News in a nutshell
| 20 December, 2010 | Adie Chan |
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Scientists were right: Sand berms fail
The Coast Guard Cutter Oak helps with the oil spill response by performing oil skimming operations. Photo by Ensign Jason Radcliffe.
Sand berms have proven to be an ineffective strategy for protecting the coast from last April’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill, according to a new report from the presidential commission investigating the spill. Scientists (such as Len Bahr, who penned an article for The Scientist) had warned the berms were a “foolish” idea, and would not have the desired effects. But Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and other government officials ignored this advice, and had the berms built anyway. Now, although Jindal “has publicly declared success,” according to ScienceInsider, the commission’s report concluded that the $220 million was not worth the 1,000-or-so barrels of oil the berms trapped (relative to the nearly 5 million barrels likely released during the spill).
Senate pushes for more science funding
While the US House of Representatives recently passed a spending bill that would hold the 2011 budgets flat for the National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) , a Senate spending panel last week designed a budget that would boost the budgets of several science agencies, including the NSF and NIH. While the Senate bill is still well below President Obama’s request of $1.134 trillion, it has an extra $20 billion in domestic discretionary spending than the House version and would give NSF an increase of 5.7%, to $7.345 billion, and another $750 million to the NIH, along with additional money for individual programs, according to ScienceInsider.
2 in 5 Americans are creationists
Forty percent of Americans believe in creationism, according to a recent Gallup poll. These respondents believe that humans were created in their current form about 10,000 years ago by God, while 38 percent believe humans have evolved over millions of years, with God guiding the process, and only 16 percent believe that God had no hand in human evolution (up from 9 percent in 1982). Six percent responded “other/no opinion.”
Protecting science from politics
Last Friday, the administration of US President Barack Obama released long-awaited guidelines regarding how to shield government research from various political influences when it comes to policy making. The new guidelines allow government scientists to speak with journalists and the public about their research, prohibit agencies from altering the reports of advisory committees, and require officials to explain the underlying assumptions of new scientific findings. Reactions to the guidelines are mixed, according to The New York Times, with some scientists praising the effort and others criticizing the lack of detail the guidelines provide.
Harvard provost returns to science
Neuroscientist and long-time Harvard provost Steven E. Hyman announced last week that he will be leaving his administrative position at the end of the academic year to return his focus to science, starting with a year-long sabbatical at the Broad Institute, a genomics research organization in Cambridge. Hat tip to The Boston Globe.
How to develop drug combos
Wikimedia commons, Ragesoss
The US Food and Drug Administration issued draft guidelines last week to encourage collaborations among biotech and pharmaceutical companies to develop drug combinations for cancer and other ailments, according to The Wall Street Journal. “I think that’s fantastic,” Erica Golemis, cancer researcher and deputy chief scientific officer at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, told The Scientist. Research is revealing that “you can’t get a good anti-cancer effect by just blocking one pathway because of the complex networks of resistance,” she said. “So you want to have the ability to combine different agents, not only from the same company, but across companies.” Sanofi-Aventis and Merck have already announced that they will work together to test new cancer drug combinations. (With reporting by Bob Grant)
Veterinary pioneer dies
Former Director General of the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) Jean Blancou died last month in Paris at age 74, according to the International Society for Infectious Diseases. Trained as a veterinarian, Blancou traveled the world working to develop better diagnoses and vaccines for animals. He served as director of the National Centre for Research on Rabies and Wildlife Diseases, an affiliate of the World Health Organization, where he researched the causal agents and epidemiology of rabies. He published more than 370 papers during his career, and received many honors, including an Honoris Causa degree from the University of Liege in Belgium.
Stem cell transplant HIV patient still virus-free
Scanning electron micrograph of HIV-1 budding (in green) from cultured lymphocyte. Photo Credit: C. Goldsmith
The so-called “cure” for HIV hasn’t faltered: Doctors report that a man with HIV and leukemia, who received a bone marrow transplant from a donor with a mutation in the CCR5 gene, remains virus-free 3 ½ years after the transplant. The patient needed a transplant for his leukemia, so aware of his HIV status, his German doctors chose a bone marrow donor with the CCR5 mutation, known to confer natural resistance to the virus. The update on his status appears in this month’s Blood. Bone marrow transplants may be too radical a procedure for general use against AIDS, but the finding opens up directions for the search for more practical cures, AIDS researcher Margaret Fischl of the University of Miami told The Seattle Times.
Related articles:
News in a nutshell
[13th December 2010]
Opinion: Louisiana shuns science
[5th August 2010]
More hope for genetic fix for HIV
[16th June 2010]
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I don’t understand
>These respondents believe that humans were created in their current form about >10,000 years ago by God,
According to the Hebrew calendar, we are in year 5771 since the creation. (Whether you take this literally is another matter). Where do these people get 10,000 from? I had never heard that the difference between our count and the Christians’ was so great.
Best wishes
A fair article would note that while the sand berms may not have done what they were supposed to do for the oil spill, those berms should help restore the coastline. The berms will also help mitigate hurricane wave effects on the coast behind them.
It should also be noted that the money would never have been spent for coastline restoration. So viewing this as a loss is wrong. Much that happens in science is accidental, the right thing done for the wrong reason. These berms are an example of it in politics.
So I suggest strongly that science journalists talk about the whole picture rather than emphasize the negative.
The increase from 8% to 49% in the number of people believing in the creation story over evolution only reflects the poor job we are doing in teaching both scientific reasoning and biology in general. K-12 science teachers should be ashamed for allowing pressure from fundamentalist groups to interfere in their ability to teach science.
That forty percent also invariably call everything “junk science” too. While that term was originally developed by scientists to call out the charlatans, I’m afraid that it has become totally flipped around by The Clem’s*.
*Clem’s – Definition: You know, your neighbors–when they open their mouths to express an opinion on anything requiring an IQ greater than 80, you just shake your head thinking, “And they let those people drive a car…”
Is anyone else annoyed by the general media spin on the Gallup poll on creationism? Here’s a counter-spin: the percentage of the US population that believes in creationism has remained unchanged for 28 years, while the percentage that does not, while smaller, has significantly increased. How should we interpret this data?
I respectfully differ with Ms. Hunt re the Jindal berms – we don’t know that BP wouldn’t have given the funds for actual restoration. They have, in fact, agreed to allow the remaining funds that they’d allocated for the berms to be spent on (hopefully) real barrier island restoration. This suggests that had the Governor put a small part of the effort he spent maligning the federal agencies who were trying to help the state into pressuring BP for restoration money earlier on, he could have gotten it.
It’s not clear how beneficial those built will be for long-term restoration. Let’s hope they are – one hurricane during this year’s active season would have destroyed them, but luckily the storms largely avoided the Gulf. The numbers tell the story – 12.7 miles completed at last count (the state was demanding a permit for 100 miles), $220 million BP dollars spent on the 12.7 miles, and 1000 barrels (reportedly) captured out of millions spilled. There are some happy dredge companies, however.
Restore the coastline? Really, Ellen, one would think that by now one would have discarded such notions in the face of massive evidence based on the attempts of the Army Corps of Engineers to ‘restore the coastline’ all up and down the eastern seaboard and on the great lakes (see, for example, the saga of Presque Isle). Whyn’t you get real about the world, Ellie. Pencil-necked Bobby Jindal just blew nearly a quarter of a billion bucks to make it look like he was doing something, and now has moved on to lying about the results. Are you a shill or just naive?
Where did they suck all the sand from and how many millions of animals were killed in moving the sand or being buried by it. Sand berms/sand bars have a tendency to wash away unless anchored by plants. Again full speed ahead and damn the consequences
Regarding the Gallup poll: I think we have the wrong focus here. The scientific goal should not be to change what people believe. The scientific goal should be to educate the public regarding the principles upon which science operates and why those principles lead to evolution as the best model (both explanatorily and predictively). The determination of life’s origins is not in of itself a scientific issue, except as this determination can be utilized for further investigation. Someone might believe that the world was created by a deity 10,000 years ago, and still understand the value of scientific investigation, even when it leads to conclusions that contradict his or her beliefs. One might challenge this position, but the challenge would be theological or philosophical, not scientific.
Michael, I admire your attempt to bring calm to the creationism discussion, but I think you miss the point that, at their extremes, reason and religion are not so easily reconciled. If your scientific investigation leads to a conclusion counter to a religious belief, what happens next? A debate on the value of scientific investigation? History (ancient as well as recent) says that religious authorities do not welcome challenges, scientific or theological (See Wikipedia: Spanish Inquisition).
As we plow ahead with genetically engineered medicine, food production and the like, the time for creationists to take a stand has arrived. They need to pledge not to use any of these abominations and place their lives in the hands of their religions and pastors.
Then a few generations from now, we’ll see how that worked out for them.
To the extent that anti-creationism is the religion of biologists, I am truly surprised that such a poll on the feelings of the American populus would have been commissioned, and further, that the result would be publicized. This is truly a devastating indictment on the failure of the biology community to indoctrinate society at-large to their more “enlightened” precepts.
I wonder if Bobby Jindal was a liberal-Democrat, would anyone bother to engage in a study, and then come up with a totured, convoluted argument to discredit his actions? More Obama-bucks squandered.
Both the creationists (38%) and the folks who believe in evolution but that god gave a helping hand (38%) are in agreement that purpose must be the driving energy and reject chance and random action. Only sixteen percent reject purpose and side with random chance. I think this is the common divide and no science curriculum will change this underlying human assumption. Life without purpose is meaningless and not understandable.
Creationism and Evolutionism are equal
Anyone that makes conclusions based on belief, rather than looking at the evidence is equal in that they are not scientific in their thinking.
The best scientists, including Darwin himself, are Christians. “Darwinists” have set science back by assuming they fully understand the nature of inheritance; it turns out that the data that their beliefs caused them to ignore was the key to taking the next step in understanding biology.
My intuition told me that there was “something missing”; the human genome is too small, the coded DNA was too small a proportion, and evolution was much more rapid than the “Theory of Evolution” seemed to predict.
The way I see it, God gave me a brain to use, and a world to explore with it. We are called to worship God with our minds as well.
How are these berms in the photo “sand” berms? It appears they are floating in the middle of the ocean.
Bob,
thank you for the reply. Of course you are correct about the extremes. But I think a lot of middle ground is lost due to the way that questions are posed. (eg “Do you believe in evolution, creation, or a combination?). Like it or not, people will have cause for religious belief no matter what science demonstrates. Believers see good in their religions that is not simply replaceable by science, and truth in their religions that is beyond rationality. So don’t go after their “mistaken beliefs.” Rather, the goal should be to show people the value and method of scientific investigation in the observable universe (where I would suspect most religious would place themselves). It is definitely possible for someone to believe in a religious truth concerning the creation of the world, while accepting that the best model for scientific investigation assumes evolution. Science is not about belief or even ultimately about establishing truth. It is about establishing explanatory and predictive models based on the observable universe.
Michael,
You are mistaken about Bob’s goals being rational. Bob is every much the religious zealot that he purports to hate. He pretends to be concerned for scientific investigation, but his takes the form of ignoring data that does not fit his preconceived model of existence. Bob relies on the same false dichotomy presented by all biological alchemists. I marvel at the ease that which these “scientists” switched from wishing that metals can spontaneously change form, to wishing that life can spontaneously change form. It is of course, just another irrational faith-system.
Scientists provide evidence in the form of data from experimentation designed to test hypotheses. Scientific beliefs are strong because interpretations and conclusions are based on what is deemed to be the most rational explanation given the data. Those with strong religious beliefs or simply seeking spiritual guidance (whether non-scientists or scientists) are entitled to their opinions, whether it is because they view their beliefs as rational or simply prefer a ‘perceivable’ moral compass (and I am sure most readers here probably believe this). In saying that, nothing is better than a good, even heated, debate. But outright condemnation or slandering of another persons views and opinions (eg. comments by Rivkah, Dec 22) helps nothing and only serves to divide people more. How hard is it for all of us to stop criticizing each other, blaming the other person, or trying to ‘convert’ each other? This is how most conflict begins and Americans, regrettably, are amongst the worst offenders (currently fighting 6 wars over what?). As a ‘leader in democracy and success’ this is hardly a good example for the rest!
As a society we all strive to promote the benefits of an educated population and indeed measure ourselves against other countries based on educational metrics. Even as a scientist and agnostic, I still accept the role that all religions have and continue to play in society and that therefore they should be part of one’s education. As such, I am OK with any religion or creationist belief being brought into a school curriculum, provided it is clearly part of a religious curriculum and not a scientific curriculum, and is brought in at an age when children can at least vaguely distinguish the two. My wife is also a scientist (in fact an embryologist) and would consider herself quite spiritual, and my kids occasionally attend church with her. I think it is good they get a rounded education, and then based on what they learn they can form their own opinions. In fact, I would prefer that the view points and beliefs of all major religions be presented as part of our educational upbringing, just like a properly balanced science curriculum is preferable (ie. one that doesnt just reflect current thinking). Within reason, we should all be more open and tolerant of each others differences of opinion but this only comes with a complete education, not a selective one. It is a pity that this seems so unattainable or undesirable for most.
Sorry I touched a nerve, Rivkah, but I don’t intend to start a flame war over what you think I do or don’t believe (although you have caused me to question my belief in alchemy!) Michael raises the interesting point that there appears to be a middle ground where two potentially conflicting world views can co-exist as long as one does not intrude on the other. My overriding principle is that I don’t object to anyone’s approach, rational or theological, as long as that approach doesn’t drive them to do harm (physical or otherwise) to people who don’t share that approach. Judging by the world around us, that doesn’t seem to be the prevailing view these days, and you can apply that to any side of the argument you prefer.
On one hand we have people wailing about how poorly our high schools are doing in educating our children, and on the other hand we have many of these same people (Texas State Board of Ejukashun, e.g.) leading the charge to downgrade our high school curriculums. For any who doubt my thesis, my trump card is Dr. MacLeroy of College Station, TX.