creationism

Last week's Science has an article about "public acceptance of evolution" by Jon Miller, Eugenie Scott and Shinji Okamoto. The article covers results of polls that demonstrate that a low proportion of Americans believe that humans evolved, compared to relatively higher proportions in Europe and Japan.

Beginning in 1985, national samples of U.S. adults have been asked whether the statement, "Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals," is true or false, or whether the respondent is not sure or does not know. We compared the results of these surveys with survey data from nine European countries in 2002, surveys in 32 European countries in 2005, and a national survey in Japan in 2001 (5). Over the past 20 years, the percentage of U.S. adults accepting the idea of evolution has declined from 45% to 40% and the percentage of adults overtly rejecting evolution declined from 48% to 39%. The percentage of adults who were not sure about evolution increased from 7% in 1985 to 21% in 2005. After 20 years of public debate, the public appears to be divided evenly in terms of accepting or rejecting evolution, with about one in five adults still undecided or unaware of the issue. This pattern is consistent with a number of sporadic national newspaper surveys reported in recent years (6-10) (Miller et al. 2006:765).

There's no question that the central point of the article is correct -- a large proportion of Americans reject the idea that evolution explains many of the central facts of life. And I think that Miller, Scott and Okamoto hit upon most of the essential reasons why: the strength of American fundamentalism, the incorporation of creationism into political platforms, and lack of information about "modern genetics". I wonder whether there are additional factors that might be explored, such as a greater skepticism of pronouncements from "experts", or wider awareness of frauds -- side effects of the American political experience and its post-Watergate distrust of authority. But certainly the overwhelming majority of American attitudes toward evolution are influenced by religion, one way or another.

However, I noticed another thing reading this article: just how badly written these poll questions apparently are. Take the one cited above:

"Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals."

Human beings have never "developed" from earlier species of animals. We evolved from them. Adult human beings develop from zygotes, embryos, fetuses, infants, children, and adolescents. And of course, some of these latter categories are themselves human beings (teenagers being the main exception!). That's why "evolutionary developmental biology" is called evo-devo instead of devo-devo!

Now, I can understand why a pollster might substitute "developed" for "evolved". "Evolved" is a "charged word", and people might react to it strongly. "Developed" has an everyday meaning that people understand, which isn't necessarily connected to ontogeny.

But really, who exactly is going to "react strongly" to the word evolution, but is going to agree with the notion that human beings developed from earlier species of animals? Somebody who would say, "Oh, well, if we didn't evolve, then I guess I can accept that we developed from monkeys." It's an empty set!

The article presents another set of questions from one of these polls:

For example, only a third of American adults agree that more than half of human genes are identical to those of mice and only 38% of adults recognize that humans have more than half of their genes in common with chimpanzees. In other studies (1, 14, 15), fewer than half of American adults can provide a minimal definition of DNA. Thus, it is not surprising that nearly half of the respondents in 2005 were not sure about the proportion of human genes that overlap with mice or chimpanzees.

Or just maybe, they failed to recognize these "facts" because they are nonsensical!

For example, "more than half of human genes are identical to those of mice"? Let's start by defining some terms. "Identical" generally means "exactly the same". Two identical genes should have the same nucleotide sequence, no? Now, we haven't found all the genes in the human genome. And further, we don't know what segments of DNA should really be included in any given "gene", since each may be regulated by sites that are very far from the coding sequence. So we will want to be very cautious no matter what we claim about similarities between humans and other species.

But let's consider the known coding sequences alone. A sample of some 13,000 genes in the human and draft chimpanzee genomes shows over 39,000 amino-acid coding differences between the two species. This means that a given human will differ from a chimpanzee by an average three amino-acid coding substitutions per gene. Certainly these are not equally distributed -- some genes are more different than others. But far fewer than half of this sample of genes are identical in their amino acid sequences. Even fewer -- only around one in ten -- are identical in their nucleotide sequences, including synonymous substitutions. If we include intronic sequences as part of each gene, then none of the 13,000 genes have identical sequences in humans and chimpanzees. Mice, of course, are more different from us than chimps.

OK, let's be generous and assume that the poll intended something that makes sense, like "more than half of nucleotides are shared between human and chimpanzee genomes." On the one hand, the obtuseness of the question would seem to vindicate those Americans who can't provide "a minimal definition of DNA". I mean, the poll doesn't understand DNA, so why should they?

On the other hand, this looks like what we in the professoriate would call a "trick question". As in:

"Hmm.... The book says that humans and chimpanzees have ninety-eight percent sequence identity, but this question says 'over half'. Now I know that ninety-eight percent is more than half. But why would the question just make up a number that was so far off? Is the question asking about something I didn't study? And it doesn't say 'nucleotide sequence', it says 'genes'. And I know that there aren't any full gene sequences that are identical. And this other question says "in common with." What the hell does that mean? Is it about genes versus pseudogenes? Oh, crap, why didn't I take economics instead?"

Now, sure, there probably aren't very many people who answer these poll questions the "wrong" way because of objections like mine. But when scientists can't seem to get their facts straight, just how exactly are nonscientists supposed to become "literate"?

I actually think 38 percent is pretty impressive penetrance for the human-chimpanzee factoid. After all, only twice that many know that the Earth revolves around the sun.

References:

Miller JD, Scott EC, Okamoto S. 2006. Public acceptance of evolution. Science 313:765-766. DOI link

Man, camp has gotten a lot more boring since I was a kid:

At the summer camp at Timber-lee Christian Center in East Troy, Wis., for example, campers can go on a seven-room "Creation Walk," where each room showcases one of the Bible's seven days of Creation. Says Karen Good, outdoor education director at Timber-lee, "The curriculum is designed to open their eyes so when they go back to school [and hear about evolution] they say, 'Oh, that sounds goofy!' "

Other camps are fighting back by offering summer programs teaching evolution. In late June, the Unitarian Universalist Church in Fresno, Calif., sponsored the fourth season of Chalice Camp, a science camp that uses song, dance and drama to teach children about scientific discoveries about human origins.

Well, maybe it's better than it sounds. Hey, maybe I should start offering song, dance and drama here! Woo-hoo!

The New York Times has a profile of "Flock of Dodos" filmmaker Randy Olson:

The biologist, Randy Olson, accepts that there is no credible scientific challenge to the theory of evolution as an explanation for the diversity and complexity of life on earth. He agrees that intelligent design's embrace of a supernatural "agent" puts it outside the realm of science.

But when he watches the advocates of intelligent design at work, he sees pleasant people who speak plainly, convincingly and with humor. When scientists he knows talk about evolution, they can be dour, pompous and disagreeable, even with one another. His film challenges them to get off their collective high horse and make their case to ordinary people with -- if they can muster it -- a smile.

Otherwise, he suggests, they will end up in the collective cultural backwash just like the dodo.

The story about the colleague who said "um" every seven seconds and only talked to his slides instead of the audience will be familiar to anyone who's attended a scientific meeting. Or, for that matter, college.

The film has gotten a lot of press for its illustration of scientists who can't articulate their work or beliefs to the public.

Though many in science bemoan their collective inability to get their messages across to the public, big grant-makers have yet to embrace Dr. Olson's approach.

"I get hundreds of inquiries from students and graduate students wanting to do what I am doing, to get into this interface between science and the media," Dr. Olson said. "There just isn't any financial support for it. The science world does not understand media, does not support it. They don't see the need for innovation."

Dr. Jackson said some scientists, even those interested in communicating science, "squirm" at Dr. Olson's irreverent approach. Others wonder whether his wry humor will translate to a wider audience.

I hope it does great business -- it really seems like a worthwhile message. If you don't like the way science is marketed, then market it yourself!

A great commentary in the Times this morning:

Someday the Sun Will Go Out and the World Will End (but Don't Tell Anyone)

By Dennis Overbye

...

Last week my colleague Andrew Revkin reported that a 24-year-old NASA political appointee with no scientific background, George C. Deutsch, had told a designer working on a NASA Web project that the Big Bang was "not proven fact; it is opinion," and thus the word "theory" should be used with every mention of Big Bang.

It was not NASA's place, he said in an e-mail message, to make a declaration about the origin of the universe "that discounts intelligent design by a creator."

In a different example of spinning science news last month, NASA headquarters removed a reference to the future death of the sun from a press release about the discovery of comet dust around a distant star known as a white dwarf. A white dwarf, a shrunken dense cinder about the size of earth, is how our own sun is fated to spend eternity, astronomers say, about five billion years from now, once it has burned its fuel.

"We are seeing the ghost of a star that was once a lot like our sun," said Marc Kuchner of the Goddard Space Flight Center. In a statement that was edited out of the final news release he went on to say, "I cringed when I saw the data because it probably reflects the grim but very distant future of our own planets and solar system."

An e-mail message from Erica Hupp at NASA headquarters to the authors of the original release at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said, "NASA is not in the habit of frightening the public with doom and gloom scenarios."

Never mind that the death of the sun has been a staple of astronomy textbooks for 50 years.

Maybe it's just me, but this series of events looks like a doom and gloom scenario...

I'm reminded of that scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind where the aliens pass over the row of buff-looking astronauts and take Richard Dreyfuss instead.