Top Five Reasons for Wanting a Presidential Debate on Science

The first editorial in the February 7th issue of Nature discusses a petition for a presidential debate that would focus on scientific and technological issues. There has been significant support for the idea of a presidential debate on science.

Numerous Nobel laureates, scientific organizations, government leaders, and renowned scientists have signed the petition. Some of the organizations and individuals who have joined the campaign include Science Magazine, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Skeptical Inquirer Magazine, Craig Venter, Steven Pinker, Sean Carroll, James Watson, and my personal favorite, Bill Nye the Science Guy. For a complete list go to www.sciencedebate2008.com

Here are my top five reasons for wanting a presidential debate that focuses on science.

1. I want a well informed president who understands the value of having a premier scientific community. I want a president who does not allow faith to stand in the way of scientific advancement, who understands the value of reason and skeptical inquiry. I want a president who understands the value of changing positions when the evidence supports it.

2. Whether we believe it or not, our planet is getting warmer and most scientists agree that we are at least partially to blame. I want a president that will address the problem of global warming and climate change and will listen to the recommendations of the scientific community.

3. I want a president who will support stem cell research even if the ethical issues are still not resolved.

4. I want a president who will make funds available for the development of alternative fuel sources.

5. I want a president who will not allow creationism in the class room, a president who understands the value of teaching evolution.

Please consider signing the petition for a presidential debate on science. We do not want another president who will neglect science.

Mate Poaching: How Rivals Intend to Steal Your Mate

Evolutionary psychology has paid a lot of attention to mating strategies. Recent research has paid specific attention to strategies that people use to attract mates who are already in a committed relationship. Psychologists refer to these tactics as “mate poaching.”

David Schmitt, an evolutionary psychologist from Bradley University, and David Buss (2001), an evolutionary psychologist from the University of Texas at Austin, have defined mate poaching as “behavior intended to attract someone who is already in a romantic relationship.”

Schmitt and Buss’s (2001) research indicates that mate poaching is relatively common. They found that 50% of the participants in their study have attempted mate poaching and 80% reported that that they were victims of mate poaching, either receiving attraction attempts directed at themselves or observing attraction attempts on their partners.

In their article, Nifty Ways to Leave Your Lover, Schmitt and Todd Shakelford (2003), an evolutionary psychologist from the Florida Atlantic University, identifies the strategies that people use to encourage and disguise mate poaching. Their results indicated that offering sexual access and demonstrating beauty were effective strategies for females to encourage mate poaching. For men, demonstrating resources and being generous encouraged mate poaching.

Keep your eyes open for mate poachers. If you are in a romantic relationship, you may be in danger of having your mate poached. Remember, mate poaching is common. Many of us know mate poachers or have been mate poachers ourselves.

Do you know any mate poachers?

Learn more about mate poaching.

Evolution is Not Magic: In Response to Mr. or Ms. Anonymous

Dear Anonymous, thank you for your comment, but I fear that you grossly misunderstand evolution. Evolution is not a magic trick and does not occur by random chance. It is a systematic process of gradual adaptation that takes place over millions of years.
Do yourself a favor and pick up a science book! Try Richard Dawkins’s The Blind Watchmaker.
Also, you suggest that I am “to(o) afraid” to believe in God because He will hold me accountable for my actions. This is a rather presumptuous allegation. I do not need a god to bee good. I am a humanist and as Kurt Vonnegut said, “Humanism is trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.”
If you have any doubts that a person needs to believe in God to have a moral compass, read Marc Hauser’s Moral Minds. Hauser presents a cogent argument for the evolution of a universal moral grammar.
Maybe it is you, Mr. or Ms. Anonymous, who is afraid. Maybe you feel that you can not be good without religion as your crutch. Maybe you are afraid of death and need to believe in an afterlife for comfort. Do not project your fear upon the rest of us!

Reason vs. Faith: Move Over Religion, Science is Moving In

I am sure that everybody remembers Kirk Cameron, the child star from “Growing Pains.” Well, he grew up to be a Christian Fundamental Bible Pusher. Kirk and his friend Ray Comfort are pushing a program called "The Way of the Master," which explains why all non-christians are doomed to hell. They are so inane that they have even gone as far as to reject the existence of evolution.

There is nothing I hate more than when religion buts its nose into science. Stephen Jay Gould once said that science and religion are non-overlapping magisteria. I do not subscribe to this perspective. I side with Richard Dawkins, who suggests that faith and reason are incompatible. In fact, faith is defined as belief without reason.

And like Daniel Dennett, I believe that religion is a natural phenomenon that should be subjected to the same scientific scrutiny as all other phenomena.

It does not do any good to invoke a supernatural explanation (including God or gods) to explain a complex system. Explaining the existence of life as the work of a magician whose powers are beyond our comprehension does not enhance our understanding of how life came to evolve. Life did not appear on earth by some elaborate, inexplicable magic trick. Life evolved.

Anyway, I am done spouting off. If you want to see the Rational Response Squad destroy Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort’s argument for the existence of God, watch Nightline tonight (May 9, 2007) on ABC or check out the nightline website.

To read more about reason vs. faith or science and religion, check out Bertrand Russell's Why I am not a Christian, Carl Sagan’s The Demon-haunted World, Richard Dawkins’s God Delusion, Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell, and Sam Harriss’s The End of Faith.

Science Blogs

Some of my friends have taken it upon themselves to pimp my blog by referring to people to my site. I am writing this post to return the favor.

First of all, I would like to say that Like a Lake is the most awesomest blog in the intergalactic blogosphere. If you want to know anything about advancements in the wide world of science, especially psychology and evolution, check out this blog. The administrator of the site is a good friend of mine who is in the M.A. program at the College of William and Mary. He is a boy genius. Check his site out.

Second of all and finally, I would like everybody to visit Dr. Yeti’s blog. He is a friend from Juniata College who is now in a Ph.D. program in Pittsburgh, PA, the greatest city on earth. If you don’t learn anything on his blog, at least you will get a laugh. Not only is he science genius he is a master of dark comedy. I guess you have to be to study yeast infections or whatever he studies.

The Evolution of Sickness

Just yesterday I came down with a horrible case of the flu, which is why I am writing this post. Usually when we are sick, we do not spend much time thinking about what the evolutionary functions of our symptoms are. If we do think about it, we usually think about it from our own perspective, not the perspective of the germ.
So, why do we get sick? What is the adaptive function of having the diarrhea and vomiting? Why do we get a fever? Randolph Nesse and George Williams present an evolutionary explanation to these questions in their book, Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine.
The short answer to the question of why we vomit and get the diarrhea when we have the flu is because it is adaptive for the germ. It is in the germ’s best interest to spread itself and it just so happens that causing us to vomit and diarrhea are effective methods for achieving this.
The fever, on the other hand, is not in the germ’s best interest. It is an adaptive function of the body, an attempt to kill the germ.
To learn more about Darwinian Medicine, check out this website: http://darwinianmedicine.org/
Also, read Why We Get Sick.

Consciousness as a Positive Feedback Loop

In Hofstadter's new book, I am a Strange Loop, consciousness is explained as a positive feedback loop. The Pulitzer Prize winning author, describes humans as evolved perceivers. As Simon Baron-Cohen explained in his seminal book, Mindblindness: An Essay on Autism, evolution has endowed us with the ability to read the minds of others. This mindreading ability allows us to perceive the emotions of others through their actions and facial expression and it is adaptive by allowing us to predict the behaviors of others. Hofstadter suggests that the illusion of consciousness emerges when we turn our perceptual mindreading abilities on ourselves. Thus, consciousness is nothing more than a positive feedback loop.

Learn About Your Brain and Change Your Life

I recently read Mind Wide Open by Steven Johnson. The book catalogs the author's journey to understand the human brain. Johnson learns everything from how we read the minds of others to the neurochemical applications involved in our perceptions of love. He participates in neurofeedback tests and fMRI scans. In his sojourn through the intricacies of his own mind, he gains a better understanding of mechanisms that underlie his own behavior. In a recent article posted on Slate.com, several prominent scientists describe how learning about the human mind has changed their lives. The more we learn about the human brain, the more incite we gain into our own thoughts and actions. Take a look at how brain science has changed the lives of Steven Pinker, Marc Hauser, Oliver Sacks, and others.
http://www.slate.com/id/2165043/