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In a scientific journal, especially one as prestigious as Cell, publication of a paper is a kind of endorsement of its content, for the paper has to be vetted for accuracy and cogency. This is why I say Cell “endorses” the view of the paper below, which maintains that sex isn’t binary, and in fact that the very concept of “sex” is incoherent, harmful, and should be jettisoned. This is clearly an invited paper, but the standards of accuracy and rigor should still apply. They don’t.

What makes me even more sure that Cell endorses this message is that the journal itself is woke and rejects the sex binary in instructing authors (see below). Plus the article is part of a series of five papers in the journal under “Focus on sex and gender” (May 14), all of which reflect gender activism. In rejecting the sex binary, both via this article and in its own behavior, Cell is rejecting science in favor of ideology. That’s very sad, but it’s what’s happening—and not just in biology. The ideological camel is sticking its nose into the tent of science—and actually, the whole head is now inside.

This article was written by Beans Velocci, assistant professor of History and Sociology of Science and Core Faculty in Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. There’s little doubt that its motivation is ideological because Beans goes by “they/them” and specializes in research that buttresses the thesis below. You can see Velocci’s c.v. here.

You may read this short (3.5-page) paper by clicking on the headline below, or reading the pdf here. 

First, here’s how Velocci tells us that the journal itself doesn’t agree on a scientific definition of sex:

 Some scientists are already contending with this problem. Cell itself has taken steps in that direction: the author guidelines for submission include a note addressing the multiplicity of sex. “[T]here is no single, universally agreed-upon set of guidelines for defining sex,” the guidelines point out. “‘[S]ex’ carries multiple definitions” including genetic, endocrinological, and anatomical features.

 Contributors should therefore reduce ambiguity by specifying their methods for collecting and recording sex-related data to “enhance the research’s precision, rigor, and reproducibility.” The Cell guidelines are aligned with a broader conversation that names increased precision when talking about sex as a solution to these problems.

Yes, but one definition is far more universally agreed on than others, at least among biologists (last time I looked, Cell was a biology journal).  But of course if researchers don’t mean natal sex when specifying “males” and “females”, then they are obliged to tell us how they recognize people. After all, if it’s solely via “self-designation”, then we have to be careful. Even so, Cell could have said this the way I just did.

Here are the main problems with Velocci’s paper:

1. It conflates sex differentiation, sex determination, and the definition of sex
2. It argues, wrongly, that no progress has been made in understanding the nature and definition of biological sex
3. Its argument is ideological rather than scientific, yet is given the trappings of science
4. It argues that the binary nature of sex, which the author rejects, somehow erases transgender and nonbinary people
5. And, as usual, its supposed examples that make sex nonbinary, like the long clitoris of the hyena, are wrong.  But where are the clownfish? Send in the clownfish!

Since the whole paper is motivated by ideology (and by now you should know what that ideology is), here are a few quotes to demonstrate the gender-activist underpinnings. Binary sex is a tool of white supremacy, for one thing!

 In the present, this means that sex—a key research variable in the life sciences, not to mention its role in structuring our everyday lives—is not a singular and stable entity. This has real, practical ramifications. On one hand, it introduces a tremendous lack of specificity and rampant imprecision to scientific research; on the other, it fuels ongoing arguments about the purportedly biological reasons that transgender (and especially nonbinary) people are not deserving of rights or do not even exist.

This of course is nonsense. The argument that sex is binary, and defined by whether you produce small mobile gametes (sperm in males) or large immobile gametes (eggs in females) has no bearing at all on whether people who are transgender or nonbinary deserve equal rights. Of course they do. (There are a very few exceptions for trangender people involving things like athletics, incarceration, or rape counseling.) Further, both transsexual and nonbinary people are, biologically, either male or female, even if they feel like they’re a mixture of both, a member of their non-natal sex, or something else.

But wait! There’s more:

Binary sex, too, continued to structure day-to-day life throughout the United States and Europe, with science serving as justification for a whole array of patriarchal and white-supremacist social arrangements. The point is this: even as scientific inquiry produced endless evidence that sex was neither straightforward to identify nor binary, sex continued to function as a foundational classification system for science and everyday life.

But the facts are the fact, even if they’re misused by bigots to denigrate people. As Steve Pinker has pointed out, we don’t say that architecture itself (or chemistry, for that matter) are bad and should be ditched because Nazis used them to construct gas chambers. But wait! There’s more:

We live in a social world that is fundamentally structured around the idea that sex is a binary, biological truth. Scientists are therefore constantly conditioned to ignore anomalies that do not fit into that scheme. Precision and rigor are incredibly important. They’re also not enough to counter hegemonic social forces.

Here Velocci argues that scientists ignore anomalies in sex (e.g., intersex or other conditions that affect secondary sexual traits) because we’re conditioned by the sex binary.  But Velocci has spent the whole paper before this arguing that there is no agreement on the definition of sex, so how can Velocci claim that the world is structured around the sex binary? At any rate, I don’t understand what Velocci means by saying that the world “ignores anomalies”. They are the subject of a huge activist literature as well as an extensive medical literature.

One more:

Questioning fundamental truths is, in its most aspirational form, the point of any knowledge-producing enterprise. Imagine what we might find out if we were to let go of a category that hundreds of years of history demonstrates to be more useful for maintaining social hierarchies than for generating scientific knowledge.

This last point not only argues that we hold onto the false sex binary because it helps reinforce the social hierarchy (e.g. “transphobia”, white supremacy, and so on), but also that it impedes the acquisition of scientific knowledge. That’s a lie, of course: we wouldn’t know about sexual selection, parental care, etc. without the binary sex definition. Finally, Velocci tells us that we should just deep-six the entire category of sex.

Here’s another of Velocci’s arguments for dumping the category (but then what do we replace it with? Nothing?):

 The answer to the question “What is sex?” is, in both theory and practice, just about everything, and therefore also nearly nothing. This exercise demonstrates that sex is an incoherent category, one that has perhaps outlived its use.

Another:

Paisley Currah noted in his recent book on government sex classification, “is what a particular state actor says it means.”

So, too, for scientific approaches to sex—because it is so many things at once, all we can say for sure about what sex is is what a given scientist does with it. This is not merely a historical quirk but a use of sex that persists into the present. The term “sex” has collapsed entire constellations of traits and processes into one point. As a result, it functions as a nearly universally accepted research variable with little consistency in its conceptual definition, and less in its usage.

I’m not really going into the argument for why sex is binary in all animals and plants, with exceptions being only in groups like algae and fungi. You can read or hear the arguments for it by Colin Wright, for example here and here, or read Alex Byrne’s new book Trouble With Gender. But if you’ve been reading this website, you’ll already know the arguments. In humans, only one person in 5600 (.018%) is intersex and doesn’t fit the binary. Even so, such people are not considered members of a third sex (see Alex Byrne on this issue here).  All I’ll say are two things:

First, Velocci maintains that sex is a gemisch of different things: hormones, chromosomes, secondary sexual traits like genitals or breasts, physiological phenomena like menstruation, and differential behavior like parenting and psychology.  To prove that, Velocci asks the students in class, “What is sex?”, and their answers, written on the board, look like this.

Figure 1. Diagram of student-provided responses to the question, “What is sex?”

But so what?  Velocci hasn’t given them the reason why most biologists define sex by gamete type, which is not a simple argument that can be grasped instantly. The figure shows only that sex determination and differentiation involve a lot of stuff, both upstream (incubating temperature affects sex in some turtles, and of course there is the societal determination of sex in those fricking clownfish) and downstream (most of the other traits on the chart). Like all aspects of an organism, the genetics, morphology, and physiology of traits are complicated. The figure above, as I’ve noted, conflates the definition of sex, the determination of sex, and the differentiation of organisms based on sex.

Second, Velocci implies repeatedly that all the work of scientists over the centuries has not led to any increased understanding of sex. Apparently biologists have vacillated among chromosomes, gametes, hormones, and genitals, and other stuff but in the end. . . no new understanding. This is perhaps the most ridiculous thing that this sweating professor is trying to say. After going through how sex was regarded for the last two centuries or so, Velocci says this (note the ideological slant as well):

So, too, for scientific approaches to sex—because it is so many things at once, all we can say for sure about what sex is is what a given scientist does with it. This is not merely a historical quirk but a use of sex that persists into the present. The term “sex” has collapsed entire constellations of traits and processes into one point. As a result, it functions as a nearly universally accepted research variable with little consistency in its conceptual definition, and less in its usage. This does not make for accurate or reproducible science. As several scientists have pointed out, these contemporary uses of sex—simultaneously attached to an oversimplified binary, yet in practice depending on a vast, rarely analyzed multiplicity—actually make it harder to understand biological variation. There are also human costs: a broader cultural idea of “biological sex” as binary, imagined to be backed by science, is routinely deployed to exclude trans and intersex people and indeed anyone with bodily characteristics that do not fit neatly into male and female norms. The status quo, built on the history sketched above, therefore generates unsound research results that falsely uphold cis- and heteronormative assumptions.

But just because ideas, concepts, and knowledge change over time doesn’t mean that the object of study is elusive, ambiguous, or incohent. As Alex Byrne said in the link above (which uses the same diversion of historical change):

Naturally one must distinguish the claim that dinosaurs are changing (they used to be covered only in scales, now they have feathers) from the claim that our ideas of dinosaurs are changing (we used to think that dinosaurs only have scales, now we think they have feathers). It would be fallacious to move from the premise that dinosaurs are culturally constructed (in Clancy et al.’s sense) to the conclusion that dinosaurs themselves have changed, or that there are no “static, universal truths” about dinosaurs. It would be equally fallacious to move from the premise that sex is culturally constructed to the claim that there are no “static, universal truths” about sex. (One such truth, for example, is that there are two sexes.) Nonetheless, Clancy et al. seem to commit exactly this fallacy, in denying (as they put it) that “sex is…a static, universal truth.”

Here, for example, are some of the things that we now know from using a definitional binary for “biological sex”

1. The binary is useful in all animals and vascular plants. No other definition of sex holds for almost the entirety of the species we know. The binary is thus, except for a few groups. universal.
2. Why natural selection has resulted in a sex binary rather than a single self-reproducing sex or in three or more sexes. No matter what produces sex, be it environment, genes, or chromosomes, the end result is always two of them
3. The binary has utility. Without it, we cannot begin to understand how sexual selection works. And sexual selection has resulted in the following phenomena, which we pretty much understand

• Sexual dimorphism in appearance (why males are most often the aggressive and ornamented sex
• Sexual dimorphism in behavior (why, in humans, are males more often the risk-takers, why females are more interested in people than things,  and why males compete for females (seahorses are the exception that proves the rule
• Why organisms care more for their relatives than for unrelated conspecifics
• Why females are more often the caregivers of their children

I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point.

In the end, as we wade through all Velocci’s unsound but familiar arguments, we have only casuistry motivated by ideology. Velocci’s intent is to show that because some humans feel as if they’re not male or female, or feel that they’re members of the sex other than their natal sex, then sex in nature must reflect these human feelings. This is what I call the “reverse naturalistic fallacy”, which can be defined as the view that “whatever we see as moral or good in humans must be seen in nature as well.”

There’s even a section of the paper called “other ways of knowing”, which argues that scientists should partner with those in the humanities, including queer studies, and this partnership is the way forward:

Many of the scientists currently pushing for critical thinking about sex are engaged with STS [science and technology studies] scholars—many of us humanists and social scientists coming from disciplines like history, anthropology, and sociology, and fields like Indigenous studies, Black studies, and queer studies. We in STS are poised to offer life scientists additional conceptual and practical ways forward. Knowing the history of science is, of course, part of this equation: it shows us that knowledge production of all kinds (including the history of science!) is an iterative process, where what we know is always changing.

Well, make of that what you will, but I’d maintain that, like the definition of “species”, the definition of ” biological sex” is the purview of biologists. Yes, philosophers can help us think more clearly, and historians can tell us about the history of studies of sex, but I don’t know how indigenous studies, Black studies, or queer studies can contribute much to a concept that, in the end, is about biology. The fact that biology is thrown into a gemisch with “studies” disciplines only serves to show how ideological Velocci’s argument is.  As Alex Byrne (a philosopher who knows his biology) said of the American Scientist paper he reviewed, this Cell paper is “rubbish”, and shame on the journal for publishing it. There is no place for catering to ideological currents in a serious scientific journal, for reports about empirical discoveries should remain “institutionally” neutral.

Now, do I have to go through the other papers in Cell‘s Panoply of Horrors? If not, who will? Or should we just ignore them? That doesn’t seem wise since gender activism is infecting science in a big way, and few people criticize it.  If dumb arguments keep being made over and over again, then it seems wise to refute them over and over again.

_____________

Velocci, B. 2024 The history of sex research: Is “sex” a useful category?  Cell, online, May 14,2024.  DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2024.02.001

Here from World Data and Info, which seems to specialize in lists, is a list of the world’s ten most beautiful birds. Here they are in order and at the video times they appear:

Chapters :
00:00 Highlight
00:38 Golden Pheasant
01:28 Macaw Parrots
02:21 Mandarin Duck
03:29 Peacock
04:41 Blue Jay
05:49 Atlantic Puffin
07:00  Flamingo
08:12 Keel-billed Toucan
09:24 Victoria Crowned Pigeon
10:46 Turaco

I can’t quarrel too much with the list (but seriously, the blue jay?); however, they left off the one bird I consider the world’s most beautiful: the male Resplendent Quetzal (Pharomachrus mocinno),. I’ve had the luck to see several of these in the wild in Central America. The metallic green color, combined with the bright red breast and that long, dangling tail, make for a fantastic sight. Here’s one:

Sidney Bragg, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

and a video:

There’s also the lilac-breasted roller (Coracias caudatus):

Adam John Bourke, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Feel free to beef about the video selection and to suggest your own most beautiful birds.

Is your cat’s birthday coming up? Here are two articles on how to make your moggy a cat-friendly birthday cake. The first is from The Spruce (click to read):

And this one is from PetsRadar (also click), whichs gives eight different recipes of varying degree of laboriousness. I’ve put an easier one below, which is similar to the one from the link above.

From the Spruce, an easy tuna-cake recipe that takes only 5 minutes and costs $10 (but you’ll need a piping bag):

What you’ll need:

Equipment / Tools

• 1 1/4 Measuring cup
• 1 Plate
• 1 Piping bag
• 1 Knife
• 1 Birthday candle (optional)

Materials

• 1 cup Canned albacore tuna

• 1 cup Cooked, unseasoned chicken

• 1 cup Pureed sweet potato

• 1 cup Mashed potatoes

• 1 Catnip

It comes out looking like this (there’s catnip sprinkled on the top):

Screenshot from video, cake by Heddy Hunt, One Things Producer

And here’s another one from the second site, a salmon and sweet potato cake. But they left out the salmon and gave a tuna recipe. So I went to the Daily Paws and got their recipe, which this site supposedly copied. But they screwed up. Here’s the good recipe; I think any cat would like it so long as they like sweet potato:

Ingredients 

• ½ 5-ounce can chunk-style skinless, boneless salmon in water, drained well
• ¼ cup finely chopped cooked chicken or turkey breast
• ¼ cup mashed sweet potato
• 1 teaspoon rice flour
• 2 tablespoons plain yogurt*
• 1 teaspoon natural creamy peanut butter* (optional)

Directions:

Step One
Line a small baking pan with wax paper.

Step Two
Place salmon in a medium bowl. Flake chunks into very small bits. Add chopped chicken and mashed sweet potato and mix well. Stir in rice flour.

Step Three
Place a lightly greased 3-inch round cutter on the baking pan and spoon 1/3 cup salmon mixture into the ring. Using fingers, firmly pat mixture out into an even layer. Carefully remove ring and repeat with remaining salmon mixture. Place pan in freezer for 15 minutes to firm up the patties.

Step Four
To assemble cake, place one patty on a small plate. Spread with the peanut butter and top with another patty. Decorate top of cake with the yogurt, letting it run down the sides of the cake to create the drip cake effect.

Recipe courtesy of Daily Paws

And the Daily Paws video showing you how to make it:

 

I hope at least one reader will make a cake for their cat’s birthday (doesn’t every cat have a birthday?). Weigh in if you’ve made one.

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Archived from the Times of London, we hear about a law to ban “coaxing of cats.” It’s bizarre but probably of marginal value.

Click to read:

 

Some excerpts:

Listen, cat people are a bit shady. Not very, just a bit. I know this because I’m a cat person and in the right circumstances, I can be a bit shady. Most cat people are consciously or unconsciously aware of their shadiness and don’t do things like coax random cats off the street with dishes of cream and teaspoons of tuna. Because although we quite want to (because we are shady), we know that it is wrong.

 

But there are always deviants who spoil things for everyone. Every area has a local catnapper, who doesn’t think what they are doing — coaxing random cats off the street with cream and tuna — is bad.

And this is why the new Pet Abduction Bill is important. The bill, which is supported by the government and making its way through parliament, would make abducting a cat or dog punishable by up to five years in prison, a fine — or both.

But there are always deviants who spoil things for everyone. Every area has a local catnapper, who doesn’t think what they are doing — coaxing random cats off the street with cream and tuna — is bad. And this is why the new Pet Abduction Bill is important. The bill, which is supported by the government and making its way through parliament, would make abducting a cat or dog punishable by up to five years in prison, a fine — or both.

Pet abduction with regards to felines is defined in the bill as “causing or inducing the cat to accompany the person or anyone else” or “causing the cat to be taken”.

Due to the evidence required to convict, the crime of pet abduction as it relates to cats will be difficult to enforce and many will be wondering why the government has bothered.

Max Hardy is a criminal barrister. He says: “As a general rule offences that are effectively unenforceable make for unhelpful additions to the statute book. Some take the view that the existing Theft Act legislation sufficiently encompasses any situation in which a pet is stolen or an attempt is made to steal.”

OK, but we the public think of “stealing” as a sudden snatching or taking permanently. Most cats are “stolen” by non-permitted feeding or, in other words, “inducing”.

“It may be that the new offence will be considered to be sending a message that taking or trying to take a pet is a worse crime than taking an inanimate object,” Hardy says. “One assumes the message will go out that food should never be provided to or left out for a pet that is not your own. That does have the potential to mitigate neighbour disputes, if nothing else.”

Oy, I’ve been guilty in days of yore of feeding a neighbor’s cat.  Good thing I’m not in Britain!  And here’s some stuff about British cat law:

This is one reason cat people appreciate cats so much: because they have free choice, if they choose you it’s a sort of blessing. This is also why, historically, cats were not seen in the eyes of the law as “property” in the same way dogs were — because who can keep tabs on a cat?

This changed in 1968 with the Theft Act and now cats enjoy the same “property” status as dogs. In 2021 the government announced plans to make microchipping mandatory — all cats must be chipped by the time they are 20 weeks old.

The Theft Act, the mandatory chipping and this new abduction law are all important to any cat owner who has an outdoor cat. Indoor cat owners wag their fingers and say, “This is why I keep my cat indoors,” but a) this isn’t always practical, and b) being trapped in a house is the personal nightmare of outdoor cat owners and it is why they can’t inflict it on their pet. No one is right or wrong in this debate and if you choose to have an outdoor cat, you can still object to others seducing it away from your home.

The lesson: don’t feed a friendly moggy, even if it lives next door:

“I steals your food” by MacJewell is licensed under CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit here.

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This is probably not a great thing to do to your cat, but somebody went to a great deal of trouble to make a costume fitting a human but looking like the cat. There are even paw-like slippers and gloves.  What do you think the cat will do when it sees its staff as a huge doppelgänger?

Watch that tail bush out in fright! But then the cat shows some ambitendency and winds up aggressive—and then even friendly! I think it smells its staff inside the costume.

**************

Lagniappe: synchronized kitties:

h/t: Ginger K., Merilee

Once again I beg, implore, beseech, and plead readers for more wildlife photos. I know some of you have them sequestered away! Send ’em along if they’re good. Thanks!

Today’s selection of photos is from Uwe Mueller.  His notes and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

These photos were taken on the East Frisian island of Spiekeroog, Germany.

A slightly worried looking Greylag goose (Anser anser) passing by. Maybe it mistook my camera for a gun:

A pair of Barnacle geese (Branta leucopsis) flying over in the evening sun:

A flock of Brants (Branta bernicla) taking off:

This House sparrow (Passer domesticus) sat in a bush only 4 feet away from me and didn’t care at all about my presence as its focus was clearly on delivering its morning melody:

A Common pheasant (Phasianus colchicus) searching for food in the dunes:

This Western jackdaw (Corvus monedula) came closer and closer while searching for food in the grass of a levee. So I laid down with my camera and took pictures. Finally it was only a few feet away and took an interested look at the weird guy laying on the ground with that thingy in his hand making clicking noises:

A fly-over of a Grey heron (Ardea cinerea):

A Carrion crow (Corvus corone) that was nesting near our vacation apartment and collecting material for it:

A Eurasian magpie (Pica pica) in the dunes:

Most photos were taken with a Sony Alpha 7R III with a Sony 200 – 600mm lens, apart from the House sparrow which was shot with a Panasonic FZ-83.

Yes, this is an op-ed from the Wall Street Journal, but if you neglect all of their op-eds, which of course lean right, it will still be your loss.  Click to read (it’s archived here). It shows that the NIH—and not for the first time—is requiring diversity statements to hire researchers, a requirement that may well be illegal.

Click to read:

Here are a few paragraphs on what’s happening at the NIH:

Thanks to a grant from the National Institutes of Health, Cornell University is able to support several professors in fields including genetics, computational biology and neurobiology. In its funding proposal, the university emphasizes a strange metric for evaluating hard scientists: Each applicant’s “statement on contribution to diversity” was to “receive significant weight in the evaluation.” [JAC: note that every applicant has to submit a DEI statement.]

It might seem counterintuitive to prioritize “diversity statements” while hiring neurobiologists—but not at the NIH. The agency for several years has pushed this practice across the country through its Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation program—First for short—which funds diversity-focused faculty hiring in the biomedical sciences.

Through dozens of public-records requests, I have acquired thousands of pages of documents related to the program—grant proposals, emails, hiring rubrics and more. The information reveals how the NIH enforces an ideological agenda, prompting universities and medical schools to vet potential biomedical scientists for wrongthink regarding diversity.

The First program requires all grant recipients to use “diversity statements” for their newly funded hires. Northwestern University suggests it will adapt a diversity-statement rubric created by the University of California, Berkeley. It isn’t alone. A year ago I acquired the rubrics used by the NIH First programs at the University of South Carolina and the University of New Mexico, which I discussed in these pages. Both used Berkeley’s rubric almost verbatim.

That rubric penalizes job candidates for espousing colorblind equality and gives low scores to those who say they intend to “treat everyone the same.” It likewise docks candidates who express skepticism about the practice of dividing students and faculty into racially segregated “affinity groups.”

Berkeley’s rubric is dire, and I’ve described it before (see also this statement by FIRE). It requires you first to give  your understanding of what diversity is and your philosophy of,it then your background in promoting diversity (Ceiling Cat help you if you don’t have one), and then finally tell your you will promote diversity in your positions. You’re scored separately in each area, and the three scores added up to give a total.  Remember, diversity is construed as racial or gender diversity, with race being most important, and if you start talking about “viewpoint diversity,” you might as well forget about the job.  Likewise, you fail if you espouse Martin Luther King’s philosophy of “colorblindness.”  King became passé a long time ago.

Here’s how Sailer described a similar rubric for USC and UNM in an earlier piece:

The South Carolina and New Mexico rubrics call for punishing candidates who espouse race neutrality, dictating a low score for anyone who states an “intention to ignore the varying backgrounds of their students and ‘treat everyone the same.’ ” Applicants who are skeptical of DEI programming might choose to describe their commitment to viewpoint diversity. This too runs afoul of the rubrics, which mandate a low score for any candidate who defines diversity “only in terms of different areas of study or different nationalities but doesn’t mention gender or ethnicity/race.”

The rubrics likewise punish candidates for failing to embrace controversial diversity practices. They recommend low scores for candidates who “state that it’s better not to have outreach or affinity groups aimed at underrepresented individuals because it keeps them separate from everyone else, or will make them feel less valued.” These affinity groups exemplify a new kind of segregation, but expressing that view could imperil an applicant’s career.

Because of a lower funding rate of black than of white or Asian scientists applying for grants, the NIH tried in 2021 to remedy this by boosting grant ratings of minorities by asking them to tick a box specifying their race. The plan was that even if a minority applicant’s grant score fell below the funding range, the ticked box would give them a boost, allowing program officers to leapfrog the minority grants back into the range where they might be funded. (This would be, of course, at the expense of researchers who had higher grant scores.)

But as Science reported just a month later, this plan failed and the NIH was forced to eliminate the magical box:

The National Institutes of Health has yanked a notice from three NIH institutes that aimed to encourage grant proposals from minority scientists. Researchers who saw the notice as a way to help bridge a funding success gap between Black and white scientists are dismayed by the move.

. . .Some observers hoped that if the notice were expanded across NIH, it could help raise success rates for Black scientists. But earlier this year, NIH’s Office of Extramural Research (OER) barred more institutes from joining the notice because it was “confusing” and institutes already had leeway to fund “outside the payline” to “bring in diverse scientific perspectives,” the agency said.

NIH rescinded the notice “for clarity in communications,” an OER spokesperson says. “We decided that issuing a general notice that encompassed all NIH better communicated our intent.” That new notice, issued 25 October, encourages applications from underrepresented groups, but won’t enable researchers to tag their applications.

It wasn’t rescinded solely for “clarity in communications,” as you see, but likely because it was unfair and probably illegal. Yes, it’s great to encourage members of underrepresented groups to apply for grants, but handing out money preferentially to such groups prioritizes identity over merit—and in the crucial area of biomedical sciences. (Actually, two papers published in 2019 and 2020 in Science showed that there appeared to be no gender or racial bias in reviewers’ scores of NIH grants, and also that funding rates for minorities were lower largely because they applied in areas having lower funding rates (see also this 2020 paper).

At any rate, DEI statements, which may be a way to hire based on race, could be illegal for that reason alone (Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits race-based hiring). They could also be illegal on First Amendment grounds, since the way they’re judged involves a form of compelled speech, which is also illegal. Finally, the Supreme Court’s recent ruling against affirmative action in college admissions could and likely will also be applied to race-based hiring of faculty and race-based awarding of grants.  There’s a note to this effect at the top of an NIH program statement from last July:

Note: Summarized here is the most recent NIH Advisory Committee to the Director (ACD) discussion of UNITE. However, it is recognized that the recent Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) decision regarding affirmative action may be at the front of consciousness. NIH adheres to federal law and does not make funding decisions based on race. NIH awaits further evaluation and interpretation of the SCOTUS decision to determine whether there is the need to modify any current policies or practices.

“May be at the front of consciousness”? What does that mean? “We have to find ways around it?”

The only question is whether these DEI statements are used as a proxy for race, as they well could be. But even ifr they aren’t, they’re probably still illegal. To see why, read my colleague Brian Leiter’s article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, “The legal problem with diversity statements,” which has the subtitle “Public universities can’t make hiring decisions based on political viewpoints,”

I’ve discussed many types of mimicry over the years, and one of them is Müllerian mimicry, in which a group of species, often not that related, come to mimic each other in appearance. In this form of mimicry, the different species are all aposematic: that is, they have bright warning coloration and obvious patterns, all evolved to deter predators.  (The form of mimicry is named after the German zoologist Fritz Müller.)

The way it usually works is that a group of species, often butterflies, are subject to predation, but are also unpalatable since they ingest plant compounds that are either toxic or can be converted to toxic ones. (Determination of unpalatability may involve tests with caged birds, observation of what a butterfly eats, or even, in the case of macho biologists, eating the butterfly itself, though human taste may not mimic butterfly taste).

At any rate, each species develops aposematic patterns and colors, which lets the predator know to stay away from the butterfly. This evolves not for the genetic sake of the bird, of course, but for the butterfly, as such coloration and obvious patterns give the aposematic individual a survival advantage over others. (How this occurs, which makes the initial individual conspicuous and perhaps more likely to be caught, is somewhat of a mystery, but there are some hypothesis that have been experimentally supported.)

Once you get some species of butterflies in one area that have warning colors and patterns, natural selection can then act to make their different colors and patterns come to resemble each other. That’s because if a bunch of toxic butterflies look alike, the predator learns to avoid them more readily (it has more chances to learn). Ergo, mutations in individual butterflies of different species that lead to a convergence in their appearance will be favored, reducing the chance of individuals being eaten by birds. This can lead to quite unrelated species of butterflies adopting similar colors and patterns.  (Of course, all the lookalike Müllerian species, which can be quite unrelated—even including both butterflies and day-flying moths—must live in the same area, because this convergent evolution requires reinforcement by predators that can encounter all the mimics.)

Here’s a group of six unrelated butterflies that are part of a Müllerian mimicry ring. Each species is in a different genus! Moreover, there’s a moth species in there, too! Can you spot it? (answer at bottom).  The photo is courtesy of Dr. Mathieu Joron, whose webpage is here, and is used with permission.

From site: The photo shows Müllerian mimicry of various Ithomiinae, a day-flying moth and Heliconius numata from San Martín, Eastern Peru. This sub-ring of the tiger ithomiine mimicry ring occurs commonly between 500 and 1800 m altitude on the Eastern slopes of the Andes from Ecuador to Bolivia. Top row: Hypothyris meterus meterus, Mechanitis mazaeus ssp. Second row: Hyposcada anchiala mendax, Heliconius numata bicoloratus (Nymphalidae: Heliconiiti). Third row: Chetone sp. (Arctiidae: Pericopinae), Melinaea “marsaeus” mothone. All are Nymphalidae: Ithomiinae unless otherwise stated. See also details of other ithomiine — H. numata mimicry rings from San Martín, Mathieu Joron’s web page and the paper by Joron et al. on the maintenance of mimetic polymorphism in Heliconius numata. (photo © Mathieu Joron 2001)

Note that there’s no need for species to be related to each other for this to happen, as the evolution of similar color patterns happens independently in each species, all mediated by visually hunting predators. A single Müllerian mimicry ring can involve true bugs (Hemiptera), wasps, beetles, and butterflies.

And different populations of a single species, if they live in different places that have other species of aposematic butterflies, can evolve different patterns in those different places to look like the local deterrents. Here’s an example of single species (the top four species are all Heliconius numata) that mimic other aposematic species in the genus Melinaea in different areas.  Remember, the top four drawings are all members of the same species, but living in different areas. Further the caption notes, “the bottom four are H. melpomene (left) and H. erato (right), which mimic each other.” Thus in the bottom four we see two cases of Müllerian mimicry.

As you see, things can get quite complicated.

Source:Repeating Patterns of Mimicry. Meyer A, PLoS Biology, Vol. 4/10/2006, e341 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0040341l; CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

 

Butterflies in the genis Heliconius are particularly famous for showing Müllerian mimicry, and feature largely in a new paper from PNAS. What the authors were studying was not the the patterns and colors of butterflies in Müllerian mimicry rings, but mimicry of their behavior.  It’s easy to see resemblance in color and pattern, but biologists have largely neglected the very real possibility that because predators can see behavior as well as appearance, mimics might evolve to resemble each other in behavior, too.  This is well known in salticid “jumping spiders”, which have evolved to mimic the walking behavior of ants. (Predators hate ants since they sting and often taste bad as well.) There’s a video of an ant-mimicking salticid at the bottom.

In this paper the author studied 29 species of heliconiine butterflies and 9 ithomiine species, belonging in total to 10 mimicry rings. They wanted to see if there was, in each mimicry ring, an evolution of similar “flight behavior”, because predators can see not only how a butterfly looks, but, when it’s on the wing, how it flies. They found that there was indeed evidence in each Müllerian mimicry ring that the species had evolved similar flight behaviors. Clearly, natural selection had altered flight behaviors within a ring to make the species flap more like the other ones, with the explanation being that predators learn to avoid not only certain color patterns, but also certain ways of flying.

(Note: I am imputing bird avoidance to their learning which species are toxic, but there’s no reason why birds cannot undergo genetic evolution via selection to innately avoid certain colors and behaviors since individuals with genes tending to cause such avoidance will be favored. (This is presumably because getting sick after a meal is something that natural selection would eliminate by favoring gene forms that instinctively avoid certain appearances and behaviors.)

Read the paper by clicking on the title, or see the pdf here.

I will be brief since the analysis is complicated, involving all kinds of corrections for wing size, relatedness, habitat, and other factors; and I’ll just give the conclusions.

For several members of each species, the authors used cameras to measure three aspects of flight:

1. Flapping rate of the wings
2. “Up angle” (the angle between the wings of an individual at the top of its upstroke)
3. “Down angle” (likewise, but with the angle measured at the bottom of the downstroke)

And, lo and behold, when you correct for relatedness, wing size, ecological area, and other factors, the authors still found significant similarity between members of each of the ten mimicry rings they measured. This held, though, only for the first two parameters: flapping rate and up angle. There was little convergence among members in down angle, for reasons that aren’t clear (perhaps birds can’t see it as well. Here’s the authors’ tentative  ad hoc explanation:

. . . down wing angles respond differently to selection exerted by predators and may be indicative of greater aerodynamic constraint on this trait. Fuller characterization of flight may provide stronger evidence of whether different components of flight are evolving under different selection pressures.

Here’s a figure from the paper showing the ten Müllerian mimicry rings they studied, each ring indicated by a different color. The groups’ conventional names are given by the key at upper left. The “tiger group” is the most famous.

(From paper): Diversity and convergence of wing patterns among the heliconiine and ithomiine taxa whose flight patterns have been measured. Background color indicates the 10 mimicry groups. Transparent (Ithomiine) 1: Ithomia salapia travella, 2: G. zavaleta; Tiger (Ithomiine) 3: Melinaea marseus phasiana, 4: Tithorea harmonia, 5: Mechanitis polymnia, 6: Melinaea menophilus zaneka, 7: Mechanitis messenoides deceptus, 8: Melinaea mothone mothone, 9: Hypothyris anastasia honesta; Tiger (Heliconiine) 10: Heliconius ismenius bouletti, 11: H. p. butleri, 12: Heliconius hecale felix, 13: Eueides isabella nicaraguensis, 14: H. pardalinus sergestus, 15: Heliconius numata bicoloratus, 16: Heliconius numata aurora, 17: Heliconius ethilla aerotome; hewitsonii-pachinus 18: H. pachinus, 19: Heliconius hewitsoni; cydno–sapho 20: Heliconius cydno chioneus, 21: Heliconus sapho sapho; Blue 22: Heliconius doris viridis blue, 23: Heliconius wallacei flavascens, 24: Heliconius leucadia pseudorhea, 25: Heliconius sara sara, Postman 26: Heliconius timareta thelxinoe, 27: Heliconius melpomene rosina, 28: H. e. favorinus, 29: Heliconius erato demophoon, 30: Heliconius melpomene amaryllis; Orange 31: Eueides lybia olympia, 32: Eueides aliphera aliphera, 33: Dione juno juno, 34: Dryadula phaetusa, 35: D. iulia; Dennis rayed 36: Heliconius elevatus pseudocupideneus, 37: Heliconius burneyi huebneri, 38: Heliconius aoede cupidensis, 39: Heliconius melpomene aglaope, 40: Heliconius doris viridis, 41: Heliconius eratosignis, 42: Heliconius demeter joroni, 43: H. e. emma; Red and white 44: H. himera; Zebra 45: H. charithonia. Butterflies images are from the Neukirchen Collection, McGuire Centre, Florida; https://www.butterfliesofamerica.com/ (Andrew Warren); http://www.sangay.eu/esdex.php/ (Jean-Claude Petit).

But it gets even nicer, for the authors also looked at flight similarity between isolated populations of the same species that were members of different mimicry rings, which, as I said above, can happen They used populations of two species, Heliconius melpomene and H. erato. Again, different populations of each species appear to have evolved similar flapping rates and up angles (but not down angles) to species of the different mimicry rings they’ve joined.

The ages of these conspecific populations can be estimated from molecular data as less than half a million years, so the flight mimicry can evolve quite rapidly. As for the other species, well, some of them are not that related, being separated by up to 70 million years from their common ancestor.

The upshot: Müllerian mimicry is often thought of as visual phenomenon because it’s mediated by visually hunting predators.  And it is, but the emphasis on vision has led biologists to concentrate on easily-discerned colors and patterns (birds have color vision). Yet vision can also detect behaviors—in this case flight behavior. This isn’t really a brand-new discovery, because mimetic behavior has clearly evolved in other cases. As I said, we see Batesian mimicry in which salticid spiders, which are edible, have evolved to walk like ants that are avoided by predators (see below).  But the important lesson of this paper is that biologists studying visual mimicry should not neglect to look at behavior of animals and not just their appearance.

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To end, here’s a remarkable case in which an edible jumping spider has evolved to not only look very similar to weaver ants, which are avoided by predators, but also to walk like ants.  This is a case of Batesian rather than Müllerian mimicry, but it does show mimetic evolution of behavior.

 

Answer to question above: Which species is the moth in the first picture above? It’s Chetone sp.! (Bottom left.)

In this short seven-minute segment from last week’s “Real Time,” Bill Maher confers five “Cojones Awards” for having. . . .well, moxie. (Women can also get the Golden Testicles.)  You may recognize some of the winners, and of course, at the end, there’s the winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award, which I have to say is well deserved.

Dina Rubina is a prominent Russian Israeli Jew who writes in Russian. Wikipedia gives this precis:

Rubina is one of the most prominent Russian-language Israeli writers. Her books have been translated into 30 languages. Her major themes are Jewish and Israeli history, migration, nomadism, neo-indigeneity, messianism, metaphysics, theatre, autobiography and the interplay between the Israeli and Russian Jewish cultures and languages.

This letter from Rubina comes from a site I don’t know, Truth of the Middle East (click on screenshot). It shows how Rubina staved off cancelation (for being Jewish) by canceling her appearance first. Click to read:

First, the intro:

Not long ago the Pushkin House in London together with the University of London invited the famous Israeli writer Dina Rubina to hold a meeting.
The topic was to be literary – a discussion of the writer’s books.
 Some time ago, Dina received a letter from the moderator of the meeting:

Then the email came that smells strongly like an impending cancelation:

“Good afternoon, Dina
The Pushkin House advertised our upcoming discussion on social media and immediately received critical messages regarding your position on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. They would like to understand your position on this issue before reacting in any way.
Could you formulate your position and send it to me as soon as possible?”
Natalia! “

That letter is an arrant insult. Rubina was going to discuss her books, and her political stand on the war has no bearing on that. Even if it did, she had already been invited.  But the Pushkin House and the University of London are spineless, and surely wanted some groveling letter from Rubina that smacked of “both side-ism.” But that’s stupid given that she is an Israeli, a fact that, again, has no bearing on her book talk.

But Rubina has spine, and I put her response below. Instead of being canceled, she canceled her own talk and rebuked Pushkin House. I put her whole letter below because you should read it, because it’s “open”, and because she says exactly what needed to be said in response to Natlia’s insulting communication.

AN OPEN LETTER

from Dina Rubina

Dear Natalia!

    You have written beautifully about my novels; I am very sorry for the time you have wasted. But it seems we’ll have to cancel our meeting. The University of Warsaw and the University of Torun have just cancelled lectures by the remarkable Israeli Russian-speaking writer Yakov Shechter on the life of Jews in Galicia in the 17th and 19th centuries – “to avoid aggravating the situation”. I suspected that this would also happen to me, because now the academic environment is the main nursery of the most disgusting and rabid anti-Semitism, hiding behind the so-called “criticism of Israel”. I was expecting something like this, and even sat down three times to write you a letter on the subject… but I decided to wait, and so I have waited.

That’s what I want to say to all those who expect from me a quick and obsequious account of my position on my beloved country, which now (and always) lives in a circle of ardent enemies who seek its destruction; on my country, which is now waging a just patriotic war against a violent, ruthless, deceitful and sophisticated enemy:

The last time in my life I apologised in the headmaster’s office, in the ninth grade. Since then, I have done what I think is right, listening only to my conscience and expressing only my understanding of the world order and human laws of justice.

And so on.

I’m really sorry, Natalia, for your efforts and the hope that you could “cook something with me” – something that everyone will like.

Therefore, I ask you personally to send my reply to all those who are interested:

On Saturday 7 October, the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, the ruthless, well-trained, carefully prepared and perfectly equipped with Iranian weapons Hamas terrorist regime ruling the Gaza enclave (which Israel left some 20 years ago) attacked dozens of peaceful kibbutzim and simultaneously pelted the territory of my country with tens of thousands of rockets. Atrocities that even the Bible cannot describe, atrocities and horrors that make the crimes of Sodom and Gomorrah pale in comparison (captured, by the way, by the frontal and chest cameras of the murderers themselves and boastfully sent by them in real time to the Internet), can shock any normal person. For several hours, thousands of gleeful, blood-drunk animals raped women, children and men, shot their victims in the crotch and in the head, cut off women’s breasts and played football with them, cut babies out of the bellies of pregnant women and immediately beheaded them, tied up small children and burned them. There were so many charred and completely burnt bodies that for many weeks the pathologists could not cope with the enormous burden of identifying individuals.

   My friend, who worked in a New York hospital waiting room for 20 years and then spent another 15 years in Israel identifying remains, was one of the first to arrive in the burned and blood-soaked kibbutzim with a group of rescuers and medics… She still can’t sleep. A medic used to cutting up bodies – she fainted from what she saw and then vomited all the way back to the car. What these people have seen is beyond words.

    Together with the Hamas fighters, the “civilian population” rushed into the holes in the fence, joined the pogroms on an unprecedented scale, robbed, killed and dragged whatever they could get their hands on into Gaza. Among these “peaceful Palestinians” were 450 members of the UN’s UNRWA scum. Everyone was there, and judging by the stormy total joy of the population (also captured in these inconvenient times by hundreds of mobile cameras) – there were a lot of people – Hamas supports and approves, at least before the real fighting starts, of almost the entire population of Gaza… The main problem: our residents were dragged into the beast’s lair, more than two hundred of them, including women, children, the elderly and non-essential foreign workers. About a hundred of them are now rotting and dying in the Hamas dungeons. Needless to say, these harassed victims are of little concern to the “academic community”.

But that’s not what I’m talking about. I am not writing this to make anyone sympathise with the tragedy of my people.

For all these years, when the world community has literally poured hundreds of millions of dollars into this piece of land (the Gaza Strip) – and the annual budget of the UNRWA organisation alone is a BILLION dollars! – All these years, Hamas has used this money to build an empire of the most complex underground tunnel system, to stockpile weapons, to teach primary school children how to dismantle and reassemble a Kalashnikov assault rifle, to print textbooks in which the hatred of Israel defies description, in which even the maths problems go like this: “There were ten Jews, Shahid killed four, how many are left?” – with every word calling for the murder of Jews.

And now that Israel, shocked at last by the monstrous crime of these bastards, is waging a war to destroy the Hamas terrorists, who have prepared this war so carefully, planting thousands of shells in all the hospitals, schools, kindergartens… – here the academic world of the whole world has risen up, worried about the “genocide of the Palestinian people”, based, of course, on data provided by… who? That’s right, by the same Hamas, by the same UNRWA… The academic community, which was not concerned about the massacres in Syria, the massacre in Somalia, the mockery of the Uighurs or the millions of Kurds persecuted for decades by the Turkish regime – this very concerned public, wearing “Arafat” around their necks, the trademark of the murderers, rallies under the banners “Free Palestine from the river to the sea! – which means the total destruction of Israel (yes, many of these “academics”, as surveys show, have no idea where this river is, what it is called, where some borders are…). – Now this very public asks me to “take a clear position on this issue”.

Are you serious?! Are you serious?!!

You see, I’m a writer by profession. All my life, for more than fifty years, I have been folding words. My novels have been translated into 40 languages, including Albanian, Turkish, Chinese, Esperanto… and many others.

Now, with great pleasure, without using too many expressions, I sincerely and with all the strength of my soul send all the brainless “intellectuals” interested in my position go to ass. In fact, very soon you will all be there without me”.

Dina Rubina

********************

It’s their loss.

Notice that she says there were 450 UNRWA members at the October 7 massacre. I knew that there were 13 who had been fired, but this higher figure may well be accurate, though I can’t confirm it yet. There are 13,000 UNRWA staff in Gaza, so if it was 450, that would be 3.5% of the entire staff, all present at the butchery.

And I wonder how many Palestinian writers or Arab writers would be asked to “clarify” their position before they gave a book talk.

Pamela Paul’s new column in the NYT (click on screenshot below or find the piece archived here) is about “mission creep” in American universities: the drift away from teaching, learning, and doing research to
promulgating social justice. As we’ve discussed so often, there are dangers inherent in this transformation, and some of them are occurring now, including Republican attempts to control universities as well as a decline in public respect for universities among Republicans, Democrats and folks among all ages and socioeconomic groups.

The biggest problem, of course, is the ideological slant that universities are taking, nearly all tilting left with some having more than 80% of the faculty describing themselves as liberal (e.g., Harvard). That in itself is a problem as students don’t get exposed to a panoply of views, but it’s worse because those on the Left—particularly the so-called progressive Left—can’t restrain themselves from making “official” university pronouncements on political, ideological, and moral issues, issues that themselves are academically debatable and whose imprimatur by the university as “official views” chills speech. If a University issues an official statement that there should be a ceasefire in Gaza, what untenured faculty member or student dares buck this position?

To keep free speech going without this kind of “chill”, the University of Chicago was the first to adopt and implement a policy of institutional neutrality, so that no University official or department can make such pronouncements. This principle, which went into effect in 1967, is called the Kalven Report, and you can read it here.

Kalven has worked pretty well here. Departments that couldn’t restrain themselves from taking stands on issues from war to abortion to shootings have had their statements taken down, and the University has issued virtually nothing about the Hamas/Israel war (see here for our anodyne acknowledgment, which basically says “there’s a war on and here’s where to go for help”). The only exceptions we have are for issues, like DACA, which can affect the University’s mission directly.

But so far only a handful of schools, like Vanderbilt and UNC Chapel Hill, have adopted institutional neutrality, though others like Williams and Harvard are contemplating it. But since institutional neutrality is essential in propping up a free speech policy, this reluctance to adopt Kalven is distressing, especially given that the Chicago Principles of Free Expression—the First-Amendment-like policy of free speech—have been adopted by over 100 schools. My conclusion: it’s easy to pass policies on free speech (which, as we see from Harvard’s case, have been implemented haphazardly), but it’s hard to make academics stop proclaiming the views they like as the “values of our school.” (Of course Kalven and all of us think academics have the right to say whatever they want as private citizens.)

And so to the piece; again, click to read.

Here’s Paul’s bit on why universities should shut up about taking official stands on issue that don’t bear on their mission. Sadly, she doesn’t mention the Kalven Report, which I think reflects a lack of historical perspective. But the rest is fine:

Right now, the university’s message is often the opposite. Well before the tumultuous summer of 2020, a focus on social justice permeated campuses in everything from residential housing to college reading lists.

“All of this activity would be fine — indeed, it would be fantastic — if it built in multiple perspectives,” noted Jonathan Zimmerman, author of “Whose America: Culture Wars in the Public Schools,” in a 2019 essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education. “For the most part, though, it doesn’t.”

Instead, many universities have aligned themselves politically with their most activist students. “Top universities depend on billions of dollars of public funding, in the form of research grants and loan assistance,” The Economist editorialized last week. “The steady leftward drift of their administrations has imperiled this.”

One of the starkest examples of this politicization is the raft of position statements coming from university leadership. These public statements, and the fiery battles and protests behind them, take sides on what are broadly considered to be the nation’s most sensitive and polarized subjects, whether it’s the Dobbs ruling or DACA for young immigrants, the Israel-Hamas war or Black Lives Matter.

At last month’s conference [a meeting at Stanford on civil discourse], Diego Zambrano, a professor at Stanford Law School, made the downsides of such statements clear. What, he asked, are the benefits of a university taking a position? If it’s to make the students feel good, he said, those feelings are fleeting, and perhaps not even the university’s job. If it’s to change the outcome of political events, even the most self-regarding institutions don’t imagine they will have any impact on a war halfway across the planet. The benefits, he argued, were nonexistent.

Indeed! Such statements are purely attempts to flaunt virtue and have no effect on social policy. Do you think that any statement by a university or school on the war in Gaza will have the slightest effect on the war itself? Yet such statements are being made everywhere, including from city councils and secondary school boards. Even the city of Chicago issued a call for a cease-fire. I’m sure Israel and Hamas are paying attention!

Paul continues:

As for the cons, Zambrano continued, issuing statements tends to fuel the most intemperate speech while chilling moderate and dissenting voices. In a world constantly riled up over politics, the task of formally opining on issues would be endless. Moreover, such statements force a university to simplify complex issues. They ask university administrators, who are not hired for their moral compasses, to address in a single email thorny subjects that scholars at their own institutions spend years studying. (Some university presidents, such as Michael Schill of Northwestern, have rightly balked.) Inevitably, staking any position weakens the public’s perception of the university as independent.

The temptation for universities to take a moral stand, especially in response to overheated campus sentiment, is understandable. But it’s a trap. When universities make it their mission to do the “right” thing politically, they’re effectively telling large parts of their communities — and the polarized country they’re in partnership with — they’re wrong.

When universities become overtly political, and tilt too far toward one end of the spectrum, they’re denying students and faculty the kind of open-ended inquiry and knowledge-seeking that has long been the basis of American higher education’s success. They’re putting its future at risk.

If you want schools to be Truth Universities and not Social Justice Universities (do see Jon Haidt’s excellent lecture on this bifurcation), then the cons far outweigh the pros when it comes to taking stands.  Paul’s last three paragraphs are succinct, clear, and correct. To universities and departments who are itching to take political stands that don’t affect their school’s mission, PLEASE SHUT UP.  Members of university communities have plenty of venues, like “X”, Facebook, or websites like this, to express their own private opinions.

After I saw that Paul had left out the Kalven Principles, I posted a comment after her piece—the first time I’ve ever commented in the NYT. Here it is, with one comma that shouldn’t be there:

Thank Ceiling Cat that several readers sent in wildlife photos, so we’re good to go for a bit over a week, I think. But remember, I always need more. If you’re a newbie, read the “how to send me photos” page on the left sidebar and please try to conform to the format.

Today Jim Blilie has returned with some varied b&w photos. His captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

I recently joined some Facebook groups dedicated to black and white photography, which I did a lot of in my youth (pre-digital days).  I spent years scanning my negatives, slides, and, recently completed, my Dad’s slides and negatives.  (In 2023 I scanned 4918 of my Dad’s negatives.)

Inspired by these FB groups:  These are all my photos:  Black and white images that I like.  Some are scans of Kodachrome slides or are native digital images (color) that I converted to black and white images.  Most have only global adjustments (overall exposure, contrast, etc.) but some have “burns” and “dodges” to produce the visualized the final image.  I follow Ansel Adams’ Zone System method, both when I used film and paper prints and now in digital.  Many of these images will display Adams’ influence (I hope!). These reach way back in my photography.  I got my first camera (Pentax K-1000) in 1978.

First:  1981, Aspen leaf with rain droplets, northern Minnesota.  Scanned Tri-X Pan film. For this one I remember the exposure information: Pentax M 135mm f/3.5 lens with extension tubes, f/32, 30 seconds:

Next, two more from 1981.  Reflections in Maligne Lake, Jasper National Park and Mount Robson and Berg Lake (taken with a 1950 Rolleiflex, 6cm film; yes, I humped a Rolleiflex and a tripod up to Berg Lake!).  Both scanned Tri-X Pan:

Next is an image from Amboseli National Park in Kenya in 1992:  Elephants under rain clouds.  Scanned Kodachrome 64:

Next is an image of the foot bridge:  Passerelle Léopold-Sédar-Senghor in Paris:

Next is an image of Mount Whitney taken from near Lone Pine, California, February 2023. This is the classic view of the peak from the east.

Next is another image taken in February 2023:  The Visitor building and lawn of Sunnylands estate in Rancho Mirage, California:

Next is an image of the very upper Aosta Valley in Italy, just across Mont Blanc from Chamonix. This photo shows the Mont Blanc massif from the Italian side.  (Lumix 7-14mm f/4.0 lens):

Next is an image I call The Shape of the Land.  A photo (2023) of the Palouse region landscape in the southeastern Washington state, near where our son Jamie attends Washington State University.  The Palouse is characterized by these sinuous rolling hills of Loess soil.  This area grows an immense amount of wheat:

Finally, two photos taken on this last New Years’ Eve, 31-Dec-2023, near Hood River, Oregon, very close to our home in southern Washington.  We had brilliant clear skies above a strong inversion layer, which provided dramatic clouds through which we ascended on our hike:

Equipment:

1950 Rolleiflex 6cm camera  inherited from my Dad; Schneider 75mm f/3.5 lens
Pentax K-1000, ME Super, and LX cameras
Various Pentax M series and A series lenses
Pentax K-5 digital camera and various Pentax D lenses
Olympus OM-D E-M5 mirrorless M4/3 camera and various Olympus and Lumix lenses
Epson V500 Perfection scanner and its software
Lightroom 5 photo software

Big Rocket Launch this morning: a test of the SpaceX Starship. It will launch from Texas, test the firing of two boosters and the payload door, and then (fingers crossed) a splashdown planned in the Indian Ocean. The flight time will be one hour and 4 minutes, and this time the rockets, though designed to be recovered, apparently won’t be recovered.

Set your alarm for 8 a.m. if you’re on the East Coast, 7 a.m. Central or corresponding times in other places. But the livestream begins half an hour before those times. You can watch the prep and launch either site given below.

This site gives information about the vehicle and launch, and also links to the SpaceX video.

From Jon and Bat, we hear of a SpaceX launch this morning.

This from Bat:

According SpaceX and news outlets, the big launch is on for a 110 minute window commencing at 0700 central time Thursday morning.  Launch is from SpaceX launch complex in Texas. The rocket is over 400 ft tall.  She’s a big ‘un!  Live Coverage begins at SpaceX website 30 minutes before scheduled launch so that would be 0630 Central Time.

This is the big rocket that Elon Musk is developing for big Moon mission payloads and on to Mars. He claims that they are using an “engineering approach”:  test often and learn from failure: you really don’t want failure but when you get it, you use it to improve the vehicle and its control.

A video of the launch should be at the site below (click to go there, and then click on “watch”; there’s another launch video site below):

Here’s the official announcement:

The third flight test of Starship is targeted to launch Thursday, March 14. The 110-minute test window opens at 7:00 a.m. CT.

You can watch the live launch webcast at SpaceX.com/launches or on X.com/SpaceX starting approximately 30 minutes ahead of liftoff.

The third flight test aims to build on what we’ve learned from previous flights while attempting a number of ambitious objectives, including the successful ascent burn of both stages, opening and closing Starship’s payload door, a propellant transfer demonstration during the upper stage’s coast phase, the first ever re-light of a Raptor engine while in space, and a controlled reentry of Starship. It will also fly a new trajectory, with Starship targeted to splashdown in the Indian Ocean. This new flight path enables us to attempt new techniques like in-space engine burns while maximizing public safety.

This rapid iterative development approach has been the basis for all of SpaceX’s major innovative advancements, including Falcon, Dragon, and Starlink. Recursive improvement is essential as we work to build a fully reusable transportation system capable of carrying both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, help humanity return to the Moon, and ultimately travel to Mars and beyond.

Excitement guaranteed!

Here’s a YouTube site:

On March 8, I wrote a critique of this article, which appeared in American Scientist (click sceenshot to read):

When I wrote my piece, I had grown weary of people making the same tired old arguments against the sex binary, arguments like saying that sex isn’t binary because male orangutans come in two forms (“flanged” and “unflanged”) while female orangs come in only one. That sentence is self refuting, of course, for the authors explicitly refer to two forms of MALE oranguatan. How do the authors know that they’re males, for crying out loud? The same goes for the authors going after the sex binary by noting the long clitorises of female hyenas and the gestation of young by male seahorses. Note that both of those sentences include either “male” or “female”, presupposing that these sexes exist and scuppering the four authors’ own argument!

I got splenetic and wrote this in my post:

Really? Do I have to rebut the same arguments about the definition of biological sex again?  Well, here in American Scientist is a group of two anthropologists, one anatomist, and a gender-and-sexuality-studies professor, all telling us that there is no clear definition of sex, using the same tired old arguments to rebut the gamete-based sex binary. And once again, Agustín Fuentes from Princeton appears among this group of ideologues who say that the definition of the sexes depends not on gametes, but on a lot of stuff, depending what your question is.  Their object, of course, is to reassure those who don’t identify as “male” or “female” that they are not erased by biology.

But you more or less have to keep rebutting this rubbish (as Byrne calls it below) because each new generation of students needs to be educated about how biologists define sex.  The reason that people say sex is a spectrum, of course, is ideological, not scientific: it’s because they want nature to correspond to their view of people’s self-image: today, some peopole can think that they’re varying mixes of male and female (one notion of “gender”). Ergo, nature must be that way, too. I call this the “reverse naturalistic fallacy”:  what we see as “good” in humans must also be seen in nature.

You can read my piece if you want, but better to read MIT philosopher and gender expert Alex Byrne‘s new takedown of the Clancy et al. paper at the Substack site “Reality’s Last Stand.” The subtitle below pulls no punches: the paper is indeed rubbish.

A few excerpts (indented). Byrne begins by giving the authors a bouquet of roses:

The essay is well-worth critical examination, not least because it efficiently packs so much confusion into such a short space.

Another reason for examining it is the pedigree of the authors—Kate Clancy, Agustín Fuentes, Caroline VanSickle, and Catherine Clune-Taylor. Clancy is a professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Fuentes is a professor of anthropology at Princeton, and Clune-Taylor is an assistant professor of gender and sexuality studies at that university; VanSickle is an associate professor of anatomy at Des Moines. Clancy’s Ph.D. is from Yale, Fuentes’ is from UC Berkeley, and VanSickles’ is from Michigan. Clune-Taylor is the sole humanist: she has a Ph.D. in philosophy from Alberta, with Judith Butler as her external examiner. In short, the authors are not ill-educated crackpots or dogmatic activists, but top-drawer scholars. Their opinions matter.

But then come then brickbats. Unfortunately, as with me, Byrne thinks the arguments of Clancy et al. are misguided and thus injurious to science. It’s a long piece, worth reading in its entirety, so I’ll just give two quotes. The first is the common misconception that intersex people, who are only 1 in 5600 of all H. sapiens, are members of a third sex:

In any case, what reason do Clancy et al. give for thinking that the number of sexes is at least three? The argument is in this passage:

[D]ifferent [“sex-defining”] traits also do not always line up in a person’s body. For example, a human can be born with XY chromosomes and a vagina, or have ovaries while producing lots of testosterone. These variations, collectively known as intersex, may be less common, but they remain a consistent and expected part of human biology.

So the idea that there are only two sexes…[has] plenty of evidence [against it].

However, this reasoning is fallacious. The premise is that some (“intersex”) people do not have enough of the “sex-defining” traits to be either male or female. The conclusion is that there are more than two sexes. The conclusion only follows if we add an extra premise, that these intersex people are not just neither male nor female, but another sex. And Clancy et al. do nothing to show that intersex people are another sex.

What’s more, it is quite implausible that any of them are another sex. Whatever the sexes are, they are reproductive categories. People with the variations noted by Clancy et al. are either infertile, for example those with Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (CAIS) (“XY chromosomes and a vagina”), or else fertile in the usual manner, for example many with Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH) and XX chromosomes (“ovaries while producing lots of testosterone,” as Clancy et al. imprecisely put it). One study reported normal pregnancy rates among XX CAH individuals. Unsurprisingly, the medical literature classifies these people as female. Unlike those with CAIS and CAH, people who belonged to a genuine “third sex” would make their own special contribution to reproduction.

Here we have a philosopher who knows his biology, and this can make clear and piercing arguments.  (See below to see Byrne’s new book on sex and gender.)  And here’s Byrne on their view that sex is “culturally constructed”:

The problem here is that “Sex is culturally constructed” (as Clancy et al. apparently understand “cultural construction”) is almost trivially true, and not denied by anyone. If “X is culturally constructed” means something like “Ideas of X and theories of X change between times and places,” then almost anything which has preoccupied humans will be culturally constructed. Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are culturally constructed: the ancients thought they revolved around the Earth and represented different gods. Dinosaurs are culturally constructed: our ideas of them are constantly changing, and are influenced by politics as well as new scientific discoveries. Likewise, sex is culturally constructed: Aristotle thought that in reproduction male semen produces a new embryo from female menstrual blood, as “a bed comes into being from the carpenter and the wood.” We now have a different theory.

Naturally one must distinguish the claim that dinosaurs are changing (they used to be covered only in scales, now they have feathers) from the claim that our ideas of dinosaurs are changing (we used to think that dinosaurs only have scales, now we think they have feathers). It would be fallacious to move from the premise that dinosaurs are culturally constructed (in Clancy et al.’s sense) to the conclusion that dinosaurs themselves have changed, or that there are no “static, universal truths” about dinosaurs. It would be equally fallacious to move from the premise that sex is culturally constructed to the claim that there are no “static, universal truths” about sex. (One such truth, for example, is that there is two sexes.) Nonetheless, Clancy et al. seem to commit exactly this fallacy, in denying (as they put it) that “sex is…a static, universal truth.”

To pile falsity on top of fallacy, when Clancy et al. give an example of how our ideas about sex have changed, their choice could hardly be more misleading.

I believe I mentioned something like this before, but only in passing and not nearly as clearly as does Byrne.

He finishes with a “J’Accuse” moment:

How could four accomplished and qualified professors produce such—not to mince words—unadulterated rubbish?

There are many social incentives these days for denouncing the sex binary, and academics—even those at the finest universities—are no more resistant to their pressure than anyone else. However, unlike those outside the ivory tower, academics have a powerful arsenal of carefully curated sources and learned jargon, as well as credentials and authority. They may deploy their weapons in the service of—as they see it—equity and inclusion for all.

It would be “bad science,” Clancy et al. write at the end, to “ignore and exclude” “individuals who are part of nature.” In this case, though, Clancy et al.’s firepower is directed at established facts, and the collateral damage may well include those people they most want to help.

There are, of course, words for people who retrieve and dispose of garbage: garbage collectors. But I know of know words for those who dispense garbage.

On a happier note, Alex has a new book on sex and gender out, and I have it on order. Early word is that it’s really good. Click below to get it from Amazon:

Now I know nothing about the Scarborough gas project in Western Australia except what I learned from the two sites below, the first from journalist James MacPherson’s Substack site and the second, which corroborates his report but is more extensive, from Australia’s Financial Review. You can access the sites by clicking on the screenshots (the Financial Review article is also archived here).

According to the site above, the gas project will cost $16 billion (Australian $) and “will power 8.5 million homes for the next 30 years”.  The project had already been approved by the government and the company was cleared to begin construction. Then two days before that began, the company was hit with a lawsuit that forced a delay. The bizarre thing about the lawsuit, as recounted below, is that is was by an indigenous woman who claimed that the project would disturb supernatural whales that told fish what to do.  Read below for more:

From Patrick’s article (bolding is mine):

Jessica Border, a young lawyer at the Environmental Defenders Office in Perth, said in an emergency court filing in September that her client, Indigenous leader Raelene Cooper, was a custodian of the Whale Dreaming, an Aboriginal story sung or chanted and known as a songline.

The Whale Dreaming states that Burrup Peninsula whales connect places, people and animals to each other, creating migratory patterns for animals and telling them when to eat and reproduce, according to the filing. It contains an “energy line” that passes through Woodside’s gas titles.

“The whale creates a path for the other animals like ‘grading a road’,” she wrote. “Songlines are essential to the survival of human beings and the ngurra or Mother Earth.”

A lawyer for the gas company, in a response filed in court, said: “Until the filing of Ms Border’s affidavit, Woodside had not previously been aware of the asserted existence of the Whale Dreaming within Murujuga [an area offshore the peninsula] or of the applicant’s carriage of a Whale songline.”

Note that according to both reports, the company had already consulted extensively with indigenous Australians before beginning this project, but had never heard of “spirit whales” before. In a decision given below, Judge Craig Colvin, stopped the gas project, at least temporarily. (The first source argues that the “greeniess” are using this myth to stop the project entirely). You can see judge Colvin’s decision at the link below, but here’s a summary of it from Aaron Patrick’s report (bolding is mine):

 

“The term ‘environment’ is defined to encompass the social and cultural features of ecosystems and of locations, places and areas,” he wrote in the judgment.

The use of songlines to fight resources projects is a tactic used by the Environmental Defenders Office [EDO], a Sydney-based not-for-profit company and relentless opponent of resources industries.

One of the EDO’s favourite courts is the Federal Court, which has shown more interest in songlines than any other. Some 20 judgments over the past decade have acknowledged the existence of songlines.

Justice Colvin, who ruled against Woodside, accepted Ms Cooper believed in whale spirits. “The evidence explains the cultural significance of the whales, turtles and dugongs in the sea at that place and of songlines, including the Whale Dreaming,” he wrote.

However, I can’t find the sentence in bold above in Colvin’s judgment, and its absence is puzzling. If you can find it, let me know. As far as I can see from a quick reading of the judgment, Colvin argued that there wasn’t sufficient consultation with indigenous people, including Ms. Cooper, who was “required to be consulted”, although there had been extensive consultation from other indigenous people.

If Cooper’s claim about spirit whales is indeed what she said, then the court is relying on mythology to stop a project that seems to have been environmentally vetted and approved.  Cooper, of course, is relying on a delusion, but if environmentalists are supporting her to stop the pipeline, then they are dissimulating—giving credence to a ludicrous “songline” about fish-controlling whales to get the project stopped.  For all I know, perhaps the project is a danger to the environment. But that doesn’t mean opponents must bring in religious mythology when considering its value.

And there are, as the article points out, dangers in using myths in court:

No High Court decisions cite songlines, according to legal databases. Legal academia has not embraced them either. One of the few journal articles on the topic, The Australian ‘songlines’: Some glosses for recognition, was lead written in 2017 by a country NSW academic, Gary Lilienthal, who has appointments with universities in India and Ethiopia.

“The pre-eminent authority on colonial land title and its relationship to Aboriginal title is me,” Professor Lilienthal said on Wednesday. “If you look back at the ancient laws around the world, including Talmudic law, most of them are transmitted by song.”

Among mainstream lawyers there are concerns that manipulating Indigenous mythology to stop resources projects could backfire, by alienating other Australians, as it did in last month’s Santos case.

What is the Santos case? An explanation:

The decision, by judge Craig Colvin, has become of greater significance since one of his judicial colleagues, Natalie Charlesworth, dismissed a similar challenge to a gas project being built in the Northern Territory by Santos, a decision that is forcing land rights lawyers and activists around the country to assess how they use Indigenous fables to protect Aboriginal communities.

Justice Charlesworth found an expert from the University of Western Australia falsely told Tiwi islanders songlines were used to stop construction of a Woodside pipeline.

These myths shouldn’t be part of court cases. While they’re of cultural significance, this ruling seems to imply that there is some “reality” to them as well—a reality significant enough to warrant stopping an energy project.  Just as there is no place for mythology alongside empirical reality in science (viz. the kerfuffle over Mātauranga Māori in New Zealand), there is no place for mythology in this case.”

It all comes from regarding indigenous people as “sacred victims,” giving their word extra credibility that would not be conferred on other people. Yes, cultural desires must sometimes be considered, even if there’s no evidence for them, but this is not such a case,. As Richard Feynman said about the Challenger disaster, “”For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.”

********************

Here’s part of the judge’s decision referring to Ms. Cooper (again, see the whole thing here..)

1    Two subsidiaries of Woodside Energy Group Ltd (together, Woodside) plan to undertake a seismic survey in waters off the coast of the Pilbara region in Western Australia. To do so, they must have obtained approval from the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA) of an environment plan. On 31 July 2023, they obtained approval for a plan subject to conditions. Relevantly for present purposes, the conditions require Woodside to undertake further consultation with representatives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander bodies prior to the commencement of the seismic survey.

2    Ms Raelene Cooper is a Mardudhunera lore woman, elder and a traditional custodian of Murujuga. Ms Cooper was a person who, under the terms of the conditions, was required to be consulted. Ms Cooper has commenced proceedings in this Court seeking judicial review on the basis that NOPSEMA did not have statutory power to make the decision to approve the environment plan for the proposed seismic survey (Ground 1). In the alternative, Ms Cooper claims that Woodside has not complied with the conditions requiring Woodside to consult with her and others and that she has standing to seek a permanent injunction restraining Woodside from undertaking the seismic survey (Ground 2).

3    The Court has granted an interlocutory injunction restraining Woodside from undertaking any activity described in the environment plan pending the urgent determination of three preliminary issues, namely:

(1)    whether NOPSEMA had statutory power to make the decision to accept the environment plan where it was not reasonably satisfied that the consultation required by reg 11A of the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage (Environment) Regulations 2009 (Cth) had been carried out, and so was not reasonably satisfied of the criteria in reg 10A(g)(i) and reg 10A(g)(ii);

(2)    whether, if (1) is established, it would be open, as a matter of law, to refuse the relief sought on any discretionary basis identified by Woodside; and

(3)    whether Ms Cooper has standing to seek relief in relation to Ground 2 of her application.

 

h/t: Don

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “toughie,” the boys get all balled up trying to figure out whether and how they could disprove God’s existence.  They get philosophically balled up, but you know in the end what they want to believe. 

Once again I importune my faithful reader/photographers to send in their wildlife photos. Thanks!

Today we have some birds from one of my future destinations: South Africa. The photographer is Billy Terre Blanche, his notes and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

As your readers know by now I am keen birder,  and South & Southern Africa is the ideal place to enjoy this past-time (obsession!}.

Many of the below pictures were taken at the Rietvlei Nature Reserve, a charming small reserve located right on the edge of Pretoria, within 5km of my house. As you can see, I decided to concentrate on the smaller members of the bird family.

African Stonechat – Male (Saxicola torquatus):

African Yellow Warbler (Iduna natalensis):

Capped Wheatear (Oenanthe pileata):

Cuckoo=Finch (Anomalospiza imberbis).  The Cuckoo Finch is a brood parasite, with a wide variety of hosts including Cisticolas, Prinias and Bishops. This is the male, which looks nothing like its potential host, but the female is very similar in appearance to the females of the hosts species mentioned above:

Half-collared Kingfisher (Alcedo semitorquata):

Levaillant’s Cisticola (Cisticola tinniens):

Little Sparrowhawk (Accipiter minullus):

Malachite Kingfisher (Alcedo cristata):

Pearl-spotted Owlet (Glaucidium perlatum). A very small owl, on average only about 19cm (7.5 inches) in size, and unlike most other owls it is often  seen during the day:

Pin-tailed Whydah (Vidua macroura).  This bird is displaying its extravagant breeding plumage, only seen during the summer months, while in winter it turns into a plain brown bird. See also the Shaft-tailed Whydah below:

Red-billed Oxpecker (Buphagus erythrorhynchus):

Rufous-naped Lark (Mirafra africana):

Shaft-tailed Whydah (Vidua regia):

White-fronted Bee-eater (Merops bullockoides):

Here’s actor Benedict Cumberbatch reading one of the last letters of imprisoned Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, whose sudden death on February 16 is still a mystery. This letter was written about a month before that. It’s only five minutes long, so have a listen.

Last month Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critic, Alexei Navalny, paid the ultimate price for his beliefs, dying in a West Siberian prison after years of relentless campaigning against corruption and a near-fatal poisoning. By the time of his death, Navalny had been imprisoned for more than two years, during which time he wrote to his supporters and the wider world through letters shared on his social media accounts. This is one of the last messages he wrote.

The letter answers a question Navalny got frequently: “Why did you come back?” (He returned to Russia from Germany, facing certain arrest, after he was poisoned by Russia while in Russia.) The short answer: “If I didn’t stick to my convictions, I’d have no credibility.” What those principles are you can hear in the reading.

There are few men as brave as Navalny.  I suppose one could compare him to a soldier ordered to undertake a mission resulting in certain death, like the attacks on the Ottomans at Gallipoli. But there’s a big difference: Navalny wasn’t under orders, and voluntarily returned to Russia, knowing what he’d face.

 

h/t: Jez

Each year my cinemaphilic nephew Steven gives his nominations for the best achievements in motion picture production, all vying for the coveted “Gold Steve” awards.  They appear on his website Truth at 24, and if you click below you can see the whole list of nominees. There’s not much overlap with the Oscar nominees. The title comes from one of the nominated movies below (“Fallen Leaves”):

Here’s Steven’s introduction to the nominees (the awards will come “sometime in April”), written with his characteristic modesty:

Presenting…the 2023 Golden Steve Awards.

Far and away the most coveted of motion picture accolades, Golden Steves are frequently described as the Oscars without the politics. Impervious to bribery, immune to ballyhoo, unswayed by sentiment, and riddled with integrity, this committee of one might be termed in all accuracy “fair-mindedness incarnate.” Over 200 of the year’s most acclaimed features were screened prior to the compilation of this ballot. First, some caveats:

1) Owing to a lifelong suspicion of prime numbers, each category comprises six nominees, not five.

2) A film can be nominated in only one of the following categories: Best Animated Feature, Best Non-Fiction Film, Best Foreign Language Film. Placement is determined by the Board of Governors. Said film remains eligible in all other fields.

3) This list is in no way connected with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences—a fact that should be apparent from its acumen. Please look elsewhere for Oscar analysis.

I’ll present the nominees in the most followed categories, but be aware that there are more on the site. Also, Steven has excellent taste in movies, so it would behoove you to pay attention to the list.

Best Picture

Afire
All of Us Strangers
Anatomy of a Fall
Killers of the Flower Moon
May December
Trenque Lauquen

Best Director

Laura Citarella, Trenque Lauquen
Andrew Haigh, All of Us Strangers
Todd Haynes, May December
Christian Petzold, Afire
Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon
Justine Triet, Anatomy of a Fall

Best Actor

Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers
Benoit Magimel, Pacifiction
Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer
Franz Rogowski, Passages
Andrew Scott, All of Us Strangers
Michael Thomas, Rimini

Best Actress

Jodie Comer, The End We Start From
Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon
Sandra Huller, Anatomy of a Fall
Natalie Portman, May December
Emma Stone, Poor Things
Teyana Taylor, A Thousand and One

Best Supporting Actor

Jamie Bell, All of Us Strangers
Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer
Glenn Howerton, BlackBerry
Charles Melton, May December
Paul Mescal, All of Us Strangers
Mark Ruffalo, Poor Things

Best Supporting Actress

Penelope Cruz, Ferrari
Merve Dizdar, About Dry Grasses
Claire Foy, All of Us Strangers
Anne Hathaway, Eileen
Rachel McAdams, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers

Best Non-Fiction Film

Apolonia, Apolonia (Lea Glob)
Beyond Utopia (Madeleine Gavin)
Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros (Frederick Wiseman)
Orlando, My Political Biography (Paul B. Preciado)
Our Body (Claire Simon)
To Kill a Tiger (Nisha Pahuja)

Best Foreign Language Film

About Dry Grasses (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
Afire (Christian Petzold)
Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet)
Fallen Leaves (Aki Kaurismaki)
Trenque Lauquen (Laura Citarella)
The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer)

Hari Sridhar, a Fellow of the Konrad Lorenz Institute, has, with others, launched a new site called Reflections on Papers Past.  Here’s the site’s aim (read more at the link):

Reflections on Papers Past is a collection of back-stories and recollections about famous scientific papers in ecology, evolution, behaviour and conservation.
The personal back-story of this project can be found here.

Allen Orr and I were honored to have one of our papers included in this pantheon (see below), which is on the site as a long interview I did with Hari a while back.

The site’s blurb and links on the front page are below:

Reflections on Papers Past is a collection of back-stories and recollections about famous scientific papers in Ecology, Evolution, Behaviour and Conservation based on interviews with their authors. To find out more about the project click here.

Full interviews with authors about the making of their papers and the papers’ fates after publication

INTERVIEWS

Thematic collections of quotes showcasing human stories behind scientific papers

QUOTES

Scientific papers annotated with author back-stories and reflections

ANNOTATED PAPERS

A library of photos and other visuals connected to the back-stories of scientific papers

VISUAL ARCHIVE

If you’re an organismal biologist, you might scan the list of papers (divided by field) and get the skinny on them.

I’d completely forgotten about my interview, as it took place over three years ago. It concerns what is probably my most-cited paper, Coyne and Orr 1989, which was called “Patterns of speciation in Drosophila“, appeared in Evolution, and can be found here (the pdf is here). It was an attempt, which met with some success, to figure out how species form in this genus of flies by looking at the reproductive barriers between pairs of species and correlating the strength of those barriers with the estimated divergence time taken from molecular differences.  (There was an update with new data in 1997.) This could give us an idea of how fast genetic barriers form between populations, and which barriers evolve fastest.

As I said, I believe this is my most-cited paper, but my most cited scientific publication is surely going to be the book Speciation, also written with my student Allen Orr, a terrific scion and great collaborator (he’s now a professor at the University of Rochester.)  I’m only guessing about citations here because I no longer check them.

At any rate, if you click below, you’ll see Hari’s interview with me. It’s long and may not be of interest to non-scientists.

A couple of pictures from yore of Allen and me.  The first one is when we enacted a mock squabble in Bellagio, Italy (2001), where we both received Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships to plan and start writing the book Speciation. But yes, there were disagreements, though not as violent as this.  The book came out in 2009 and I am prouder of it than any other piece of science I produced (I can’t speak for Allen).

Relaxing on Lake Como. Fellows stay at the Villa Serbelloni, a mansion now owned by the Rockefeller Foundation and open to tourists only for guided tours. (George Clooney’s mansion is nearby.)  The Foundation affords artists and scholars a month of freedom (and luxury) to work without interruption, save the lovely breakfasts and dinners and breaks for drinks. (You specify your lunch on a checklist filled out at breakfast, and they bring it to your door to enjoy while working or roaming the extensive and beautiful gardens.) Allen and I got a LOT done in that month. Our partners got to come to Italy, too, and we dedicated Speciation to them (they had projects to do as well.)

The Foundation also had two rowboats:

An aquatic jaunt during lunch. Allen shows the way, though of course he’s looking backwards

One more picture of Orr and me, taken at the Evolution meetings in Portland, Oregon in 2001. He was the outgoing President of the Society for the Study of Evolution, and I was the incoming President. This was before Portland became woke and went down the drain:

Here’s how I translate two phrases that we hear quite a bit these days about the Hamas/Israel war. The phrases are on the left, and how I hear them is on the right.

“Calls for Permanent ceasefire” = “Calls for Hamas to win the war”*

“Calls for Israel to leave Rafah alone” = “Calls for Hamas to win the war”*

*As per one of the comments below, it could also be translated as “Calls for the State of Israel to stop existing.”

A few days ago none other than President Biden issued the second mantra, saying this in his State of the Union message:

President Biden likes to say that no President has been a better friend to Israel, but of late he doesn’t sound like it. He beat up Israel’s leaders in his State of the Union speech, criticized its war strategy in Gaza with regularity, and on the weekend called Israel’s plans to clear Hamas from its last stronghold in the city of Rafah a “red line” that Israel shouldn’t cross.

“It is a red line, but I am never going to leave Israel. The defense of Israel is still critical. So there is no red line I am going to cut off all weapons, so they don’t have the Iron Dome to protect them,” Mr. Biden said on MSNBC. “But there’s red lines that if he crosses,” without finishing his train of thought, before adding “you cannot have 30,000 more Palestinians dead.”

The clear intimation is that if Israel goes into Rafah (a necessity to destroy Hamas), the U.S. will still support Israel, but only to the extent that we supply rockets to keep the Iron Dome going.  See the second mantra above.

********

As Richard Dawkins says, “Discuss.”  Think of it as an essay topic.

A high-up worker in the pharma industry sent me a video from last month  showing biologist Bret Weinstein apparently denying to Joe Rogan that AIDS is cause by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). (That claim starts about three minutes in, but watch the whole video below.)

Apparently Weinstein subscribes to Rogan’s “competing hypothesis” that AIDS is simply group of symptoms caused not by a virus, but by taking “party drugs” (3:53). Weinstein finds that explanation “surprisingly compelling.”  He also suggests darkly that Nobel laureate Kary Mullis—also an HIV denialist—died “strangely” (there were conspiracy theories about Mullis’s death).  Then the video stops, but you can hear the whole 3½-hour episode here.

The first several minutes of the video below, which you’ll have to scroll back to see, show Weinstein expressing doubt that a virus also causes Covid-19.

You may remember that Weinstein and his partner, biologist Heather Heying, touted the antiparasitic drug ivermectin as a treatment and preventive for the “syndrome” known as Covid-19, even though there was no evidence that the drug was effective (see also here).  In other words, Weinstein seems fond of heterodox and discredited causes of and treatments for diseases: he’s a medical conspiracy theorist.

The pharma guy who wrote me said this:

I don’t mean to obsess about BW, but after the Evergreen debacle and getting a modicum of credibility, he went crazy about COVID and the efficacy of ivermectin so much so that Sam Harris ripped him for conspiratorial thinking and now they’re enemies.  I was livid because people like him were giving horrible medical advice to the public as a biologist-who-claims-to-be-an-authority and may have really harmed people who were listening to his claptrap.  3 weeks ago, he was on Joe Rogan’s show (which I don’t watch but saw a link) wherein he’s now giving airtime to the ‘AIDS is not caused by HIV’ conspiracy theory.

As a member of Pharma industry who watched colleagues like myself craft thousands of molecules to become specific drugs tailored to fit and inhibit the active sites of HIV protease, reverse transcriptase, integrase, and to antagonize HIV binding to the chemokine receptor CCR5 that the virus uses to enter T-cells, I know for a fact that these drugs prevent AIDS by stopping HIV viral replication and entry.  All were approved in Phase 3 with data and are used in various combinations to make drugs like the Quad pill that have suppressed HIV to undetectable levels, allowing HIV-infected individuals to lead pretty normal lives.  Ergo, AIDS IS caused by HIV!  QED.

There were then some words not suitable for a family-friendly site, but among them were the claims that Weinstein is “a conspicuous troll who is hurting people.”

VICE News has a summary of Weinstein’s appearance on Rogan and on their shared and bogus theory of AIDS. An excerpt:

Weinstein’s “evidence,” he made clear, is partially drawn from reading about this theory as outlined by Robert F. Kennedy in his book The Real Anthony Fauci, published in 2021. (One review of the book noted that Kennedy managed to misrepresent numerous scientific studies he cites, which does not make a strong case for its scientific rigor; nor does the fact that it was written by Robert F. Kennedy.)

“I came to understand later, after I looked at what Luke Montagnier had said and I read Bobby Kennedy’s book on Fauci, was that actually the argument against HIV being causal was a lot higher quality than I had understood, right?” Weinstein told Rogan. “That it being a real virus, a fellow traveler of a disease that was chemically triggered, that is at least a highly plausible hypothesis. And with Anthony Fauci playing his role, that was inconvenient for what he was trying to accomplish.”

. . .The conversation generated substantial outcry from scientists and public health researchers on Twitter; David Gorski, an oncologist who frequently writes about the anti-vaccine world and pseudoscience, identified the conversation as an example of “crank magnetism,” writing, “Once you go down the rabbit hole of pseudoscience, quackery, and conspiracy theories in one area (e.g., #COVID19), it is nearly inevitable that you will embrace fractal wrongness in the form of multiple kinds of pseudoscience (e.g., antivax, AIDS denial, etc.).”

And this is, of course, indisputably part of a larger pattern. Rogan and Weinstein regularly repeat discredited scientific ideas, mainly around their promotion of ivermectin as a treatment for COVID and Rogan’s constant promotion of anti-vaccine ideas. The AIDS conversation makes clear that COVID denialists are branching out, using their forms of pseudo-inquiry to draw other bad ideas back into the public discussion.

And from Wikipedia:

Appearing on a Joe Rogan podcast in February 2024, Weinstein erroneously stated that some people with AIDS were not infected with HIV and that he found the idea that AIDS was caused by a gay lifestyle, rather than the HIV virus, “surprisingly compelling”. The American Foundation for AIDS Research reacted to the podcast, saying “It is disappointing to see platforms being used to spout old, baseless theories about HIV. … The fact is that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), untreated, causes AIDS. … Mr. Rogan and Mr. Weinstein do their listeners a disservice in disseminating false information …”.

As for Weinstein’s implication that Karry Mullis’s death may have involved his “maverick” view that HIV didn’t cause AIDs (shades of Karen Silkwood!), Michael Shermer responded on February 16 with a tweet:

Dear @bretweinstein
On @JoeRogan you suggested that there was something mysterious about Kary Mullis’s death, and that since he was critical of Anthony Fauci you hinted that perhaps there was something nefarious about his death.

I knew Kary, and I am still in touch with his wife…

— Michael Shermer (@michaelshermer) February 16, 2024

I’m especially distressed by this kind of quackery, which in the end can cost lives, by a man who started out in my own field, evolutionary biology.  Now, having left Evergreen State far behind him, Weinstein appears to be trying to make a name for himself by being medically heterodox. It’s fine to question untested theories, but the evidence is now very, very strong that HIV causes AIDs and that Covid-19 is caused by a coronavirus.

People often say that “pseudoscience” isn’t that harmful. After all, what’s the danger in reading the astrology column or tarot cards? But that’s just the thin edge of the wedge that opens up medical pseudoscience like that given above. And that can kill people.