Scientific Advisors to the Prophet

Discover Magazine has an article, How to Teach Science to the Pope, that highlights a little known organization in the Vatican called the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

Though it is virtually unknown among laypeople, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences is an independent and remarkably influential body within the Holy See. Over the years its membership roster has read like a who’s who of 20th-century scientists (including Max Planck, Niels Bohr, and Erwin Schrödinger, to name a few), and it currently boasts more than 80 international academicians, many of them Nobel laureates and not all of them Catholic—including the playfully irreligious physicist Stephen Hawking.

The academy serves an advisory role to Catholic leadership, and some scientific work is done under its auspices.

In 1992 John Paul II told the members that “the purpose of your academy is precisely to discern and to make known, in the present state of science and within its proper limits, what can be regarded as an acquired truth or at least as enjoying such a degree of probability that it would be imprudent and unreasonable to reject it.”

I wonder if our Church could use a similar organization--maybe an appendage to Correlation. Given how advancing science touches on Church policies and doctrines, it would be nice to know that the Brethren get good information to inform their decisions. You could make a case that BYU can serve that purpose; I wonder how often anybody in the basic sciences are contacted by Church headquarters for information or advice. (Steve P., got any stories?)

My guess is that when Church leaders feel a need, an ad hoc committee is formed involving GAs with the appropriate background and other prominent trusted professionals. Back in the 1970s James O. Mason--later the head of the CDC, and even later a Seventy--served as the Church Commissioner of Health and advised the First Presidency on certain health issues. I have no idea whether such a position still exists or not.

The Church Scientific Advisory Committee--I won't hold my breath, but I can dream.

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Measles Up in the U.S.

The CDC released a report this week detailing an increase in measles cases this year. From January to July there have been 131 cases all around the U.S. One hundred twenty three of those are U.S. residents and 112 were unvaccinated--63 of them for religious or philosophical reasons.


The report reminds us of the importance of immunization.

In the United States, measles caused 450 reported deaths and 4,000 cases of encephalitis annually before measles vaccine became available in the mid-1960s (1). Through a successful measles vaccination program, the United States eliminated endemic measles transmission (1). Sustaining elimination requires maintaining high MMR vaccine coverage rates, particularly among preschool (>90% 1-dose coverage) and school-aged children (>95% 2-dose coverage) (7). High coverage levels provide herd immunity, decreasing everyone's risk for measles exposure and affording protection to persons who cannot be vaccinated. However, herd immunity does not provide 100% protection, especially in communities with large numbers of unvaccinated persons. For the foreseeable future, measles importations into the United States will continue to occur because measles is still common in Europe and other regions of the world. Within the United States, the current national MMR vaccine coverage rate is adequate to prevent the sustained spread of measles. However, importations of measles likely will continue to cause outbreaks in communities that have sizeable clusters of unvaccinated persons.

It's also important to remember that vaccination does not always confer immunity; a certain percentage of vaccinated people fail to mount a protective immune response. In fact, recently a co-worker told me that they had to get the MMR vaccine as an adult because even though they were vaccinated as a child, lab tests failed to find antibodies against measles.

MMWR Weekly: August 22, 2008 / 57(33);893-896

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The Science Behind the Anthrax Investigation

A Trained Eye Finally Solved the Anthrax Puzzle

The New York Times has a nice article on the scientific end of the anthrax investigation. After missing them using standard methods, scientists found that the spores used in the attacks contained several low-frequency mutants that were matched to Ivins' flask. Since Ivins was only one of a number of people with access to the flask, the science ends there. More interesting to me was that the FBI divided up the work to keep the assisting labs in the dark, just in case the culprit was working on the investigation.

As an aside, I've seen others complain about this before, but I will bring it up anyway. When journalists write about the sequencing of a genome, why are they so fond of using the word "decode"? According to my count, the second page of the story uses a form of the word seven times. Why can't they use the word that scientists use: sequence? The scientists were not decoding anything; they were determining the sequence that makes up the code. It's like saying that a doctor diagnosed a patient, when he really only took a history, performed a physical exam, and ordered lab tests.

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Another Nail in Lamarck's Coffin

Last month I did a post on the role of E. coli in defeating the notion of Lamarckian evolution. I mentioned that there have been attempts to revive Lamarckism, specifically for bacteria. Essentially, there was experimental evidence that suggested that when bacteria are under stressful conditions, they can increase their mutation rate in order to increase their chance of hitting on a helpful mutation.

This week's Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences has a paper dealing with this topic. Here is the abstract (but the full article is free to read):

Several bacterial systems show behavior interpreted as evidence for stress-induced mutagenesis (adaptive mutation), a postulated process by which nongrowing cells temporarily increase their general mutation rate. Theoretical considerations suggest that periodic stress-induced general mutagenesis would not be advantageous in the long term, due to the high cost of deleterious mutations. Alternative explanations have been tested for very few of the systems used as evidence for stress-induced mutation. In one prominent system, mutants resistant to rifampicin (Rif^R; rpoB; RNA polymerase) accumulate in cell populations that “age” on solid medium with little net growth. Mutant accumulation was initially attributed to stress-induced general mutagenesis in nongrowing cells. Evidence is presented that these Rif^R mutants accumulate because they grow faster than parent cells during the aging period. Direct tests revealed no increase in the frequency of other mutant types during the aging period.

Marie Wrande, John R. Roth, and Diarmaid Hughes. Accumulation of mutants in “aging” bacterial colonies is due to growth under selection, not stress-induced mutagenesis. PNAS 2008 105:11863-11868

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Facts and Presidential Politics

I've avoided partisan politics on this blog and will continue to do so. However, with the presidential election approaching, debate over the candidates and their proposals is increasing--and as rhetoric increases, truth is often a casualty.

My favorite resource for separating fact from fiction is FactCheck.org. I have added their RSS feed to the sidebar, and I anticipate keeping it there until the election. At the very least, I hope to stay above the sleazy smear tactics, lies, and plain stupidity that seem to circulate at election time.

Happy voting.

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BYU Studies on The God Delusion

The latest BYU Studies (Vol. 47 No. 1) contains a review of The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. The article is "The God Delusion: Selling the Soul of Science for a Pot of Message," by Steven C. Walker.

Let's start with my favorite part of the review.

I do not suppose Dawkins could ever agree that I have seen what I have seen, even though I am perfectly willing to agree he has not seen what he has not. Even as agenda-driven a thinker as this deliberately blindered scientist might be, I would hope he might agree that negative evidence can be less persuasive than positive evidence. Even a scientist might admit, were he willing to think about it beyond his usual dismissive range, that the experience of a person who claims to have experience with another Person does more to establish the existence of that Person than the lack of experience of another person does to deny it.

It does seem that some critics of religion don't have the capacity to even imagine why intelligent people believe in God. For many that belief is ultimately rooted in some kind of religious experience that is in turn rooted deep in the heart, and I think it is unfair and unrealistic to expect such people to betray that experience based on a few arguments, however compelling they may seem. After all, we don't know what we don't know.

Having said that, overall I am not wild about this review for several reasons.

1. There is much lamenting about how little Dawkins knows about theology. However, what bearing theology has on the issue or how it refutes Dawkins is not made clear. It seems to me that the best theology can do for you is to put a particular belief into a context of surrounding beliefs that make it seem more reasonable and respectable. You may be able to paint a pretty picture with theology, but that does nothing to establish whether such beliefs are grounded in reality. You may explain to Dawkins all the theological reasons for the death and resurrection of Jesus, but that does nothing to establish his existence or the many miraculous things attributed to him.

2. I don't think that Walker is entirely fair with his quotations of Dawkins. Having returned the book to the library, I can't thoroughly check the quotes, but let's take one example that I dug up. Walker wrote:

When we hint that it appears to us sometimes that scientists could be the worst group in the world to look to for ethical, let alone moral, insight, he assures us that sufficiently moral for his purposes, purpose enough for his life, is—I kid you not—“a good lunch” (100).

Now here is the passage from The God Delusion:

In my interview with [James] Watson at Clare, I conscientiously put it to him that, unlike him and Crick, some people see no conflict between science and religion, because they claim science is about how things work and religion is about what it is all for. Watson retorted: 'Well I don't think we're for anything. We're just products of evolution. You can say, "Gee, your life must be pretty bleak if you don't think there's a purpose." But I'm anticipating having a good lunch.' We did have a good lunch, too.

So first of all it's James Watson, not Dawkins, who made the comment about lunch. But more to the point, isn't it obvious that Watson is saying--in a dry understated way--that life has the quality you give it? I don't see any pronouncements on ethics or morality here, and I don't take either of them to be as shallow as Walker implies.

3. Walker seems almost to approach postmodernism in his criticism of science. Science, you see, is based on human observation and interpretation and is fallible. Therefore, it should not necessarily be privileged over other ways of seeing the world.

...though there are better and worse ways of thinking, there is no infallible way of thinking—even if it thinks itself divinely sanctioned, and even, heaven help us, if it thinks itself scientifically self-evident. Most ways of thinking—whether scientific or religious, idealistic or pragmatic, legal or logical, psychological or philosophical, mathematical or metaphorical, hyperbolic or hallucinogenic or however otherwise demented—have weaknesses as well as strengths, with limitations that allow concentration in particular areas.

Alright, but if we are trying to understand how the universe works, isn't science the best way of thinking?

Science is superbly focused on the world of physical fact. That need not be a problem unless a scientist somehow convinces himself physical fact is all there is. The crippling limitation of materialistic focus is manifest in how many scientists have persuaded themselves that the world of physical fact is the total extent of reality.

I'm not arguing for strict scientism, and I'm not trying to carry Dawkins's water for him, but what does that mean and where does it take us? And this may be a matter of semantics, but if there is no such thing as immaterial matter, and all spirit is matter, where does the domain of science actually end?

I think that Walker's main point is something like the following: "I have experienced God in a way that validates my commitment to my religion and its sacred texts and teachings. One of those teachings is that life is a test, and as part of that test, God has purposefully removed himself from our scientific inquiry." I can accept such a statement and still agree with Dawkins that the existence of God is a scientific question in principle, though perhaps not in practice.

Coincidentally or not, Walker's review is very similar to evolutionary biologist Allen Orr's review in the Feb 2007 New York Review of Books, which resulted in some back-and-forth with Daniel Dennett (the page is laid out in reverse chronological order).

So now The God Delusion has been reviewed in BYU Studies and The FARMS Review. Do you think they are effective reviews? I am particularly interested to hear from people who have read the book, though others are welcome too.

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The Best Bookstore in Utah?

On my recent trip to Utah, I stopped by a few bookstores to look at LDS books. Based on this and previous experience, my impressions are as follows:

Deseret Book: Great if you want something published by Deseret Book (or Bookcraft, which is now owned by DB) or other Church-owned publishers (e.g. FARMS, BYU Religious Studies). You may or may not find books from other publishers.

Barnes and Noble: A small selection that occasionally has some variety.

Sam Weller's: Has a decent selection of older and out of print titles (I did not look at the higher-end rare books); pretty skimpy on newer ones, but it does have a few.

Benchmark Books: Pretty good overall selection; books from multiple publishers, and a decent selection of used books. Not many of the newer Deseret Books titles.

BYU Bookstore: At first glance, it's a mini Deseret Book. However, on closer inspection they do carry a few books from other LDS publishers, including ones that some might not consider "faith promoting."

So what bookstores do you recommend? I'm especially interested in stores that carry LDS books from publishers other than Deseret Book.

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Utah Geology Show and Tell

Attention Geologists! I have a question; see below.

One of the things I like about Utah is how its natural history is constantly exposed for viewing. Recently my family and I were in Utah for vacation and I took some pictures for blog show-and-tell (see previous installments here and here). Click on images for larger viewing.

First up was our hike to Timpanogos Cave. Timp cave actually consists of three caves that were discovered at separate times (as late as the 1920s) and then connected by the National Park Service. One of the first things they show you when you get into the cave is fossil coral, which looks like a bunch of white speckles.



Then, of course, there are the stalactites, stalagmites, and other formations.



And here is a view of Utah Valley from near the cave.



We also took a trip down to Arches National Park, by Moab, UT. The hike to the famous Delicate Arch is about 3 miles, which we decided was too long. So instead we took a shorter route to a viewing point. (Delicate Arch is in the upper left of the picture).



Alright, now we come to my question. At the viewpoint for Delicate Arch I noticed lines running through the rock (next three pictures). These were not just color lines; they were slightly raised relative to the surrounding rock, presumably because of slower erosion. The third picture shows one of the lines running down the rock (you may need to click for a bigger view). So my question is, what are those lines?





This next picture is not the Grand Canyon. It is Deadhorse Point, which is close to both Arches and Canyonlands. Here you see the Colorado River winding its way through to where it will join the Green River a few miles to the south. It may not be the Grand Canyon, but it is beautiful and impressive nonetheless.



Some of the natural rock is used as a safety fence at the lookout. This one caught my attention because of its many layers. I couldn't help but wonder how many years were represented in each layer--each a few thumbnails in thickness.




Here is one of several lizards we saw in Arches and Deadhorse Point.



It was a great trip, and I look forward to returning.

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