Tag Archives: nature

On “Nature”, religion, Higgs and the temples of Angkor

Posted on 23/08/2012 | 8 Comments

Dearie me. Look what somehow and inexplicably made it into Nature magazine this week:

Sometimes science must give way to religion
The Higgs boson, and its role in providing a rational explanation for the Universe, is only part of the story, says Daniel Sarewitz.

The problem is, I don’t think Sarewitz actually means that, and what he might have wanted to express is more down the lines of “Looking at great pieces of art or architecture like the temples of Angkor Wat can create in humans an emotional response and a feeling of transcendence”. But the way the headline is written, the conclusion I draw is that Sarewitz gets his starting premise wrong and simply confuses art or skillful architecture with religion. It gets worse, though.

Not only does he bring up that old howler of the “God Particle”, which the author who coined that unfortunate name for the Higgs boson, Leon Lederman, actually wanted to call the Goddamn Particle, but the publisher refused, but he also says this:

For those who cannot follow the mathematics, belief in the Higgs is an act of faith, not of rationality.

Is an act of faith required for anyone unfamiliar with the equations of Newtonian mechanics to drop a can of coke down a building and trust that it will actually fall? I may not be able to follow the mathematics of general relativity either, but I know that my GPS works. We have evidence that science works, from microwave ovens to the Curiosity Rover. Most people are unable to “follow the mathematics”, but it is reasonable to assume based on previous experience that scientists have arrived at their conclusions by gathering evidence and testing their hypotheses. The scientific method works, and no faith is required.

Yet, whereas the Higgs discovery gives me no access to insight about the mystery of existence, a walk through the magnificent temples of Angkor offers a glimpse of the unknowable and the inexplicable beyond the world of our experience.

How so? What is meant by “unknowable” here? Christian religion as it is today has its basis in 2500 year old texts, and nothing that wasn’t known at the time when those texts were compiled has made it into them since. Not dinosaurs, not bacteria, not the temples of Angkor. Religion is not equipped to make any forays into the unknown, in fact it is always satisfied to declare things “unknowable” and let the matter rest. And what is a “mystery of existence”? The universe has no purpose, humans are not god’s creation on a secret mission, the mystery is rather how it all works, and it is extremely exciting to see how science is making more and more advances towards understanding how the universe came to be. How it came to be, not “why”.

How this confused piece ever made it into Nature is really beyond me.

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Posted in Science

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Let me get the logic straight here, so publishing how to build a nuclear bomb in a science journal will make us safer from anyone building a nuclear bomb ?

Posted on 24/06/2012 | 4 Comments

That seems to be the logic behind the very regrettable and dangerous decision by two journals, Science and Nature, to publish research done in ferrets, that shows exactly what steps are needed for the H5N1 subtype of Influenza A to mutate into a virus that has the ability to cause a pandemic.

I do realize that there was much discussion about whether to publish or not, but I am somewhat astonished that it has actually been done.

Next up, some Nuclear Physics journal will publish a helpful tutorial on how to produce weapons-grade Plutonium. Because the mere fact of the publication will deter rogue states from reading through it, taking notes and going to work on using the information. The logic behind this argument entirely escapes me, I have to say.

If you want the data from this H5N1 research to do good, and if you want to work on preventing a pandemic or gain more knowledge about ways of transmission, why not phone or email the authors and ask for a copy ? I just can not for the life of me see why we have to publish a Howto on creating a killer virus in a public and widely-read journal (or two). Might as well put it on Wikipedia.

The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) in the USA discussed this matter and advised the government in the end that the research should be published. I am not aware that any other country’s biosecurity agencies were involved in the decision, but maybe I just don’t know about it. If they weren’t, and this was indeed a decision by US agencies alone, I think that in itself is another big problem.

One of the arguments in support of publishing seems to have been that the research was done in ferrets and not humans, and that it is not certain that the knowledge gained is 100% applicable to mechanisms of transmission in humans. Well, I have to tell you, then why didn’t we take the time to investigate that first, before potentially putting a recipe for how to create a doomsday virus out onto the Internet ?
I think this is madness.

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Posted in Health, Science

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South Korea and Creationism

Posted on 13/06/2012 | Leave a comment

Nature reports that in South Korea creationists have succeeded in winning a petition to remove references to evolution from high-school textbooks. They may have superfast internet in South Korea, but they sure don’t have a superfast thinking populace :

A petition to remove references to evolution from high-school textbooks claimed victory last month after the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST) revealed that many of the publishers would produce revised editions that exclude examples of the evolution of the horse or of avian ancestor Archaeopteryx. The move has alarmed biologists, who say that they were not consulted. “The ministry just sent the petition out to the publishing companies and let them judge,” says Dayk Jang, an evolutionary scientist at Seoul National University.

The campaign was led by the Society for Textbook Revise (STR), which aims to delete the “error” of evolution from textbooks to “correct” students’ views of the world, according to the society’s website. The society says that its members include professors of biology and high-school science teachers.

It sounds to me like South Korea is being a bit naive when it comes to creationist creeps and their lobby efforts, and the majority of the country has yet to wake up to the fact that Christian interest groups are openly trying to subvert and undermine education, and in particular the theory of evolution in that place. There is however also data to suggest that lack of belief in a simple and obvious fact like evolution may not be solely due to religious belief :

It also found that 40% of biology teachers agreed with the statement that “much of the scientific community doubts if evolution occurs”; and half disagreed that “modern humans are the product of evolutionary processes”.

That is even more of a worry. When religious believers disagree with and refuse to acknowledge evolution, we are not particularly surprised, but biology teachers ? There has to be something really wrong with science education in South Korea for that to happen.

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Posted in Religion

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