BioBlog

"Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world." - Louis Pasteur (via ScienceAlert on Facebook, where you can find many cool things.)

At ScienceAlert I also found this wonderful quote from Neil deGrasse Tyson: The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it." (This is particularly relevant to a discussion we've been having over at SciBlogsNZ about interactions between scientific attidudes and people's belief systems.)

Readers - please feel free to add your own favourite quotes to the list :-) 

 That's a question that many science blog-posts examine, implicitly if not explicitly. I do it here (quite a lot, recently!) when writing about various pseudo-scientific claims, & the same goes on over at Sciblogs NZ. It's an interesting question that sometimes receives rather slick, glib answers.

Over at Science-Based Medicine, Kimball Atwood has written a particularly good discussion around the 'what is science?' question, including an explanation of why many of those glib answers are based on a mis-characterisation, or a mis-understanding, of the nature of science. 

(I really enjoyed reading it. But now - I must get back to revising my study guides!)

That's the title of Susan Musante's paper in the latest issue of Bioscience (& many thanks to David Winter for sending it on). It's a summary of some key points made by speakers at an NAS convocation called "Thinking evolutionarily: evolution education across the life sciences."

Now, I find science fascinating, exciting, & endlessly interesting, & I'm sure my colleagues feel the same. The thing is, how to pass all that on to our students? As I've said before, simply providing them with quantities of facts is not going to do it. At the convocation, several speakers stressed that

[simply] regurgitating the biological knowledge generated by the scientific community or conducting "cookbook" laboratory experiments does not result in genuine understanding or excitement on the part of students... Instead, the nature and process of science, the unifying concepts and connections to the real world, and the problems encountered and discoveries made by scientists are what make biology come alive.

I joined Facebook about a year ago - primarily to access the NZIBO pages, but subsequently I found I quite enjoyed keeping up with what friends & family are up to. More recently I've added 'entities' like ScienceAlert, & through that particular link I've just found an excellent series of short videos on critical thinking. With the new NZ school year coming up, I thought it might be good to share them more widely.

So, here we go :-)

One of my tasks at the moment it the revision/rewriting of the study guide (along with my actual lecture notes etc) for my A semester first-year biology class. As part of that I'm reviewing some of the material I give the students to read & came across a previous post of mine on the relationship between atmospheric oxygen and the size of eukaryote organisms. And I liked it (still), so thought I'd repost it here :-)

The earliest fossils we have are of prokaryotes - a major taxonomic grouping that includes both bacteria and members of the Archaea (things like blue-green algae, aka cyanobacteria). And like modern prokaryotes, those early life-forms were tiny. Most of us are far more familiar with some of the eukaryotes, and perhaps a major reason for this is that we can see them: they are orders of magnitude bigger than microbes. And an interesting question is: what sort of trajectory took some forms of life from the tiny to the ginormous? Was there a smooth upward trend in the maximum size of living things? Or did things progress like a learner driver - by bunny-hops?

 An article in the Sydney Morning Herald tells its readers: Scientists urge unis to axe alternative medicine courses. According to the article, 

[a]lmost one in three Australian universities now offer courses in some form of alternative therapy or complementary medicine, including traditional Chinese herbal medicine, chiropractics, homeopathy, naturopathy, reflexology and aromatherapy.

We were talking about it & my friend Aimee said, "I think the key question to ask here is whether universities are scientific bastions, educational institutes, or organisations geared towards making money." And I agree with her. While alternative therapies/complementary medicines are certainly popular, & there's wide public interest in them (as evidenced by stories in the NZ Herald - here, & here) - universities surely teach critical thinking (within & beyond their science programs), & there's little evidence of either in many CAM modalities. Nor should the hoary old argumentum ad populum carry weight in scientific circles: just because an idea is popular, doesn't mean it's correct. 

In other words, universities are educational institutions offering research-based, evidence-based programs in science & other disciplines, & subjects that lack that strong basis should have no place in their curricula. As the newly formed Australian lobby group, Friends of Science in Medicine, said in its letter to Australian vice-chancellors,  

by giving "undeserved credibility to what in many cases would be better described as quackery" and by "failing to champion evidence-based science and medicine", the universities are trashing their reputation as bastions of scientific rigour.

Hear, hear! After all, it's not enough to put on a course because of actual or perceived student demand. The program also needs to be academically rigorous. And applying that rigour to an examination of the content should enough to see offerings such as homeopathy out the door. After all, claims that the homeopathic treatment for burns is more heat, or that homeopathic plutonium is a valid treatment for anything, are easy to test (& to find wanting). And explanations for its mode of action fly in the face of all we know od how the world works. The same is true for many other CAMs (& don't get me started on leeches!).

Just a heads-up for teachers & students: next month Chris Stringer will be giving public lectures on human evolution in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch & Dunedin. (No Hamilton talk! I am sad :-( I've got an all-day meeting that means I'd never get up to the Auckland  event in time.) From the latest Royal Society "Alert":

Professor Chris Stringer: ‘Origin of our species, Neanderthals and the Early Human Occupation of Britain and Europe’, February 2012

Professor Chris Stringer answers some of the big questions:  How can we define modern humans, and how can we recognise our beginnings in the fossil and archaeological record? How can we accurately date fossils, including ones beyond the range of radiocarbon dating? Has human evolution stopped, or are we still evolving? What can we expect from future research on our origins? 

Professor Chris Stringer is in New Zealand by invitation of the Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Ecology and Evolution and his public talks are supported by the Royal Society of New Zealand.  Details for booking tickets are available at http://www.royalsociety.org.nz/events/origin-of-our-species/

• Auckland, 6.00 pm, 22 February, Auckland War Memorial Museum;
• Christchurch, 6.00 pm, 23 February, C1 Central Lecture Theatre, University of Canterbury;
• Dunedin, 6.00 pm, 24 February, St David Lecture Theatre, University of Otago;
• Wellington, 6.00 pm, 25 February, Embassy Theatre, Courtenay Place.

 A new post by Orac discusses various tactics of the anti-vaccine movement, with reference to a new paper published in the journal Vaccine. (Link is to a pdf - apologies if this isn't accessible to all as it's well worth the time spent reading.) In the paper (entitled Anti-vaccine activists, Web 2.0, and the postmodern paradigm – An overview of tactics and tropes used online by the anti-vaccination movement), Anna Kata comments on how the combination of ready access to information via internet search engines, combined with a post-modern attitude to science as a means of viewing the world, have enhanced the spread and uptake of anti-vaccination messages.

In fact, you could argue that this combination enhances the spread of pseudoscience per se. For that reason I found Anna's concluding statement particularly valuable & (like Orac) have reproduced it here (with bolding for emphasis):

... [F]inding common ground with those who question, fear or crusade against vaccines** is no easy task. Their arguments are constantly shifting and evolving - this has been furthered by the fluidity of the Internet and social media. While acknowledging and correcting flawed arguments is important, an approach that moves beyond providing "the facts" is likely needed. With the anti-vaccination movement embracing the postmodern paradigm, which inherently questions an authoritative, science-based approach, "facts" may be reinterpreted as just another "opinion". This issue is as much about the cultural context surrounding healthcare, perceptions of risk, and trust in expertise, as it is about vaccines themselves. For these reasons it is possible the minds of deeply invested anti-vaccination activists may never be changed; therefore it is for both the laypersons with genuine questions or worries about vaccines and the healthcare professionals who work to ease their fears that keeping abreast of the methods of persuasion discussed here is essential. Recognising anti-vaccine tactics and tropes is imperative, for an awareness of the disingenuous arguments used to cajole and convert audiences gives individuals the tools to think critically about the information they encounter online. It is through such recognition that truly informed choices can then be made.

** or in favour of other modalities

 The other day my friend Renee sent through this link, & her thoughts. "This article (& website) set my woo-ometer off big time," she said. The article's entitled Scientists cure cancer, but no one takes notice, and begins thusly:

Canadian researchers find a simple cure for cancer, but major pharmaceutical companies are not interested. Researchers at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Canada, have cured cancer last week, yet there is a little ripple in the news or on TV.

 ... not only do we have at least one homeopath using heat to treat burns (yes, really! That piece of burning stupid - to use an Oracian aphorism - is admirably covered here by Grant), but we also have the Daily Mail announcing that scientists have discovered - ta-daah! - a hangover cure (hat-tip to David Winter for passing the story on):

New drug lets you enjoy a drink without getting drunk, and wake up without a hangover - at least if you're a rat

Well, at least they mention that the work's been done in rats, which is a step up from many such reports (although I suspect that the first clause is what most readers will remember). What else do they have to say? From the sub-header we learn that the drug

[was] extracted from [an] ancient Chinese remedy

stops hangovers, prevents rats passing out

 and that

• rats given [the equivalent of] 20 beers in two hours.... recovered their balance in 15 minutes [when given the drug].

The drug is "now moving to tests in humans."

O-Kay...

The drug in question is called dihydromyricetin, or DHM, "a flavonoid component of herbal medicines." It's not unknown for 'ancient remedies' to turn out to actually have some pharmaceutical benefits. Think willow bark, for example. So we can go with that. But this 'stops hangovers' bit - how on earth would they know? (Hint: the research was done on rats, which I seriously doubt go round groaning "oh my aching head" the morning after.)

Anyway, what was the actual scientific study about? The full article is behind a paywall but you can read the abstract for free here. It turns out that the researchers weren't looking for a hangover cure, & in fact were not looking at hangovers at all. They were instead looking at potential means of treating 'alcohol use disorders' (AUDs), which they describe as "the most common form of substance abuse" & characterise thusly:

The development of AUDs involves repeated alcohol use leading to tolerance, alcohol withdrawal syndrome, and physical and psychological dependence, with loss of ability to control excessive drinking.

In other words, they're talking about alcoholism.

It seems that when rats were injected with DHM they didn't develop "acute alcohol intoxication"; nor did they suffer from withdrawal symptoms. The drug also cut back on the animals' drinking. It seems to do this through its effects on particular receptor molecules in the brain, some of which are inhibited and others enhanced. Identifying some of the key molecules in the brain that are involved in addictive responses to alcohol, and of a compound that seems to block the development of this addiction, opens the way for the possibility of developing a pharmacological means of treating alcoholism. 

But a hangover cure, it ain't.

Y.Shen, A.K.Lindemeyer, C.Gonzalez, X.M.Shao, I.Spigelman, R.W.Olsen & J.Liang (2012) Dihydromyricetin as a novel anti-alcohol intoxication medication. The Journal of Neuroscience 32(1): 390-401. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4639-11.2012