Do Human Races Exist?

While the stir over the Bott gaffe on race was playing out last week, there was, coincidentally, a concurrent discussion in the science blogosphere about whether human races even exist, in a biological sense. Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne recently took up the issue, and gave his view that races do exist, but they are hard to define and probably not of much biological relevance except occasionally in medicine. Nick Matzke responded at The Panda's Thumb (see Matzke's post for links to Coyne) and argued that genetic clustering that is sometimes interpreted as demarcating race is actually an artifact of incomplete sampling. You can read a similar debate between anthropologists here.

It seems like this question is the kind of thing that can be argued over endlessly, in part because the answer depends on how you define your terms. This isn't my field, but to my mind the answer seems to be both yes and no. Yes, humans in a geographic area can share a genetic history leading to genetic differences from other geographic areas, a small part of which is manifested in outward (or skeletal) appearance. So it's obvious that native Scandinavians are different than native Africans. But no, there are not any discrete demarcations that allow firm categorizations (or that determine how many categories there should be), and most differences change gradually over geographic distance. So there's no such thing as a genetically "pure" Scandinavian or African. And of course in today's mobile society everything gets even more confused as formerly geographically isolated people are able to intermingle and have children together.

So it seems to me that to speak of biological races is to use a contextual term of convenience, but it's prone to misunderstanding because for most people races are cultural identifiers (whether they realize it or not). My two cents.

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Heartland Institute Heartbreak

The drama unfolding around the release of internal documents of the Heartland Institute (HI) has been interesting, if unfortunate, to watch. In case you've not been following the action, someone posing as a board member of the HI obtained internal documents concerning funding, plans, etc, and anonymously sent them to DeSmogBlog. The HI is probably the most prominent of global warming skeptic "think tanks," and DeSmogBlog covers the corporate attempts to obscure climate issues. We now know that the anonymous poser was climate scientist Peter Gleick, who publicly admitted his role and apologized.

My judgment was blinded by my frustration with the ongoing efforts -- often anonymous, well-funded, and coordinated -- to attack climate science and scientists and prevent this debate, and by the lack of transparency of the organizations involved. Nevertheless I deeply regret my own actions in this case. I offer my personal apologies to all those affected.

Gleick's actions are unfortunate for at least two reasons. First, they were arguably unethical and unlawful, but certainly dishonest, and that dishonesty will hurt more than just him. Second, they distract attention from what the HI has been up to (serving as a policy front group for corporate donors, creating an educational curriculum, etc), and may even create a feeling of sympathy for HI among the public.

I'm reminded of Doctrine and Covenants 10:28:

Verily, verily, I say unto you, wo be unto him that lieth to deceive because he supposeth that another lieth to deceive, for such are not exempt from the justice of God.

But I can't help but note the asymmetry here. Gleick's actions have been condemned by Nature and other climate scientists, as well as prompted his resignation from several science organizations. I expect that similar consequences will continue to play out.

Meanwhile, it seems that amongst the climate skeptic community that there is nothing too false or misleading that can't be used to undermine mainstream climate science. Whether taking stolen emails out of context or pushing plainly incorrect information, there just doesn't seem to be any cost for dishonesty, let alone incompetence, amongst climate skeptics.

Sign of the times, I suppose.

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Batman, Hebrew, and Genesis

The semester at BYU following my mission was an exploratory one. I left on my mission knowing that I did not want to continue in the major I started in. However, as I returned I didn't know what major to choose, so I decided to have a little bit of fun. I had always been interested in the facsimiles of the Book of Abraham, so I took a Pearl of Great Price (PofGP) class from Michael Rhodes because he was the only religion professor that I knew could translate them. At the same time I took an introductory class in biblical Hebrew. My Hebrew was never advanced; I did alright in the class, but the height of my ability was to translate some very simple sentences.

One day in PofGP class, I realized that there were honest-to-goodness Hebrew words in the Book of Abraham. Words like Kokob, Kokaubeam, and Shaumahyeem were words that I was learning in my Hebrew class. I also knew enough Church history to know that Joseph Smith had studied Hebrew in Kirtland. At some point it occurred to me that the reason there were Hebrew words in the Book of Abraham was probably because Joseph had studied Hebrew, not because they were revealed to him.

It turns out that, of course, I'm not the only one to have noticed this. For example, a 1981 article in Sunstone, "Professor Seixas, the Hebrew Bible, and the Book of Abraham," explains how wording in the Book of Abraham creation account reflects Joseph's studies of Hebrew. In some cases, the word choices are more aligned with the Hebrew text of Genesis than the Book of Moses, which was Joseph's inspired, pre-Hebrew, rendition of the same material. At a minimum this calls into question simplistic notions that any of these versions represent the original text. Over at Times and Seasons, Ben S. is posting notes for his Institute class where he lays out the same basic argument. He makes some great points, and I suggest you go read what he has to say.

So how do the Genesis, the Book of Moses, Book of Abraham, and temple creation accounts relate to each other? I think it's obvious that the Genesis text is the touchstone for the rest. But why have more than one? I'm chewing on a different way of thinking about them, and here's where Batman comes in.

Compare the 1989 movie Batman (with Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson) to The Dark Night (with Christian Bale and Heath Ledger). Both movies cover the same basic story--the battle between Batman and the Joker--but do so with different details and interpretation of character. If you broaden the scope to include the various television series and comic books, you see a variety of interpretations of Batman, but they remain unified by constant elements of his character. Similar things could be said of the James Bond movies; there is a certain consistency between the movies with respect to the characters and elements of the storyline. However, there is usually not any attempt to maintain continuity between movies. Or if we switch to music, we could speak of different versions of the same jazz song, or re-mixes of pop songs. In each case the movie or song stands on its own, while at the same time being intimately tied to others.

That's kind of how I view the various creation accounts. Each is a re-mix of the Genesis story, but with novel elements that reflect Joseph's changing understanding and sensibilities, which gives each a different flavor. In this view, the question of which version is the "correct" or "original" is largely irrelevant. Each stands on its own, but you can't get too attached to the details because they are flexible.

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The Book of Mormon as a Quasispecies

Sometimes it's fun to find commonality between otherwise unrelated things.

One of the problems faced by all organisms is the need to replicate their genetic code with fidelity. Too many mutation can be lethal. The enzymes that replicate genomes occasionally make errors, and many organisms have proof-reading enzymes that help to identify and correct mistakes. However, many viruses, such as HIV, get by without this proof-reading ability. In fact, the lack of proof-reading is actually advantageous to them because mutations help to keep them nimble in the face of the onslaught of the immune system.

If you were to chemically synthesize the genome of one of these viruses (so that you knew the precise genetic sequence), introduce it into a host, and then sequence the genomes of the progeny virus. You would find lots of variants from the original genome sequence. In fact, there is a sense in which the virus does not have a single genome sequence. Rather, the virus exists as a cloud of variant sequences called a 'quasispecies.'

The quasispecies concept is a model rooted in mathematics, and although many virologists are familiar with the term, my sense is that most don't really understand the mathematical underpinnings. (Neither do I.) Nevertheless, the quasispecies model has interesting implications. Some mutations are advantageous and some are deleterious, and we usually think of natural selection as weeding out unfit individuals and promoting the more fit ones. However, in the quasispecies model selection acts on the cloud of variants as a unit, and it's possible for a cloud of less-fit genomes to out-compete a single, more-fit genome. And if you were to align the sequences of all of the individual genomes and create a consensus sequence by using a majority vote at each position, you might find that the consensus sequence is not represented in any individual genome.

The 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon is kind of like a quasispecies because it turns out that it is not a single text. As the sheets were being printed, mistakes--both human and mechanical--were noticed and corrected. At least 41 changes are known. However, the already printed sheets were not discarded, and so there was a mixing of mistakes which were scattered throughout the 5,000 finished copies. It's possible that you could come up with a consensus text that is not found in any single copy.

There's no profound meaning here--I guess that's about the extent of the similarities. I just figured that introducing the quasispecies concept along with Book of Mormon trivia was more fun than doing them independently.

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CES? I Don't Think So

What? Consumer Electronics Show? Nevermind.

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Spend an Evening with Daniel Peterson

It's been a little while since I've checked in on the Mormon Stories podcast, and boy have I been missing out. Today I want to highlight a 4-part interview with Daniel C. Peterson. That works out to about 4.5 hours of discussion with one of the Church's chief (if not the chief) apologists. It's a wide-ranging and pretty frank discussion, and I thought it was just delightful. Here are a few of the gems that I picked out:

- He has an abiding interest in astronomy, cosmology, and geology. In fact, he originally intended to be a cosmologist.

- A desire that we teach our history better (i.e. warts and all), and that Sunday school in general be improved. In connection with this, Peterson tells some amusing stories about his time on the Sunday school manual-writing committee.

- While serving as a gospel doctrine teacher, he talked about the human side of prophets (e.g. Nephi probably was a really annoying younger brother). A contingent of the class complained to their bishop that he was teaching "secular humanism."

- Speaking of humanism, Peterson sees Mormonism as a kind of theistic humanism, and thinks that non-religious humanists have important things to say.

- His opinion that many prophecies, and their fulfillment, are often a reflection of God's power to bring things to pass in the way he chooses, rather than some kind of predestined future.

- A second-hand story that President Eyring remarked that most high priest groups have more doctrinal certainty than the First Presidency.

I want to dwell on one part of the interview for a moment, because I think it needs some challenging. In defense of Joseph Smith's use of folk-magic, Peterson pointed out that dowsing for water is still a wide-spread practice, and told of a personal experience where dowsing for water seemed to work. First I should note that although that line of defense might work well with religious critics, it makes things worse for someone of a scientific skepticism orientation. This is because dowsing appears to be a phenomenon that can be attributed to subconscious cues and muscle movements, and retrospective justification. In short, it appears to be a psychological illusion, similar to facilitated communication and Ouija boards.

I don't doubt Peterson's sincerity (and to be clear, he does not claim that dowsing does in fact work), nor am I in a position to judge his experience, but his story does raise some red flags. For example, he and others may have received subtle cues as to where the water pipe was. Did the dowsing rods cross at exactly the right spot, or was there an element of 'close enough,' that artificially inflates the number of hits? Further, Peterson discounts the guy for whom the dowsing failed, attributing the failure to his not holding it right. As convincing as the experience sounds, a lot of ordinary possibilities remain. So, I agree that Joseph's use of folk-magic is not, in and of itself, any more scandalous than dowsing, but let's be careful in comparing him to a practice that controlled tests have repeatedly shown to be illusory. (Actually, I'm open to the possibility that many of Joseph's magical experiences were honest illusions, but that's another discussion.)

Anyway, my overall impression of the discussion is that Daniel Peterson and I think a lot alike, and his view of Mormonism resonates with me in many ways. I don't say that as though he should be flattered or to inflate my own status. I simply mean that Peterson has impeccable LDS credentials, so when I agree with him about something that isn't the company line, so to speak, I think I'm in good company.

In the spirit of this blog, I want to finish with a couple of quotes that I really liked.

To the extent that there is an anti-scientific, anti-intellectual strain in CES [the Church Educational System], that's something that needs to be rooted out. This does not help us. And I know that there is a movement on in the Church right now with some people pushing certain geographical theories of the Book of Mormon, and a component of that is young-earth creationism, anti-evolutionism. This worries me enormously, because it can't be sustained.

And later:

We're not fundamentalist Protestants who happen to have an extra book, and maybe an extra wife.

...Mormonism itself is bigger than that. And I object to it when critics try to paint us as a narrow-minded little fundamentalist sect, and I really object to it when Mormons try to do it. And I don't like it from either side. That's why I object to some of this young-earth creationist stuff that I'm hearing recently. No, no, that's not us.

Preach it, brother!

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If I Had a Side Blog (#5)

I've got most of the week off, but haven't felt like doing much blogging. So here is some stuff to chew on for the time being.

1. Did Jesus have long hair?

2. Why energy journalism is so bad.

3. Do facts exist anymore? And can they be checked?

4. Although this is about Gingrich, it speaks to a larger issue: underappreciation of the importance of public health infrastructure.

5. We are apparently to the point where imaginary objects are security threats.

6. Kevin Drum about sums it up:

Climate change is the public policy problem from hell. If you were inventing a problem that would be virtually impossible to solve, you'd give it all the characteristics of climate change: it's largely invisibile, it's slow moving, it's expensive to fix, it requires global coordination, and its effects will be disproportionately borne by poor countries that nobody cares about.

7. I have some serious career envy.

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XMRV Paper Retracted

Earlier this month I highlighted the drama and controversy surrounding the claim that a virus (XMRV) was associated with chronic fatigue syndrome. The original paper has now been fully retracted by Science.

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