The Answer, The Question, and The Scientific Method

I recently began reading "The Mismeasure of Man" by Stephen Jay Gould.  It is an account of, in the words of a reviewer, scientific racism.  Gould gives this a more scientific name: Biological Determinism.  This is the idea that differing social status is due to innate biological differences.  In other words, subjugation based on race, sex, or class is okay because such people (non-white, women, poor) are simply biologically inferior and are deserving of their place in society.  Gould presents and reexamines the philosophical and scientific proof collected in the 19th and early 20th centuries (focus on craniology - the study of skull shape and size - and psychological testing).  What I have found most interesting is his reexamination of the raw data and finding how a priori assumptions shaped the way data was collected and analyzed such that the "right" conclusion was supported. 

Gould brings up the argument that society and science are not separate in his introduction: science is not purely objective.  Society and culture shape the way we think and thus shape the way we carry out science.  This is illustrated quite well in his first chapter (and I'm sure throughout the book, but I have only read through the first chapter), in which Gould addresses polygeny (the idea that different human races are in fact different species with different origins) and craniometry before Darwin.  At the end of the chapter he reanalyzes brain size data collected by distinguished scientist Samuel George Morton.  Morton had a collection in excess of 1000 human skulls from around the world.  He wrote three extensive works on the size of human skulls, all of them proving that Whites have larger brains than Americans (natives from North and South American) which are larger than Blacks (from U.S. and Africa).  Morton first measured cranial size using uniform seeds - however this method did not give consistent results and he switched to led shot (BB size). Luckily, in all of his works, Morton published all the raw data enabling analysis by Gould.  Gould found right off that that in Morton's analysis was biased (I won't go into the detail of this, but feel free to read the book).  The better illustration of a priori knowledge biasing the scientific method is in the actual data collection by Morton.  Gould was able to compare the size of individuals measured using both seeds and shot.  He found that the discrepancy between seed and shot was "5.4, 2.2, and 1.8 cubic inches for blacks, Indians, and whites, respectively."  These numbers match the a priori assumptions.  As Gould states, you can imagine that Morton subconsciously packed seeds in African skulls less than in White skulls of any shape because Black skulls are smaller than White skulls.

This innate bias due to the culture in which we are raised can be a powerful thing even to this day.  How often do scientists start an experiment hoping for a particular outcome?  Many conservation ecologists want to prove that pesticides, nutrient pollution, and GE crops are bad for the environment; or than organic farming is better than conventional.  On the flip side, Monsanto and other big industry are hoping to prove just the opposite.  Do we subconsiously design studies to favor our a priori assumptions; do we take measurements unequally, run stats in a way to favor one outcome, or throw out some data, which could be an outlier, to support the result we want?  I think that these are questions we all need to ask ourselves as we conduct our studies.  Are we asking the question first or do we "know" the answer first?

Why the "How" matters

My daily ritual is to read the BBC World News.  This past week happened to be particularly "big headline"-ed.  Civil war in Libya, cholera rages on in Haiti, and earthquake-tsunami-nuclear threat in Japan.  This past week was also one of reading children's stories.  The following is the result of sudden inspiration taken from these influences.  Imagine that the 'final' draft would rhyme, have colorful pictures, and a melodramatic telling.  This could be the worst story ever put into words (though I do believe an important one).  Please bear with me.

"You can cut down all the forests,
Plow the prairies,
Put fish in all the ponds,
    But I will still remain"
       Said the Bullfrog

"You can fill all the landfills,
Concrete the world,
Block out all the sun,
    But I will still remain"
       Said the Pigeon

"You can pour on fertilizer,
Release the waste,
Kill the oceans and lakes,
    But I will still remain" 
       Said the Cyanobacteria

"You can burn all the fuels,
Open the ozone
Heat up the entire Earth
    But I will still remain"
       Said the Ant

[etc etc - last page]

"But we won't"
         Whispered everyone else.

 There is surely a better and more uplifting way to tell this story, but after reading BBC this is what my mind came up with.  So as not to leave you will an unhappy feeling after reading this, I present to you a few of the most content faces in the world, individuals who are doing what they do best without any concern. 

  

Kids are the Future

We all know the saying that kids are the future: grownups and ruined this world and it is up to the next generation to fix everything b/c it is too late for us to do anything.  I'm note sure that I buy this sentiment, but I do think we have a responsibility to educate out children so that they are less likely to make the same mistakes that have been made in the past.  And what better time to educate than right out of the womb?  Children's books are a great avenue to teach about life lessons, morals, and just plain old life in general.  Vibrant pictures, words than rhyme, fun adventures - there is no limit to the imagination.  My two favorite children's books that I this week read were "Round the Garden" by Omri Glaser and "Chickens Aren't the Only Ones" by Ruth Heller.  "Round the Garden" is a great story to read to young children and also makes a great first reader book.  It is short and simple yet very elegant.  It detail the cycle of water from land to sky and back to land - where clouds and rain come from and how it all fits together to water a garden.  "Chickens Aren't the Only Ones" is great for a little older audience as it is quite a bit longer.  This was a fun book to read with lots of rhyming and was packed full of information.  Both books had very different illustration styles, but I enjoyed them both and didn't think they were too cluttered or too bare - just the right amount to enhance each story.

In reading these books I began to contemplate on what makes a good children's book.  Children's books can be realistic or purely fantastic and both styles can tell the same story - relay the same message.  I think the most important characteristic is that it is fun.  A fun story, fun pictures, or fun words.  I don't think you need all of these for good book, but at least one is necessary for a kid to enjoy the book enough to sit through a reading - or to read it themselves.  Of those I think that the language used is important because it is through these books that we are teaching our children how to express themselves through words.  I think it is important that books have some sort of rhythm to them (like Dr. Seuss) or that introduce new or more difficult words or ideas here and there (as both stories mentioned above did).

I then ask myself what would I write about were I two write a book.  It would have to be about amphibians as they are my true love.  I think it would be aimed at a slightly older group 4-6.  And it would have a conservation message.  "The Adventure of Sally Salamander and Tod the Toad."  Fun names are important.  I'm not too sure what they would do.  Perhaps they would travel across the land in search of a new pond and encounter obstacles on their way.  Would they look like actual species, or would they be your generic toad and salamander dressed in fantastically bright colors?  I don't know.   

El Sapo a la Sapa

El sapo a la sapa tiénela por guapa: a Spanish idiom which literally translates as "the male toad thinks the female toad is very beautiful."  The meaning of course is, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder."  I would like to dedicate this weeks blogs to such beautiful animals which may not normally make it in the cute and cudly charismatic megafauna calendar (yet which still deserve our attention).

1. Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis: Purple Frog/Pignose Frog.  This beautiful creature is found in Southern India.  Few specimens have ever been seen because it spends the entire year (minus a couple weeks) underground. The Pignose Frog is threatened by deforestation/intensified agriculture and dams changing river flow (amphibiaweb.org).

 

 2. Loris tardigradus: Red Slender Loris. This primate is listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List and is part of the EDGE of Existence conservation program (a program to conserve the evolutionary distinct and globally endgangered).  Red Slender Lorises are found only in the rainforests of Sri Lanka.  They are thought to share an African ancestor with bushbabies and lemurs.  These animals are noctural - they sleep during the day and come alive at night moving silently through the night in search of prey (mostly insects).  These are also threatened due to forest clearing (edgeofexistance.org).

3. Lampetra spadicea: Champala Lamprey. The Champala Lamprey is endemic to a small region in Mexico - a single lake and a portion of the river exiting the lake. Lamprey are are jawless fish and some, like this species, are parasitic.  They have specially constructed mouths that allow them to attach to fish and suck out the blood.  This particular species is threatened by water pollutaion and recent surveys have not found it (though it does perists in captivity). This is not a photo of the Champala Lamprey, this is of the same genus and most lamprey look the same.(iucnredlist.org)

4. Deinacrida heteracantha: Wetapunga - one of the giant weta.  Endemic to islands of the shore of New Zealand, giant wetas are wingless insects related to crickets.  Wetapunga are now found only on one island, Little Barrier Island.  Once common on many islands, their populations were decimated due to introduced rodents.  Wetas occupy a similar nich to rodents, so with the their introduction, the slow growing wetas found themselves out competed for food and also became food.  The largest specimen of Wetapunda found was three times as heavy as your common house mouse.  (collections.tepapa.govt.nz)

Not all critters are cute and fuzzy, but all critters are awesome!  I encourage you to go out and discover for yourselves all the crazy critters you can!

 

How wide is your gape?

Did you know that snakes are the only species that eat prey larger than their heads in one gulp?  True, there are many species that eat things in one gulp - like fish and amphibians.  These critters sneak up on prey and swallow without chewing.  However, they are what we call gape-limited: they can only eat things that fit in their mouth.  Fish eat smaller fish; frogs eat smaller frogs.  















And, there are many more species that eat things larger than their gape.  To overcome this difficulty some tear off bite-sized morsels.  Nature documentaries love to show eagles flaying the flesh off of helpless prey.  Still other predators liquefy their prey's insides and suck out the juices.  This is the method used by sea stars. They use their suction cup legs to pry open a mussel, insert their stomach into the opening, release their digestive juices thus liquefying the tissue, and finally bring their stomach, food and all, back inside their own body. 

While these methods of eating are fascinating, they still aren't as visually impressive as a feeding snake.
Snakes, don't chew, they don't suck up liquefied tissue, and they are not limited to small bite-sized prey.  Most people are familiar with the picture of a boa (or some other constrictor) wrapped around prey that looks too large to eat.  So how do they manage?  Snakes have a unique and very complex jaw.  A snake's skull contains multiple links and joints (kind of like being double jointed) which allows a high degree of flexibility, three-dimensional movement, and a very wide gape.  Interestingly, unlike humans, the jaws are not fused to the braincase (allowing for flexible upper jaw movement) and the two halves of the lower jaw are not fused together but rather are connected by muscle and skin; this means they don't have a bony chin and allows them to move each half of their mouth independently. 

Alfie, my corn snake, modeled this feat of feeding for me last week:

You can see the drastic change in jaw and neck width through this sequence of pics.  Amazing.  (She then curls up in her paper towel tube and enters a state of lethargy for about 3 days to digest.)

And now we would like to present.....

Presentation is an art form.  How do you capture your audiences attention and imagination? And how do you keep their interest so that when your presentation is over, they don't forget?  People are drawn to passion - excitement is contagious.  But, does drama have a place in science?

This week, I read three articles in popular magazines on global warming - by far one of the most pressing issues in the modern era.  Two of the articles were on global warming as the central topic while the third discussed how global warming should be presented.
 
Jeffery Kluger, senior writer at TIME magazine specializing in scientific writing, uses drama throughout his piece on global warming.  He opens with a serious tone of doom and gloom, Earth is ill.  Throughout the article he presents fact after fact of how global warming can, and does, wreak havoc on our sickly planet.  From warmer oceans causing melting ice caps and a cooler Europe, to drought affecting flora and fauna, and wild weather impacting humanity.  He leaves no room for doubt - no room for disbelievers.  Global Warming is REAL and you had better be prepared.  Now is the time to act - though it will be a long fight.  While his passion and the examples he gives make for an entertaining read, for people who are skeptical of global warming, this article may throw them off.  Which is unfortunate because Kluger does include a wealth of scientific information.  He gives hard scientific facts and describes how climate patterns are caught in feedback loops and how everything is connected.  And, he is able to describe these complex patterns in a way that is easy to understand.  I thought that by describing an event rather than just reporting it was an effective educational method - i.e. “higher temperatures bake moisture out of soil” not “increased evaporation.”  I think that if he used a little less opinionated tone, a little less polarizing, then this article would make for a very good scientific article to reach a wide variety of people. 

Noreen Malone, writing in Newsweek, took a less impassioned approach to the effects that climate change have on weather.  Her article opened by calling global warming "global weirding."  I thought that this set the tone for global warming to be such a serious topic.  It's just weird weather, nothing to worry about.  The middle section of her article did present data and articles in support of global warming. However, at the end, I was unsure whether to "believe in" global warming on not because of the wild weather could be isolated seasonal differences.  Also, scientists still are not sure and don't have all the answers.  Should we believe scientists?  She also ended with some out of place sentences on how global warming could influence human disease and war - but again, is global warming really real?  I thought that this article could be used as anti-warming fodder.  Also, as this article was less dramatic, I found it a little more boring to read.  It didn't keep my attention as well as the first one.  (As a side note, Malone generally writes on culture, politics, and feminism for liberal online magazine Slate.  She is no scientist, does not frequently write on science, and yet was able to present climate patters, such as NASH, in an easy to understand manner - amazing.)

The final article, by Bryan Walsh of TIME, spoke to the way global warming has been and perhaps should be presented.  The message - scare tactics don't work.  According to a psychology study, people respond to climate change scare tactics with denial.  The stronger someone believes in the just-world hypothesis, the less likely they are to accept global warming.  Again, we are faced with the question of how can we overcome someone's fundamental beliefs?  This articles suggests that we use a message of optimism.  That we relate solutions to human benefits rather than the problem to human destruction.  We must "negotiate with the public."

So then, how do we present science?  From these articles I conclude that too much drama and passion has the potential to be polarizing but too little and the reader may loose interest.  Drama is good, but not too much.  Also, most people don't want to read about the end of the world - especially if it is our fault.  Rather, when presenting environmental issues it is important to highlight what is being done now and how there is hope for the future.  Be optimistic and passionate, with just a hint of drama. 

This week I read two articles from The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2010.  The articles were on the food industry and all its glory (or not).  The important thing to note though, is that these “best science writings” are not written by scientists: they are writings by award winning journalists.  Is this a message that scientists are not the best people to communicate with the public?  That we must use journalistic middlemen to get our message across?  Perhaps.  Or perhaps, scientists can learn from these journalists and employ these top ranking journalistic techniques in our own endeavors to communicate with the public.  What then, makes these articles - All You Can Eat by Jim Carrier and Graze Anatomy by Richard Manning - the best?

In All You Can Eat, Carrier describes the rise and fall of shrimping industry in the U.S. and the birth of shrimp farming – and all the problems associated with these practices.  The message: don’t eat shrimp – especially if it is farmed abroad.  In Graze Anatomy, Richard Manning takes a more positive approach to the food industry by praising the practice of grass fed cattle.  Here the message was: we can still eat all the beef we want and solve environmental issues – so support free range.  These articles used all the tricks used to grab the audiences’ attention: gripping first sentence, first person narrative, first hand accounts, personification, etc.  They played on the audiences’ emotion to make their readers think twice about eating shrimp or corn raised cattle (after all, who supports cruelty to animals, unnecessary death, or murder?).  I confess, at then end of reading these articles I never wanted to eat meat again (unless if it was free range, grass fed, organic). 

But where was the science?  These are after all “Science Writings.”  These authors used what I will call subtle science.  They didn’t cite primary literature or use complex words to talk about relevant scientific processes.  Yet, the science was there, hidden in behind pretty words and visual descriptions.  Manning talked about ecosystem health and nutrient cycling by comparing it to a cows gut – microbes are the base of both.  The reader can visualize deep underground where nutrients are cycled with the help of “lowly creatures like dung beetles and earth worms” and brought to the surface by the elevator action of perennial roots.  Manning is also able to make carbon cycling, source and sink dynamics, and global warming easy to digest.  Carrier didn’t talk about such “hard science” topics, but rather wove sustainable practices, life cycles, and how science was used to create farming practices into his narrative. 

As these authors have demonstrated, the subtle working of science into an argument is effective.  In this way, you minimize the risk of boring or alienating your audience.  Most people don’t care about all the details, but they do respect scientists and science.  By weaving science into a larger, and more griping story, I think that the public is likely to be more engaged with what they are being told and more likely to believe it.  We must all strive to have gripping stories through which we can share our science.