gamble in the Saudi Desert (may require subscription):

KAUST is perhaps the most-watched experiment in higher education taking place anywhere in the world. Its huge endowment is certainly an attention-getter: Two years ago, KAUST officials used a figure of $10 billion, although one knowledgeable source says the number is actually $20 billion. Saudi officials decided to make it a graduate-only university so that it wouldn't compete for undergraduates with existing Saudi institutions. KAUST hopes eventually to be the size of the California Institute of Technology—roughly 250 faculty and 2500 students—and to rival it in prestige. It's also the first Saudi institution of higher education to allow men and women to mix freely. ... To retain the talent being amassed, Saudi officials know they will need to maintain a high quality of life. So within the barbed wire and concrete barricades that encircle the campus, Aramco is building an entire community, with all the residential, retail, recreational, and cultural amenities that any academic scientist would expect. The thousands of palm trees lining the main roads and academic complexes even help Berumen, an avid golfer, forget he's in a desert as he whacks balls at a driving range adjacent to a nine-hole golf course scheduled to open this month.

Yes, the this kind of disconnect from the Saudi society at large should raise all sorts of alarm bells. Nevertheless, we can hope that there is going to be a lot of discussion on this separation and hopefully the larger influence will move from the university to the cities rather than the other way around. But check this out: The start-up package for scientists is phenomenal:

For most scientists, however, the biggest difference is how their research will be funded. Rather than having to submit a never-ending stream of grant applications to government agencies and face depressingly low success rates, each faculty member has been given substantial internal support—$400,000 annually for assistant professors, $600,000 for associate professors, and $800,000 for full professors—from which they can hire students and technicians, buy materials and supplies, travel, and otherwise tend to the needs of their individual labs. The funding supplements full access to core lab facilities that include a 220-teraflops IBM Blue Gene/P supercomputer that will be upgraded to a petaflops machine, an industrial-quality nanofabrication facility, a state-of-the-art visualization center, and 10 nuclear magnetic resonance machines, including a 950-MHz instrument that is not yet on the market. "It was like setting a bunch of kids loose in the best toy shop in the world," says Neil Alford, chair of the materials science department at Imperial College London (ICL), which helped KAUST assemble the noncomputing components of its core labs. That's not all. Salaries are more than competitive with those in the West, say researchers, many of whom also receive free housing and other generous benefits.

The facilities also look amazing. In addition, I think there are certain areas where KAUST can truly excel. Oceanography is certainly one such area:

None of the new recruits ever imagined doing science in Saudi Arabia until they heard what KAUST had to offer. "I loved, really loved, working at Woods Hole [Oceanographic Institution]," says Michael Berumen, a 29-year-old assistant professor of marine sciences and the first hire by the Red Sea center's director, James Luyten, a former director of WHOI. "But field-based work on reefs is such a huge part of what I do. And now I have the ability to just pop on a boat for a couple of hours, to grab some coral samples or check on the fish we've just been talking about. And then you add in these incredible facilities."

At the same time, the founding faculty includes only 5 females (out of roughly 70 faculty members - also see the figure above):

Khashab is one of only five women among the founding faculty. Shih says that's a concern and adds that he plans "to redouble our efforts to recruit women." But he isn't sanguine about his chances of success. "There is a shortage of women everywhere, especially at the senior level, and we are competing with the rest of the world," he says.

No - seriously. You can find more than 5 qualified women for the fields that KAUST is offering. Now it is also possible (quite likely, in fact) that women scientists may not want to live in Saudi Arabia, but then that concern should be up front and the university should make an extra effort to provide other research incentives. But the founding faculty picture above doesn't look good.

In any case, we'll see how the KAUST experiment will shape up. Clearly, this a step in the right direction - but also with much much room for improvement. We'll have to see what impact will it have on the Saudi society. If you have subscription to Science, you can read the full article here.

Also see earlier posts:
KAUST and King Abdullah
Co-ed University for Saudi Elites?

Higgs Boson with Colbert

Here is a bit on the Large Hadron Collider on the Colbert Report (it also mentions the crazy-sounding claim of two physicists about disruptions from the future):

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Big Bang Theory
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Religion

And here is a followup interview with Brian Cox:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Brian Cox
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Religion

Oh and if you are interested in knowing more about the paper that Colbert mentions in the first sequence, check out this excellent explanation on Cosmic Variance. In the end, Sean Carroll finds the idea crazy but interesting:

At the end of the day: this theory is crazy. There’s no real reason to believe in an imaginary component to the action with dramatic apparently-nonlocal effects, and even if there were, the specific choice of action contemplated by NN seems rather contrived. But I’m happy to argue that it’s the good kind of crazy. The authors start with a speculative but well-defined idea, and carry it through to its logical conclusions. That’s what scientists are supposed to do. I think that the Bayesian prior probability on their model being right is less than one in a million, so I’m not going to take its predictions very seriously. But the process by which they work those predictions out has been perfectly scientific.

Scientology conviction in France

The Church of Scientology has been convicted of fraud in France. I know a lot of people have been gunning for Scientology and this will vindicate their position. I still feel uncomfortable by the fact that they are not recognized as religion and are placed under a more loaded term of "sect" (see an earlier discussion: Cults, Sects, and the Scientology Trial). In fact, the US State Department has criticized several European countries (Belgium, Germany, etc) for labeling Scientology as a sect and for restricting their activities. Germany, in particular, has been quite harsh and has moved in the past to ban the Church of Scientology. We may disagree with religious practices, but the line impeding freedom of religion is not that far - especially for the French, who are also dealing with banning headscarves in state schools. In any case, here is the French Scientology case:

The court convicted the Church of Scientology's French office, its library and six of its leaders of fraud. Investigators said the group pressured members into paying large sums of money for questionable financial gain and used ''commercial harassment'' against recruits.

The group was fined euro400,000 ($600,000) and the library euro200,000. Four of the leaders were given suspended sentences of between 10 months and two years. The other two were given fines of euro1,000 and euro2,000.

The court did not order the Church of Scientology to shut down, ruling that it would be likely to continue its activities anyway, ''outside any legal framework.''

May be they have been pressuring and defrauding people more than other religions - perhaps that is what convinced the court, but here is the bit that makes me think twice about it:

The Los Angeles-based Church of Scientology, founded in 1954 by the late science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, has been active for decades in Europe, but has struggled to gain status as a religion. It is considered a sect in France and has faced prosecution and difficulties in registering its activities in many countries.

And here is some information about the case was about:

The original complaint in the case dates back more than a decade, when a young woman said she took out loans and spent the equivalent of euro21,000 on books, courses and ''purification packages'' after being recruited in 1998. When she sought reimbursement and to leave the group, its leadership refused. She was among three eventual plaintiffs.

Investigating judge Jean-Christophe Hullin spent years examining the group's activities, and in his indictment criticized what he called the Scientologists' ''obsession'' with financial gain and practices he said were aimed at plunging members into a ''state of subjection.''

Read the full story here.

P.S. Also, Paul Haggis has left the Church of Scientology.

Kitcher et al on the fact of evolution

Couple of weeks ago Nicholas Wade had a largely positive review of Dawkins' latest book, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. However, in the second half of the review he accuses Dawkins of mixing up theory with fact when talking about evolution:

There is one point on which I believe Dawkins gets tripped up by his zeal. To refute the creationists, who like to dismiss evolution as “just a theory,” he keeps insisting that evolution is an undeniable fact. A moment’s reflection reveals the problem: We don’t speak of Darwin’s fact of evolution. So is evolution a fact or a theory? On this question Dawkins, to use an English expression, gets his knickers in a twist.

Well...philosophers and biologists have spoken overwhelmingly in defense of Dawkins. Yesterday's NYT published two letters in print and several others online - almost all clarifying Wade's confusion about fact and theory. I will here highlight the one by Philip Kitcher - since he was our Science & Religion speaker last semester - oh and also because he makes his point very clearly:

To the Editor:

In his review of “The Greatest Show on Earth,” Nicholas Wade charges that Richard Dawkins is guilty of a philosophical error. According to Wade, philosophers of science divide scientific propositions into three types — facts, laws and theories — and, contrary to Dawkins’s assertions, evolution, which is plainly a systematic theory, cannot count as a fact. However, contemporary philosophy of science offers a vastly more intricate vocabulary for thinking about the sciences than that presupposed in Wade’s oversimplified taxonomy and in his confused remarks about “absolute truth.” Although philosophers may quarrel with aspects of Dawkins’s arguments on a range of issues, he has a far firmer and more subtle understanding of the philosophical issues than that manifested in Wade’s review.

The crucial point is that, as Dawkins appreciates, the distinction between theory and fact, in philosophical discussions as in everyday speech, can be drawn in two quite distinct ways. On the one hand, theories are conceived as general systems for explanation and prediction, while facts are specific reports about local events and processes. On the other hand, “theory” is used to suggest that there is room for reasonable doubt, whereas “fact” suggests something so amply confirmed by the evidence that it may be accepted without debate.

Opponents of evolution slide from supposing that evolution is a theory, in the first sense, to concluding that it is (only) a theory, in the second. Any such inference is fallacious, in that many systematic approaches to domains of natural phenomena — like the understanding of chemical reactions in terms of atoms and molecules, and the study of heredity in terms of nucleic acids — are so well supported that they count as facts (in the second sense). Many scientists and philosophers who have written about evolution have pointed out that the contemporary theory that descends from Darwin has the same status — it, too, should count as a “fact.” Dawkins is entirely justified in following them.
PHILIP KITCHER
New York
The writer is the John Dewey professor of philosophy at Columbia University and a former editor in chief of Philosophy of Science, the journal of the Philosophy of Science Association.

In another letter, even Stephen Jay Gould stepped in from the grave to correct Nicholas Wade:

This was most eloquently stated by Stephen Jay Gould, who wrote (in “Evolution as Fact and Theory,” reprinted in “Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes”): “Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world’s data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein’s theory of gravitation replaced Newton’s, but apples did not suspend themselves in midair pending the outcome. And humans evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did so by Darwin’s proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be discovered.”

Read Wade's review here, letters by Daniel Dennett and Philip Kitcher here, and all the remaining letters here. If I'm Nicholas Wade, I'm not getting out of bed for the next few days.