john hawks weblog

paleoanthropology, genetics and evolution

teaching

  • Graphic biology teacher survey results

    Sun, 2010-07-18 16:46 -- John Hawks

    Several people (e.g., P. Z. Myers, Jerry Coyne) have passed along a poster representation of some statistics on evolution, creationism, and other stuff in secondary biology education.

    These statistics are from the National Survey of High School Biology Teachers, taken in 2007 and reported in a 2008 paper by Michael Berkman and colleagues [1]. I wrote about the survey results at greater length when the paper by Berkman and colleagues reported on them.

    Biology teachers creationism chart

    What I want to know is where are these high school biology classes that include more than 20 hours of human evolution? That's four weeks! Two percent of the survey is 18 teachers. Good for them, and I hope they're using the blog!

    The 17% who say they don't cover human evolution at all... I think that it wouldn't be too hard to make a real dent in this statistic. It does not take extra time to instill basic knowledge about human evolution, if you're already discussing basic genetics. All of the good examples of Mendelian inheritance are good examples precisely because they illustrate recent human evolution. Any discussion of human variation really is a discussion of human evolution. You just need to include the missing evolutionary frame, the one that makes sense of these things.

    Still it's true that many biology classes don't touch on issues related to humans at all. Even these are missing an obvious opportunity -- other organisms are relevant to our biology precisely because of our shared evolutionary history.

    The part of the survey that I found dismaying was the low number of hours devoted to evolutionary biology in general. As I put it then:

    We're entering an age in which health decisions will be made based on genetic information -- when everyone may know their own gene sequences if they want to. New diseases are emerging, new crops are being developed, and new organisms are being transplanted from one continent to another. Decisions about the economic development of entire regions -- perhaps entire nations -- are now subject to the evaluation of biodiversity, including threatened and endangered species.

    The people making these decisions ten to twenty years from now will have an average of 13.7 hours of education about evolution.

    Looking at the distribution of numbers, it's clear that the average of 13.7 is buoyed by a tail of high-instruction classes. The median and mode are between 5 and 10 hours. This has to change, if we're going to have a populace capable of using genetic information.

    References

    1. Berkman MB, Pacheco JS, Plutzer E. Evolution and Creationism in America's Classrooms: A National Portrait. PLoS Biol [Internet]. 2008;6:e124+. Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0060124
    Tags: 
    teaching
    education
    creationism

  • Berkeley DNA comments

    Thu, 2010-07-15 17:47 -- John Hawks

    Marie-Claire Shanahan has written on A Blog Around the Clock an essay discussing the Berkeley genetic test:

    I chatted informally with some friends about the issue. One expressed her divided feelings about it saying (roughly quoted) "It seems like they [university admin] have addressed the ethical concerns well by being clear about the use of the swabs and the confidentiality but something still just doesn't feel right. There's still a part of me that shivers just a little bit."

    What is the shiver factor?

    Her thoughts provide another perspective, and I hope more will come.

    I think that the test does two things. It requires that students give a different kind of trust to the university -- for information that's not covered by the usual federal protections of student records, and that requires a new "consent statement". To enforce this new trust, the test imposes a pressure from peers and faculty upon students.

    I don't see how that trust has been earned. Especially by the University of California system -- remember MoCell?

    Tags: 
    ethics
    biotech
    teaching
    testing

  • Berkeley DNA tests revisited

    Thu, 2010-07-08 23:50 -- John Hawks

    I wrote about the UC Berkeley genetic testing of incoming freshmen earlier this spring. The summer is halfway over and the saliva kits have been sent. Now Scientific American has a long and balanced article on the contrasting approaches to genetic testing at Berkeley and an upper-level seminar at Stanford: "Exposing the Student Body: Stanford Joins U.C. Berkeley in Controversial Genetic Testing of Students".

    This is an article worth reading by anyone interested in personalized genomics or bioethics. I wouldn't have expected that university classes would be such an early battleground for genetic information, privacy rights, and junk science. But nothing about either program is unprecedented. I wrote in 2005 about genetic testing associated with a course at Penn State. As I noted in 2005, I have a lot of concerns about applying these genetic tests to students. They can have an educational effect, but not always a beneficial one.

    The UC-Berkeley program actually provides vastly less information than the ancestry testing that has been applied to students in courses in the past. That's my main objection -- it's an awful lot of trouble for essentially no scientific value. I mean, they might as well just do blood types!

    There's a lot in the article about the thinking of the main decision makers. I'll share these two paragraphs:

    In fact, after Salari originally proposed the class last fall, a Stanford task force of about 30 basic scientists, clinical scientists, genetic professors, genetics counselors, bioethicists, legal counselors and students spent several months working through the various ethical issues and establishing safeguards to protect students. In contrast, the organizers of Berkeley's project incurred criticism because they spent hardly any time considering the potential reaction to their new orientation program.

    Kimberly Tallbear, a professor of science, technology and environmental policy at Berkeley, explains that neither [Dean] Mark Schlissel nor any of the project's other organizers consulted with Berkeley's bioethics community. "Schlissel said several times they were surprised about the controversy," Tallbear says. "I said to him, 'Well doesn't that tell you that you needed input from us? Because we could have told you about the controversy and debate.'"

    The article also discusses the "research study" aspect -- participants will be asked to sign an informed consent form and data will be kept. It may seem like the three genotypes provided to the students would not be very interesting as research topics. But it's not too hard to imagine psychology grad students in three years becoming very interested in research projects involving a high-risk population for binge drinking and known ALDH2 genotypes. Berkeley freshmen may be enrolling now in the first phase of a long-term research study on alcohol and sexual assault.

    Tags: 
    genomics
    teaching
    biotech
    politics
    testing

  • "STEM blows"

    Mon, 2010-05-03 01:23 -- John Hawks

    The Science Insider listens to actor Tim Daly, advocating for science education, who thinks the officially sanctioned ed-school terminology is bad marketing.

    "The acronym STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) blows," says Daly, who participated in a lunch-time rally today for the upcoming National Lab Day on 12 May as co-chair of the Creative Coalition, a nonprofit organization that lobbies for the arts community. "Everybody thinks you're talking about stem cells. It should be STEAM. It's not only a better acronym, but it will enhance what they are doing."

    On the one hand, "STEM" is so completely uninspiring, that it's even obvious to the actor best known from "Wings," boat anchor of "Must See TV." On the other hand, "STEAM" not only blows, it also sucks. And I don't mean that in a steampunk kind of way.

    I mean, why not just call it "SMEAT"? Because, people, you're arguing about an acronym. Is there anything more quintessentially nerdy than trying to find the majick acronym that will float to the top of the grant application pile? They may as well name it "nerdropology."

    Tags: 
    teaching
    education

  • Conference blues

    Sat, 2010-04-24 08:30 -- John Hawks

    Michael E. Smith has some suggestions after going to the SAA meetings:

    How to give a bad presentation at a professional conference

    I have always been amazed at the low quality of many presentations at these meetings, starting at the first one I attended as an undergraduate. It seems that many archaeologists must WANT to give bad presentations. If that is the case, then I can be helpful and give you some tips on giving bad presentations.

    Good (inverse) advice follows, mostly centered around reading a prepared text and working poorly with slides.

    Tags: 
    metascience
    meetings
    teaching

  • New Smithsonian human origins hall

    Fri, 2010-03-19 19:34 -- John Hawks

    Thanks to all those readers who sent me links to the new human origins hall at the National Museum of Natural History, in Washington D.C. The NY Times' Edward Rothstein reviews the new exhibit:

    During the brief 200,000-year life of Homo sapiens, at least three other human species also existed. And while this might seem to diminish any remnants of pride left to the human animal in the wake of Darwin’s theory, the exhibition actually does the opposite. It puts the human at the center, tracing how through these varied species, central characteristics developed, and we became the sole survivors. The show humanizes evolution. It is, in part, a story of human triumph.

    I pointed to a feature about the John Gurche reconstructions last month. You can see many of these along with some 3-d models of fossil casts at the exhibition's website. The online component of the exhibit, titled, "What does it mean to be human," has been given a lot of effort. It includes essays about several areas of paleoanthropological research, some interactive features (including the 3-d casts), and a forum for teachers. As you might imagine from the quote above, I don't agree with everything in the exhibit, but they've done a very nice job creating a storyline (focused on human adaptability to climate and environment) and illustrating it.

    I'm having a bit of a laugh about the "Human Family Tree", though. It's an interactive feature so I can't paste a copy. They've taken care to make sure that every fossil is on a side-branch, not on the "main trunk" of human evolution. But what tickled me is that some of the "branches" appear to ramify from lots of different places in the tree -- like "Paranthropus" for example is paraphyletic. Also I love how some of the species weren't specifically given facial reconstructions (some don't have crania), so they have a generic "caveman mugshot" on the tree. It's a reminder of the contentious scientific politics that lie hidden behind certain hypotheses, no matter how accessible-looking they are!

    Tags: 
    teaching
    museums

  • Museums decentering the human

    Fri, 2010-03-19 08:30 -- John Hawks

    A very interesting essay by Edward Rothstein in the NY Times special museum section: "The thrill of science, tamed by agendas".

    Rothstein features a comparison of the human-centered renovation of the Griffith Observatory, and the new Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York, which goes with more of a pale blue dot theme.

    Of course, the insignificance of human existence is one of the fearsome lessons of modern science. But when we are young, we learn differently. We begin by learning to value our own understanding and only gradually come to recognize its limits. We begin by making sense of the world before we see how much lies beyond sense. The process doesn’t work well in the other direction: we can be left mystified by the world and lose respect for the human.

    Something like this has started to happen in some museums. This decentering of the human can become a devaluing of the human; the museum may even begin to see human frailties as a great flaw in the cosmic order that must be repaired. So this new variety of science museum must not just display or explain. It must be relevant, useful, practical, critical — something that helps with fund-raising as well.

    From there, he covers the "self-loathing" that seems to have crept into natural history museums concerning humans and nature. Some of his comments are reasonable, some hyperbolic, but all thought-provoking.

    Tags: 
    museums
    astronomy
    teaching

  • Professors banning computers

    Wed, 2010-03-10 13:30 -- John Hawks

    Washington Post: "Wide Web of diversions gets laptops evicted from lecture halls":

    Professors have banned laptops from their classrooms at George Washington University, American University, the College of William and Mary and the University of Virginia, among many others. Last month, a physics professor at the University of Oklahoma poured liquid nitrogen onto a laptop and then shattered it on the floor, a warning to the digitally distracted. A student -- of course -- managed to capture the staged theatrics on video and drew a million hits on YouTube.

    Whiners.

    All this does is privilege students with smaller devices in tablet form factor. I'd like to see the opposite story, about how computers are empowering new kinds of classroom experiences.

    Although there was that time that the student with the computer tried to "correct" me by citing Wikipedia in class. That led to a few minutes of entertainment for everyone!

    Tags: 
    teaching

  • Lateness

    Wed, 2010-02-24 07:30 -- John Hawks

    Jeffrey Zeldman: advice for business that works just as well in academics: "Show up early"

    How can a client blame you for a cab driver’s mistake? How can a conference organizer hold you accountable for an airline’s cancelled flight?

    They can do it because lateness is part of the order of things, and grownup professionals plan for it, just as they plan for budget shortfalls and extra rounds of revision.

    No, my link is not sending a passive-aggressive message to anyone...

    Tags: 
    teaching
    social

  • Science journalism approaches terminal velocity

    Sun, 2010-01-31 07:20 -- John Hawks

    Regarding the sad state of science journalism, or the public perception thereof:

    I was reading this article in Popular Mechanics, "How to fall 35,000 feet--and survive", basically a tongue-in-cheek discussion of unlikely cases of survival from no-parachute freefall. And at the end of the article is a long stream of comments about one line in the article:

    Lower body weight reduces terminal velocity, plus reduced surface area decreases the chance of impalement upon landing.

    Now, just to be clear, that's statistically true -- people who weigh less will almost always have lower terminal velocities during a fall. There's no controversy, it's basic physics applied to human body shapes.

    So it's interesting to watch the confusion unroll. Several commenters think that Galileo proved that all terminal velocities are equal. (That would be the sorry state of science literacy.) Then there are a bunch of commenters who show up to correct those people, by claiming that lower mass means less momentum. (Getting warmer....). Then they're contradicted by the people who claim that smaller people have lower surface area, so they should fall faster. (Getting colder...).

    My favorite:

    Lower weight reduces terminal velocity because f = mass x acceleration. If your mass is less the acceleration pushing up on you is more so your downward acceleration is reduced.

    N2F! (That would be Newton's Second Law FAIL!).

    And then there are the people who point out that the ratio of surface area to volume is allometric, so lower mass tends to go with relatively high surface area (Warmer...). After a while, a redundant slew of references to the Wikipedia "Terminal Velocity" article start showing up. You get the idea, it's like grading an undergraduate physics essay. It converges chaotically on the truth.

    What I noticed: Pretty much all the immediate reactions assume that the writer made an obvious mistake. They more easily accept that a clear error of fact, opposite to the truth, was printed by a popular science magazine, than stop and think, or do a cursory check to see if their understanding might be, shall we say, incomplete.

    That's the sign of a profession in trouble! Lazy people are universal. Lazy people trained to assume you're wrong are a problem.

    Tags: 
    teaching
    science writing

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Neandertals

For years, I've worked on their bones. Now I'm working on their genes. Read more about the science studying these ancient people.

Denisova

From a finger bone of an ancient human came the record of a completely unexpected population. My lab is working on the science of the Denisova genome.

Acceleration

The advent of agriculture caused natural selection to speed up greatly in humans. We're uncovering some of the ways that populations have rapidly changed during the last 10,000 years.

Malapa

Just outside Johannesburg, the Malapa site is producing some of the most exciting finds in human evolution. This site is the headquarters of the Malapa Soft Tissue Project.