China's One Child Policy

There is a new study out that looked at the sex ratio in China and how it has been affected by the one child policy. An accompanying commentary had some interesting information.

Rapid population growth is an unforgiving task master. Even with the one child policy—as a result of the high birth rate a generation before—China still has one million more births than deaths every five weeks. The Chinese State Council launched the policy in 1979, "so the rate of population growth may be brought under control as soon as possible." However, the root cause of the policy lay back in the 1960s with Mao Zedong's belief that "the more people, the stronger we are"—an ideology that prevented China from developing the highly successful voluntary family planning programmes that countries such as South Korea and Taiwan had put in place in the 1960s.

Deng Xiao-ping, the acknowledged architect of China's contemporary economic miracle, was a major sponsor of the 1979 policy. He said that unless the birth rate fell rapidly, "we will not be able to develop our economy, and raise the living standards of our people." Economists and demographers now recognise that a falling birth rate offers a demographic dividend, as the economically productive proportion of the population grows more rapidly than the general population. Without a rapid decline in fertility, China's economy would not have grown by 7-8% a year over the past decade; such growth has lifted an unprecedented 150 million people out of abject poverty....

Undoubtedly, the one child policy caused great individual pain and it has been heavily criticised. For people in the United States especially, the idea that society's long term interests could ever be more important than individual rights was anathema. A veritable media industry has arisen in the US criticising the one child policy, although it chooses to overlook the tens of millions of coercive pregnancies in other countries where family planning and legal abortion are not available. The Bush administration refuses to fund the United Nations Population Fund because it works in China, even though this fund has never supported the one child policy.

The Chinese demographic crisis arose because between 1960 and 1973 the population grew by 2% or more each year. Today, the whole of sub-Saharan Africa, along with Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Philippines, have population growth rates of at least 2%. Between now and 2050 the population of Niger, West Africa, is projected to grow fivefold from 14 to 53 million. As the World Bank acknowledges, without a rapid decline in fertility, tens of millions of Nigeriens will be uneducated, unemployed, and desperately poor; they will either starve or be fed by Western humanitarian aid.

The birthrate has fallen in Western countries, something both secular and Church leaders (pdf) have noticed.

I'm inclined to take an Ecclesiastes view: there is a time to multiply like rabbits, and a time to refrain from multiplying--as much.

(There was a discussion of birthrate at the Bloggernacle Times almost a year ago.)

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Skepticism Kick-Off

I recently finished reading Carl Sagan's book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. In the book Sagan extolls the virtues of the scientific method and how its use helps us to overcome human biases in the search for truth. Along the way he discusses topics ranging from alien abductions to the atomic bomb to the need for better science education. His discussion of midieval beliefs about demons and the ensuing witch hunts is sobering. Perhaps the book is best known for Sagan's "Baloney Detection Kit," a set of principles and logical rules to keep in mind when investigating claims.

One of the most prominent leading light's of the modern skeptical movement is James Randi, a former magician who has devoted his life to uncovering deception (honest and dishonest.) Then there is Michael Shermer, who writes a column in Scientific American and is the founding publisher of Skeptic Magazine and the executive director of the Skeptics Society.

I've also enjoyed listening to a podcast called "The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe" (available free at iTunes). Topics of discussion run the gamut: aliens, conspiracy theories, creationism, alternative medicine, political correctness, astrology, faith healers, scientific discoveries, and so forth.

The goal of all of the above is to separate truth from fiction, and science from pseudoscience, as best as is humanly possible. In many ways it is a commendable effort; we are constantly bombarded with messages that claim to represent truth, so we need ways to protect ourselves from con-men, determine what public policies should be supported, and just plain figure out what the truth is.

Of course the tools of skepticism are also often turned against religion. In a forthcoming series of posts I plan to discuss skepticism and its intersection with religion--ours especially. I have not written the posts yet, and right now I only have a rough outline of the material I want to cover. Hopefully it will be an exercise worth doing, and worth reading.

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How Many Planets?

It is not official yet, but it's looking like we will soon say that there are 12 planets in our solar system. The status of Pluto has been under debate for some time and, as I understand it, the choice is to either demote Pluto or add more planets.

The Bad Astronomer explains.

I'm sure this can only mean good things for astrology.

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The Spawning of a New Lifeform

Evolution skeptics sometimes pose mocking questions like, "When has a dog ever produced something that is not a dog?" The foundation of such a question is flawed, but amazingly we can now say that such a thing has happened!

A few days ago Carl Zimmer highlighted a paper that just came out in Cell. Canine transmissible venereal tumor (CTVT) in an infectious tumor that is spread in dogs by sexual contact, as well as biting and sniffing. It has been known for years that infectious viruses can cause tumors, but that is not the case here. The agents of CTVT transmission are the tumor cells themselves. When scientists looked at tumor DNA, they found that it did not match that of host dogs. Furthermore, all of the tumors examined were closely related genetically. The scientists estimate that the tumor arose in wolves or east Asian dogs somewhere between 200 and 2500 years ago.

So essentially this dog tumor seems to have become its own parasitic lifeform. That's way cool if you ask me!

Abstract:

The transmissible agent causing canine transmissible venereal tumor (CTVT) is thought to be the tumor cell itself. To test this hypothesis, we analyzed genetic markers including major histocompatibility (MHC) genes, microsatellites, and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in naturally occurring tumors and matched blood samples. In each case, the tumor is genetically distinct from its host. Moreover, tumors collected from 40 dogs in 5 continents are derived from a single neoplastic clone that has diverged into two subclades. Phylogenetic analyses indicate that CTVT most likely originated from a wolf or an East Asian breed of dog between 200 and 2500 years ago. Although CTVT is highly aneuploid, it has a remarkably stable genotype. During progressive growth, CTVT downmodulates MHC antigen expression. Our findings have implications for understanding genome instability in cancer, natural transplantation of allografts, and the capacity of a somatic cell to evolve into a transmissible parasite.

(FYI, the tumor is derived from histiocytes, which as far as I can tell is just another name for macrophages.)

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Nephite Genetics: Moving the Discussion Forward

There has been another flare-up of discussion of the DNA:Book of Mormon issue. Dave at DMI has a discussion on some of the latest. I think he makes some good points, and a few of the comments have some good points as well.

Additionally, Simon Southerton has updated his main response page. The most noteworthy change has been item #7. It used to state:

In 600 BC there were probably several million American Indians living in the Americas. If a small group of Israelites, say less than thirty, entered such a massive native population, it would be very hard to detect their genes today. However, such a scenario does not square with what the Book of Mormon plainly states and with what the prophets have taught for 175 years.

This statement has recently been turned against him, and may be why it has been removed.

General Comments

I'm rooting for the apologists, but let me put on my curmudgeon hat for a moment. The general discussion seems to be at a stalemate. The critics point out the lack of DNA evidence and view it as a strike against the Book of Mormon. Apologists conceed the science, but argue that the founding population was small and therefore we should not expect to find DNA evidence. The principle argument at the moment seems to be over how the Book of Mormon should be interpreted in regard to the success of the founders' reproduction and the inter-mixing with natives.

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But I'm not yet convinced that we should not (in theory) expect to find DNA evidence. Most of the discussion has focused on mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosomes. Those have been studied first because they are easiest to deal with, but a Y chromosome is only 1/46 of the male genome (by chromosome count). It is easy for me to believe that the few Y chromosomes and mitochondrial lineages that would have been introduced by the Nephites did not make it. It is harder for me to believe that no trace of the other chromosomes should be expected to have survived.

This is not to say that those traces should be easy to spot, but that is a technical/sampling issue. DNA recovery methods are improving and whole-genome sequencing is getting faster and cheaper. The resolution of the global genetic structure is going to keep improving which will make spotting non-Asian traces easier. On what grounds are we to believe that no Nephite/Lamanite traces exist?

I have not read Southerton's book, and I haven't read all of the commentary yet, but so far I have not seen anybody put up any back-of-the-envelope calculations as to what we ought to find. What I think we need are some general calculations under different assumptions (including known history) to give us some idea of what kind of boundaries the probablilites have. For the sake of argument, let's say that each founding Nephite/Lamanite chromosome had five theoretically identifiable markers. What kind of assumptions would lead to complete extinction of all of the markers today, and are those assumptions reasonable?

Yes, I know that the details of history and the storyline of the Book of Mormon are fuzzy, but I think such an exercise is needed. I think it would lend greater credibility to assertions that we should not expect to find Nephite/Lamanite DNA and it might also help guide us in interpreting the Book of Mormon. For example, it seems to me that having the Nephites/Lamanites intermixing with natives from the get-go has much different implications for expected findings than if the Nephites and Lamanites remained mostly separate from any surrounding groups.

Unfortunately I am not the person to do this. I think I have a reasonable grasp on population genetics concepts, but I don't have any real training in it, and I would really be out of my league in trying to generate any basic models. I'll be watching with interest to see if anybody takes on the task.

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Sinking the Ships of Tarshish

Yesterday I browsed through the most recent FARMS Journal of Book of Mormon Studies (Volume 14 Issue 2, 2005) and noticed the article, "'Upon All the Ships of the Sea, and Upon All the Ships of Tarshish': Revisiting 2 Nephi 12:16 and Isaiah 2:16." [pdf, html]

The Book of Mormon renders this Isaiah passage a little differently from the King James Version, and a footnote to the 2 Nephi passage states:

"The Greek (Septuagint) has 'ships of the sea.' The Hebrew has 'ships of Tarshish.' The Book of Mormon has both, showing that the brass plates had lost neither phrase."

I remember when I was a missionary that on at least one occasion I cited this passage in support of the divine origin of the Book of Mormon, and it's been in my mental bin of positive evidences since. It looks like I will now have to move it to the "questionable" bin. The article explains that the scriptural footnote appears to be based on Sidney Sperry's reasoning but that it glosses over some problematic details.

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My first skim of the article put me in a sour mood and I expected to have negative things to write about it. It wasn't the fact that a preconception was put into question (though that isn't necessarily fun), but more the apologetic approach. Having read it all the way through I feel better about it. I may need to read it again to fully digest it, but overall I like the article. Below I discuss a criticism, a mixed criticism/compliment, and a compliment.

Criticism: The first endnote states in part:

We began discussing the topic of this article many years ago. Our determination to finish and publish this article was motivated, in part, by two relatively recent publications that employ Isaiah 2:16 // 2 Nephi 12:16 as part of their authors' efforts to raise questions about the means by which the Prophet Joseph Smith brought forth the Book of Mormon.

To me this translates as "We've known about this for a while, but we were worried that it would weaken faith and people might run out of the room screaming. But since critics are on to it we are forced to discuss it." Maybe that's a little cynical, but my point is that this kind of stuff should be brought out regardless of the critics' awareness of it. To do otherwise is to allow us to collectively walk around with our fly open, hoping that nobody else will notice.

Mixed: The conclusion states:

...we have observed that some Latter-day Saints blithely cite 2 Nephi 12:16 as a tangible vindication of Joseph Smith's prophetic call without sufficient consideration of the complexities involved in dealing with the ancient Hebrew and Greek versions of this verse. Furthermore, we are concerned that Sperry's explanation has been too readily and uncritically accepted by Latter-day Saints and that 2 Nephi 12:16 footnote 16a in the current edition of the Book of Mormon continues to encourage the oversimplification of this issue.

My criticsm here is the reference to uncritical acceptance by Latter-day Saints. The vast majority of Latter-day Saints are not informed enough to think critically about the issue, nor would I say that critical evaluation of scriptural guides--particularly those printed in the scriptures--is encouraged. My compliment is for putting the blame where it should be (if not as clearly as I think it should be): the scriptural footnote and, to a lesser extent, the Old Testament CES manual (mentioned earlier in the article).

Compliment: Even when I was grumpier about the article, I planned on giving FARMS full kudos for publishing it. Not only does it knock a (popular?) argument down a few pegs, but one that is printed in the scriptures. It shows that FARMS is willing to print less-than-rosy information, and I think they are to be commended for it. I think that this is a model article: honest and straight scholarship with assumptions clearly marked.

I don't expect that this article will be the last word on the issue; I would not be surprised if someone (like Donald Parry) puts forth arguments--perhaps convincing--in defense of Sperry's line of reasoning. But even if this does mark the death of that particular argument, it may open doors to better understanding Joseph's translation process, and I tend to think that is a good thing.

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Book Review: The Whole Shebang

The Whole Shebang: A State-of-the-Universe(s) Report, by Timothy Ferris

Cosmology--the study of the origin and structure of the universe--is a topic that can seem forbidding. Full of counter-intuitive concepts best understood with mathematics, and covering time and distances unimaginably removed from our planet, it is easily brushed off as irrelevant speculation. To make matters worse, popular culture and science fiction often use scientific-sounding terms like "big bang," "quantum mechanics," "relativity" or "dark matter" in a way that confuses rather than enlightens the average person. The Whole Shebang cuts through a lot of the garbage and explains what the big bang is all about.

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Timothy Ferris tells the story of how the current cosmological model came to be. His general approach is to explain the observations that led to current thinking as well as to touch on alternative ideas and the basis for them. Along the way we get glimpses into how science works and the personalities behind the discoveries. He writes that "the line dividing fact from fancy is not always as clear as in other fields." (p. 12) Yet in spite of being introduced to contradicting views or data, I still felt that I had a sense for where the more solid footing lay. His even-handed approach extends to more philosophical areas as well. For example the final chapter, which discusses the meaning of cosmology for God (his answer: cosmology tells us nothing about God) and some of the arguments for and against him, contains this statement: "...when the cosmological arguments propounded by atheists are subjected to reasoned criticism, they fare no better than the comparable arguments of believers." (p.310)

The reading is not all easy going; a few of the chapters in the middle felt like I was reading the scientific equivalent of Isaiah. However I thought that most of the book was interesting and understandable.

While reading this book I began to realize how much knowledge I take for granted everyday. It was only in the mid-1920's that Edwin Hubble determined that galaxies composed of individual stars existed outside the Milky Way. Now we receive stunning images of deep space from the telescope named after him, we have put men on the moon, and we've sent probes to study close-up what to us are specks in the sky. All of this, and we have not even scratched the surface of exploration.

You can read a article-length summary of the book here. Also, one whole chapter is available here.

Finally, here are a few passages that I enjoyed.

The empirical spirit on which the Western democratic societies were founded is currently under attack, and not just by such traditional adversaries as religious fundamentalists and devotees of the occult. Serious scholars claim that there is no such thing as progress and assert that science is but a collection of opinions, as socially conditioned as the weathervane world of Paris couture. Far too many students accept the easy belief that they need not bother learning much science, since a revolution will soon disprove all that is currently accepted anyway. In such a climate it may be worth affirming that science really is progressive and cumulative, and that well-established theories, though they may turn out to be subsets of larger and farther-reaching ones--as happened when Newtonian mechanics was incorporated by Einstein into general relativity--are seldom proved wrong. As the physicist Steven Weinberg writes, "One can imagine a category of experiments that refute well-accepted theories, theories that have become part of the standard consensus of physics. Under this category I can find no examples whatever in the past one hundred years." Science is not perfect, but neither is it just one more sounding board for human folly. (p.13)

One product of the interaction between cosmology and daily life is the Declaration of Independence. Impressed by the elegant, clockwork precision of planetary motions revealed in Netwon's laws, Western thinkers of a liberal bent dismissed God from his old role of personal intervention--since his services were no longer required to move the planets around--while retaining the concept of God as Creator of the universe. Having done so, they increasingly turned their attention to the study of nature as a way of appreciating God's marvelous design. From this concentration on natural law it was a short step to John Locke's assertion that there are also natural laws that address human beings and their governance. The thrust of these laws is, as Locke put it, that "the natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of Nature for his rule." By the late eighteenth century Locke's ideas were so much in the air as to be echoed by Thomas Jefferson in the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence: When Jefferson wrote of "the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle" a people, he meant that human equalitiy and the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are natural laws, based in nature as are Newton's law of gravity.
(p. 19-20)

Trouble brews...whenever scientists confuse constraining a phenomenon with explaining it. If they think they have explained it by showing it to be necessary to life, they may be discouraged from seeking a deeper and more productive explanation. This has already happened. The phenomenon in question was the isotropy of the universe--the fact that it looks the same in all directions....In 1973, Stephen Hawking and Barry Collins...invoked the anthropic principle to "explain" cosmic isotropy by noting that if the universe were not highly isotropic it would have been difficult for stars and planets to form and, therefore, for life to exist. Fortunately, this argument was not accepted as final, and soon thereafter, isotropy was accounted for in a much more natural and elegant fashion, as resulting from inflation. So we need to be careful that anthropic constraints don't blind us to deeper explanations. If, for instance, the value of the gravitational constant is not an accident but the inevitable consequence of a deep natural structure to be revealed by superstring or some other theory, the anthropic principle will at best have been a red herring when it comes to understanding gravity. (p. 300)

Quoting cosmologist James Hartle:

History becomes predictive and testable when we predict that further present records will be consistent with those already found. Texts yet to be discovered are predicted to be consistent with the story of Caesar....In such ways history becomes a predictive science. (p. 256-257)

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I.D. in the News

Since the Kitzmiller decision in Dover, PA the hub-bub over intelligent design has quieted somewhat. It's back in the news today because of primary elections for the Kansas Board of Education. Most recently the board has favored including language (aided by the Discovery Institute) that would call for evidence against evolution to be taught. Although sounding open minded and fair, it is seen by many scientists as just another method to sneak ID into the class. (One ID supporter apparently admitted as much.) Over the years the progression has looked like this in response to court decisions:

creationism --> scientific creationism --> intelligent design --> teach the evidence for and against

[Update: It looks like the ID-friendly board members will now be in the minority.]


So while we're on the topic, I'll just point out a few other things.

1. Barbara Forrest has an online article desribing her experience as an expert witness in the trial last fall.

2. John Rennie, the editor of Scientific American, has a post on why I.D. is bad science even on its own terms.

3. A post on The Panda's Thumb announced an upcoming meeting at Cold Spring Harbor called "Engineering Principles in Biological Systems," and rightly pointed out that the I.D. folks ought to be all over a meeting like that--that is, if they are serious about their claims. The post ellicited this comment from someone who claims to be in the field of bio-medical engineering.

The issue is, at least in my undergrad university we were first trained in engineering and biology/medicine seperately, then trained to put the two together. So I learned to think like an engineer before I learned to apply that thinking to biological and medical issues. Engineers are, of course, designers. When looking at anything, we are trained to ask “why is it designed like this”. This becomes extremely frustrating when dealing with biological systems. This question is useful in many instances. But for biolgical systems an annoyingly large amount of the time there is no answer to the question. It is how it is because of some random thing that means it couldn’t have been any other way. It is the exact opposite of human design, and it makes the human designers I know extremely frustrated. It seems very hard for engineers to accept this, it goes against everything I was trained and it appears what others I know were trained as well. But it is painfully obvious when looking at biological systems in any sort of detail, and is something we have all had to come to terms with.

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