Why Evolution is True Feed

After an absence, Tara Tanaka is back with a new wildlife video (nice title!) showing two female gobblers (Meleagris gallopavo).  Here are her notes:

We did a prescribed burn between our yard and the swamp last month, and for only the second time in 32 years we had a wild turkey in the yard – the other time was also right after a burn.  We had a single bird three days in a row, then we didn’t see her for two days and I thought she’d moved on, but last night she appeared and brought a friend.

Don’t miss the wood duck (Aix sponsa) at 1:42.

Tara’s Flickr page is here and her Vimeo page is here.

Here’s a new article in the Journal of Sexual Medicine that investigated the effects of gender-changing surgery on both males and females (over 18) with a diagnosis of gender dysphoria.  The results won’t make gender extremists happy, as in both cases rates of mental distress, including anxiety, and depression, were higher than those having surgery than those not having surgery after two years of monitoring. However, this doesn’t mean that the surgery shouldn’t be done, as the authors note that other studies show that people undergoing surgical treatment are, over the longer term, generally happy with the outcome.  The main lesson of the paper is that people who do undergo such surgeries should be monitored carefully for post-surgical declines in mental health.

Click the headline below to read.

The authors note that there are earlier but much smaller studies that show no decline in mental health after surgery, but these are plagued not only by small sample size, but also by non-representative sampling reliance on self-report, and failure to diagnose other forms of mental illness beyond gender dysphoria before surgery. The present study, while remedying these problems, still has a few issues (see below).

The advantages of this study over earlier ones is that the samples of Lewis et al. are HUGE, based on the TriNetX database of over 113 million patients from 64 American healthcare organizations. Further, the patients were selected only because they had a diagnosis of gender dysphoria and no record of any other form of mental illness (of course, it could have been hidden). Patients were divided into four groups (actually six, but I’m omitting two since they lacked controls): natal males with gender dyphoria who had or didn’t have surgery, and natal females with and without surgery. Here are the four groups, and I’ve added the sample size to show how much data they have:

• Cohort A: Patients documented as male (which may indicate natal sex or affirmed gender identity), aged ≥18 years, with a prior diagnosis of gender dysphoria, who had undergone gender-affirming surgery.

• Cohort B: Male patients with the same diagnosis but without surgery. [Cohorts A and B had 2774 patients.]

• Cohort C: Patients documented as female, aged ≥18 years, with a prior diagnosis of gender dysphoria, who had undergone gender-affirming surgery.

• Cohort D: Female patients with the same diagnosis but without surgery. [Cohorts C and D each had 3358 patients.]

A and B are the experimental and control groups for men, as are C and D for women.  Further, within each comparison patients were matched for sex, race, and age to provide further controls.  And here are the kinds of surgeries they had:

To be included, all patients had to be 18 years or older with a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, as identified by the ICD-10 code F64. This criterion was chosen based on literature highlighting elevated mental health concerns for transgender and nonbinary patients with gender dysphoria [15, 16]. Gender-affirming surgery cohorts consisted of patients with a documented diagnosis of gender dysphoria who had undergone specific gender-affirming surgical procedures. For transmen, this primarily included mastectomy (chest masculinization surgery, CPT codes 19 303 and 19 304), while for transwomen, this encompassed a range of feminizing procedures such as tracheal shave (CPT code 31899), breast augmentation (CPT code 19325), and vaginoplasty (CPT codes 57 335 and 55 970). These surgeries were identified using clinician-verified CPT codes within the TriNetX database, allowing for precise classification.

Note that there were a lot more “bottom” surgeries for trans-identifying men (as the authors call them, “transwomen”) than for trans-identifying women (“transmen”). Men prefer to change their genitals more often than women, even though, if you know how vaginoplasties are done, you have to be hellbent on getting one. (I don’t know as much about the results of getting a confected penis.)

I’ll be brief with the results: in both comparisons, those patients who had surgery had a significantly higher postsurgical risk of depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and substance abuse. But surgery had no effect on body dysmorphia: the obsession with flaws in one’s appearance.  Here are the tables and statistical comparisons of cohorts A vs. B and C vs. D, and the effect of surgery is substantial (results on women are similar though differences are smaller).  Some of the differences are substantial: anxiety in men, for example, was nearly five times higher in those who had surgery than those who did not.

As you see, there are significant differences for everything save body dysmorphia, for which there are no differences at all. The authors conclude that yes, at least over the two-year measurement period (again, mental states were monitored by professionals, and were not due to self report). Given that surgery does seem to improve well being over the long term, as the authors note twice, they conclude that the results provide more caution about taking care of patients who have transitional surgery:

The findings of this study underscore a pressing need for enhanced mental health guidelines tailored to the needs of transgender individuals following gender-affirming surgery. Our analysis reveals a significantly elevated risk of mental health disorders—including depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and substance use disorder—post-surgery among individuals with a prior diagnosis of gender dysphoria. Importantly, however, our results indicate no increased risk of body dysmorphic disorder following surgery, suggesting that these individuals generally experience satisfaction with their body image and surgical outcomes. Notably, the heightened risk of mental health issues post-surgery was particularly pronounced among individuals undergoing feminizing transition compared to masculinizing transition, emphasizing the necessity for gender-sensitive approaches even after gender-affirming procedures.

Possible problems. There are two main limitations of the study noted by the authors. First, individuals electing surgery may have higher levels of distress to begin with than those who didn’t, so the elevated rate of mental disorders in the surgery group could be artifactual in that way. Second, patients who have had surgery may be wealthier or otherwise have more access to healthcare than those who didn’t, and so higher rates of mental distress could result simply from a difference in detectability.

Now I don’t know the literature on long-term effects of surgery on well-being, so I’ll accept the authors’ statement that they are positive, even though patients with greater well being could, I suppose, still suffer more depression and anxiety. But those who are looking to say that there should be no surgery for those with gender dysphoria will not find support for that in this paper. What they will find is the conclusion that gender-altering surgery comes with mental health risks, and those must be taken into account. It’s always better, when dealing with such stuff. to have more rather than less information so one can inform those contemplating surgery.

When I was writing Faith Versus Fact, I sometimes visited professors in our Divinity School, located right across the Quad. I discovered that the faculty was divided neatly into two parts. There were the Biblical scholars, who addressed themselves wholly to figuring out how the Bible was made, the chronology of its writing, comparisons of different religions, and so on. Their questions were basically historical and sociological, and I found that, as far as I could tell, most of this group were atheists.

Then there were the real theologians: the believers who engaged in prizing truth out of the Bible, and taking for granted that yes, there was a god and somehow the Bible had something to tell us about him. These I had little use for.  Indeed, if you look up “theology” in the Oxford English Dictionary, you find this as the relevant definition. It describes the second class of academics who inhabit the Div School—the ones who accept that there is a god:

After writing my book, and having to plow through volume after volume of theology, including theological luminaries like Langdon Gilkey, Martin Marty, Alvin Plantinga, William Lane Craig, John Polkinghorne, Edward Feser, C. S. Lewis (cough) and Karen Armstrong, I finished my two years’ of reading realizing that I had learned nothing about the “nature and attributes of God and His relations with man and the universe.” That, of course, is because there is no evidence for god, and the Bible, insofar as it treats of things divine, is fictional.  Yes, there is anthropology in the Bible, as Richard Dawkins notes below, but it tells us absolutely nothing about god, his plan, or how he works. If you don’t believe me, consult the theologians of other faiths: Hindus, Muslims, and yes, Scientologists. They find a whole different set of “truths”!  There is no empirical truth that adds to what humanists have found (as Dawkins notes below “moral truths” are not empirical truths), but only assertions that can’t be tested. (Well, a few facts are correct, but many, like the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt and the census that drove the Jesus Family to Bethlehem, are flatly wrong.)

The discipline of theology as described by the OED is a scam, and I’m amazed that people get paid to do it.  The atheist Thomas Jefferson (perhaps he was a deist) realized this, and, when he founded the University of Virginia, prohibited any religious instruction. But pressure grew over the centuries, and I see that U. VA. now has a Department of Religious Studies, founded in 1967. So much the worse for them.

In the end, the only value I see in theology comprises the anthropological, sociological, and psychological aspects: what can we discern about what people thought and how they behaved in the past, and how the book was cobbled together.  I see no value in its exegesis of God’s ways and thoughts.

And so I agree with what Richard says in the video below. Here he discusses the “value” of theology, but the only value he sees is as “form of anthropology. . .  the only form of theology that is a subject is historical scholarship, literary scholarship. . . that kind of thing.” (“Clip taken from the Cosmic Skeptic Podcast #10.”)

I just wrote a piece for another venue that partly involves theology (stay tuned), and once again I was struck by the intellectual vacuity and weaselly nature of traditional theologians. And so I ask readers a question:

What is the value of theology? Has its endless delving into the nature of God and his ways yielded anything of value?

And I still don’t think that divinity schools are of any value, even though we have one at Chicago.  After all, concerning their concentration on Christianity and Judaism, they are entire schools devoted to a single work of fiction.  Granted, it’s an influential work of fiction, and deserves extra attention for that, but trying to pry truth out if it. . . well, it’s wasted effort and money.

I asked this question five years ago, noting that Dan Barker defined theology as “a subject without an object.”

A few kindly readers, such as ecologist Susan Harrison of UC Davis, have sent in photos, so the feature is not yet moribund. Susan’s narrative and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the owl photos by clicking on them.

A winter visit to the owls of Bob Dylan Country

Many North American owls are not regularly migratory like songbirds, but will shift many miles to the north or south depending on yearly weather conditions and prey availability.   Once every five or more years, the northernmost Midwest receives a winter influx of Boreal Owls (Aegolius funereus).  The arrival of this handsome little raptor is so exciting that some birders will travel from as far away as (say) California for a weekend to see it.

Having heard about the Boreal Owls in January, I reached out to a local guide and arranged a late February trip to Two Harbors, Minnesota on the north shore of Lake Superior.  On our first day it seemed I might have waited too long.  The weather had warmed and no owls had been reported for a few days.  We spent 10 fruitless hours cruising the roads and staring obsessively into the willows, alders, and small spruce along the verges.  Had the owls moved back north?

Our second day dawned as clear and cold as a proper Minnesota winter morning.  Not half an hour into our renewed search, a teardrop-shaped gray bundle stared back at us from the roadside shrubbery.  With a nod to Bob Dylan, “Highway 61 Revisited” describes exactly how we found this owl!

Our first Boreal Owl:

Later that day we saw another one at Sax-Zim Bog, a famous destination for seeking overwintering owls of multiple species.

Our second Boreal Owl:

We were greatly helped by the close-knit network of regional owlers who share sightings with one another over an app.  They guard information closely to spare owls from excessive attention.

Owlers at our second Boreal Owl sighting:

Having achieved success with the elusive Boreal Owl, we cruised around Sax-Zim Bog looking for the magnificent and more regularly occurring Great Gray Owl (Strix nebulosa).  These are similar to Boreal Owls in being boreal forest inhabitants, nonmigratory, and shifting farther south in some years.    We found a very sleepy owl perched along a roadside.

Great Gray Owl:

Finally we looked for Snowy Owls (Bubo scandiacus), which unlike the other two, undergo a regular winter migration to this area from their breeding grounds in the high Arctic.  In most years they reach only the northern tier of US states, but they wander much farther south every now and then. They seem to be highly adaptable; one reliable place to see them, in fact, is the industrial district of Superior, Wisconsin.  I think Bob Dylan would approve of their taste in gritty, down-to-earth surroundings.

Snowy Owl:

I guess the number of papers and articles people send me about the definition of sex is one sign that it remains an important issue for the populace.  Indeed, I think that in future decades people will see the kerfuffle about a simple and widely accepted definition (the gametic one) as a tempest in a teapot, stirred up by activists who demand that nature conform to their own ideology.

Philosopher Alex Byrne of MIT, whose recent book Trouble with Gender: Sex Facts, Gender Fictions I recommend, has also written a short and useful article on the site Fairer Disputations (“Sex-Realist Feminism for the 21st Century”) that covers a lot of ground, including the recent definition of sex given by the Department of Health and Human Services, the history of the definition that was used (the gametic one), the opposition to that definition, and “the British gender wars”, which are particularly nasty but have some smart combatants, like Helen Joyce, Emma Hilton, and J. K. Rowling, to defend those women who lose their jobs or get demonized for speaking the truth.

You can (and should) read Alex’s article by clicking below (it’s free), and I’ll give a few quotes (indented)

The beginning of understanding the nature of biological sex. Nobody really knew about gametes until 1677, when the Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek found little wiggly “animalcules” in his sperm.  Over the years since then, biologists began to realize that all animals and plants have two sexes with different gametes, and those gametes must usually unite to produce to produce a new offspring.  Further, regardless of whether the sexes are produced by chromosomes, the environment, genes, or social interactions, they are always two, and this condition has evolved independently nearly a dozen times. Here’s Alex’s description of the beginning, and how the definition continues–up to this day:

Sexual reproduction remained something of a mystery for the next five millennia, until the German physician Theodor von Bischoff hypothesized in the mid-nineteenth century that it involved the fusion of (in the EO’s language) two “reproductive cells”—one sperm and one ovum, or egg. The sperm is small and relatively simple, the egg large and much more complicated. When von Bischoff’s theory was later confirmed, it was a short step to uncovering the deep distinction between females and males: females produce large reproductive cells (or gametes), males produce small ones. What about producing both? Some animals (and many plants) do just that: they are hermaphrodites—female and male.

Here’s Robert Payne Bigelow, a biology professor from my own university, writing in 1903:

The ability to produce a macro- or microgamete constitutes the essential distinction of sex. The individual which produces the latter is said to be of the male sex, the individual producing the former is said to be of the female sex. In most of the higher plants and in a few of the lower animals both sexes are included in a single individual, which is then said to be hermaphrodite.

The French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir noted that the sexes are “defined primarily … by the gametes which they produce—sperms and eggs respectively” in The Second Sex, published in 1949. Yet in her 2023 book Beyond the Binary: Thinking About Sex and Gender, the feminist philosopher Shannon Dea tells us that “papaya trees come in three sexes—male, female, and hermaphroditic.” That is wrong, as Bigelow made clear 120 years earlier. Hermaphroditic papaya trees are both male and female, not a third sex.

The misguided critics. I can’t resist quoting this part, but the article has far more stuff in it:

In short, the EO’s [Executive Order’s] definitions of “female” and “male” are right, or at least substantially on the right lines. (On February 19, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a memo with improved versions.) So why the furor? What were the experts’ main complaints?

Some struggled with reading comprehension. The Director of the Centre for Indigenous Initiatives at Carleton University criticized the claim that there are “two genders” as “ignorant,” evidently thinking of so-called “third genders” in some traditional North American societies. But the EO pronounces on the number of sexes, not on the special cultural arrangements that have sometimes been made to accommodate homosexual men. In any case, even if the EO had said there were only two “genders,” it would have used the word as a synonym for “sex.”

Others were just painfully muddled. A biological anthropologist at the University of Urbana-Champaign declared that sex has multiple definitions, each valid for different purposes. One definition “is around typical hormone ranges. [For instance, people with] polycystic ovary syndrome end up having androgen levels that are very different from those of most people that we might put in the sex category of female.” The suggestion seemed to be that on one acceptable definition of “female,” people with polycystic ovary syndrome aren’t female because they have (relatively) high androgen levels. (The clue is in the name: polycystic ovary syndrome.)

Any acceptable definition of sex needs to get the right results for cats, ibises, and date palms, and one based on circulating hormones won’t. A definition based on chromosomes works for cats and date palms: they both employ the XX/XY sex determination system, with the males being XY. But ibises have it the other way round: the lady ibis is the one with different sex chromosomes. And what about other animals known to the ancient Egyptians, such as the Nile crocodile and the honeybee? The sex of a baby croc is determined not by chromosomes, but by the temperature of the nest, and male bees develop from unfertilized eggs, with half a set of chromosomes.

There is no definition of sex other than the standard gamete one that classifies female humans, cats, ibises, date palms, crocodiles, and bees correctly. That did not stop the anthropologist from saying that the EO “misunderstand[s] basic human biology.”

Anthropologists can be flaky. Still, one might have expected the Presidents of the Society for the Study of Evolution, the American Society of Naturalists, and the Society of Systematic Biologists to get basic biology right. However, according to them, in a letter to Trump and members of Congress, sex is a spectrum, a “continuum of male to female.” This “continuum” apparently has something to do with “chromosomes, hormonal balances, … gonads, external genitalia,” although the three presidents declined to spell out the details. Presumably, on this account, women with polycystic ovary syndrome are mostly-but-not-entirely female—perhaps a slight improvement on the anthropologist’s position. The biologist Jerry Coyne dissected the letter on his blog, writing in an email, “I used to be President of the Society for the Study of Evolution. Now it embarrasses me.”

And I’ll add that while most of the evolutionists I know agree about the gametic definition of sex, there is of course still debate about how that definition will be used on documents, driver’s licenses, and the like. Alex recognizes that these issues are far more contentious—at least to biologists:

Trump’s EO does not rest with the biological facts; it also sets a raft of policies. Among other things, government officials are directed “to require that government-issued identification documents, including passports, visas, and Global Entry cards, accurately reflect the holder’s sex.” It is understandable that someone seeking peace of mind by living as a member of the other sex would want a sex marker to match, especially when traveling to the less tolerant parts of the world. We should hope that the EO does not make life more difficult for such people than it already is. That hope is undoubtedly in vain, but the problem with pushing the pendulum too far in one direction is that it will tend to swing too far in the other. The activists who—predictably—have produced an equal and opposite reaction have only themselves to blame.

Here we have a new paper in Nature Scientific Reports, accompanied by a news piece in Science, that sends a misleading message to the public, both about “inheritance of trauma” and the effects of epigenetic changes.  Both pieces are free to access; click on the first headline below to go to the news piece, and the second to go to the scientific report (its pdf is here). 

I must add that most of the “misleading” appears not in the paper but in the News piece by Andrew Curry, who suggests that trauma is inherited when in fact there’s not a scintilla of evidence for that. But the authors of the real paper don’t go to any great lengths to dispel that notion, either, and this suggestion is undoubtedly why Nature Scientific Reports found the piece clickbaity and publishable.

Note that the news piece suggests that what is inherited across three generations is trauma. That is false. What the researchers shows is that Syrian women exposed to trauma during their country’s wars have offspring and grand-offspring that inherited certain epigenetic markers in the DNA: methyl groups affixed to consistent positions in the offspring DNA.  This “epigenetic inheritance” may indeed be caused by maternal trauma, for trauma messes up the fetal environment, and since female fetuses already carry their own eggs after a few months, it could affect grandchildren at all.

But inheritance of trauma itself? NO EVIDENCE. They have no idea what the DNA positions that are methylated even do, much less that they’re in genes that affect trauma.

The situation described in both the news puffery and the paper resembles the “epigenetic” inheritance associated with the Dutch “Hunger Winter” of 1944-1945, during which a German blockade of food killed around 20,000 people in the Netherlands.  It turns out that the children of survivors who were pregnant during the famine had a higher frequency obesity, higher cholesterol, as well as higher incidences of diabetes and schizophrenia, than did children of survivors who were not pregnant. The former also lived less long, but what they inherited as not “famine”, but a panoply of diseases and conditions that may well have been the result of biochemical changes in a pregnant mother experiencing famine. These changes were certainly not adaptive, either!  However, the inheritance lasted only one generation (grandchildren of pregnant survivors were normal). PLUS, what was inherited in the famous Dutch case were conditions and behaviors, while in the present case the “trauma” appears to have caused only slight changes in the DNA sequence that had an unknown effect. There was no inheritance of trauma described at all. But look at the headline below!

The news piece:

It summarizes the scientific report this way:

Rana Dajani, a biologist at Hashemite University in Amman, Jordan, wondered whether the recent conflicts in neighboring Syria might have left traces in the epigenomes of people in the country—with implications for the health of future generations. “I wanted to ask if environmental exposure was impacting different genes,” Dajani says. “Can those changes be transferred across three generations, or more?”

To answer that, Dajani, a Jordanian researcher of Palestinian and Syrian descent, teamed up with researchers in the United States and Jordan, leveraging her family contacts to assemble a cohort of Syrian women living in Jordan. In one group were women and girls who were either pregnant or in utero themselves during the Syrian civil war that began in 2011 and had fled to Jordan. Another group included someone who was pregnant during a government-orchestrated massacre in the city of Hama in the early 1980s, her daughter and grandchildren, and other unrelated female descendants of survivors. As a control group, Dajani included Syrian families who emigrated to Jordan almost a century ago, sharing a culture with the rest of the participants but with no direct experience of violent conflict.

Biologist Dima Hamadmad, a co-author and a descendant of survivors of the Hama violence, spent hundreds of hours over the course of 5 years contacting potential participants and listening to their stories. Many of them had experienced trauma such as being severely beaten, witnessing wounded or dead bodies, or seeing someone being shot or killed. “It’s a lot of work, and the victims also deserve a lot of credit,” says Isabelle Mansuy, an epigeneticist at ETH Zürich who was not part of the research. “What they’ve done is remarkable.”

After using cheek swabs to collect DNA from more than 130 women, the team looked for patterns in DNA methylation, a process in which responses to environmental circumstances—such as trauma—add or subtract to genes chemical tags known as methyl groups that alter the gene’s function. DNA methylation is among the most studied examples of epigenetic change.

The team found that women who experienced wartime trauma directly shared such changes in 21 different spots in their genome; grandchildren in the study showed alterations in a different set of 14 sites. “We discovered a number of genes with signatures of trauma transferred across generations compared to the control group,” Dajani says. The function of the genes and proteins associated with the sites isn’t known.

Comparing those results with the surveys and interviews revealed the more wartime horrors someone experienced, the more methylation changes they seemed to have. “It doesn’t look random,” says Mulligan, who co-led the study with Dajani.

I’m prepared to believe all that, though I’m disturbed by the important control group, which is described as “Syrian families who emigrated to Jordan almost a century ago, sharing a culture with the rest of the participants but with no direct experience of violent conflict.” Well, one can debate whether a group that has been in non-warring Jordan for a century has experienced the same “culture” as Syrians who emigrated in 1980 and 2011. But others who know more about epigenetics than I have weighed in with other criticisms (see below). What was affected may not have been trauma, but just gum disease!

Click the article to read. I can’t find any description of the control group in the paper except for this—”In the control group, Syrian grandmothers and mothers lived in Jordan prior to 1980″, and it adds they were “unexposed to war,” but it doesn’t say that not that the ancestors of the control individuals been in Jordan for a century. Oh well, we’ll let that slide.

The paper:

Here’s a diagram of the experimental setup from the paper; the caption is also from the paper. Click to enlarge.

There are three groups: the control (right), consisting of pregnant women unexposed to war; the 1980 group, which included women who experienced violence when the fetuses had eggs (about 12 weeks into pregnancy); and the 2011 group, which included women who experienced violence in the early stages of pregnancy, before the (female) fetus developed eggs. Click diagram to enlarge:

(From paper): Our research strategy was designed to test contrasting exposures to violence (direct, prenatal, germline) for changes in DNAm in three groups of three-generation Syrian families. The violence exposures of three generations (F1, F2, F3) for each group are indicated—the 1980 group was directly, prenatally, and germline exposed in the F1 generation, the 2011 group was directly and prenatally exposed in the F2 generation, and the Control group was unexposed. Exposure types are color coded: red = direct exposure, green = prenatal exposure, blue = germline exposure, and yellow = no exposure.

Note the very small sample size of both women exposed to trauma and their children and grandchildren. Here is the violence the authors describe what was experienced by pregnant women:

“. . . . violent traumatic experiences that included being severely beaten, being persecuted (by the authorities/militia), seeing a wounded or dead body, and seeing someone else severely beaten, shot or killed.”

They then did DNA sequencing of all individuals using a sampling system that identified 850,000 nucleotide bases (SNPs). Out of these, they found 21 sites that were methylated in a pretty consistent way among those who experienced violence; these were in the pregnant women’s non-germline DNA, so could not be passed on. However, they found another 14 sites  methylated in the germline (mother’s or fetus’s eggs), and were inherited across not just one generation, but across two (this might be expected since fetal eggs can also be exposed to grandmother’s physiological conditions).  But in no case did they know which genes were involved in the changes, though they speculate that some regions could be involved in “gene regulation”.

The authors conclude this:

There is strong scientific evidence indicating that impacts of stress and trauma can reverberate far into the future, possibly through epigenetic mechanisms.

Well, that’s true if “far into the future” means “three generations,” but epigenetic marks are usually wiped clean from the DNA when gametes (sperm and eggs) are made, and four generations is about as far as any environmental alterations of mammalian DNA have persisted. What we do not have here is either inheritance of trauma or any kind of permanent evolutionary change produced by the environment. This is manifestly not “Lamarckian inheritance“!

The news piece does proffer some mild criticism:

These results are consistent with research in mice and other organisms that shows trauma can be passed down across generations. But other researchers note that the sample size isn’t big enough to confidently conclude that trauma passes from generation to generation through the germline—in this case via egg cells. “It’s important to do studies like this, and we need more of them, and with larger samples,” says Michael Pluess, a psychologist at the University of Surrey who was not involved in this study but whose own work with Syrian refugee children has found similar violence-related methylation changes in different places of the genome. “We also need to replicate the findings to know if they’re real or just chance.”

If you click on the first link in the preceding paragraph, you’ll find changes in biomarkers that may be associated with trauma in humans and mice, but not evidence for the inheritance of trauma itself.

But there is even stronger criticism of the methods and conclusions posted on Bluesky by John Greally, a professor of genetics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and he has  the chops to criticize.  Here’s his post thread in its entirety. One of his important criticisms appears to be that they got the Syrian DNA by using buccal (cheek) swabs, and, as Greally notes, “This could be a very expensive study of gingivitis.” Also, note the penultimate post in which Greally says that there’s not any convincing evidence (including this paper) for transmission of acquired characteristics in mammals.”  Just remember that when you hear about this study or the famous but misleading Dutch famine study.

 

As I wrote on February 13, three important societies representing evolutionary biology, ecology, and systematics issued a grossly misleading statement aimed at the government. (It is dated February 5, but I don’t think it’s yet been sent):

As I reported recently, the Presidents of three organismal-biology societies, the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), the American Society of Naturalists (ASN) and the Society of Systematic Biologists (SSB) sent a declaration addressed to President Trump and all the members of Congress. (declaration archived here)  Implicitly claiming that its sentiments were endorsed by the 3500 members of the societies, the declaration also declared that there is a scientific consensus on the definition of sex, and the consensus is that sex is not binary but rather some unspecified but multivariate combination of different traits, a definition that makes sex a continuum or spectrum—and in all species! The bolding below is Jerry’s:

Scientific consensus defines sex in humans as a biological construct that relies on a combination of chromosomes, hormonal balances, and the resulting expression of gonads, external genitalia and secondary sex characteristics. There is variation in all these biological attributes that make up sex. Accordingly, sex (and gendered expression) is not a binary trait. While some aspects of sex are bimodal, variation along the continuum of male to female is well documented in humans through hundreds of scientific articles. Such variation is observed at both the genetic level and at the individual level (including hormone levels, secondary sexual characteristics, as well as genital morphology). Beyond the incorrect claim that science backs up a simple binary definition of sex, the lived experience of people clearly demonstrates that the genetic composition at conception does not define one’s identity. Rather, sex and gender result from the interplay of genetics and environment. Such diversity is a hallmark of biological species, including humans.

And as I write this today, I am still baffled how the different traits are supposed to be combined to determine one’s sex. I’d also like to ask the three societies exactly how many human sexes there are. As I’ve said before, I’m embarrassed to have been associated with the SSE since it’s now rejecting science in favor of currying favor with “progressive” ideology. It’s okay for societies to respond to situations that fall within their ambit, as this case does, but it’s not okay for them to purvey bogus science to buttress a political position.

Our original letter included 23 signers, most of whom are included in this second and final version of the letter.  The first letter never received a response (I find that rather rude), but we’re hoping for a response to this one.

The list of signers has now grown to 125, whose names are placed below the fold to keep this post shorter. If we’ve counted correctly, the signers come from nineteen countries. (We have omitted the names of five medical doctors and a nurse who also signed.) Every signer was willing to make their names public—a condition for signing the group letter. Others I know of have written privately to the Presidents of the Societies—and received a response, so the Societies clearly didn’t think they had to respond to our first letter.

The point of this letter is not to show that our view is a “consensus” (the Societies did not poll their members, either), but simply to affirm that a variety of people in biology or adjacent areas reject the Societies’ construal of sex as both a “construct” and a “spectrum”.  The letter below speaks for itself.

By the way, the driving force for writing the letter and collecting the signatures was Luana Maroja, Professor of Biology at Williams College, so kudos to her. And below this line is our letter, which was sent to the societies four minutes before this posting.

Dear presidents of the Tri-societies: ASN, SSB and SSE,

We, Tri-society members and/or biologists, are deeply disappointed by your recent letter “Letter to the US President and Congress on the Scientific Understanding of Sex and Gender” issued last Wednesday, Feb 5, 2025, in response to Trump’s executive order “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government”.

While we agree that Trump’s executive orders are misleading, we disagree with your statements about the sex binary and its definition. In animals and plants, binary sex is universally defined by gamete type, even though sexes vary in how they are developmentally determined and phenotypically identified across taxa. Thus, your letter misrepresents the scientific understanding of many members of the Tri-societies.

You state that: “Scientific consensus defines sex in humans as a biological construct that relies on a combination of chromosomes, hormonal balances, and the resulting expression of gonads, external genitalia, and secondary sex characteristics.”

However, we do not see sex as a “construct” and we do not see other mentioned human-specific characteristics, such as “lived experiences” or “[phenotypic] variation along the continuum of male to female”, as having anything to do with the biological definition of sex. While we humans might be unique in having gender identities and certain types of sexual dimorphism, sex applies to us just as it applies to dragonflies, butterflies, or fish – there is no human exceptionalism.   Yes, there are developmental pathologies that cause sterility and there are variations in phenotypic traits related to sexual dimorphism. However, the existence of this variation does not make sex any less binary or more complex, because what defines sex is not a combination of chromosomes or hormonal balances or external genitalia and secondary sex characteristics. The universal biological definition of sex is gamete size.

If you and the signers of this letter do not agree on these points, then the Tri-societies were wrong to speak in our names and claim that there is a scientific consensus without even conducting a survey of society members to see if such a consensus exists. Distorting reality to comply with ideology and using a misleading claim of consensus to give a veneer of scientific authority to your statement does more harm than just misrepresenting our views: it also weakens public trust in science, which has declined rapidly in the last few years. Because of this, scientific societies should stay away from politics as much as possible, except for political issues that directly affect the mission of the society.

Respectfully,

NAMES OF 125 SIGNERS ARE BELOW THE FOLD

[Click “continue reading” to see the names.]

In alphabetical order:

Charleen Adams, Lead Statistical Geneticist, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

Eli Vieira Araujo-Jnr, biologist and independent journalist, Brazil

John Avise, Emeritus Professor, Univ, of California, Irvine

Nick Bailey, Research Fellow in Bioinformatics

Daniel A. Barbash, Professor, Molecular Biology and Genetics, Cornell University

Alexander T. Baugh, Associate Professor, Department of Biology, Swarthmore College

David Bertioli, Distinguished Investigator and Professor, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, University of Georgia, USA

Andreas Bikfalvi, Professor MD PhD, University of Bordeaux, France

Franco Biondi, Professor of Natural Resources and Environmental Science

Ranieri Bizzarri, Professor of Biochemistry, University of Pisa, Italy

William J. Boecklen, Professor, Department of Biology, New Mexico State University

Jacobus (Koos) Boomsma, Emeritus Professor, University of Copenhagen Department of Biology

Glenn Borchardt, Director, Progressive Science Institute

Gary Bowering, Member, Royal Society of New Zealand

Gordon M. Burghardt, Professor of Psychology and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology (Emeritus), University of Tennessee

Chris Campbell, Research Assistant Professor (retired)/ University at Buffalo

Joseph Ciccolini, Professor/University Hospital of Marseille France

Kendall Clements, Professor, School of Biological Sciences, University of Auckland

Mark Collard, Chair in Human Evolutionary Studies, Simon Fraser University

Michael Coon, Scientist/Biopharma (cell therapy)

Athel Cornish-Bowden, Directeur de Recherche Émérite au CNRS (retired)

Richard Cowling, Emeritus Professor of Botany, Nelson Mandela University

Jerry Coyne, Professor Emeritus, Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago

David Curtis, Honorary Professor, Genetics Institute, University College London, UK

Richard Dawkins, Emeritus Professor, University of Oxford

Robert O. Deaner, Professor, Department of Psychology, Grand Valley State University; PhD Biological Anthropology & Anatomy, Duke University

Gilly Denham, SSE member, Williams College

Lynn Devenport, Professor Emeritus of Psychology, University of Oklahoma

Chet Dickson, Secondary Education (retired)

Paul Doerder, Professor Emeritus Cleveland State University

Gavin Douglas, Postdoctoral Researcher, North Carolina State University

Janet Roman Dreyer, Retired PhD Research Fellow Caltech

Joan Edwards, Samuel Fessenden Clarke Professor of Biology, Williams College

Nelson Jurandi Rosa Fagundes, Associate Professor, Department of Genetics, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul

Lars Figenschou, PhD. The Arctic University of Norway

David Frayer, Prof. Emeritus – Anthropology, University of Kansas

Steven M. Fredman, Associate Professor of Physiology & Neuroscience (retired)

Jonathan Gallant, Professor Emeritus of Genome Sciences, University of Washington

Constantino Macías Garcia, Full-time researcher (professor), Instituto de Ecología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)

Brian Gill, retired natural history curator from Auckland Museum, New Zealand

David Greene, Professor, California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt

Christy Hammer, Associate Professor of Education, Sociology, and Women and Gender Studies, University of Southern Maine

Brian Hanley, Biologist, PhD. UC Davis

Sheila Rutledge Harding, Professor (ret’d), College of Medicine, University of Saskatchewan

Michael Hart, Professor, Simon Fraser University

Wesley Hawthornthwaite, BSc Neuroscience and Mental Health, Carleton University

James Heard, MS Biology, San Francisco State, SF, California, Retired

Jody Hey, Professor, Temple University

Emma Hilton, Developmental Biology, University of Manchester, U.K.

Susan Hoffman, Associate Professor of Biology, Miami University and 40 year member of SSE

Carole Kennedy Hooven, Senior Fellow, AEI; Affiliate, Harvard Psychology.

David Hughes, Teaching Fellow in Marine Biology (retired), Scottish Association for Marine Science

Peter M. Hurley, PHD Widlife Biologist, currently GIS Analyst, Grant County, NM

Christine Janis, Professor Emerita, Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology, Brown University

Maria Garza Jinich, Retired CS professor. National University of Mexico.

Brian Jones, Retired Principal Fish Pathologist, Government of Western Australia

Robert King, Dr, University College Cork, Ireland

Anatoly Kolomeisky, Professor of Chemistry, Rice University

Shawn R. Kuchta, Professor, Biological Sciences, Ohio University

Michael Lattorff, Associate Professor (Parasitology) / University of KwaZulu-Natal, School of Life Sciences, Durban, South Africa

Benoît Leblanc, Lecturer, Sherbrooke University

Edward Lee, SSE member, Williams College

Harry Lusic, Associate Professor of Chemistry, William Peace University

Dan Lynch, Professor of Biology, Emeritus, Williams College

Maya Dyankova Markova, Associate Professor of Biology at the Medical University of Sofia, Bulgaria

Luana S. Maroja, Professor of Biology, Williams College

Edward Matalka, SSE member, Adjunct Professor of Biology, Worcester State University

Nicholas J. Matzke, Senior Lecturer, School of Biological Sciences, University of Auckland

Gregory C. Mayer, Professor of Biological Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Parkside

Stephanie Mayer, Senior Instructor Emerita, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado, Boulder

Marcella McClure, Microbiology retired from Montana State University

Richard J. McNally, Professor of Psychology, Harvard University

Axel Meyer, Lehrstuhl für Zoologie und Evolutionsbiologie, University of Konstanz

William Meyer, Educator, General Science, Mokena Junior High School, Illinois

Neil Millar, Biology textbook author and retired biology teacher

Michael Mills, Associate Professor of Psychology, Loyola Marymount University

Graeme Minto, Biologist, Πανεπεστιμιο Κριτις

Robert Montgomerie, Professor Emeritus of Biology Queen’s University

Greg Murray, Professor Emeritus of Biology, Hope College

Paulo Nadanovsky, Professor of Epidemiology, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro

Raymond Nelson, Biology Educator/North Thurston Public Schools

Howard S. Neufeld, Professor of Biology, Appalachian State University

Judith Totman Parrish, Professor and Dean Emerita/University of Idaho

Laurent Penet, PI in Agricultural Science, INRAe, Guadeloupe

Charles C. Peterson, Ph.D., Retired biologist Copper Mountain College

Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology, Harvard University

David Policansky, PhD, Scholar, US National Research Council, retired.

Chris Pook, Senior Research Fellow; Lead Technologist, The Liggins Institute, The University of Auckland

Anthony M. Poole, Professor, School of Biological Sciences, University of Auckland

Jorge Octavio Juarez Ramirez, PhD Candidate (Biological Sciences, Evolution and Genetics)/Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico

Mary Rasmussen, Professor Emerita, Biomedical and Health Information Sciences, University of Illinois Chicago

Michel Raymond, Evolutionary Anthropology, Institute of Evolutionary Studies, Montpellier, France

Jaime Renart, Retired researcher, molecular and cellular biology, CSIC. Spain

Jacques Robert, Emeritus professor of cancer biology, University of Bordeaux, France

Mel Robertson, Professor Emeritus of Biology, Queen’s University at Kingston, ON, Canada

Rafael L. Rodriguez, Professor, Biological Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

James J. Roper, Professor (retired), ecology, evolution, ornithology, Institute for Tropical Ecology, Panama

Callum Ross, Professor of Organismal Biology and Anatomy, University of Chicago

Claudio Rubiliani, Docteur d’Etat. Honorary MCF Biologie des Organismes. Univ. Aix-Marseille (France)Visiting Professor Duke

Bjørn Ove Sætre, Developmental biology University of Bergen, Norway retired teacher

Lisa Sanders, Ph.D., Genetics, North Carolina State University

David Scadden, Professor, Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology and of Medicine, Harvard University

Julia Schaletzky, Professor of Molecular Therapeutics (Adj.), Dept. of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley

Brandon Schmit, Wildlife Disease Biologist, USDA

Corrie Schoeman, Associate Professor, School of Life Sciences, University of KwaZulu Natal

Garvin Schulz, Dr., Department of Sociobiology/Anthropology, University of Göttingen

Elizabeth Sherman, Professor of Biology, Emerita, Bennington College

David Smith, Emeritus, Department of Biology, Williams College

Flavio S.J, de Souza, Group leader in Developmental Biology, IFIBYNE-CONICET, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina

Robert Paul Spence, Biotechnology company Chief Scientist

Steve Stewart-Williams, Professor of Psychology, University of Nottingham Malaysia

Malcolm Storey, PhD, naturalist retired

Mark Sturtevant, Associate Professor of Practice, Biological Sciences, Oakland University

John P. Sullivan, SSB member, PhD in Zoology, Duke University

Douglas Swartzendruber, Professor Emeritus, Biology, University of Colorado

Costas A. Thanos, Prof. Emer., Dept Biology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece

Keith M. Vogelsang, Professor of Biology, Ivy Tech Community College

Schulte von Drach, Biologist (PhD). Journalist

Graham Wallis, Emeritus Professor, Population genetics and molecular evolution, University of Otago

Philip Ward, Professor Entomology, University of California Davis

Bob Warneke, Jr., BA (’73) and MS (’76) – Biology; Trinity University

Randy Wayne, Associate professor of plant biology, Cornell University

Marcelo Weksler, Professor, Museu Nacional, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Landon Whitby, Chemical Biologist, PhD, The Scripps Research Institute

Mike Zenanko, Director Emeritus, Jacksonville State University

Because it’s Sunday, we get another dollop of photos from John Avise, who continues his series on North American butterflies. John’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Butterflies in North America, Part 12 

This week continues my 18-part series on butterflies that I’ve photographed in North America.  I’m continuing to go down my list of species in alphabetical order by common name.

Mourning Cloak (Nymphalis antiopa), topwing:

Mourning Cloak, underwing:

Mourning Cloak, larvae on a host plant Arroyo Willow (Salix lasiolepis):

Mylitta Crescent (Phyciodes mylitta):

Northern Crescent (Phyciodes cocyta), topwing:

Northern Crescent, underwing:

Northern Pearly-eye (Lethe anthedon), underwing:

Northern White Skipper (Heliopetes ericetorum), topwing:

Northern White Skipper, underwing:

Ocola Skipper (Panoquina ocola) underwing:

Orange Sulphur (Colias eurytheme) underwing:

Orange-barred Sulphur (Phoebis philea), underwing:

by Greg Mayer

As someone interested in history, I am both interested and wary when analogies are drawn among different periods and events in history, especially applying the past to the present day. And, as another prelude, I should note that I have said here before at WEIT that Bret Stephens is wrong about most things. But when he’s right, he’s right, and he’s right about yesterday’s cringe-inducing display of depravity by the erstwhile leaders of the free world, the President and Vice President of the United States. [JAC: You can find Stephens’s piece archived here.] I found Stephens’ historical analogy to the pre-Pearl Harbor meeting between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, which led to the Atlantic Charter, whose principles include that there should be “no aggrandizement, territorial or other” and that “sovereign rights and self-government [shall be] restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them”, very clarifying. Money quote:

If Roosevelt had told Churchill to sue for peace on any terms with Adolf Hitler and to fork over Britain’s coal reserves to the United States in exchange for no American security guarantees, it might have approximated what Trump did to Zelensky.

I got no news today, so I’ll put up some music. This happens one of my favorite jazz solos, and I don’t think I’ve posted it before but came across it on YouTube. It’s a smoking trumpet piece played by Roy Eldridge (1911-1989), nicknamed “Little Jazz” because of his stature. Here he plays with the Gene Krupa Orchestra, and later he played with Artie Shaw’s band.  Unable to form his own big band, Eldredge later confined himself, like Charlie Parker, to small groups.

This rendition of “Rockin’ Chair” is smoking, one of the best trumpet pieces I know. Wikipedia singles it out:

One of Eldridge’s best known recorded solos is on a rendition of Hoagy Carmichael‘s tune, “Rockin’ Chair”, arranged by Benny Carter as something like a concerto for Eldridge. Jazz historian Gunther Schuller referred to Eldridge’s solo on “Rockin’ Chair” as “a strong and at times tremendously moving performance”, although he disapproved of the “opening and closing cadenzas, the latter unforgivably aping the corniest of operatic cadenza traditions.” Critic and author Dave Oliphant describes Eldridge’s unique tone on “Rockin’ Chair” as “a raspy, buzzy tone, which enormously heightens his playing’s intensity, emotionally and dynamically” and writes that it “was also meant to hurt a little, to be disturbing, to express unfathomable stress.”

If you want to hear a very different (but also good) rendition, go here to hear a duo with Louis Armstrong and trombonist Jack Teagarden. This one has vocals.

Regular Mark Sturtevant has sent us a passel of insect and spider photos. Mark’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge his pictures by clicking on them.

I come with another set of pictures of arthropods. Mostly orb-weaver spiders, actually. The pictures were taken in various parks near where I live, which is in Michigan.

Let’s begin with the large bee shown in the first two pictures. I was rather puzzled about the identity of this bee. Although it resembles a bumble bee, it turns out to be a male Eastern Carpenter Bee, Xylocopa virginica. I don’t recall ever seeing a male foraging at flowers, but I do see them hovering around nest entrances. The females are commonly seen out foraging, and are easily recognized by their shiny black abdomen and large all-black head. Female carpenter bees are well known for boring large holes into soft wood, which they provision with pollen for their young in a series of stacked cells. In preparing for this post, I learned that these bees are often not solitary (I thought they were!), but instead the can form small social groups where their duties depend on their age which can be up to three years. Older females are dominant and they perform all duties and most of the egg laying. Younger females do less provisioning and egg laying while tending to guard the nest entrance, and the youngest females pretty much just eat provisions and provide no services. Although I carry multiple degrees in Entomology (it’s a long story), this hobby and posting in WEIT has taught me a lot about the lives of insects.

Now we move on to orb-weaver spiders. There are many species in my area, and many members of this group stay hidden near their web by day. Some of them are cussedly hard to tell apart, but I do believe the first one is a Shamrock Orbweaver, Araneus trifolium. There are two other very similar species, but I rely on differences in the leg banding and markings under the abdomen to suggest this ID.

Next up is a Furrow Orbweaver, Larinioides cornutus. These common spiders are specialists in concealment since by day they usually stay in a tightly woven hide-away in a curled leaf.

The next two pictures are of Spotted Orbweavers, Neoscona crucifera. The first one really really impressed me since it managed to catch a large cicada.

The large and colorful garden spiders, or Argiopes, are always a favorite. These will sit out in the center of their web during the day. Although the other orb-weavers may be found anywhere, the Argiopes seem more patchy in distribution now-a-days, with only certain areas where they are common. The species shown here is the Banded Garden Spider, Argiope trifasciata.

Moving away from spiders, the next picture shows a Great Spreadwing Damselfly, Archilestes grandis, which is the largest damselfly in the U.S. That is not to say that it’s a large insect, but it is the size of a smallish dragonfly and so it is way bigger than all other damsels in the U.S. The linked picture will show you. This is originally a species from the southern portion of the country, but it has moved farther north and they are now common in a certain park near Ann Arbor. I go to this park every year or two with the specific goal of photographing this insect and of course whatever else may show up.

Bringing up the rear are pictures of grasshoppers. First is a mating pair of Differential Grasshoppers (Melanoplus differentialis). It was a little surprising that they could be coaxed onto my finger for this picture.

Some time ago I came across an internet meme that pointed out an amusing pareidolia with a grasshopper, which was that its sternum bore what looks like a lion face with sunglasses. I recognized that the species was a member of the spur-throated subfamily, Melanoplinae (See? My entomology degrees are useful), and the Differential ‘hopper and many other local species belong in it. So the last picture is of two spur-throated grasshoppers, and they each have the feline pattern. The one on the left is the Differential Grasshopper, and the right one is a Red-legged Grasshopper (M. femurrubrum). I expect that Jerry will especially like this last bit! [JAC: Cat faces!]

In closing, on occasion I am asked about the equipment that I use for photography. That really does not matter, although these pictures were generally taken with an old and very worn Canon crop sensor body (t5i), which is cheap these days, and a nice macro lens (Canon 100mm, f/2.8L), but there are less expensive macro lenses that are just as good or even better. If anyone would like to try this form of photography, however, I would suggest that they look into OM system cameras. OM cameras (formerly Olympus) have features that make them especially effective at macrophotography, and if I had a way to do it all over again I would not think twice about switching to that brand. Also, for what you get I believe they tend to be cheaper than other camera models. But it is hard to go wrong with cameras, and you can easily modify a regular lens to be used as a macro lens. What really matters, more than the choice of camera, is the diffuser on the external flash. That is a whole other subject that can take a lot of discussion. I lie awake at night worrying about whether my diffuser could be better.

I swear, NYT columnist Ross Douthat must have a huge publicity machine, because his latest book, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious, is appearing everywhere, usually as excerpts.  The point of the book is to assert that religion’s decline in America is slowing, and that readers having a “God-shaped hole,” denoting a lack of religious meaning in their lives, should not just become religious, but become Christian. (Douthat thinks that Catholicism is the “right” religion, and of course he happens to be Catholic).

And by “believe,” Douthat doesn’t just mean adhering to a watered-down form of Christianity that sees the New Testament as a series of metaphors. No, he really believes the tenets of his faith, including the miracles of Jesus, the Crucifixion and Resurrection, and the existence of Satan and the afterlife. (See my posts on this delusional book here.) It is a sign of the times that this book, which calls for people to embrace claims that are palpably ridiculous and totally unevidenced—unless you take the New Testament literally, which you can’t because it’s wrong and self-contradictory—is getting not only wide press, but approbation.  Even the New Yorker summary and review of the book, which you can read by clicking below (the screenshot links to the archived version here) is pretty mild in its criticism. Author Rothman is a nonbeliever, and gives good responses to Douthat’s “evidence” for God, but at the end says the he “respects [Douthat’s effort to persuade.”  What does that mean? He respects Douthat’s efforts to proselytize people with a divisive and harmful faith, and to believe stuff without evidence? Well, the New Yorker has always been a bit soft on faith (despite the fact that most of its writers are atheists), because some of their rich and educated readers have “belief in belief”.

Rothman’s summary of the book (his words are indented):

“Believe” is different: in it, Douthat proselytizes. His intended readers aren’t dyed-in-the-wool skeptics of the Richard Dawkins variety, who find religion intellectually absurd. His main goal is to reach people who are curious about faith, or who are “spiritual” but not religious. (According to some surveys, as many as a third of Americans see themselves this way.) If you’re in this camp, you might have a general sense of the mystical ineffability of existence, or believe that there’s more to it than science can describe. You might be agnostic, or even an atheist, while also feeling that religion’s rituals, rhythms, and attitudes can enrich life and connect you to others; that its practices draw our attention to what really matters. At the same time, you might not be able to accept the idea that Jesus actually rose again on the third day.

But Douthat needs to persuade the audience that yes, Jesus rose like a loaf of bread, and more:

Douthat argues that you should be religious because religion, as traditionally conceived, is true; in fact, it’s not just true but commonsensical, despite the rise of science. His most surprising, and perhaps reckless, assertion is that scientific progress has actually increased the chances that “religious perspectives are closer to the truth than purely secular worldviews.”

From what I’ve read here and elsewhere, Douthat has two main arguments for religion. The Argument from Increasing God of the Gaps, and the Argument from Personal Experience.

In “Believe,” Douthat rebels against these attempts to adjust the scale of God; he resists both the minimizing God-of-the-gaps approach and the maximizing abstraction proposed by thinkers like Armstrong and Tillich. First of all, he maintains that the gaps are actually widening: from a survey of speculative ideas in physics, neuroscience, and biology, he draws the conclusion that a “convergence of different forms of evidence” actively points toward the existence of a traditional God. Second, he argues that, even in our supposedly secular world, it’s still eminently reasonable to believe in a supernatural God who reaches down to Earth and affects our lives. David Hume, the eighteenth-century philosopher known for his pursuit of empiricism, predicted that, as the world grew more rational and scientific, people would stop having supernatural experiences, which he thought more common among “ignorant and barbarous nations.” Douthat points out that this hasn’t happened. [JAC: No data are given, however, about any decrease over time.] About a third of Americans “claim to have experienced or witnessed a miraculous healing,” he notes, and regular people continue to have mystical experiences of various kinds. (A 2023 survey conducted by Pew Research found that nearly four in ten respondents believed that the dead can communicate with the living.) Religious experience is a “brute fact,” Douthat writes, shared among billions of people, and its “mysteries constantly cry out for interpretation” just as they always have.

Miraculous healing? Talk to me when an amputee regrows a leg, or someone without eyes regains the ability to see. Why can’t God cure ailments that medicine is impotent to cure?

I’ve discussed some of the God of the Gaps arguments made by Douthat, the two most prominent being the “fine-tuning” argument (the physical parameters of the universe were cleverly adjusted to allow our existence) and the consciousness of humans, which Douthat says cannot be explained by science.  Rothman is good at refuting both in brief responses, and I’ll let you read what he wrote. Plus remember that animals like dogs, cats, squirrels, and other primates also appear to be conscious (of course we can’t prove that), but are these other creatures made in God’s image, too?  Rothman makes a good point here:

Throughout “Believe,” the implication is that work at the frontiers of science has increased the amount of mystery in the world by uncovering impenetrable unknowns. But this is misleading. Science has vastly expanded our understanding of how things work, reducing mystery; along the way, it has inevitably shifted the landscape of our ignorance, sometimes drastically. This new landscape can feel unfamiliar; strangeness comes with the territory. But just because we don’t understand something, it doesn’t mean that we face the ultimately mysterious; we’re probably still dealing with the ordinary, earthly unknown. And if science really does hit a hard limit in certain areas, or if it discovers questions that our minds are simply unequipped to answer—what would that show? Only that we don’t know everything. The likely possibility that omnipotence is beyond us in no way suggests that our intuitive religious revelations are correct. If anything, it suggests the opposite.

That of course is the usual argument against “The Argument for God from Ignorance”: throughout history, one baffling phenomenon after another imputed to God has later been found out to be purely naturalistic (lightning, disease, epilepsy, eclipses, and so on).

The single argument by Douthat that Rothman finds somewhat persuasive is that lots of people have had religious or spiritual experiences. Why are they so common unless they’re showing us the presence of a supernatural being?

At any rate, the version of me that exists today found Douthat’s case for faith unpersuasive. But I still enjoyed “Believe,” and found myself challenged by it. Douthat is right to call attention to the “brute fact” of religious experience, which apparently remains pervasive in a supposedly secular age. In 2006, an editorial in Slate argued that Mitt Romney’s Mormonism indicated a kind of mental weakness on his part—his apparent belief in its more outlandish tenets, Jacob Weisberg wrote, revealed in Romney “a basic failure to think for himself or see the world as it is.” But if lots of people have experiences of the supernatural, then can belief in it really be understood, tout court, as proof of their fundamental irrationality? What about the award-winning journalist Barbara Ehrenreich, who, in her book “Living with a Wild God,” described a “furious encounter with a living substance that was coming at me through all things at once”? In her classic “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America,” she certainly saw the world as it was.

Well, many of us atheists, including me, have had spiritual experiences, though not religious ones.  I remember sleeping out in Death Valley, looking up at the fantastic display of stars unsullied by nearby human lights, and feeling drawn out of myself, a tiny speck in a huge universe. (But of course that raises the question about why there are so many celestial bodies without humans?) And I won’t get into the visions I had when I was on psychedelic drugs in college.

We are emotional beings, with emotions surely partly a result of evolution, and once the meme of religion has spread, it’s easy to ascribe intense emotions to religious experience. We are also ridden with delusions: after my cat died, I used to see it out of the corner of my eye.  I’m sorry, but if Jesus/God is so anxious for us to believe in Him/Them (he surely doesn’t want all those nonbelievers to fry forever, as Douthat thinks), why doesn’t he simply appear in a way that cannot be written off as a delusion? (We do have cameras and videotape now.) Carl Sagan himself asked this question years ago.

Further, the religious experiences had by members of different faiths correspond to the different tenets of those faiths. Muslims have dreams and visions of Muhammad, and of course Muhammad himself produced the Qur’an after having a vision of the angel Gabriel, who dictated the book to the illiterate merchant.  So if visions of God tell us that God is real, which God who is envisioned is the real one?  I’m sorry, but I don’t find experiences or visions of God/Jesus convincing given that, if he wished, Jesus could make himself available in an irrefutable way to all of humanity, and presto!, we’d all be Catholics! (He also said that he’d return within the lifetime of those who witnessed his Crucifixion. Did he come back? No dice.)

No, I’m sorry, but I don’t have any respect for the deluded, especially when they insist, as does Douthat, they they have hit on the “true” religion. (Muslims, of course, believe that Islam is the final and true religion.)  Where is Mencken when we need him? The best way to go after someone like Douthat is not with intellectual analysis and respect, as does Rothman, but with all-out satire and mockery.

Still, given the constraints of the New Yorker, Rothman’s review is about as good as it can be.

h/t: Barry

I have two announcements this morning:

a.) First, next Monday, Mar 3 at 12:30 Chicago time (1:30 Eastern time), I am having a 1-1½-hour discussion with DIAGdemocrats  (“DIAG” stands for Democrats with an Informed Approach to Gender. And their slogan is “Liberals guiding our party back to reason and reality.” It’s tailor made for me!) Their “who we are” description is here, and the mission statement here. But there’s a lot of other stuff, including critiques of existing claims and studies involving gender. You can even send emails to your representatives in Congress from the site.

DIAGdemocrats also has a YouTube channel of previous discussions here, an Instagram page here,. and a Facebook page here.

The topic of our discussion is in the headline below, which I believe will link to the discussion on Twitter when you click on it (it will also be archived). We’ll be talking about various things, including the KerFFRFle with the Freedom From Religion Foundation that led to the resignation of Richard Dawkins, Steve Pinker, and I.  But the discussion is likely to be wide-ranging and there will be a Q&A at the end.

As you can tell from the group’s name and the website linked above, it is is dedicated to a rational, science-informed approach to gender issues.

b.) And I want to call attention to this upcoming book edited by Lawrence Krauss; it’ll be available starting July 29 (I believe there will be an audiobook later). Click on the screenshot to go to the Amazon site:

Here’s the Amazon blurb:

An unparalleled group of prominent scholars from wide-ranging disciplines detail ongoing efforts to impose ideological restrictions on science and scholarship throughout western society.

From assaults on merit-based hiring to the policing of language and replacing well-established, disciplinary scholarship by ideological mantras, current science and scholarship is under threat throughout western institutions. As this group of prominent scholars ranging across many different disciplines and political leanings detail, the very future of free inquiry and scientific progress is at risk. Many who have spoken up against this threat have lost their positions, and a climate of fear has arisen that strikes at the heart of modern education and research. Banding together to finally speak out, this brave and unprecedented group of scholars issues a clarion call for change.

I’ve put a list of the authors below. The contents include the second and unpublished part of Richard Dawkins’s essay on sex, a slightly revised version of my essay with Luana Maroja, “The Ideological Subversion of Biology,” plus a bunch of pieces appearing for the first time.  There are six sections as well as an introduction and afterword by Krauss. Keep your eye open for further announcements here or a view of the contents that will likely appear on the Amazon site.

Dorian Abbot

John Armstrong

Peter Boghossian

Maarten Boudry

Alex Byrne

Nicholas A. Christakis

Roger Cohen

Jerry Coyne

Richard Dawkins

Niall Ferguson

Janice Fiamengo

Solveig Lucia Gold

Moti Gorin

Karleen Gribble

Carole Hooven

Geoff Horsman

Joshua T. Katz

Sergiu Klainerman

Lawrence M. Krauss

Anna Krylov Luana Maroja

Christian Ott

Bruce Pardy

Jordan Peterson

Steven Pinker

Richard Redding

Arthur Rousseau Gad Saad

Sally Satel

Lauren Schwartz

Alan Sokal

Alessandro Strumia

Judith Suissa

Alice Sullivan

Jay Tanzman

Abigail Thompson

Amy Wax

Elizabeth Weiss

Frances Widdowson

Today we have backyard botanical photos from Rik Gern of Austin, Texas. Rik’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

The first is a repeat species, adding to pictures I sent you a few years ago.

Here are some scenes from a blossoming Winterberry (Ilex verticillata) that I planted as part of a hedge when I bought my house about sixteen years ago. At the time I didn’t know that it wasn’t native to the region; I just liked the way it looked. Had I known, I probably would have planted something else, but I can’t deny that I’m happy to have it in the back yard.

The next plant is a gangly-looking weed called Henbit Deadnettle (Lamium amplexicaule). It is another non-native plant, but I take no responsibility for this one; it came to my yard uninvited, but not unwelcome. Henbit Deadnettle grows to a few inches in height and is easy to mow no matter how tall it gets. (first two photos below) Here at the tip of the plant (third photo) you can see a few buds getting ready to flower. The flowers aren’t your typical pretty flowers with a symmetrical ring of petals, but they give the plant a splashy, fountain-like look (fourth photo). When I look at the last picture, I like to imagine that it’s an exotic plant about four or five feet tall, and think how thrilled I would be to see such a thing. Then I can look at the original small plant that grows plentifully in the area and still be thrilled to be able to see this example of nature’s variety without even leaving home!

UPDATE:  Carole Hooven called my attention to a paper in Hormones and Behavior, on which Maney is co-author, which is far more explicit about the author’s motivation to depose the hegemony of binary sex.  Carole also tweeted about Maney’s paper:

“This species challenges the practice of flattening nature’s wondrous diversity into two categories, male and female.” White-throated Sparrows are indeed fascinating, challenging stereotypes about sex differences. I learned lots from your explanation of how that works.

But sex…

— Carole Hooven (@hoovlet) February 26, 2025

I had hoped and expected, after the departure of woke editor Laura Helmuth from Scientific American, that the magazine would go back to what it was good at and famous for: presenting solid articles on popular science actually written by scientists. The ideology-imbued science, I thought, would disappear, as readers were canceling their subscriptions.

Sadly, it appears that the magazine may well be creeping back to “progressive science,” at least as judged by the latest biology article I read, as well as a similar critique of binary sex and, as lagniappe, an op-ed promoting gender activism and “affirmative care”.

The good news is that the biology article presents some solid and interesting data on the white-throated sparrow, a bird with a unique system of genetics and mating behavior. The bad news is that the author, neuroscientist Donna Maney of Emory University, couches all her results, and those of her colleagues, as casting aspersions on the binary nature of sex. It’s the usual argument that “things are complicated here, and if we are blinded by the idea that sex is binary, we miss the complicated and interesting stuff.”  In other words, the biology presented is used partly to do down the sex binary.

Click to read (the article is archived here).

The article is long and complex (perhaps too complex for the non-biologist reader), but the phenomenon is quite interesting.  Here are the salient facts (wording is mine):

a.) The North American white-throated sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis) comes in four varieties. There are two sexes (something the author admits but doesn’t emphasize), and each sex has two varieties that differ in color and behavior.

b.) Both males and females come in two flavors, and each sex has roughly 50% of each. Each morph behaves and looks the same whether it’s in males or females.  The “white” morph, shown on the left below, has a white stripe on its head, and, in both males and females, is more aggressive, defending its breeding territories more vigorously than do individuals of the tan morph (right below), which has a tan stripe and spends more of its time bringing food to the offspring.  The diagram below is from a paper by Romanov et al. in BMC Genomics.

(From paper){ Various views of the plumage morphs of the white-throated sparrow. Two morphs are shown: A, the white morph, and B, the tan morph. Morph is absolutely associated with the presence (i.e. ZAL2m/ZAL2 = white) or absence (i.e. ZAL2/ZAL2 = tan) of a chromosomal rearrangement.

c.) The genes for striping differences, as well as for the behavioral differences between morphs, reside on the birds’ second chromosome, and within an inverted section of that chromosome, where the chromosome has broken multiple times and been rearranged.  The white morphs have one copy of the rearranged chromosome and one of the “normal” chromosome, while the tan morphs have two copies of the “normal” chromosome. You can see the difference in the chromosome-2 photo at the bottom left above: in the white morph, the  copies of chromosome 2 are of different configuration because of the rearrangements.

d.) What happens if you get two copies of the rearranged chromosome containing the genes for aggression and white head color? Well, that doesn’t happen, and that’s the interesting part of the story. It turns out that white males will mate only with tan females, and tan males will mate only with white females.  Because of this, the white chromosome can occur only in a single copy.

Note also that, as far as the sexes are concerned, males have two copies of the “sex chromosome” and are ZZ, while females have unlike sex chromosomes and are ZW; this differs from the way sex is determined in humans and many other mammals. The Z and W chromosomes are, like our Xs and Ys, members of a pair, but they are not the second chromosome, which carries the genes for color and behavior. It is not unusual for genes involved in producing sex-specific traits to reside on chromosomes different from the sex chromosomes. Each male in humans, for example, carries genes for other sex-related traits like breasts and vaginas, but they aren’t expressed because they aren’t activated. Even genes involved in producing the human male vs. female reproductive system, like SOX9, DMRT1, NR5A1, and DHH, are spread throughout the genome.  We’ve long known this, and it’s not unexpected, but the author appears to think that this is an unexpected finding.

e.) Because there are two morphs of each sex, and each morph mates with a member of the opposite sex that has the opposite pattern and behavior, the system is stably maintained in this species.  How it evolved is another question, and the author implies it’s a mystery.  I can’t find any speculation about how the system arose in this species, but perhaps those speculations exists somewhere, and perhaps a reader/bird expert can help.  All I can say is now is that this system of sex-morph variability can maintain itself, and, also, the fact that there is an inversion on the second chromosome prevents gene exchange (that normally occurs during gamete formation) between the “normal” and “inverted” chromosomes. Crossing-over between inverted chromosomes, which leads to gene mixing between the two copies of each chromosome, leads to wonky chromosomes that cannot function. This prevention of gene mixing allows the two versions of the second chromosome to diverge evolutionarily and accumulate different genes, explaining why the color and behavioral differences we see reside largely on that chromosome.

There’s a lot more stuff in the article, and some good biology, but the data relevant to this post is above. The system is fascinating and somewhat of an evolutionary puzzle, though Maney and her colleagues are working out which genes are involved in color and behavioral differences, and how they result in differences between the morphs.

Note that there are only two sexes here, not four. Some benighted authors have said that this species has four sexes, but they are deluded. We have a case of two sexes and “polymorphism” (different behaviors and appearances) within each sex.  The author recognizes this, but, as you can see from the big-print heading below, she wants us to know that this system detracts from the importance of the sex binary:

The point is the usual one: “things are complicated here, and can’t be fully understood simply by recognizing that there are just two sexes.”  And that’s true, but nobody thinks that recognizing two sexes brings a stop to further research on any biological system. After all, work on this sparrow had to begin by recognizing that there are two sexes, and then realizing that each of the two sexes comes in two forms.  First, here are quotes showing that the author recognizes that there are two sexes. Bold headings are mine; the indented bits are quotes from Maney’s article:

Recognizing that there are two sexes, not four. Maney adopts the consensus definition of sex: males produce sperm in their testes and females eggs in their ovaries:

This interesting and complex situation has earned this species the nickname “the bird with four sexes.” But to be clear, White-throated Sparrows do not have four different types of gonads. As in other birds, each individual typically has either two testes that produce sperm or a single ovary that produces eggs.

, , , The sex chromosomes, which in birds are known as Z and W, influence whether primordial gonads develop as ovaries or testes. Birds with both the Z and the W typically develop an ovary, whereas birds with two copies of the Z develop testes.

. . . . Although color morphs in White-throated Sparrows are not technically sexes, the standard and supergene-bearing versions of chromosome 2 share features with the human sex chromosomes X and Y, respectively.

. . . . In White-throated Sparrows, we see “masculine” and “feminine” traits distributing themselves in a manner clearly orthogonal to gonadal sex. White-striped birds with ovaries behave in a way that is more masculine than we expect for female songbirds, and tan-striped birds with testes look and behave in a relatively feminine way.

So yes, the author admits that there are two sexes, with each having two varieties.

But despite that, she says that admitting the binary nature of sex somehow inhibits us from studying this system; it “flattens” the diversity.  So throughout her paper there are attempts to show that recognizing that there are two sexes somehow either inhibits research or stifles our interest in how this system evolves.  It does neither; this is pure ideologically-based attempts to do down the palpable fact, which the author recognizes, that there are only two sexes.  As I said, that recognition is the very beginning of an attempt to understand the multi-morph system, and I know of no biologist who would say, “Yes, there are two sexes here. That’s the truth, and we needn’t study anything else or ask further questions. And so we get to this:

Dissing of the sex binary. A few quotes from the author:

Nevertheless, as recent research has shown, this species has much to teach us about the nature of sex variability—the way in which sex-related behaviors are influenced by genes, the complex structure of sex-associated chromosomes and the evolution of sexual reproduction itself. Importantly, this species challenges the practice of flattening nature’s wondrous diversity into two categories, male and female.

Um. . .  well, the wondrous diversity is flattened into four categories: white males, white females, tan males, and tan females. But let’s pass on to more binary-dissing:

Even genes involved in gonadal development and hormone synthesis can be found on most any chromosome, mapping to locations throughout the genome that freely recombine. Each individual inherits a new combination of genetic and epigenetic material, resulting in diversity that defies binary categories.

We’ve known for years that sex-specific genes producing intraspecific or intra-sex variability don’t need to be on the sex chromosomes. There is no “defying binary categories” here.

A few more disses:

In most sexually reproducing species, making an embryo requires two gametes: one egg and one sperm. That binary is clear. But the egg-sperm binary does not apply to the eventual development of that embryo into a sexed body with sex-related behaviors. That development is conceptually separate and decidedly nonbinary in many ways.

This is the “development in sex is complicated, implying that the sex binary is simplistic” argument. Finally, there’s a Big Finish:

The development of sex-related traits is astonishingly diverse not only across species but within them. Every individual, sparrow or human, has masculine and feminine characteristics. That diversity is obscured when we lump individuals into two categories and consider each as a homogeneous group. When we compare the categories “female” and “male,” we often report a “sex difference”—a binary outcome made inevitable by a binary approach. This approach fails to acknowledge the profound overlap between sexes on almost any measure.

White-throated Sparrows help us see past the sex binary by forcing us to acknowledge sources of variability other than sex, which is, in reality, only a small contributor to variability for many species. Diversity and plasticity of phenotypic expression is the norm, particularly for traits that correlate with sex. Sex-related traits are simply not hardwired. Evolutionary biologists believe that this plasticity—like the dazzling diversity of sex-determining molecular pathways—may be adaptive in changing environments. Individuals retaining maximal flexibility in the expression of sex-related traits are better able to adapt quickly to changing environments or, in some cases, may even be able to change their sex.

I’m not sure what the author means by saying “every individual, sparrow or human, has masculine and feminine characteristics”.  Males and females do of course share common traits, like having (usually) five fingers and two legs, but inspection of myself this morning revealed neither a vagina nor breasts.  At any rate, the author is attacking a straw man here and throughout her paper. NOBODY argues that recognizing that there are two sexes in all plants and animals either stifles research or “flattens diversity”.

Once again, the recognition that there are just two sexes is the beginning of research to explain diversity.  This recognition, as Darwin realized, for example, gave rise to his explanation of why there is sexual dimorphism (differences in temperament, behavior and ornamentation between males and females). Hie explanation was sexual selection (Darwin saw two varieties, “combat” and “preference for beauty”). And sexual selection that is the direct result of females investing more in offspring than do males, something that starts with the different gametes.  Note that differences between animal sexes, which involve weapons like antlers, behavior like building bowers, or plumage and display traits, need not reside on the sex chromosome, and in fact cannot because there are simply too many differences between the sexes. The important part, though, is that this inter-sex and interspecific diversity can be understood ONLY as a result of the sex binary, which involves the ability to produce either high-investment eggs or lower-investment sperm.

I won’t go on except to say that perhaps we need a name for the tactic of doing down the sex binary (or pretending it doesn’t exist), by emphasizing both diversity of nature and the complication of sex determination and expression of sex-related traits. I will call it “The Argument from Complication” which says something like this:

“Nature, including the determination and expression of biological sex, is complicated and diverse.
Therefore the sex binary is relatively unimportant, because by itself it can’t explain everything.” 

I’m not sure why the author flaunted this straw man, and I have no idea who the new editor of the journal is. But what is clear is that either the author or the editor, or both, decided to slant what is otherwise an informative article towards criticizing the very important fact that there are two sexes in all plants and animals, and that the defining traits of those two sexes, involving gametes, is both universal and explanatory. If you want to read more about this, see this free article by Richard Dawkins.

Two additional notes. First, this article appears on the website, published yesterday (click to read; I just saw it and haven’t yet); it’s by our old friend Agustín Fuentes, who is making a living attacking the sex binary:

And there is this one, reporting a new study that seems to lack a control (click to read):

An excerpt from the Santora piece:

Suicide attempts among transgender and nonbinary youth jumped by as much as 72 percent from 2018 to 2022 in states that had recently passed laws to curtail their rights. And President Donald Trump took this onslaught to the federal level last month when he signed an executive order to cut federal medical care support for trans people aged 19 and younger, which two federal judges have since temporarily blocked. These political actions affect a set of young people who already had much higher rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicide attempts than their nontransgender peers. Many of the recent state laws ban gender-affirming care—which a 2022 study suggests is a lifeline for many trans youth. In the study, those who received gender-affirming care had 60 percent lower odds of depression and 73 percent lower odds of suicidality over a 12-month follow-up than those who did not.

A growing body of evidence supports the mental health benefits of gender-affirming care for trans youth—including puberty blockers, hormone therapy and, in very rare cases, surgery. Now a new study adds to this evidence: it’s the first of its kind to show that hormone therapy improves overall emotional health among trans youth.

For the new study, published in January in the Journal of Adolescent Health, researchers tracked the emotional health of 315 trans youth aged 12 to 20 for two years after they began using hormone therapy (testosterone or estrogen). Emotional health is a component of mental health that concerns feelings; it shapes how we act in relationships, react to struggles and generally behave in everyday life. The study also tracked appearance congruence, a measure of how much a person’s physical presentation matches their gender identity.

Two points about it.  First, the “new study” doesn’t seem to have a control, so (and I just scanned it) the improvements in emotional health can’t be ascribed to hormone therapy. This is what controls are for! We know that gender dysphoria generally resolves and disappears in 80% of untreated children, so those controls are essential.

Second, the article does not mention the contradictory results in the literature, nor does it mention the famous but unpublished study of Johanna Olson-Kennedy that, over a period of two years (same as above) found contradictory results (the Olson-Kennedy study remains unpublished because the results weren’t ideologically acceptable!). From the NYT:

The doctor, Johanna Olson-Kennedy, began the study in 2015 as part of a broader, multimillion-dollar federal project on transgender youth. She and colleagues recruited 95 children from across the country and gave them puberty blockers, which stave off the permanent physical changes — like breasts or a deepening voice — that could exacerbate their gender distress, known as dysphoria.

The researchers followed the children for two years to see if the treatments improved their mental health. An older Dutch study had found that puberty blockers improved well-being, results that inspired clinics around the world to regularly prescribe the medications as part of what is now called gender-affirming care.

But the American trial did not find a similar trend, Dr. Olson-Kennedy said in a wide-ranging interview. Puberty blockers did not lead to mental health improvements, she said, most likely because the children were already doing well when the study began.

My conclusion from all this: Scientific American is, after a short hiatus, going woke again. Keep your eye on it.

h/t: Robert

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “decide”, came with the note, “Because the Koran is the most overrated book in the history of the written word.”

Jesus is fed up with the contents of Mo’s book (a book apparently dictated to Mo by an angel from Allah), and is making a bulletin board.   (I have indeed read both the Bible and Qur’an, and while both are fictional, the Qur’an (the “final revelation”) is nastier to unbelievers).

Today we have Part VI of Robert Lang’s recent trip to Brazil’s Pantanal region (wetlands). Robert’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

Readers’ Wildlife Photos: The Pantanal, Part VI: Birds

Continuing our mid-2025 journey to the Pantanal in Brazil, by far the largest category of observation and photography was birds: we saw over 100 different species of birds (and this was not even a birding-specific trip, though the outfitter also organizes those for the truly hard core). Here we continue working our way through the alphabetarium of common names.

Crested caracaras, adult and juvenile (Caracara plancus):

A caracara eating another bird (too far gone for me to identify, but perhaps our birding experts recognize it):

This one shows an onlooker waiting its turn. The facial color can change, depending on the bird’s mood (according to Wikipedia) and also reflects the dominance hierarchy, so here, yellow = boss, red = underling:

A chaco chachalaca (Ortalis canicollis). Say that five times fast. Its onomatopoeic name reflects its call—it’s one of the chattiest birds to be heard in the Pantanal:

Chalk-browed mockingbird (Mimus saturninus):

Chestnut-eared aracari (Pteroglossus castanotis). I love the wild coloration on this toucan relative:

Cocoi heron (Ardea cocoi) with a fish (unknown species). They hunt by spearing their prey, then can spend a fair amount of time and effort flipping and playing with the foot so that they can swallow it head-first and not get the heartburn of spine-in-the-gullet:

A cocoi heron flying:

Crane hawk (Geranospiza caerulescens):

Crested oropendola (Psarocolius decumanus). These are weaver birds, building elaborate hanging nests, one of which you can see immediately behind the bird:

More birds to come.

This article was mentioned in a comment by reader Ted Gold, but I thought I would highlight it just to show that when the rubber meets the road, people recognize that, yes, there are just two sexes. This is from the NYT on Feb. 25th.

Click headline to read, or find the article archived here.

An excerpt:

Women outlive men, by something of a long shot: In the United States, women have a life expectancy of about 80, compared to around 75 for men.

This holds true regardless of where women live, how much money they make and many other factors. It’s even true for most other mammals.

“It’s a very robust phenomenon all over the world, totally conserved in sickness, during famines, during epidemics, even during times of starvation,” said Dr. Dena Dubal, a professor of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco.

But if there are more than two sexes, why do articles like this one always accept that there are two, and, in this case, put people in one of the two classes to compare their longevity?  Why are they leaving out all those other sexes that, according to people like Agustín Fuentes and Steve Novella, actually exist? (They are not supposed to be rare, either!)

The article, which by the way is worth reading, though it does not mention evolution (another possible reason), does not refer to members of any other sex. Why not?

You know the answer: there are almost no people who do not fit the gametic definition of male or female, and those people are not members of other sexes. The failure of some Democrats to sign onto this recognition of the obvious is one reason why my party did poorly in the last election.

And yet so-called progressive Democrats and liberals are simply doubling down, as we will see tomorrow when I give a juicy example of resistance to the sex binary from an actual scientist.

Jon Lovett is identified by Wikipedia as

. . . .  an American podcaster, comedian, journalist, and former speechwriter. Lovett is a co-founder of Crooked Media, along with Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor. All three formerly worked together as White House staffers during the Obama administration. Lovett is a regular host of the Crooked Media podcasts Pod Save America and Lovett or Leave It. As a speechwriter, he worked for both President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton when she was a United States senator and a 2008 presidential candidate.

And of course you know who Bill Maher is.  In the ten-minute talk argument below, Lovett and Maher discuss issues of kids with gender dysphoria, including these questions:

a.) Can schools hide a child’s desire to transition sex roles from the parents?

b.) Are there social influences that can promote children to want to change gender roles beyond “feeling like you’re in the wrong body.”

c.) Can the government be allowed to ban “gender-affirming care”?

d) Are children dying (presumably by suicide) because they aren’t allowed to transition?

Lovett actually comes off worse here, mainly because he’s spouting Biden-era dogma about sex and making statements that are scientifically dubious. However, I have to call out Maher near the beginning when he says “Obviously sex is more complicated than just two sexes.”  Yes, sex is complicated, but there are just two sexes. This is the mistake I discussed the other day.

Maher also conflates gender dysphoria with sexual attraction. But in the main, Maher makes some good points, and above all emphasizes that these are questions to be debated, not quashed by “progressives” who slander everyone trying to discuss them as “transphob” or “bigots”.

Maher calls the social conditioning of gender-dysphoric kids “entrapment”, which he defines as “suggesting that people do something that they are not going to do,” or “Putting an idea in someone’s head that wouldn’t be there otherwise.” (In this case, the idea is that the child/adolescent is trapped in the wrong body.)

Lovett, in contrast denies the prevalence of social influence on transitioning, while Maher takes Abigail Shrier’s view that many (but not all) children who decide they are in the wrong body are pushed to transition by peers, doctors, and teachers.  As he says, premature transitioning is medically dangerous and perhaps superfluous, not to mention an issue that can hurt Democrats who support it out of virtue signaling. Maher: “To take that risk at that age, before you know shit about anything. . . ”

Lovett makes the familiar but incorrect argument that without gender-affirming care, many kids would die.  He draws an analogy with cardiology, in which heart surgeons sometimes screw up during surgery and their patients die. But that’s a bogus argument because heart surgeons operate (and patients consent) if the consequences of not having surgery are dire. The difference is that we have enough experience to know the risks and benefits of heart surgery.

But this is not the case for gender dysphoria. Withholding hormones and surgery from kids who are dysphoric does not as often touted, leead to depression and death. (“Do you want a dead son or a live daughter?, some say.)  Yet studies show that about 80% of gender-dysphoric children who are not driven to take hormones and surgery resolve as gay (no medical dangers there!) or even cis.  That is a strong argument against the kind of “gender-affirming care” that puts dysphoric kids on a one-way escalator leading first to puberty blockers and then to hormone treatment and/or surgery.

Maher also seems to know more about the recent science than does Lovett, mentioning the ten-year Olson-Kennedy study showing that puberty blockers, touted by ideologues like Lovett as essential to saving lives, do not in fact improve the well being of gender-dysphoric childrene. From the NYT:

The doctor, Johanna Olson-Kennedy, began the study in 2015 as part of a broader, multimillion-dollar federal project on transgender youth. She and colleagues recruited 95 children from across the country and gave them puberty blockers, which stave off the permanent physical changes — like breasts or a deepening voice — that could exacerbate their gender distress, known as dysphoria.

The researchers followed the children for two years to see if the treatments improved their mental health. An older Dutch study had found that puberty blockers improved well-being, results that inspired clinics around the world to regularly prescribe the medications as part of what is now called gender-affirming care.

But the American trial did not find a similar trend, Dr. Olson-Kennedy said in a wide-ranging interview. Puberty blockers did not lead to mental health improvements, she said, most likely because the children were already doing well when the study began.

“They’re in really good shape when they come in, and they’re in really good shape after two years,” said Dr. Olson-Kennedy, who runs the country’s largest youth gender clinic at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles.

Although we the American taxpayers funded this study through the NIH, the results have not yet been released. Why? Because they don’t support the dogma that puberty blockers save lives. Also from the NYT:

In the nine years since the study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, and as medical care for this small group of adolescents became a searing issue in American politics, Dr. Olson-Kennedy’s team has not published the data. Asked why, she said the findings might fuel the kind of political attacks that have led to bans of the youth gender treatments in more than 20 states, one of which will soon be considered by the Supreme Court.

“I do not want our work to be weaponized,” she said. “It has to be exactly on point, clear and concise. And that takes time.”

This is shameful. To suppress important data because they “might fuel political attacks” or go against “progressive” ideology is totally unethical.  Maher knows about that study, as do many of us; but apparently Lovett either does not or deliberately ignores it.

Maher also makes the point that insistence on possibly harmful medical intervention without knowing its long-term effects is a stand that can—and probably has—harmed Democrats. (Yes, some Republicans take this stand because they really don’t want trans people around, but you can take that stand for the right reasons, too.)

Maher’s point, with which I agree completely, is that you don’t go ahead with possibly harmful medical treatment until you know what the harms actually are. 

Without further ado, here is the debate, which is mildly acrimonious:

We have two contributors today, each with a few photos. Once again I’ll ask readers to send in their wildlife photos, as, save for Robert Lang’s Brazil pictures, we’re at an end.  Readers’ captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Our first trio is from Sharon Diehl in Colorado:

Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus)  Pair atop Transform Tower #199, Wally Toevs Pond, Walden Wildlife Habitat, Boulder, Colorado. I have photographed this mated pair for years at Walden Wildlife Habitat, where they hang out atop the transform towers that overlook Wally Toevs Pond. They aren’t always successful breeders, but they keep at it, together year after year. Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis)  hunting at my backyard bird feeders–where, alas, it caught a bird–at least it was a Starling. I know the raptors have to eat, too: Downy Woodpecker (Dryobates pubescens) on the Hornbeam tree I believe, waiting for the flicker to leave the suet feeder–my backyard, Boulder, Colorado:

. . . and more eagles from Mark Shifman

Obviously I’m not a biologist and these are backyard bird photos. This series is a bald eagle on the Cumberland River.