PZ Myers and the death threat debacle!

As anybody who reads the Pharyngula blog by PZ Myers will know, a shit storm has swept down over some comments about, what to none-Catholics, is a very thin piece of bread.

Anyhow, a death threat was sent to the venerable PZ which resulted in a lady who works for 1-800-flowers getting the sack. Turned out that, yes she was careless with her email security (and choice of husband), it was actually her fella, the hilariously named Chuck Kroll (only in America, folks), who sent the email from her account.

Anyway, it seems a bit harsh that she should lose her job as well as having to sleep with her fuck-nut husband. PZ Myers has also stated he doesn't want her to lose her job over this. So there is a petition underway to try and get her reinstated, as an act of goodwill from us evil atheists and non-religious types.

SIGN IT!

Scientists Say...

One thing that really irritates me in the mass media is the shoddy and lazy quality of scientific reporting. There's one phrase in particular that is guaranteed to raise my blood pressure. That phrase is "Scientists say..."

Readers of the risible Daily Mail should be particularly familiar with this expression. In fact a quick google search of the Daily Mail website for the hated phrase returns "about" 1830 hits.
But it's not just the Daily Mail that does this. You see it on everything from the Daily Sport (ha) through to BBC news and so on. And it's invariable linked to some weird or shocking bit of news.

"Scientists say Greenhouse effect not real"
"Scientists say eat your greens to prevent cancer"
"Scientists say lettuce causes cancer"

It's always shit like that.

The all encompassing spirit of "scientists say" makes me smile. It gives the impression that whenever some earth-shattering research is released all the scientists in the world meet in some ivory tower to discuss a strategy on disseminating this New World to the public. And the research that most frequently gets this sort of coverage tends be tenuous. I don't know, single-parent, homosexual, immigrant mothers being the sole cause of suffering in the world (the Daily Mail readership would spontaneously combust if that research were real).

Really, what it says is that the science correspondent probably has a GCSE in biology but doesn't really get it. "Scientists" rarely say anything collectively. It generally takes a long time for any real consensus to be met. What newspapers and news programs really mean when they play the "Scientists say" card, is that a piece of research has been published. That's it, usually. For the scientific community to be in agreement, any research has to be replicated, the data set to increase and the statistical work to be very good. Then, and only then, when the data is as solid as is reasonable, and the conclusions undeniable will true consensus be met (and 100% consensus is never met!).

Science is fairly brutal. If you release research that is not particularly stringent or fatally flawed, there are a hundred research groups more than willing to destroy it. Scientists don't release papers that say "we have definitely proven x, beyond a doubt". We release papers that say "we did this experiment to investigate this idea. Here's what we did, here's how we did it and here are the results of what we did, with a hopefully good-enough statistical work up." After that the author of the paper will discuss their conclusions based on the results and stats. The two things to remember about this are:

1) The conclusions in any individual paper will be based on the personality, experience and quality of the author and their team

2) The conclusions in any individual paper are drawn from the work described in that paper

Point 2 in particular is the key issue here. A conclusion (especially for a controversial or revolutionary study) will only become mainstream if it is demonstrably accurate based on the quality of the initial research and any subsequent testing that might be done by other groups.

So next time you pick up a paper and read "Scientists say", just remember that this probably means "one research group has found evidence to suggest". Be sceptical!

Animal Human Hybrids

I totally understand that the very phrase "Human-Animal Hybrid" (or vice versa) sounds dramatic.

However, I think that the general public's (and particularly those of a religious persuasion) gut reaction is out of all proportion. We are not talking about creating centaurs or mermaids though. Essentially what we are talking about is using temporary cellular housing for human genomic material. It's a very different kettle of fish (albeit a kettle of human-fish).

Cells, generally talking, are remarkably similar across species. The thing that really separates one animal's cells from anothers is the nuclear genome. Cow cells do not have little udders on them and they do not moo. Like our cells they contain (broadly speaking) a nucleus containing DNA, mitochondria and all the little organelles that keep the cell ticking over. If you want to look at it in simplistic terms, the "cell" is merely a housing unit for the nuclear DNA, and it is really the nuclear DNA that defines the species of the organism from which the cell derives.

The hybrids which are being so hotly discussed at the moment, and voted on in the British Parliament (the vote on hybrids was yesterday, with other related topics still being voted on), really just refer to inserting human nuclear DNA into cells obtained from another organism (such as a cow). But this does not mean that half-cow, half-human creatures are being created. The embryo that begins to develop will to all intents and purposes be a clone of the donor of the human DNA. The human element of this embryo will be virtually unaltered, save for any small differences in mitochondrial DNA. Given that mitochondrial DNA can not afford to change dramatically, given the metabolic role of mitochondria (meaning any big changes would more than likely result in cell death), the only differences between a "pure-bred" human and one of these "hybrids" would be negligble. The cells that developed from the original hybrid would have no choice but to be human: it is, after all, the nuclear DNA that dictates the generation of proteins and so on that are used throughout the body.

In many ways, the current situation is of the religious objectors' making anyway. Use of embryonic stem cells has been so vastly restricted, largely due to religious objections, that another way has had to be sought to satisfy the qualms some have over embryonic stem cells. This method allows another way - a way which wouldn't have been necessary without the scientific Luddism of religion - in order to try and develop treatments, and maybe one day cures, for a host of life-shattering and often life-ending diseases (such as Parkinsons). The untold numbers of people who could benefit from this progress makes it utterly abhorrent, to my mind, to try and suppress it.

I'm not saying that ethical checks shouldn't exist. Of course, they absolutely should. And if this were a case of trying to mutant army of human-crocodile soldiers, or whatever, then I too would be fiercely opposed. However, it's not. Basically it's housing human DNA in (simplistically) the cellular "goo" required to create stem cells. And it would be unneccessary if the religious community hadn't done so much to restrict non-hybrid stem cells. This is not merely experimentation for experimentation's sake: we are at the cusp of potentially one of the most significant advances in medical science of modern history.

And to those who say that this isn't what "nature intended", I would say that "nature" (whatever that might be) doesn't have any intentions, but that the overriding intention of all organisms within nature is to survive with as little suffering as possible. And that is what we're trying to do.