Hauser guilty of science misconduct

Man, it pains me to post this, but it's important to know: Harvard says Marc Hauser is guilty of science misconduct.

Hauser, the author of Moral minds: How nature designed a universal sense of right and wrong is a noted researcher in the field of animal cognition. He had been placed on leave following accusations by his students that he had purposely fabricated data in his research. Hauser's work relied on observing responses by tamarin monkeys to stimuli such as changes in sound patterns, claiming they possessed thinking skills often viewed as unique to humans and apes.

Hauser has posted a response to the charge:

I am deeply sorry for the problems this case has caused to my students, my colleagues, and my university..

I acknowledge that I made some significant mistakes and I am deeply disappointed that this has led to a retraction and two corrections. I also feel terrible about the concerns regarding the other five cases, which involved either unpublished work or studies in which the record was corrected before submission for publication.

I hope that the scientific community will now wait for the federal investigative agencies to make their final conclusions based on the material that they have available.

I have learned a great deal from this process and have made many changes in my own approach to research and in my lab's research practices.

Research and teaching are my passion. After taking some time off, I look forward to getting back to my work, mindful of what I have learned in this case. This has been painful for me and those who have been associated with the work.

Emory University primate researcher Frans de Waal has chimed in:

It is good that Harvard now confirms the rumors, so that there is no doubt that they found actual scientific misconduct, and that they will take appropriate action. But it leaves open whether we in the field of animal behavior should just worry about those three articles or about many more, and then there are also publications related to language and morality that include data that are now in question. From my reading of the dean's letter, it seems that all data produced by this lab over the years are potentially in question.

As has psychologist David Premack:

Dishonesty in cognitive science is somehow more disturbing than dishonesty in biology or physical science. The latter threatens the lives of people, producing a kind of harm we readily comprehend. The former puzzles us: it produces no physical harm, but threatens our standards, a kind of harm we do not readily understand. Because he caused no physical harm, we see him as discrediting everything he touched, including science itself. Hauser, a gifted writer, had no need for shortcuts.

Harvard scientist guilty of misconduct

The New York Times is reporting that Harvard University has found a prominent researcher, Marc Hauser, “solely responsible” for eight instances of scientific misconduct.

Dr. Hauser is a leader in the field of animal and human cognition, and in 2006 wrote a well-received book, “Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong.”

Harvard’s findings against him, if sustained, may cast a shadow over the broad field of scientific research that depended on the particular research technique often used in his experiments.

More.

Pigliucci on science and the scope of skeptical inquiry

Russell Blackford is a guest blogger for Sentient Developments.

Over on his Rationally Speaking blog, Massimo Pigliucci has an interesting post on the nature and scope of skeptical inquiry. He is particularly keen to nail down the relationships between scientifically-based skeptical thought, political philosophy, and philosophy of religion (he actually says "atheism", but I think this is a mistake). Pigliucci is a biologist and a philosopher, and these are his three main areas of intellectual interest.

To illustrate his points, Pigliucci introduces a diagram that shows skepticism overlapping with both "atheism" and political philosophy, though they do not overlap with each other. On this diagram, all three fall into a larger realm of critical thinking and rational analysis. Although it's a neat diagram, I think that it (along with the analysis that it illustrates) is somewhat misleading, and in at least one respect even wrong.

On skeptical inquiry

First, however, let's consider something that Pigluicci clearly gets right. He says:

Skeptical inquiry, in the classic sense, pertains to the critical examination of evidential claims of the para- or super-normal. This means not just ghosts, telepathy, clairvoyance, UFOs and the like, but also — for instance — the creationist idea that the world is 6,000 years old. All these claims are, at least in principle, amenable to scientific inquiry because they refer to things that we can observe, measure and perhaps even repeat experimentally. Notice, of course, that (some) religious claims do therefore fall squarely within the domain of scientific skepticism. Also in this area we find pseudohistorical claims, such as Holocaust denial, and pseudoscientific ones like fear of vaccines and denial of global warming. Which means of course that some politically charged issues — like the latter two — can also pertain properly to skeptical inquiry.

I'm with him completely on this. Claims about ghosts, the age of the Earth, and pseudohistorical or pseudoscientific theories, are all within the ambit of skeptical inquiry as so defined. Skeptical inquiry in the sense under discussion is not about taking positions that are in the minority. It is about rational inquiry into various claims, popular or otherwise, using the means available not only to science but also to such fields as history. Accordingly, when someone claims to be a "climate change skeptic" she is using words in a different sense.

It is always possible, of course, that a view with widespread, or even consensus, support from current science is nonetheless incorrect. Still, skepticism in the sense that Pigliucci is discussing is not about challenging the majority position. It is about rational investigation, especially of extraordinary claims - extraordinary in the sense that they fit badly, or not at all, with the best picture of the world built up through science, scholarship, and ordinary observation.


In particular, we are not talking here about some kind of radical epistemological skepticism, such as Descartes wrestled with and sought (unsuccessfully) to transcend or escape. Nor are we talking about skepticism as regards the status quo of scientific and scholarly knowledge. That sort of skepticism is possible, of course, and it may sometimes be justified. However, it is not legitimate to act as a skeptic merely in this sense, while attempting to get approbation for being engaged in skeptical inquiry in the different, and quite familiar, sense that Pigliucci describes.

Accordingly, I think that Pigliucci is correct when he later denounces the practice of "using the venerable mantle of skepticism to engage in silly notions like denying global warming or the efficacy of vaccines." As he says, "That’s an insult to critical analysis, which is the one thing we all truly cherish."

Pigliucci is also quite correct to show an overlap between atheism and skeptical inquiry, although atheism is a substantive position, not a field of inquiry, so he should really have written "philosophy of religion". He is correct that what philosophers of religion do when they investigate religious claims, such as those about the existence of various gods, overlaps with scientific skepticism or skeptical inquiry. I think, however, that he unnecessarily deprecates the extent of this overlap. This I'll return to.

On political philosophy

As for political philosophy, Pigliucci sees this too as overlapping with skeptical inquiry. After all, he says, some skeptical inquiry (e.g. into the claims of holocaust denialists) has implications for political philosophy.

This seems to be correct. However, he doesn't seem to have noticed that philosophy of religion may also have implications for political philosophy, and vice versa. For example, some religious positions, if correct, have definite implications for the role of the state. After all, various comprehensive worldviews based on religion claim that the state should enforce religious systems of morality or law; these worldviews are starkly opposed to liberalism and pluralism.

Less obviously, it is at least conceivable that a political position on an issue such as social justice could have implications for whether we should accept certain religious positions. We might develop a politically-based theory of justice, then ask, "Does the world seem to have been created by a just God?" Surely the answer could feed back into at least some views about the existence or nature of God. In any event, the diagram seems to be wrong, not just misleadingly presented, when it shows no overlap between political philosophy and "atheism".

Science and philosophy

While this may be the only error, strictly speaking, there are other problems with the analysis. They emerge when Pigliucci tries to defend the view that atheism is a philosophical position, rather than a scientific one. There is a sense in which this is clearly, but rather trivially, true. The issue of God's existence is, after all, examined by philosophers of religion, and not usually by biologists or physicists, and the pedagogical and other decisions that have led to this have not been merely arbitrary. But there's also a sense in which Pigliucci's account is misleading. Here's how he attempts to persuade us:

Now, I have argued of course that any intelligent philosopher ought to allow her ideas to be informed by science, but philosophical inquiry is broader than science because it includes non-evidence based approaches, such as logic or more broadly reason-based arguments. This is both the strength and the weakness of philosophy when compared to science: it is both broader and yet of course less prone to incremental discovery and precise answers. When someone, therefore, wants to make a scientific argument in favor of atheism — like Dawkins and Jerry Coyne seem to do — he is stepping outside of the epistemological boundaries of science, thereby doing a disservice both to science and to intellectual inquiry. Consider again the example of a creationist who maintains in the face of evidence that the universe really is 6,000 years old, and that it only looks older because god arranged things in a way to test our faith. There is absolutely no empirical evidence that could contradict that sort of statement, but a philosopher can easily point out why it is unreasonable, and that furthermore it creates very serious theological quandaries.

The difficulty here should be obvious. Scientist do use logic and "more broadly reason-based arguments"; they do so all the time. Much of science proceeds by processes that include logical deduction, and there are no a priori boundaries to the kinds of "broadly reason-based arguments" that scientists can use.

Let me qualify that: there may be some claims that should be conceded as lying outside of science. These may be more a matter of the historical construction of science as a set of institutions than anything else, but I'll not press that issue. Instead, let's agree, for the sake of argument, that scientific reasoning alone cannot give us correct values or correct moral norms. Let's also assume that such things as correct values and moral norms actually exist - though there's much to be said here - but that science alone cannot provide them.

It's also strongly arguable that science is unable to deliver correct statements about fundamental epistemological principles. Take, for example, a principle such as, "All truths except this one are truths that are known through science." A claim like that, whatever its other features, does not seem to be known through science. Nor does its negation seem to be known through science. I'll assume, then, that some meaningful and rational discussion of epistemological issues lies beyond the boundaries of science.

Still, this is not the sort of example that Pigliucci offers. Instead, he begins with the claim that the universe is really 6,000 years old. Science has, of course, produced plenty of evidence that this is just false, that the universe is more like 13 to 14 billion years old. Our own planet is roughly 4 to 5 billion years old. All of this surely counts against the claim that the universe is really only 6,000 years old. Pigliucci is quite correct to see this as an example of science falsifying a religious claim, and I suspect he'd think there are many such examples. Furthermore, he doesn't try to assert, in the fashion of Stephen Jay Gould, that there are some kinds of claims that it is illegitimate for religion to make. Thus, quite correctly in my view, he does not accept the principle of Non-Overlapping Magisteria.

However, what if somebody replies that God arranged for the Earth to look far older than it really is, in order to test our faith? Here, Pigliucci thinks that science (and hence skeptical inquiry) reaches a limit. He claims, in effect, that philosophers have a reply, whereas scientists must stand mute.

I disagree with this. The scientist is quite entitled to reject the claim, not because it makes falsified predictions or conflicts directly with observations (it doesn't) but because it is ad hoc. It is perfectly legitimate for scientists working in the relevant fields to make the judgment that a particular hypothesis is not worth pursuing, and should be treated as false, because it has been introduced merely to avoid falsification of a position that is contrary to the evidence.

Scientists might take some interest in claims about a pre-aged Earth if they were framed in such a way as to make novel and testable predictions, but as long as all such claims are presented as mere ad hoc manoeuvres to avoid falsification of the claim that the universe is really 6,000 years old, a scientist is quite entitled to reject it. A philosopher should reject it for exactly the same reason. Philosophers don't have any advantage over scientists at this point.

Thus, Pigliucci is unnecessarily limiting the kinds of arguments that are available to scientists. He writes as if they are incapable of using arguments grounded in commonsense reasoning, such as arguments that propose we reject ad hoc thesis-saving hypotheses.

That's not to say that the resources of science never run out. But when they do it is often for merely practical reasons. For example, it may be because of because a problem that confronts us requires that we consider points that scientists are, in practice, not well-trained to consider. If that's the problem, it's a matter of pragmatic division of labour, not of an epistemological resource that's out of bounds to scientists in principle.

Accordingly, we might have good reason to say that scientists, as a class, are not that well-trained to solve puzzles that arise within philosophy of religion. But it doesn't follow that any specific scientist - Richard Dawkins, say - is poorly equipped to do so by his training and study. Nor does it follow that whatever arguments Dawkins uses are "not scientific". They may be shared with philosophers, but it by no means follows that they are out of bounds for use by scientists. They may not be distinctively scientific, but that's another matter.

Moreover, it is possible that certain arguments that are legitimately open to scientists to develop might turn out to be decisive, one way or another, with respect to issues in philosophy of religion. Pigliucci says: "When someone, therefore, wants to make a scientific argument in favor of atheism — like Dawkins and Jerry Coyne seem to do — he is stepping outside of the epistemological boundaries of science, thereby doing a disservice both to science and to intellectual inquiry." But we can't know that in advance. It's certainly not a truism which we're compelled to accept.

Two examples

It might help to consider some contrasting examples. First, suppose that a cryptozoologist claims that a gigantic, previously undiscovered species of ape lives in the forests of New England (I'm thinking of the location in North America, not the identically-named location in Australia, or any other place with the same name). I assume that it would be pretty straightforward to work out what would be good evidence for or against the existence of this new species - what kinds of observations we would need to make to confirm its existence directly, what kinds of observations would pretty much preclude its existence, and what observations would be inconclusive. It wouldn't be too hard, at least in principle, to get together a group of zoologists, ecologists, and the like, to investigate the matter. Thus, no one doubts that the existence or otherwise of this spectacular New World primate is a scientific question.

What, however, if the claim is made that a Jewish apocalyptic prophet performed miracles during the first century of the Common Era? This looks like a job for historians - thus we immediately assign it to folks in the Faculty of Arts, rather than the Faculty of Science. The historians are likely to ask for historical evidence of the existence of this prophet and of his alleged miracles. Surely that's reasonable? This may involve (among other things) investigating various documents that supposedly record the prophet's acts, including the miraculous ones. How should the historians proceed?

Well, it will be a bit complicated, though perhaps no more so than the job of the scientists looking for the giant ape.

The historians might wish to establish, using a variety of means available to them, whether the documents were contemporary with the events described. They might examine the documents to try to determine whether they were originally created in their current form, or whether some parts are older, and perhaps more reliable than others. They might attempt to determine whether any of the events recorded in the documents are of such a nature that, if they really happened, they would have been recorded in secular texts of the time. For example, the documents might claim that on such and such a day five hundred long-dead corpses rose from a major cemetery and wandered the streets of Rome, accosting sinners and soldiers. Historians can check whether any of the secular historical texts and other unbiased records describe such an event.

They might also check carefully to see whether the documents are internally consistent and consistent with each other, and the nature of the inconsistencies if any are found. They might take into account whatever is known about the propensity for the lives of prophets to be mythologised, in the sense that the truth is embroidered with (false) accounts of miracle working. They might look to forensic psychologists, among others, for knowledge of when and how people come to believe things (and even to believe they saw things) that turn out to be false.

Many of the skills needed to do all this (including language skills) are taught in arts faculties rather than science faculties. And yet, there is nothing in the kinds of investigations that the historians will be involved in, or the kinds of arguments that they will use in attempting to settle the issue, that is conceptually remote from scientific reasoning. The same sort of logic will be employed; ad hoc hypotheses will be rejected; facts will be weighed.

It's true, of course, that the job will be assigned to people who are well trained in interpreting the nuances of language and the effects of culture, rather than in (for example) mathematics and the conduct of experiments. On the other hand, some scientific apparatus might be used, such as computers programmed to analyse texts to help determine whether they were written by the same person. Hypothetico-deductive reasoning might be relied on at various points. Most importantly, none of the techniques that I am describing are totally unavailable to scientists - it's more a question of emphasis in training. It makes sense to call the investigation a "scientific" one, even though conducted by people employed within arts faculties.

Or we might say that it's an issue for historians, not scientists, while adding that there is no radical difference between the epistemological resources of history and science. It's just that different emphases in training and skill mixes tend to be needed, for everyday purposes, by scientists and historians. If someone had all these skills, they would complement each other and mesh together just fine. When we talk about the methods of scientists and compare those of historians, there are no radically different "ways of knowing" involved. Moreover, there is no reason in a case like this why the historical evidence and arguments should be considered anything less than decisive.

What about philosophers?

Imagine that a philosopher seeks to investigate whether a divine being created the Earth. In that case, she might be faced with evidence of many kinds. For example, one item of alleged evidence, among the many, might be the claim that a Jewish apocalyptic prophet who performed miracles in the first century of the Common Era claimed to be the son of this being. The philosopher might conclude that the alleged testimony of the apocalyptic prophet would carry weight if: (1) he really existed and said what is recorded, and; (2) he really did perform the alleged miracles.

In checking into this evidential issue, the philosopher is likely to ask for help from historians, at least in the first instance, rather than from scientists, thus keeping the investigation within the Faculty of Arts. But, let's remember, the historians will not be using techniques or arguments that are radically foreign to science and scientists - they have a different skill mix but not a radically different way of knowing.

What if the apocalyptic prophet were alleged to have made various claims that are in conflict with current science, e.g. that the Sun is a ball of white hot metal circling the Earth? A philosopher might take this as evidence (perhaps not strong evidence, but still ...) that the prophet was all too human and not, in fact, the child of a divine being. Note, however, that she would depend on scientists to tell her that the claim is, in fact, incorrect, and on historians to tell her whether it is likely that the prophet really said what is attributed to him. At no stage in this inquiry - at least no stage discussed so far - does the philosopher do anything that's radically foreign to the scientific reasoning.

In the upshot, the question about a divine being who created the Earth is likely to involve input from many disciplines, with people who have many different skill sets providing relevant data and sub-conclusions. The beleaguered philosopher must sort out highly complex arguments using all this material, while (probably) not having the skills herself to undertake the textual analysis performed by the historian, or the physical experiments that were performed by scientists in the past when they discovered the true nature of the Sun. But she has not yet used arguments or evidence that are beyond those available, in principle, to scientists. It's simply a matter of division of labour within academic institutions and the availability of people with different skill sets.

Accordingly, a question about the existence of a divine creator is different, in a practical way, from a question about an unknown species of gigantic ape in New England. Whereas the latter can be assigned to scientists from a small group of relevantly related disciplines, the latter may call on data and conclusions from many disciplines, across faculty boundaries, and involving many different skill sets. The overall argument may be extremely complicated in the sense that there are many sub-arguments (from many disciplines) feeding into it. Accordingly, this kind of argument gets assigned to philosophy, the repository for arguments that involve many considerations (and sub-conclusions) from many fields.

But, while that is a reason to say that a question such as this is philosophical, it still does not follow that any of the reasoning done is unavailable to scientists who are broadly enough trained. It is simply that some of the skills depended on at different points in the overall argument come from people with training that scientists don't usually have - e.g. advanced knowledge of ancient languages.

Not only that, but some of the sub-conclusions derivable from science might turn out to be decisive. If we're told enough about the God concerned, we might be able to deduce that it doesn't exist (or that it does) purely on the basis of data and arguments that are available to scientists, without even calling in the historians to help establish what took place in the Middle East 2000 years ago. Thus, Pigliucci is wrong when he suggest that atheism cannot, as a matter of principle, be established by scientific arguments. Whether or not it can be, in respect of one god or another, remains to be seen.

For example, consider the claim that an all-benevolent, all-powerful, all-knowing God exists, and has existed from eternity. It is well within the skills of scientists to give this consideration, deduce what kinds of events would contradict the claim, and look for evidence of such events - e.g. evidence of nature red in tooth and claw, the existence of horrible pain experienced by sentient creatures, and that much of this has nothing to do with any exercise of free will by human beings.


Although there is no science that is specifically charged with investigating the existence of such a deity, there easily could be an interdisciplinary effort by various scientists, particularly including biologists, that justifiably concludes that a god of this kind does not exist. If a theist who supports the existence of a god of this kind resorts to ad hoc manoeuvres, the scientists will be well equipped to recognise them as such.

None of this is to deny that some of what goes on in philosophy is different from what goes on in any scientific discipline. But it is not known in advance that any of these things will be required to settle, decisively, the truth of a particular religious claim.

Perhaps, however, there could be religious claims that it is possible to settle only if we first settle issues of morality or fundamental epistemology that lie outside of science. Accordingly, there is a possibility that some claims about the existence of a god will require sub-conclusions that seem to lie beyond the scope of science. Thus, we can't guarantee that all questions about the existence of a God or gods are decisively resolvable by science, or by methods (such as those of historical-textual scholars) that are allied with it.

Conclusion

We should come to a weaker conclusion than Pigliucci's. Pace Pigliucci, it is not wrong in principle to put scientific arguments for atheism (or for theism). It cannot be ruled out in advance that the kinds of arguments used by scientists will be decisive.

Even if the scientific arguments are not decisive by themselves, they may be when taken in conjunction with other considerations. In that case, they may still be of crucial importance in reaching an atheistic (or, indeed, theistic) conclusion and in that case it appears unfair to criticise somebody like Richard Dawkins for overstepping the bounds.

After all, philosophers are forced to draw upon resources from other disciplines. Why can't a biologist do likewise, obtaining important data and sub-conclusions from his own field, while also relying on input from (say) historians and philosophers for the full argument? If we accept that picture, scientists in the relevant field(s) do have an advantage over people with no scientific training. The advantage will consist in a the possession of both a useful knowledge base and the skills in developing relevant kinds of arguments. While the ultimate conclusion may turn out to require assistance from, say, historians or philosophers, that does not render scientific qualifications irrelevant.

In any event, Pigliucci is surely correct about one thing: the questions relating to theism, atheism, and philosophy of religion in general, should be investigated rationally. Philosophers, historians, and various kinds of scientists may all have a role to play in that investigation (though it is still possible that one or other set of arguments by itself will be decisive). There is no "way of knowing", lying somewhere beyond the realm of rational inquiry, that can solve the problem for us. We are left with our reason and intelligence, and the ongoing advance of knowledge.

But possessing those is no small thing. It's something we must always celebrate, the only key to a (post)human future on or beyond our blue-green Earth.

Russell Blackford's home blog is Metamagician and the Hellfire Club. He is editor-in-chief of The Journal of Evolution and Technology and co-editor, with Udo Schuklenk, of 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).

An "explanation" for life's origins that falls way short

David Brin is a Sentient Developments guest blogger.

This rather lengthy posting is for all you astronomy junkies who are interested in the Origin of Life question... but also to offer you a glimpse of the seamy and immature side of scientific paper publishing. Warning, it is not an ankle-deep puddle-splash. You'll need to wade in, at least hip-deep.

Recently, I was asked to offer a peer review of a paper submitted to the "Journal of Cosmology," an online venture backed by the famed astronomer-iconoclast and former colleague of Fred Hoyle, Chandra Wickramasinghe. Despite a new-Agey look, I had high hopes, perhaps because of the journal's name, or because the chief editor is a neighbor of mine and works in a building where I did graduate school.

Alas, my hopes ebbed as I ready the paper: "Life on Earth Came From Other Planets," by Rhawn Joseph, Ph.D. (His bio, at the end of the article, is about as vague as could possibly be - but one should judge a work by its content, which I proceeded to do. Unfortunately, I found much to fault in the lengthy paper, laying down details in the work of many hours.

What I did not expect was for the editor to thereupon go ballistic on me! Accusing me, in emotion-drenched terms, of defaming and insulting Dr. Joseph. In science, one isn't used to having an invited peer review rejected in such a manner, amid vague ad hominem attacks, without actually quoting or citing any of the purportedly unfair passages in question. Having good-naturedly and generously given many hours to this futile exercise, I blinked in appalled wonder as, without any basis, the editor claimed that I had called Dr. Joseph a "Creation Scientist."

Generally, such misunderstandings are settled by asking the question: "Show me where I actually said that, please?" But no such specifics were forthcoming, only more vituperation.

So, why am I even bothering to report on this event, here? Because we are in the internet age. The topic of Dr. Joseph's paper is an interesting one. Indeed, despite some naivete and glaring omissions, it also contains some thought provoking and entertaining passages. Above all, the effort that I put into appraising and analyzing -- and, in part, refuting -- his thesis ought not to be wasted. There are those who may be edified.

(Note, an inveterate re-writer, I edited some of these passages from the version submitted to JoC, for clarity or readability. However I made NO changes in any passages that might have been the skimmed-misinterpreted sources of the editor's strange vitriol. I leave it to anyone to find justification for claiming that I clearly "hate Dr. Joseph." (???) )

So make of this what you will. Or not. Don't feel obliged. Believe me; there are far more important things going on, in science, right now. All told, I wish I had never heard of these guys.


==== David Brin Ph.D appraises and critiques "Life on Earth Came From Other Planets," by Rhawn Joseph, Ph.D., Journal of Cosmology (2009) =======

While this paper is interesting and fun to read -- and shows an ambitious eagerness that does Dr. Rhawn Joseph credit -- there are some glaring faults. The central one is that this article creates a "just-so story" about Earth's early seas having been seeded by the process known as "panspermia." This notion credits the origin of Earth's biology not to the evolution of cells out of proto-biochemistry, but to the arrival of spores or other living material that may have crossed interstellar space from some earlier biome, a concept that goes back more than a century to Svante Arrhenius.

Dr. Joseph's core innovation is to propose that these seed materials were driven into the coalescing cloud of dust and gas that formed our sun and solar system by the very same supernova that created most of the heavier elements out of which the Earth was formed. The star that went supernova is posited to have had planets that were demolished by the cataclysm, but without destroying all dormant life-material, since those planets would -- Joseph proposes -- have been driven outward some distance, earlier, during an intermediate, giant star phase, before the supernova.

An entertaining scenario, indeed. But even were it to be plausible, without the flaws that I shall elucidate, it would nevertheless remain just a story, one of many ways that dormant life-material might enter interstellar space and eventually arrive at Earth. Hence, it would merit only one place among many such scenarios, rather than being placed on a pedestal, as The Answer.

Indeed, the literature of panspermia speculation offers quite a list of alternative sources of drifting life-material that might enter the atmosphere of an early water world, such as the Earth was (presumably) half a billion years after its formation. For example, Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, and separately Nobelist Hannes Alfven, posited that large COMETS, measuring above ten kilometers in radius, might -- soon after their formation amid supernova debris -- contain copious amounts of the radioactive isotope Aluminum 26. Decay of this substance might thereupon heat and melt internal spaces and fill them with liquid water, protected from space conditions by insulating layers of ice. Within these micro-oceans, water, energy and necessary elements might mix and create pre-biotic or even life-supporting soups. While individual comet chambers might seem small, compared to a planet's ocean, the sheer number of such comets is staggering to contemplate, perhaps pervading every stellar system, not only those with earthlike planets equable, continuously habitable zones. This potentially vast volume of watery reactor vessels led some to suggest comets as the true test-tube sources of life in the universe.

(Note: my own doctoral work was on comets and my novel HEART OF THE COMET featured discussion of these issues.)

Offering vast amounts of liquid water volume for pre-biotic chemistry is not the only advantage of this earlier model. In addition, we are not asked to believe that the seeding material will survive a nearby supernova.

Nevertheless, I bring up this previous scenario not so much in order to contrast it against Dr. Joseph's proposal, as to point out that such scenarios are abundant. It was Joseph's duty to both understand all competing theories and present them in full light. His mere mention of comets as delivery systems, to inject life-seeding material into the early Earth, was insufficient and remiss.

Before getting down to nitty gritty specifics of Joseph's particular scenario, let me pause and step even farther back. Dr. Joseph's central tenet -- contending that life cannot arise from non-life, and hence must be traced farther back in time, to earlier living sources, is made plain where he says: "Given the complexity of a single-celled organism and its DNA, the likelihood that life on Earth began in an organic soup is the equivalent of discovering a computer on Mars and claiming it was randomly assembled in the methane sea."

(Let us put aside the strange "methane sea" non-sequitur... could he have been thinking about Titan?... and proceed.)

This premise, shared by the so-called Creation Science movement, is not well thought-out. It is one thing to suggest that there are missing steps, between the complex precursor molecules derived so far, in later versions of the Miller-Urey-Orgel experiments, and truly self-sustaining cellular life. Skeptics about the missing steps may turn out to be right, after all.We'll see.

It is quite another thing to trot out this old horse chestnut -- that in order to arise out of pre-biotic material, life must self-assemble completely randomly, directly from raw materials into all the perfectly interacting gears and wheels of a living cell. Anyone who pushes that line simply has not allowed himself to grasp the well-observed phenomenon of Successive Selection and Accumulation, which renders such "clockmaker" arguments not only irrelevant, but ignorant.

Let me clarify this point, to eliminate any chance of misunderstanding. I am not saying that the Standard Model maintained by the vast majority of working evolutionary biochemists is automatically true, just because it is the majority consensus! Standard Models have been proved wrong, on occasion, in the history of science. Nevertheless, those who rebuke the consensus in any scientific field do bear the burden of proof. Above all, they should be able to describe -- even paraphrase accurately -- what that consensus view is and what its strongest supporting arguments may be, before seeking to systematically disprove those arguments.

In this case, Dr. Joseph is not merely suggesting a method by which Earth MAY have been seeded by interstellar life. He ridicules the very notion of "life from non-life" dismissing the majority view with little more than a rhetorical shrug. That is not how rebel scientists systematically disprove a standing consensus.

Please note that I do not go so far as to class Dr. Joseph categorically with Creationists, any more than Chandra Wickramasinghe was one. Both men avow belief in actual astronomy in a vast and ancient, physics-propelled cosmos. Indeed, Wickramasinghe did accept Successive Selection and Accumulation; he simply believed that the early Earth lacked sufficient time and working volume to accomplish the task. His favored cometary chambers, on the other hand, would. Or so he contended.

Dr. Joseph, in contrast, appears to simply be pushing the critical question further back in time. Allegorically, it is like claiming that the Earth-supporting turtle stands on the back of another turtle, then another, "all the way down."

So let me put the question: if life did not arise from non-life on the Earth itself, then when and where did it begin? Alas, if we go back too far, we enter an era when the Milky Way's metallicity would be too low to support life. Indeed, that wall is encountered only one stellar generation before our sun. It had to start somewhere!

As for Dr. Joseph's particular proposal, there are problems which I'll attempt to shed light upon... though for lack of time, I'll be brief.

1) His scenario posits that our solar system condensed rather immediately after interstellar space was seeded with detritus from a supernova. While it is true that supernova-generated isotopes were the crucial ingredients for rocky planets and for later generation, metal-rich stars like our sun, this scenario is implausible. Propulsive dispersal from a supernova encompasses many light years and substantial periods of time. Condensation episodes are thought to take place only later, after the ejected material comes into contact with pre-existing molecular clouds, whereupon hydrodynamic complexities can occur. We are talking about vast distances of many parsecs. The odds of any pre-existing planets, formerly in orbit around the supernova star itself, being involved, would seem -- well -- astronomical.

2) That fact, plus the rarity of supernovas themselves, means that Dr. Joseph is proposing a "rare life" scenario, and hence a fairly uncommon position among panspermia thinkers, who tend to envision life spreading everywhere. I am not objecting to this, per se. He is welcome to hold that life is rare in the cosmos. There are, of course, philosophical problems, e.g. the Anthropic Principle, that all such rare-life theories must face, compared to hypotheses based upon plenitude. But that does not refute him.

3) In any event, there are astronomical problems with his theory. Most supernovae come either from very large stars or else stars that tightly co-orbit with white dwarves. Neither of these are the type of solar system where one would generally expect to find circumstances friendly to life. The big stars only last some tens of millions of years, hence what can we expect from their planets, which might not even have time to cool and form seas?

In the other class of supernovae, the white dwarf companion would mess up orbital mechanics and would have created many earlier violent episodes. Dr. Joseph should do a better job explaining why such systems seem more likely to engender life than our own placid, early seas, orbiting a calm, long-lived and stable sun.

4) This one is lethal. Let me quote from Dr. Joseph:

"It is generally believed that our sun was created within a nebular cloud produced by a supernova nearly 5 billion years ago. A protoplanetary disc formed from the remnants of the nebular cloud surrounding the new sun, thereby giving rise to the planets of this solar system (Greaves 2005; van Dishoeck 2006)."

Alas, this view is simplistic, misleading and simply flat-out wrong. Experts on the material that first formed in the solar system -- found in tiny inclusions in the oldest meteorites -- have determined that our solar system coalesced from a cloud that contained contributions from AT LEAST THREE, AND POSSIBLY FIVE OR MORE INDEPENDENT NUCLEOSYNTHETIC SOURCES. (The Wasserberg Lab, at Calktech.) In other words, there was not just one supernova cloud but an amalgamation that stewed with contributions from several earlier supernovae and/or novae, over an extended period.

Hence, the amount of mixing time required would be hundreds of millions of years. Since the galaxy, at our distance from the center, takes about 200 Myr to complete a rotation, any conceivable association with the specific planets that once circled a particular supernova would long have smeared out, leaving the odds of Dr. Joseph's scenario happening in the realm of spooky coincidence.

Of course, there may have been drifting particulate matter, instead of larger bodies, dispersed throughout the clouds. But seriously. In that case, who needs a supernova? Living worlds would shed such stuff through meteoritic impacts etc.

CONCLUSION

I could go on. Alas, I haven't the time. Suffice it to say that there are problems with this scenario.

These problems do not invalidate the notion that panspermia-seeding might have set life in motion on our planet. I find that general concept plausible in a very broad way -- though not a leading candidate. Top position -- until someone comes up with good reason to change -- goes to the Standard Model consensus or life-from-nonlife in Earth's early seas.

Nevertheless, I'll maintain an open mind. Certainly, if the galaxy turns out to be rife with comets that were once great big aqueous/organic reactor vessels, one could imagine them delivering precursors in copious quantities, swamping our own planet's own creative fecundity. It could happen, perhaps.

No, the devil is in the details. And Dr. Joseph's details are, unfortunately, unconvincing.

I do compliment Dr. Joseph for his initiative, enthusiasm, and eagerness to explore fresh ideas. I found his paper interesting and entertaining... but, ultimately, lacking.

With cordial regards,

David Brin
http://www.davidbrin.com

The 'end of science' my ass

The reports of the death of science have been greatly exaggerated.

Another effort in the 'science has come to an end' series recently appeared in the Guardian with Ehsan Masood's article, "Are We Witnessing the End of Science?" Masood's concern has more do to with how science is conducted today than a fear that the well has run dry -- though he does suggest that 'radical' advances in physics and biology are likely at an end barring some kind of technological breakthrough (e.g. Hadron Collider data).

Specifically, Masood believes that we are seeing fewer revolutions in science because of the professional way in which modern science is organized. "It takes a lot of courage to challenge conventionally accepted views," he writes, "and it needs a certain amount of stamina to constantly battle those who want to protect the status quo. Mavericks do not do well in large organisations, which is what some scientific fields have become."

While there may be some truth to Masood's assertion that there are systemic problems, the suggestion that such challenges will forever stifle potential scientific breakthroughs is overstated. These are merely short term problems. Science isn't going to stop just because of the conservatism that's supposedly embedded in the institutions that Masood is talking about.

As for the issue that scientific progress is at an end because there's nothing left to uncover, that's an equally problematic claim. This is a perspective that's been promoted by such thinkers as John Horgan, author of the book, The End Of Science: Facing The Limits Of Knowledge In The Twilight Of The Scientific Age.

While I agree that the rate of paradigmatic scientific breakthroughs is slowing down, I firmly believe that there's still plenty of meaningful science to be done.

Accelerating technological change, decelerating scientific advance

A number of years ago Michael Vassar, who is now the President of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, and I tackled this question. We suspected that, despite the rapid pace of technological progress, that breakthroughs in science were actually slowing down. To test the theory we created a list of humanity's most important scientific breakthroughs and noted how much time had elapsed since each development:

• Advent of religion as primitive metaphysics (100,000 to 45,000 years ago)
• Meditation Pantojoli, Forest Vedas (1000 BC)
• Advent of science in Ancient Greece (350 BC)
• Arabic Mathematics (800 AD)
• Revival of Ptolemaic Astronomy (early 1500s)
• Copernican Astronomy/Heliocentrism (1543)
• Advent of Mechanistic Dynamics (17th century)
• Statistics & Probability Bayes, Pascal, Fermat, etc. (17th century)
• Calculus Huygens, Newton & Leibniz (late 17th century)
• Newtonian Dynamics (1680s)
• Newtonian Optics (1680s)
• Idea of Progress/Enlightenment (18th century)
• Thermodynamics (early 19th century)
• Biochemistry (early 19th century)
• Non-Euclidean Geometry Lobachevsky, Bolyai, Gauss, Riemann, etc. (early 19th century)
• Electro-Magnetic Induction Faraday (1821)
• Natural Selection Darwin (1858)
• Geological Uniformitarianism (mid to late 19th century)
• Mendelian Inheritance (1866)
• Maxwell's Equations (1884)
• Periodic Table of the Chemical Elements (mid to late 19th century)
• Microeconomics (mid to late 19th century)
• Germ Theory of Disease Pasteur (late 19th century)
• Advent of Speculative Science Fiction, Futurology (late 19th century)
• Unification of Chemistry and Physics (late 19th, early 20th century)
• Experimental Psychology (early 20th century)
• Undecidability (early 20th century)
• Einsteinian Relativity (1905)
• Quantum Physics (1909) Planck, Einstein, Bohr, Schrödinger
• Universal Computing Turing, Gödel, Hilbert (1928)
• Advent of Cosmology (early to mid 20th century)
• Idea of force carrier Einstein, Bose, Higgs (mid 20th century)
• Standard Model of Particle Physics (mid to late 20th century)
• Neo-Darwinian synthesis with Mendelian Genetics Williams, Dawkins, etc. (mid to late 20th century)
• Chaos Theory or Complex Systems Theory (1960s)
• Memetics/Semiotics Dawkins, Eco (1970s)
• Sociobiology Wilson (1970s)

Based on this list we concluded that science had experienced a 'golden age' of sorts from the 17th through to the 19th century, and that major breakthroughs were becoming less and less frequent.

So what does that mean moving forward? As already mentioned, I suspect that the 'earth shattering' breakthroughs may be a thing of the past, though that cannot be guaranteed. Past successes may be no guarantee of future gain, but it can also be argued that the current slowdown is no guarantee that there won't be future scientific black swans.

The ongoing interplay of science and technology

The interplay between science and technological progress is a very intimate one: some of the greatest breakthroughs in science arrived alongside the introduction of new technological devices.

Take modern astronomy, for example, which was ignited by the invention of the telescope. Similarly, microbiology's emergence coincided with the introduction of the microscope. There are many other examples, including conceptual ones; it's no coincidence that the human body started to be perceived as machine-like during the industrial revolution, or that the brain started to be seen as a type of computer once information technologies took off.

It's quite possible that future advances will once again inspire the sciences. This will unlikely happen in the well-established or more traditional disciplines like astronomy, biology or chemistry. Instead, future breakthroughs will happen in the fuzzy and specialized areas that currently confound science.

The greatest beneficiary of such breakthroughs will undoubtedly be in neuroscience -- or what some observers still regard as the 'philosophy of mind' on account of its slow progress. There is still plenty of mysterious space to work in to keep scientists busy for the foreseeable future (consciousness, qualia and subjectivity in particular). And very closely related to this is the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence theory. I very much anticipate that these two fields will inform and inspire each other over the coming decades.

Another important field will be quantum computation. This is actually a potential game-changer; quantum computers would likely change the way we go about information processing and perhaps even daily life itself. If theory holds, quantum computers will eventually reach the point of instantaneous problem-solving for almost all computational problems. That's significant.

There's also the issue of converging sciences. Take molecular nanotechnology, for example, which is a collision between chemistry, physics, biology and engineering (to name a few). We will undoubtedly uncover many mysteries of both physics (at small scales) and biology as we work to create molecular scale materials and devices.

Many of the fields I just described already exist today, but they're arguably still proto-sciences that are in their first or second generation of development.

Technology is applied science

Science feeds technological development, which in turn inspires the sciences. But ultimately, all technologists are scientists. They just happen to apply their work to the real world. Without science, engineers are merely hopeful conjurers.

Which brings me to another reason that I am confident for future scientific breakthroughs: we still cannot create sufficiently accurate models of the world around us.

The human brain immediately comes to mind. If science is at an end, and we've discovered all there is to know, then why can't we create an accurate and fully functional model of the human brain? And where the heck is our modern theory of consciousness?

The list goes on. What about the science of aging? How come we haven't eradicated all diseases? Why do we still have cars that run on fossil fuels? How about addressing climate change? And what about a clean and sustainable energy source?

These are not technological problems -- they are scientific problems. And they're all tractable. Further, because there is a strong desire to solve such problems there's is a good chance that we eventually will.

And as for science coming to an end, not by a long shot. We still live in a world of mystery and doubt. Yes, science has done an admirable job answering questions to date, but there's still considerable work to be done.

Scientific literacy as a means to inoculate against religion

"My only wish is…to transform friends of God into friends of man, believers into thinkers, devotees of prayer into devotees of work, candidates for the hereafter into students of the world, Christians who, by their own procession and admission, are "half animal, half angel" into persons, into whole persons."

– Ludwig Feuerbach

There’s a current billboard in Toronto that reads, “Literacy is a right.”

Now, we’ve all be told to believe that rights are nonsense on stilts, but there is a certain significance to these sorts of proclamations. Clearly, when someone declares something to be a ‘human right’ they are making a very serious claim. They have pinpointed something they feel no person should have to do without, whether it be protection against racial discrimination, access to clean water, or in this case, the ability to read.

The impetus behind these sorts of social efforts is the assurance that persons be guaranteed the most basic tools and protections required to get through life fairly and safely. In the case of reading, it is generally acknowledged that illiteracy debilitates a person to the point where they experience undue difficulty engaging in all that life and society has to offer.

Interestingly, there’s a normative aspect to these sorts of ‘endowments’ and privileges. A few centuries ago most people did not need to know how to read to get through life. Today, however, it is near impossible – hence the call for literacy as a basic right.

But it’s not just the ability to read that is crucial today. Given the intricacies of the modern age and the ever-growing complexification of ideas and technology, it can be said that a scientific education is also increasingly necessary; if literacy can be considered a basic right, then so to must scientific literacy.

Yet, far too few people truly understand science and technology today. This is proving to be extremely problematic, particularly at the dawn of what looks to be a transformative future. Scientific illiteracy, quite unfortunately, appears to be an issue that will only get worse and create a slew of social problems.

Including the ongoing entrenchment and spread of religion.

We currently live at a time when rationality and tolerance have never been more important to the human species. Religion, with all its prejudices and devotion to ignorance, continues to present a threat to not just healthy and inquisitive minds, but to civilization itself.

Consequently, we need to place a much higher value on a scientific education. Simply put, there’s no better way to inoculate against religion and other forms of misinformation and unhealthy thinking habits. Our children deserve the right to a scientific, critical mind.

Soft memetic engineering

Indeed, the only truly effective and ethical way to combat viral religious memes is to nip them in the bud and prevent them from taking root in the first place. Prevention is what’s required rather than a cure.

Memetic theory -- the notion that ideas replicate by spreading from mind to mind – suggests that memes are only effective if they find a home in a sympathetic brain. The ability of a meme to take root in someone’s consciousness is a reflection of its ability to exploit human psychology (consequently, memetics can be thought of the science of understanding how human psychology responds to information). But this is only part of the story. Not all minds are alike, and not everyone is subject to the same information acquisition/transmission tendencies.

There are currently 6.6 billion human minds on the planet in various states of memetic receptiveness. Owing to new technologies, many these minds have unprecedented access to the world’s information. The current memepool is an anarchic mix of ideas bursting open like the Cambrian Explosion --each idea waiting for the opportunity to copy itself from one mind to another.

These conditions are the result of human ingenuity, creativity and tolerance. In free societies memes remain largely unchecked and are allowed to proliferate and mutate at will. In liberal democracies we consider freedom of speech and the right to free expression as among our highest values.

We also live in a world, quite thankfully, where people cannot be coerced into adopting a specific mindset. This was attempted in the 20th century by totalitarian Marxist regimes who, in the case of religion, banned spiritual practices, burned down churches and executed priests. The end result, particularly in post-Soviet Russia, was a religious community who survived the persecution only to come back with more power and fervor than before.

In other words, it backfired.

Indeed, this kind of ideological ‘memetic engineering’ is very much frowned upon today and should not be considered a viable solution in the struggle to maintain cultural health.

Unfortunately, however, there are consequences to having an anarchic memepool, namely the unchecked proliferation of misinformation, superstition, and of course, religion. These types of ideas are more than mere falsities, they create problems as well. Recently in Canada, for example, Catholic girls were nearly denied vaccinations for for human papillomavirus, a sexually transmitted disease. As a result, these girls were put at risk of developing cervical cancer on account of religious sexual taboos.

As Thomas H. Hulxey once noted, “Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.” As we can attest to today, religious notions are interfering with the quality of human lives, whether it be public health issues, hallucinations of an intelligent designer or the blood lust of a suicidal would-be martyrs.

Thankfully, there is a gentle and elegant way to steer people in the direction of truth and rationality – what we can call a soft form of memetic engineering. I’m speaking, of course, of scientific literacy. Given our society's laws and values, the best we can do is to prime minds in such a way that they are equipped to fend off superstitious nonsense. A mind in tune with scientific methodology can better sterilize religious memes, and at the same time guard against other psychological pot-holes like pseudoscience and conspiratorial paranoia.

A way of thinking

A scientific education consists of more than just memorizing the periodic table of the elements or understanding Newton’s basic laws. In addition to these things it is the acquisition of the skeptical mind and the capacity for critical thought. Carl Sagan once noted that, “Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.”

Skepticism should be considered a virtue and a redeeming characteristic. Physicist Richard Feynman agreed, “There is no harm in doubt and skepticism, for it is through these that new discoveries are made.” Conversely, Richard Dawkins describes the religious mind as being unimaginative, not poetic, not soulful. “On the contrary, they are parochial, small-minded, niggardly with the human imagination, precisely where science is generous,” he says.

Needless to say a number of things have to change. The education system needs to be reformed, while popular media needs to take on a more positive outlook when it comes to science.

Take school, for example. In addition to regular science classes students should have lessons dedicated to critical and healthy thinking (including lessons in emotional intelligence). These classes should teach the scientific method, empiricism, how to recognize biases and extraordinary claims, and how to properly source data and work with credible sources.

This would go a long way in making the learning of science much more palatable for students. Today, most students, particularly girls, find it off-putting. It’s geek stuff. It’s supposed to be hard. Moreover, science is often relegated to the sidelines in favour of easier or more romantic and exciting subjects, including athletics.

Districts should establish pro-science campaigns and bring in expert speakers and science-focused entertainers. Schools need more money, better equipment, and enthusiastic teachers. Students should have more time allocated each week to learning about science and critical thinking. Pop culture needs more positive role models like Bill Nye and outspoken individuals like Richard Dawkins and the late Carl Sagan.

Science can be sexy. It just has to presented that way.

Liberal education and home schooling

All of this, of course, cannot happen in a vacuum; science most certainly needs to be part of a broader liberal education. Students should understand the width and breadth of the world and avoid the insular thinking that characterizes religious minds and communities.

To this end, schools should introduce students to psychology, history and cultural studies at an earlier age. World religions should be taught to expand otherwise limited faith-based views, thus greatly reducing xenophobia and general lack of awareness. It would also establish a sense of humility and reduce notions of cultural relativism.

As for the issue of home schooling, yes, parents deserve the right to keep their kids at home or send them to private faith-based schools.

But such a decision may eventually come at a price. Standardized testing should be implemented and no student should be able to earn a high school diploma without a solid grasp of the basics of science and its methodology. Should some parents insist on teaching creationism instead of evolution, their children will have to face the consequences. The outcome may be that faith-based schooling will eventually carry a stigma. It’s conceivable that these children will have low employability and have difficultly earning admission to universities.

Democratic process

An implicit assumption in a democracy is that the collective actions of an informed populace will be to the benefit of both individuals and the community. The world, in order to be properly comprehended, and for an individual to fully engage in life, is increasingly dependent on persons having a scientific rather than a metaphysical interpretation of existence. Today, without critical thinkers, democracy and effective governance is in peril.

Moreover, given the complexity of today’s technologies and the dire consequences (or benefits!) of their development, the need to address global scale problems has never been more important. Scientific minds are absolutely necessary to not just identify these problems, but to solve them as well. Today we face such calamities as global warming and the spread of catastrophic diseases.

It should be noted that many Christian evangelists are global warming deniers -- not because they claim any special scientific knowledge, but because they are skeptical of any scientific claim, and any other 'belief system' like environmentalism that could rival their own. This is a recipe for disaster.

Close-mindedness is not what's required here; instead, we need dynamic and effective people to help humanity deal with problems like climate change.

Helping people and society

Scientific illiteracy is an impairment. Individuals without the capacity for critical and rational thought are increasingly having a difficult time understanding their world and relating to ‘mainstream’ society. There is a growing divide between the secular and religious worlds, giving rise to two distinct cultures who are increasingly unable to converse with each other.

Worse, those individuals who embrace more extreme or fundamentalist versions of religion feel increasingly alienated by modern society. The urge is to rail against the tide rather than seek a kind of reconciliation or understanding; cultural relations ends up regressing to an 'us versus them' mentality.

But a common ground does exist. Science is the universal language.

If literacy can be declared a right, then so too must scientific literacy. The health of individuals and society depends on it.