Getting The Kids Back To Church
First of all, sorry for the lack of recent updates, but I’ve been working on a new collaborative science and scepticism site. It’s called “The Twenty-First Floor”, where all that is good shall be praised and all that is evil (from Jenny McCarthy to Mike ‘Health Ranger’ Adams) shall be put to the sword. Please take a look! Or don’t.
Anyway, the clock of moral panic has once again struck “video games” and the Church of England’s general synod have dutifully rushed to defend the innocence of the nation against this grave threat to the keystone of society. Tom Benyon, a former tory MP, terrified the synod with his assertion that violent computer games could cause “nightmares”. So frightening are these games that Mr Benyon had, at obvious risk to his own sanity, made a compilation of the most horrific video games scenes he could find and offered it to the Church’s council to watch “should they have the courage”.
Severed heads being used as footballs, a woman being burned alive, chainsaw murders, even rape are, Benyon informed the synod, regular features of our children’s leisure lives and the effects of such media are manifesting in crime figures which are “rising year on year”. No need to acknowledge that crime is a complex social concept which cannot sensibly be attributed to one factor, and certainly no need to mention the fact that no causative link has ever been demonstrated between violent media and crime, the church has a panic to stoke!
However, it seems to me that if the church should want to protect the fragile and malleable minds of the people from the pernicious influence of violent media they have bigger heads to chainsaw off than “Mortal Kombat”. There’s a horrifically violent and outlandishly disturbing piece of media which is actively taught to children by those with whom we trust their moral and personal development. Something that sells far, far more copies than “Grand Theft Auto” and has a wider reach than even the fearsome Dhalsim.
I’m not going to insult your intelligence by continuing to pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. So let’s just get straight on with casting an eye over some of the violence in The Bible.
Seeing as the Bible is quite a lengthy piece of literature and is drenched in gore from its vicious commencement to its Dali-on-a-bad-trip blood-soaked ending, I’ll stick to just the first eleven* books (excepting “Ruth”, which is kind of like a biblical Mills & Boon) and choose only the most absurd, bizarre or amusing example from each book.
Genesis
Lot, one of God’s favourite people ever, is visited by two angels. When word gets out around town about this a gang of rapists appear at Lot’s door, demanding they be allowed to have sex with the angels. Clearly, raping an angel would be a terrible thing, but Lot doesn’t want to just tell the gang of violent sex offenders to fuck off (or implore the angels to use their holy magic to get rid of them), so he appeases the mob by handing over his two virgin daughters instead.
Exodus
There’s lots of murder and genocide in Exodus, but the strangest and most disturbing act of violence has to be when God, the most merciful, decides to kill a whole bunch of little babies to make a point about how powerful he is. When there are no little babies left, he starts killing animals instead.
Leviticus
A sizeable part of Leviticus deals with God’s graphic instructions on how to slaughter animals. Not for food, nor for clothing, but just because God likes it when people butcher animals in his name. Later on he demands that homosexuals be killed and threatens to send wild beasts to murder the children of those who don’t listen to him.
Numbers
More purposeless animal killing. Then the Israelites complain, quite reasonably, that they have nothing to eat or drink in the desert. It’s not even so much a complaint as it is a plea for help. Anyway, God sends “fiery serpents” to attack them for whining. Many are killed.
Deuteronomy
In Deutoronomy, God explains that if a man believes his wife was not a virgin on their wedding night, and the wife’s father cannot produce evidence of her virginity (a bloody sheet), then the woman is to be stoned to death in front of her father. Fair’s fair. Later, he promises to send wasps to kill anyone who inspires fear in his followers.
Joshua
God finally delivers on his promise to kill people with wasps. He also threatens to torture anyone who commits transgressions against him, even if they repent.
Judges
Samson, a prototypical terrorist, catches three hundred foxes, ties them together, sets them on fire and releases the burning animals into his enemies’ cornfields in order to destroy their crops. The biblical terrorism continues when Samson commits literature’s first suicide attack.
1 Samuel
God dislikes the Amalekites because of something that happened hundreds of years before any of them were born, so he orders Saul to murder every last one of them – men, women, children, cows, sheep – the lot. Saul only kills most of them, and God falls out with him. Later Saul’s corpse is beheaded and the head and torso are used as warnings for anyone who might consider not becoming a cold-blooded murderer of innocent people on God’s command.
2 Samuel
God kills another little baby because of something its father did. Amasa is disemboweled and left to writhe, dying, in a pool of his own blood. Later on, a man is beheaded, and his head is thrown around.
1 Kings
God demands that anyone who urinates on a wall be killed, and tells that the corpses of these criminals shall be eaten by dogs and chickens.
2 Kings
Elijah burns fifty-one men alive to prove that he is the prophet of God. Then he does it again. In a separate incident, Elijah’s disciple, Elisha, is being made fun of by some little children. So God sends two bears to tear the children to pieces.
All in all, God kills more than 2.3 million people in the Bible (not including the flood or any of the cities he demolishes). I think you’d struggle to find a more violent or morally confused text currently legitimately available in any school in the country.
It’s the children I feel most sorry for, though. Seeking out the cliched, £50-a-pop, age-restricted, thrills of violent video games when the really meaty, really imaginative, really gut-wrenching stuff is sitting right under their noses in a big, dusty, boring ol’ book which plenty of kindly, unassuming, coffee-morning-and-jumble-sale types will gladly give them for free.
Dwindling congregations? The church really have missed a trick here.
*cos if I’d picked ten I’d have had to miss out the child-mauling bears…
Jenny McCarthy’s Battle With Sense
Originally published at The 21st Floor…
For reasons that I don’t want to think about too much lest I lose the will to continue breathing in and out, US broadcaster ABC recently bypassed several thousand people who know what they’re talking about and petitioned actress and soft-porn star Jenny McCarthy for her views on a recent study reporting no evidence for a gastrointestinal disorder causing autistic spectrum disorders, and no evidence that special diets alleviate symptoms of autism. Predictably, McCarthy was incredulous, maintaining that she had witnessed these special diets help her autistic son and that doctors need to, and I quote, “start listening to our anecdotal evidence.”
McCarthy, for context, is a seasoned mouthpiece for all sorts of conspiracy theories regarding autism. An entire course in critical thinking could be built solely around her output on the science behind the subject. So convinced is she of the link between MMR vaccinations and autism that she has created complex ad hoc refutations of the overwhelming numbers of studies which have found no such link, most of which involve some hegemonic cabal of evil scientists living in the pockets of the pharmaceutical industry. Behind this stubborn refusal to accept scientific consensus on the matter is Jenny’s personal observation that her son’s autistic behaviour (there’s actually good reason to believe that her son was misdiagnosed) began shortly after he recieved his vaccinations. This is a hugely flawed basis for such deeply ingrained beliefs; not only does it equivocate correlation and causation, but because autism diagnoses are generally made in infancy it would be entirely logical to actively expect that some diagnoses would coincide with vaccination even if there was no causal link between the two. The illusion of cause and effect is strong, however, and McCarthy has wound up in the grip of it’s specious appeal. It’s so satisfying as an explanation that she’s allowed herself to become convinced that anyone who opposes it is an elitist or a conspirator. So she disregards scientific consensus and makes appeals to the public for them to do the same. On the basis of her personal experience, her anecdotal evidence.
“Who needs science when I’m witnessing it every day in my own home? I watched it happen. At home, Evan is my science.”
- Jenny McCarthy
If you don’t do a whole lot of thinking, “listen to my anecdotal evidence” sounds great. It’s saying “look, I’ve experienced this and you haven’t, who are you to tell me what’s right and what’s wrong?” It’s a sentiment which tempts you to cheer for it. It’s irritating and frustrating when you’ve seen something with your own eyes and someone tells you you’re wrong. Especially when the issue under scrutiny centres on the wellbeing of an individual you love and care for very much and that the people criticising you have never met. Jenny’s a mum, right? She knows her child better than anyone, yes? What gives these elitist scientists the right to tell her she doesn’t know what she’s talking about?
Unfortunately, being a mum doesn’t make you any more an expert on childhood diseases and their treatments than my penis makes me an expert on urology.
The problem with accepting anecdotes as evidence is the fact that, leaving wilfull dishonesty to one side, human beings are innately unreliable. We see things that aren’t there. We attribute causes and effects where there are none. We’re suckers for confirmation bias – the psychological phenomenon whereby we tend to pay disproportionate attention to phenomena that support our beliefs. We tend to interpret things to fit our expectations. Science goes to painstaking lengths to eliminate all of these biases and misperceptions, which is why it produces reliable results.
“The first rule of science is not to fool yourself, and know that you are the easiest person to fool.”
– Richard Feynman
Jenny McCarthy may well have seen improvements in her son but, because of these all-too-human weaknesses in perceiving reality, we can’t just take her (or anyone’s) word for it that the diet was the cause. Maybe he was going to get better anyway? Maybe it was some kind of placebo effect by proxy? Maybe he was never even autistic in the first place? Maybe she’s just gone mad? The fact is, that when we control for such biases, the effect of this diet disappears. Autistic children on the diet fare no better, on average, than autistic children who are eating normally. And scientists aren’t just being smart-arsed party-poopers: there are potentially serious consequences for putting children on restrictive diets, so why risk it for no better reason than that Jenny McCarthy has an anecdote about how it worked for her kid?
Woo-icide Is Painless
Glasgow’s contribution to the 10:23 campaign began with a small bunch of unremarkable looking individuals gathering in the shadows of the tie stall in the city’s central station. As the group grew in number and started handing t-shirts and small bottles of pills marked “arsenic” to one another, it was clear that something was afoot and the attention of the rail station staff was piqued. They needn’t have worried though, and the two policemen who arrived shortly after were assured that there was no plan to attempt a mass overdose in the railway station – the woo-icide was being taken to Royal Exchange Square and the steps of the Gallery of Modern Art. The coppers were satisfied with this. After all, a pile of dead bodies outside the GoMA could be shrugged off as a piece of radical art, corpses in the railway station would probably raise a few unshruggable complaints from commuters.
On arriving at the steps of the art gallery it quickly became apparent that, as appropriate as the 10:23 monicker is, it doesn’t translate very well into a time of day to hold a protest. There was barely a homeopathic dilution of people on the streets for the group to protest to. The group (numbering around 20 at this point) were unshaken by the scarcity of potential spectators and dutifully assembled under a “Homeopathy, There’s Nothing In It” banner to begin knocking back the pills. Death did not descend. It was Saturday morning, though, perhaps he had a hangover.
Absence of fatalites was a significant advantage in executing the next part of the demonstration: distributing leaflets and engaging with the public. To the surprise of some in attendence, the majority of people they talked to were fairly sceptical of homeopathy already. “Oh, homeopathy?” commented one elderly lady “What a load of rubbish.” The awareness of the average Glaswegian, it appears, is not in need of raising.
With the streets still relatively empty after fifteen minutes or so the group decided to take their message to those who need it most and set up stall outside of Neal’s Yard Remedies, a purveyor of all kinds of alternative medicines situated just around the corner.
As one young man in a 10:23 t-shirt reassured his father on the phone (“I’ll be fine dad! Honestly! It’s just sugar and water.”) an angry homeopathist emerged from Neal’s Yard and began berating the sceptics for assembling in front of her store. The protest, she opined, was affecting her business (that was pretty much the point) and she threatened to call the police if the group didn’t disperse. Her attention was politely drawn to the policemen standing not ten feet away, who were both aware of and happy with the demonstration.
The confrontation soured the atmosphere a little. I felt, albeit briefly, that things were only a few misplaced words away from turning into a slagging match. The demonstration shouldn’t be directed against any group of people, it should about education. The Neal’s Yard employee railed that her customers were entitled to their opinions and were being victimised by the protest and the sceptics objected. Thankfully, however, the altercation was soon resolved as genially as could be expected and the group agreed to move on to Buchanan street, where there were many more passers by to engage with.
The morning’s events were encouraging, all things considered. No-one died, which helped the message a bit. And it seems that the vast majority of people already exercise a healthy scepticism regarding unproven medical treatments.
One final thought though: scepticism should encourage discourse and sharing of thoughts and opinions in an amicable way. Sometimes there’s a threat of fostering mutual suspicion and resentment and this is not a situation that’s helpful to any of us. The goal of demonstrations such as this should be to educate, to encourage people to think about what (in this case) homeopathy is and to explain why some of us find it worrying. It’s not about ridicule, it’s not about superciliousness, it’s not about “them and us”. “Them and us” attitudes are deeply irrational, and when you’re fighting in the name of reason, you’ve lost half your battle if you start to succumb to them.
Homeopathy: There’s Something In It
One of the core tenets of homeopathy is the belief that the more dilute a substance is, the more powerful its effects on the body. It would make sense, then, that homeopaths should go to enormous lengths to prevent contamination of their preparations with unwanted solutes. Clearly, you wouldn’t want some contraindicated contaminant potentising your remedy along with the substance you intended to put into the potion. Indeed, it does seem to be the case that laboratories which engage in the preparation of homeopathic medicines do take some pains to avoid contamination.
There is a significant problem, however. Water itself contains countless solutes. So how do the homeopathists prevent all of these unwanted substances potentising remedies with their character? The answer, it turns out, is the same answer to the question of how water doesn’t “remember” all of the things that have been dissolved in it throughout history: they use double distilled water. Because double distilled water is pure water, isn’t it? Isn’t it?
Recently, for reasons quite distinct from any desire to piss all over a homeopathic campfire, I had cause to contact a gentleman who was involved in the water purification business. Not “chuck these tablets in your river water” or “here’s a filter for a kettle” water purification, but front-line, super-awesome, space-age water purification. So I asked him: “Can we make absolutely, 100% pure water?”
The answer? No.
Uh oh.
The purest water available commercially, he informed me, contains ionic impurities at the parts per trillion level and organic impurities at the parts per billion level. This is water that has gone through all of the following processes: ion exchange, organics removal, UV treatment, reverse osmosis, electro deionisation, ultra-filtration, and a host of other steps that he wouldn’t divulge. And that level of purity is from straight out of the treatment process. You’ve got a whole other set of problems when you try to bottle, store and transport it. You see, no matter what you use to contain the water, it’s going to contaminate it somehow. Glass doesn’t work well at all, the water will easily leach and dissolve silicates from the surface of the glass (especially, say, if you had it in a glass bottle and were whacking it repeatedly off of a book for some reason). The best (but not perfect) option is to use bottles made from high density organic polymers that have been extensively fluorinated; and these don’t come cheap.
This presents a couple of problems for homeopathic theory.
1) If your remedy is based on any of the following substances:
Bromine, Fluorine, Chlorine, Iodine, Nitrates, Nitrites, Phosphates, Sulphates, Silver, Aluminium, Arsenic, Gold, Boron, Beryllium, Barium, Bismuth, Calcium, Cadmium, Cobalt, Chromium, Cerium, Caesium, Copper, Dysprosium, Erbium, Europium, Iron, Gallium, Gadolinium, Germanium, Mercury, Holmium, Indium, Potassium, Kryptonite, Lanthanum, Lithium, Lutetium, Magnesium, Manganese, Molybdenum, Sodium, Niobium, Lead, Palladium, Praseodymium, Platinum, Rubidium, Antimony, Selenium, Silicon, Tin, Strontium, Terbium, Thorium, Titanium, Thallium, Thulium, Uranium, Vanadium, Yttrium, Ytterbium, Zinc or Zirconium*
Then, even if you are using the purest water that is available (homeopathy only claims to use double distilled, so this is generous) and starting with, say, a molar solution of whatever substance you’re diluting (1 part per 1800). You cannot get past about 4C or 5C. You just can’t. You hit baseline.
Take the example of homeopathic table salt (or Natrium Muriaticum as it’s named in homeopathy), prescribed at 30C for long term nervous tension and heart disease (among other ailments). It’s just a solution of sodium chloride. ANY water you use will contain sodium and chloride ions. It gives you a nice wee answer to the sceptics who claim there’s none of the “named ingredient” in the prep, but it raises the question “what the hell is the point in continuing to dilute it past around 4C?”
I guess the answer could be that the continuation of dilution and succusion (shaking the vial violently, releasing untold numbers of novel solutes, by the way) continues the potentisation. But that brings me on to my next point…
2) Even with substances that don’t exist naturally in water (homeopathic snake venom, for example, used in the treatment of period pains), once the original substance is long gone, isn’t the succusion potentising the mixture the essence of all of these other substances that exist in the water? I mean, if the potentisation of homeopathic salt and arsenic and the like can continue once they’ve hit the limit of their dilution, why aren’t all these other substances affected by the treatment too. If they are, is this a good idea? Is this accounted for in the homeopathic canon? I dunno. What’s the official line?
Now, I don’t actually care that much about homeopathy. I don’t believe it works but I take a “live and let live” sort of view. I would like to see homeopaths take an official line against its recommendation for dangerous, life-threatening conditions, but I don’t really see the problem with people spending their money on it for self-limiting conditions if they think it makes them feel better. But seeing as it’s 10:23 week, homeopathy’s been invading my consciousness more than usual and I guess it bugs me to see the abuse of science in the explanations that are dragged out for homeopathy.
If it’s special wizardy magic, just say “it’s special wizardy magic”. Stop trying to dress it up in science.
*only joking about the kryptonite
Very Ape
Every so often some evidence is produced that tells such a beautiful story, that has such potent explanatory power, that you just want to run out into the streets and start touching other people inappropriately on their bums out of sheer love for humanity and what it can demonstrate when it puts its mind to it. Only a pissed-up fool, however, would think I would accept responsibility for any charges of sexual assault that may be brought upon you after reading this account of the story of human chromosome two.
The theory of evolution – specifically all that malarkey about man descending from apes – had, at one stage, a fairly significant problem: our chromosomes. Chromosomes are the little bundles of DNA which carry the instructions needed to create a functioning organism. These are passed on to us by our parents and we pass them on to our children, and we can tell how closely related two people are by looking at the contents of the chromosomes: the more similar they are, the closer those people are in nature’s great family tree. They also come in pairs, you get one set from your mum and one set from your dad. Human beings, incidentally, have 23 pairs of chromosomes. And this is the fact that threatened to piss all over Darwin’s picnic. You see, all the other great apes have 24 pairs. How, exactly, do we explain our relation to the great apes when we have such a fundamental difference in our genetics? Finding the answer to this question was pretty important; not just because the pursuit of knowledge is noble, but also because we were obviously going to look hella stupid in front of the creationists when they stumbled across this discrepancy.
So, could one of the chromosomes have just disappeared sometime after the chimps and we went our separate ways? Almost certainly not. There’s so much important information on each and every chromosome that an organism that was missing a pair would not be viable. So we can toss that one in the air and headbutt it into the bin without rising from our seats, and then punch the air in ecstatic celebration of our dexterity and precision.
Anyway…
That leaves us with one other possibility: fusion. Fusion of two chromosomes would allow the organism to keep all of the important genetic information of its ancestors within a smaller set of chromosomes. And, if this is the answer, we should be able to identify the “fused” chromosome by looking for a human chromosome that contains all the information found on two separate chromosomes in the other great apes. Luckily, chromosomes can be stained in such a way that they take on a pattern of stripes. The stripes appear black or white depending on the structure of the DNA in that region of the chromosome. The more similar the pattern, the more similar the chromosomes. So, this is what was done, and it was found that the structure of human chromosome two is identical (or as near as dammit) to the structures of two separate chromosomes in the great apes.
LOOK!
H – Human (chromosome 2); C – Chimpanzee; G – Gorilla; O – Orang-utan
Fucking brilliant, isn’t it?
But why stop there? Looking at this picture tells us roughly where the fusion would have taken place, so if we are correct about human chromosome two being the result of fusion between these two ape chromosomes is there anything we can look for that would indicate that this was definitely fusion and we’re not being fooled by a coincidence?
Brilliantly, it turns out that there is. Right at the ends of all chromosomes are sections of DNA which are structured in a very specific and very repetitive way. They’re called telomeres, and they help stop DNA being damaged when it replicates (but we don’t need to get into that here). If two chromosomes were to fuse end to end, as we’re hypothesising happened in the formation of chromosome two, then we might expect to find telomeres at the site of fusion, somewhere in the middle of the chromosome and not just at the ends. With that in mind, the sequence of chromosome two was analysed for telomere or telomere-like sequences around the hypothesised site of fusion. Unfortunately, however, none were found.
Nah, just shitting you. Telomere sequences were found exactly where we would have expected to find them if chromosome two had formed from the fusion of two ancestral ape chromosomes. They’re right in the middle of chromosome two, and found nowhere but the very ends of every other chromosome. This evidence for the descent of man from apes is so beautiful and so neat that it makes me want to weep with joy. But it gets better.
If you look again at that glorious wee diagram, you’ll notice a small indentation on each of the chromosomes. This is called a centromere and it’s involved in cell division, but we don’t really need to worry about its purpose. You’ll notice that the centromere on human chromosome two corresponds exactly with the centromere on one of the chimp chromosomes. Cool, eh? But what’s happened with the other one? Shouldn’t we expect to see a second centromere or, at least, something like a centromere in chromosome two?
Again, the sequence of a centromere is known and we can analyse chromosome two for centromere sequences. It has two. And the position of the second corresponds exactly with the position of the centromere on the second chimp chromosomes. If this was a murder trial, you wouldn’t even have time to boil the kettle for coffee in the jury room.
The discovery that chromosome two was produced by fusion of two chromosomes that were found in our ape ancestors is presented here only as a beautiful demonstration of the process and power of the scientific method. A problem was observed, an explanation was hypothesised, predictions of the hypothesis were worked out and tested, and, voila, we have a near impenetrable explanatory theory. It would, however, be lax of me to ignore the opportunity for a bit of “evolution vs creationism” point scoring so I’ll add the following thought: if a creator made the human race as we are today, then he must have really, really, really wanted it to look like we evolved from apes. What a weirdo.
(diagram reproduced from: Yunis and Prakash (1982). “The origin of man: a chromosomal pictorial legacy”. Science 215: 1525–1530)
‘Cos I Said So, Right?
So, as you may be vaguely aware, sceptics across the UK have recently been lining up in support of the “10:23 Campaign” – a loosely organised affair with the stated aim of raising awareness of the evidence (or, more pertinently, lack of evidence) for homeopathic medicine. Understandably, part of the focus of the campaign is on the mechanisms through which the treatment is proposed to work. This, to my mind, is a side issue – debating the credibility of its mechanism is a waste of time when we know that countless double blinded randomised controlled trials have demonstrated that just as many people get better after taking “fake” homeopathic medicine as benefit from the real stuff. It’s a bit like debating how Santa Claus manages to fit his fat arse down the chimney of your standard 1940s semi-detached council house.
That said, however, the way in which homeopaths have been defending their craft from accusations of ridiculousness illustrates an interesting phenomenon: science used as rhetoric. The explanations usually go something like this: water can be “imprinted” such that it can “remember” a substance that was previously dissolved in it and subsequently diluted out; this is due to effects at the quantum level where the identity of matter is characterised by vibrations of different frequencies; the vibrations of the water and the vibrations of the substance are harmonised such that the water retains the character of the substance long after it has been diluted away; when this water is imbibed the body recognises the character of the original substance through the “vibrations” and this gently stimulates the immune system to react to the threat without actually being exposed to a threat.
The above, or some approximation to the above, is most often offered to refute the assertion that homeopathy has no basis in science. The ideas are drawn from science, they fit loosely with a superficial understanding of concepts such as the much abused “quantum physics”, and they are strung together to make an internally consistent, pleasing story. However, persuasive language is not sufficient for an idea to be accepted as a mechanistic explanation in science. Hypothesis and “blue-sky” thinking, of course, hold very important roles, but these serve only as the starting point for enquiry. No matter how persuasive your assertion, that it seems to makes sense on paper is never enough: the sciences demand you provide evidence.
“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.” – Nobel prize-winning badass, all round titan of reason, and shite poet: Richard Feynman.
Unfortunately, most people’s formal training in science goes no further than the absorption of a litany of facts and laws, handed down by authority figures, and to be regurgitated mindlessly in examination. The core of science, which is method not dogma, is largely ignored (amazingly, in my experience, the scientific method was not formally taught until the honours year of my BSc, and even then it was only briefly covered in a lecture which was intended to prepare us for our research projects….and this was at a well respected university) with the result that when two scientists disagree with one another in the public eye the response of the lay community is one of mistrust. The perception is that scientists just waffle away authoritatively using unusual terms and unfamiliar concepts to baffle their opponents. It seeds the idea that scientific discourse is a kind of rhetoric and this both produces and perpetuates the kind of reasoning we see in these “scientific explanations” for homeopathy above. In this, and in all pseudoscience, the fact that one might need evidence is rarely even acknowledged – as long as it sounds like it may make some kind of sense then it can just be asserted. With this in mind, it’s almost understandable why those who question the validity of such assertions are often accused of “closed mindedness” or, tiresomely, fascism. After all, if science is just rhetoric why can’t everyone get a fair crack at the whip?
Science, fortunately, is not rhetoric. It is successful because it takes no-one at their word, no matter how charismatic they may be. It relentlessly asks “how do you know that?”. This is why, when entering the Royal Society in London, you pass under the bold inscription “Nullius In Verba”.
Depression and “Chemical Imbalance”
(imported from my other blog)
The main aetiological explanation for depression in the public consciousness is undoubtedly the “serotonin hypothesis”. This probably manifests more popularly as the idea that depression is somehow the result of a “chemical imbalance” in the brain, and therefore that sufferers of depression (whose suffering is not in question) are somehow the passive victims of an organic condition, like victims of diabetes, for example, and that this can be righted with medication. It’s a neat explanation, which, I guess, is why it’s so appealing. However, the evidence, as it so often does, suggests that depression is nowhere near this simple.
The serotonin hypothesis was the product of two papers, both published in the mid 1960s. Basically, the authors of these papers suggested that a deficit in a certain group of neurotransmitters (the monoamines, which include serotonin) could be a cause of depressive illness. Their suggestion was based on an observation that inhibiting a (entirely natural) process which breaks down these chemicals, while feeding patients a diet which includes their precursors, seemed to alleviate depression. This was a perfectly reasonable mechanism to suggest, on the evidence available, but that’s all it was: a suggestion. And the logic of this hypothetical mechanism is not without its critics:
“Some have argued that depression may be due to a deficiency of [noradrenaline] or serotonin because the enhancement of the enhancement of noradrenergic or serotonergic neurotransmission improves the symptoms of depression. However, this is akin to saying that because a rash on one’s arm improves with steroid cream, that the rash is due to steroid deficiency.” – Pedro Delagado and Francisco Moreno, writing in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry
So, how does the evidence for the “Serotonin Hypothesis” stack up? The answer, it seems, is not very well. To this day there exists no roundly accepted evidence demonstrating reduced serotonin levels in the depressed. Indeed, attempts to demonstrate a link in even the most severely depressed patients have been regarded as fraught with problems and therefore inconclusive. It has also been demonstrated that depression cannot be induced in the healthy by depleting serotonin – an observation which, if accurate, would fatally falsify the serotonin hypothesis. This patchy and inconsistent evidence does much to raise doubt over whether a condition such as depression can be explained by a mechanism as simple as that proposed in the serotonin hypothesis.
All of this is compounded by the fact that, contrary to its popular image, serotonin can’t rightly be described as a “mood improving” chemical. Like all neurotransmitters its effects are highly context dependent, different parts of the nervous system will respond to serotonin in different ways; responses which are modulated by the different ways in which different cells respond to serotonin, all of which is subject to modulation by the local chemical and anatomical environment. Serotonin is no more a “happy drug” than metal’s to be feared because it’s what swords are made of.
But if the drugs are helping people what does this matter?
The problem here is that we’re no longer entirely sure that the drugs are helping people. Recent studies have provided evidence that selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs, such as as citalopram (cipramil), paroxetine (seroxat), fluoxetine (prozac), sertraline (zoloft), and many others) – drugs which purport to “rebalance” the “imbalance” of serotonin – perform little better in alleviating reported symptoms of depression than identical pills containing no drug (link). On top of this, a simple programme of cardiovascular exercise has been shown to be no less effective than a programme of anti-depressants.
Is it really what we want to have ineffective drugs based on hypotheses that are, at best, dubious? Especially considering that this model of understanding lends credibility to the idea that depression is an inescapable biological phenomenon, the manifestation of a malfunctioning brain. This view can only be hugely disempowering for the depressed.
Clearly, the causes of depression need to be better understood if we’re to develop an effective model for caring for those who suffer from the condition. Resigning people to the conclusion that they are the sufferers of some organic malfunction which can be corrected but not cured by chemical intervention is, quite simply, telling them something which hasn’t stood up to scrutiny. This is not to say that there’s no neurochemical contribution (one or more siblings with depression is a significant risk factor, for example, although I’d imagine the line between genetic and environmental input in most of these cases will be irrecoverably blurred), it’s simply to say that we currently have scant idea of what that contribution might be. And, as for a simple explanation such as “chemical imbalance”, the facts are that science has no idea what the correct balance of brain chemistry is, or if there even is something that could be described as a “correct” balance. The mind is far too complex.
That neurochemistry only modulates our potential response to multitudinous psychosocial and environmental factors needs to be considered – and it is very possible that a cure, not simply a treatment, lies in the consideration of these external factors and situations that the depressed individual finds themselves exposed to. Of course, unless we want to entertain concepts such as “the soul”, we have to accept that behaviour is, at its very root, a chemical event. But the trend for this biological reductionism in depressive illness is, I feel, misguided. Just as we can’t learn much about aerobatics from studying the chemical properties of the polymers in a stunt-plane’s fuselage, neither can we learn much about complex social behaviours from studying the chemistry of the brain.
Magic Eggs
(imported from my other blog)
Forgive me for leaping, like a startled springbok, towards fantastical assumptions but I had imagined that the purpose of The Metro was to deliver news. That is to say, that somewhere between its crisp, warm, fingertip muddying early hours to its time tiling the floor and windows of whatever papier mache and pipe cleaner vehicle us proles are riding home to our nests, I expect it to at least attempt to communicate information. I don’t expect much, either, I fully appreciate that it’s meant to be read at half-past-don’t-even-speak-to-me by bleary eyed ne’er-do-wells like me, but I’d like an attempt. A shot. A go. It’s not much to ask. Is it?
Yesterday morning, in “Microcosm” (which is The Metro’s column for science news), there was a festive little piece explaining that the head-cramp, rainbow-yawn and bum-sick which becomes endemic in the UK around “office party” season can be cured by simply gubbing an egg! How easy! Tell me more…
This is, they explain, because “chickens’ eggs” contain “a substance” which combats the toxic effects of acetaldehyde (the metabolite of ethanol that’s held to be responsible for making you feel like you have a pregnant hippo wallowing in the gloopy remnants of your brain).
What is this mysterious substance that makes chicken eggs a magic bullet in the war against beer disease? Boringly, it’s the ubiquitous amino acid cysteine, which is found in most foods that we’d consider, in balanced-diet-speak, “protein”. Cysteine is also considered a non-essential amino acid, which means our body can manufacture it all on its own.
So, where are The Metro getting their information? Well, they tail their story with an optimistic “…a study in the Journal of Inflammation Research found”.
And here is the study.
Seems decent enough for what it is, which isn’t a demonstration of eggs curing a hangover. They fed a potentially fatal dose of acetaldehyde to a bunch of rats, some of which had previously been fed heroic amounts of cysteine (the equivalent of an 80kg man eating 20g of pure cysteine) and found that the rats that weren’t full of cysteine were much more likely to die. So does this mean it’s plausible that an egg will help cure your hangover? Yes. But before we rush to sell an idea to the marketing people at Warninks, let’s be careful what we mean by “plausible” here. This is pub conversation plausible, not breaking news plausible.
Now, talking of breaking news, far be it from me to be an etymological pedant but, this study, deemed worthy of inclusion in a science news column from yesterday, was published in 1974. Thirty four years ago. Is this what passes for mainstream science journalism? I quickly turned to their entertainment pages for an exclusive on the death of Jimi Hendrix, but was denied. Their journalistic bloodhounds have yet to hit the scent of that trail, it seems.
Surely, if it was just a space filler they were looking for they might have found an interesting contemporary story. There are lots of scientists after all, doing lots of science, and some of it is about space, explosions or ferocious animals (unfortunately, not so much of it is about all three).
But, no, it seems there is a more sinister motive. The Metro, I suspect, are in the pockets of some sinister egg baron. Not 24 hours previously, they’d published another “magic eggs cure hangover” story. This time quoting a Dr Andrew Irving in saying that a breakfast of eggs will provide sufficient protein to overcome the hypoglycaemia (rather frighteningly described as “a reduction in blood levels” – enough to put anyone off the pop) of a hangover. Hypoglycaemia is low blood sugar. Eating protein will only combat this in very specific dietary situations, none of which are commonly experienced by your average western adult.
Perhaps I’m over-reacting. I don’t know. It is only The Metro after all, and it was 8am and my patience for bullshit was enfeebled by the unwelcome legacy of the beer I’d had the night before. If only I’d had time to boil an egg…
“What Have The Romans Ever Done For Us?”
(imported from my other blog)
Vomiting up inane opinions on things one knows nothing about is part of the pop-star package. It’s something we have to expect and learn to live with. Just look at that cunt Bono and his wiry, weasel-faced protege, Chris Martin offof Coldplay.
However, every so often one comes along with such a ludicrous, demonstrably flawed diatribe (usually against ‘the establishment’; whatever that is) that you have to chisel the impacted stupidity off of your eyes with a needle-gun and purify your ears with a year of silence.
At the tail end of 2008, the expiremental rock band TV On The Radio released their third album, entitled “Dear Science”. To some critical acclaim, I believe.
In an interview with Rough Trade’s Album Club Newsletter one of their number explained the title thus:
“The title comes from a letter I wrote to science that was pinned on the studio wall. I feel like: Come on guys just solve one problem just fix one disease. I swear to god I don’t need a smaller phone or a smaller mp3 player and we don’t need more defence system shit. Enough you friggin’ brainiacs. If you have brains, try to connect them to your heart, just for a second and see what happens. This record is the result of our desire to aspire to something higher than air conditioning or technology.” David Sitek, guitar/not knowing what he’s talking about/keyboard
It’s the classic, cliched, critique of “progress” trotted out every ten seconds by some self-important scrote like this Sitek character, who obviously doesn’t like to spend too much time thinking – unless that time is spent thinking he’s Jeff Goldblum’s character in Jurassic Park. “Science has left human causes behind for the dollar of the arms industry or frivolous pursuits such as portable music players! Oh noes!”
I wonder if Sitek knows anyone who has died from polio? Or smallpox? Indeed, I wonder if he’s ever even seen anyone with polio or smallpox? Or had any experience of these things at all outside of history books or perhaps the tales of a grandparent? Perhaps a grandparent who lived twice as long as the average life expectancy when they were born.
Aside from sufferings that have already been eradicated, the efforts underway just now to understand conditions such as cancer and diabetes are positively Herculean. There are many, many more scientists working on these things than there are developing defense systems or miniaturising MP3 players.
I imagine Sitek’s response would be something like “So why don’t we have a cure for cancer yet, but we can build nuclear weapons, BRAINIAC! LOLOLOL”, possibly seasoned with some verbal flatulence about the Pharmaceutical industry covering up cancer cures to make money.
This idea that we could have cured cancer by now if we really wanted to is a common piece of anti-science rhetoric, chirped up by people who haven’t the first idea what they’re talking about.
Cancer is fucking complicated. It’s mind-meltingly complicated. Creating a nuclear weapon, putting a man on the moon, or whatever other piece of progress you want to compare it with for criticism simply doesn’t cut the proverbial mustard. These things are like making beans on toast compared with understanding, let alone finding some universal cure for, cancer. Here is an image demonstrating how some of the proteins involved in cancer (or believed to be involved in cancer) interact with one another. And that’s just a fraction of one part of the story. It’s a subject that involves genetics, epigenetics, biochemistry, cell biology, molecular physiology, physics, medicine and environmental biology. The possible permutations of human biology that could lead to cancer are unimaginable. No one person will ever understand the whole story.
So, I’d like to pen a response, on behalf on science, to the letter that Sitek so rebelliously pinned to his studio wall:
Dear TV On The Radio,
While you utilise the latest products of our ever expanding knowledge of electronics and information in the studio to help you fulfil your aspiration to “something higher than air conditioning or technology”; while you utilise the machines we have built to exploit the physical laws of nature to get from A to B in promoting your record; while you take advantage of the way humanity has harnessed the power of electromagnetic radiation to broadcast your art across the globe; while you can eat and drink with reasonable confidence that what you’re eating and drinking won’t kill you; while you’re not worrying about myriad diseases any children you might have may succumb to; while you can go for an operation knowing that, through safe anaesthesia, you’ll be protected from pain and that, due to understanding of infection, you’re unlikely to die from gangrene following the procedure; while living well into your eighties…
Please remember not to tarnish the good reputation of the human brain which has brought us all of these things, by making stupid statements about things you know nothing about.
Yours,
Science
(P.S. Our brains are connected to our hearts, hence the unfortunate outcome of decapitation. You twat.)
