Clarke’s Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguisable from magic.
Amoeba’s Corollary: Sooner or later, someone will proclaim that all such magic is black.

In my previous post, Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba poked and prodded at the disconnect between the high level of official public concern over the current outbreak of 2009 H1N1 influenza and its actual impact on human health in these Untied States.

(The official public concern, I’m guessing, has some part of its basis in history: the influenza epidemic of 1918, also caused by a strain of H1N1 virus, came in waves, with later waves more deadly than the first.)

I was chagrined, to say the least, to discover a link to this post on a virulently anti-vaccination website. A clear case of foot in mouth pseudopod in cytostome disease. Fortunately:

A. The link was short-lived.
B. With all due respect, gentle readers, there aren’t enough of you for whatever happens here to make much of an impact. (I can only hope that the same is true for that other website.)

Wikipedia has what I consider to be an excellent page on the history, dynamics, and negative social impacts of vaccine controversies. It points out that vaccines have been, in human health terms, the best thing since sliced bread – and that, for one reason or another, various persons have had issues with sliced bread.

Including the English theologian Rev. Edward Massey, who argued, in 1772 (yes, the anti-vaccinationists have been around for awhile) that smallpox vaccinations represented diabolically-influenced defiance against the will of God.

No wonder Richard Dawkins considers God to be a delusion.

My principal concern is that, now as then, a significant part of the population is willing to accept a glib soundbite as truth, in preference to a long catalogue of facts that happen to represent the truth but don’t fit conveniently on a protest sign.

Even more worrying to me is the idea, implicit in the thoughts and actions of the conspiracy theorists, that the findings of science, like so many of the practitioners of magic in the current blitz of popular novels, are for sale to the highest bidder.

Such a view is consistent with the deconstructionist view of the world (all viewpoints are utterly dependent on the self-interest of the originator) that is now predominant.

But I think that, if science actually does devolve in this way, we are lost.

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba was engaged in world-saving pursuits (reading the sports scores online) when he happened upon this headline:

Doctors May ‘Fire’ Parents Who Don’t Vaccinate Children

Seems there’s a profit-making newsworthy standoff between patients who are convinced that vaccinations cause autism in children and physicians who:

(a) are convinced that they don’t;

(b) don’t want to get blamed (read sued) for outbreaks of the deadly diseases that currently are controlled by universal vaccination programs.

Vaccinations have been taking shots ever since they were invented in the mid-19th century, but especially since the first Gulf War, when an anthrax vaccine was blamed (wrongly) for causing the puzzling array of illnesses labeled “Gulf War Syndrome”.

But what drove me to the keyboard was a line in a Discover magazine article that I looked up to track those developments in the vaccine controversy that were important to the press.

A line that asked, in effect, how it could be that “science and so many citizens fell out of touch” on the vaccination issue.

Indeed, how is that large numbers of people will choose to believe the opinions of a Playboy bunny over a physician’s recommendation based on reams of heavily scrutinized data? Or those of a political vaudevillian over the long catalogs of facts supporting evolution and anthropogenic global warming?

Lots of people have expressed opinions on this phenomenon, and how to fix it. My views are perhaps more curmudgeonly than some.

1. Science is hard. Yes it is. There’s no point in sugarcoating this, as some folk try to do. Success in science requires both a vivid imagination and the disciplined reasoning skills to turn that imagination into useful work. The earlier that someone begins learning and exercising these skills, the greater the chances for success.

We don’t seem to have any difficulties applying this principle to kindergarten students who show promise in football.

But if that kid shows promise in science?

We slap a white coat on him and call him ‘mad’.

And the science teachers compete with the music, art, and history teachers for space at the bake sale tables, in the dwindling hope that the schools for which they work (for now) might teach something other than football.

2. Science does not pay. Science as a profession is almost entirely a creation of the 20th century. The “great men” of the 19th century upon whom most modern science is based (e.g. Banks, Darwin, Freud, Lyell, Maxwell, etc.) hardly ever got a government grant, never ran a bake sale. They paid for their researches out of their own pockets, either from independent wealth or from “real job” income, such as from medicine or the law. This history, I think, is one of the reasons why pay rates for most scientists are so low. Hell, We the People haven’t had to pay for science before, why should we now?

And why should a young person with talent in science go through all the trouble to learn the hard discipline that science requires, and suffer all the ‘mad scientist’ jibes, only to make less than most of his peers who have taken easier and less costly paths in life?

3. Science has lost its reputation for impartiality.

Perhaps the most important of the hard-learned (and hard to learn) principles of science is that the work of a scientist is to be openly published and just as openly critiqued. The scientist is trained, not to argue that a piece of work is correct, but to argue, with the coldest and most rigorous logic at her command, that a piece of work is not demonstrably wrong. With everyone in the room, including herself, trying to show just that.

And if the work is shown to be wrong, the scientist is expected to admit it.

It is this willingness to put the work, not the worker, foremost that has historically given science its reputation for impartiality. What, indeed, is a ‘mad scientist’ but one who has put himself first, and therefore can no longer see the flaws in his research because ‘he can do no wrong’?

Impartiality is easy to maintain when you’re a wealthy Victorian gentleman whose daily bread does not depend on the results of a particular experiment.

Today? When your company’s future, your laboratory’s, indeed your own, may depend on the results of a particular experiment – or what a particular client community perceives is the result of a particular experiment?

Corporate research findings are no longer openly discussed, and if they are published, they are presented, not by the scientists involved but by the company’s publicists – if the scientist does the presenting, she’s almost certainly been trained to be a publicist and is acting in that role. And an increasing number of research findings are corporate, as non-corporate funds have almost completely dried up (these days, the National Science Foundation struggles to fund 20% of the proposals submitted to it) and scientists try desperately to find a career path that has a small chance of repaying the costs of their special education – which may commence at age 22 and lead to a first real job at age 40. (With those job prospects, it really does amount to “special” ed.)

Corporate research puts (or is perceived to put) the corporation first, not the research. Much of the public is convinced that, therefore, the corporation is incapable of seeing the flaws in its work. And that makes all the corporation’s scientists ‘mad’.

Moreover. The introspective self-critique which has, for more than a century, been a centerpiece of scientific training is 180 degrees removed from what YFNA thinks is the main driver of present-day American political and social discourse: the emotive impulse. Just do it! Buy now! screams the ad campaign. Marketing 101: If the customer is allowed to think, you’ve lost the sale. Therefore, Jenny, don’t let the customer think. Carry him along in the waves of your emotion. Bury any logic in the torrent of your pronouncements, and he will be yours, Adolf.

So, how is it that science and citizens are out of touch?

Because science is so hard, that to most citizens it is indistinguishable from magic. Sir Arthur C. Clarke, ever the optimist, neglected, when he formulated his Third Law, to consider Amoeba’s Corollary:

Sooner or later, all magic is black.

Because the low pay of a science career discourages people with any sense of economic rationality from taking it up (or even from defending it – the money is with the opposition), and encourages everyone else in their perception of science as a black magical guild.

Because the loss of science’s reputation for impartiality further alienates it from a skeptical, nay fearful, public.

That scientific inquiry, properly conducted, is society’s best hope for improving the human condition doesn’t seem to matter.

It doesn’t make good media bites.

Or sell creationist rhetoric.

Or create false illusions that we can actually keep our Hummers.

Or market quack cures for autism.

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

The other day, I was relaxing during the intermission of a band rehearsal, when a bandmate comes up to me and says:

“One of my old buddies just won a Nobel Prize!”

Now, you probably know this already, but just in case you didn’t: the scientific Nobel Prizes (Physiology or Medicine, Chemistry, Physics) are something of a holy grail for scientists. Some of us anyway … let’s establish right now that the Nobel Prize Committee spares no thoughts for amoebae, or those who work on them. These prizes are for the folk who make Really Big Contributions to the health and welfare of We the People. Funded by the inventor of the principal means, pre-1945, of blowing We the People skyhigh.

Needless to say, hearty congratulations were in order. Especially since, in this particular case, my bandmate’s glory was not entirely reflected; he had participated in early phases of the work, and then chosen a different path for his career. Which is working right well for him.

In this case, the Really Big Contribution is an understanding (I’m oversimplifying here) of how cells, including human cells, sense how old they are, and, to a degree, control that aging. This understanding plays a role in (for example) understanding cancer. Which is, in essence, a bunch of cells that don’t age and won’t quit dividing even when the rest of the body (not to mention the chemotherapy and radiation treatments) tells them not to.

With this piece of information, Medicine will make strides towards curing cancer.

Eventually.

Which, to some people, isn’t good enough. The Nobel discoveries aren’t curing people now, so therefore “the Nobel Prizes have long since strayed from Alfred Nobel’s original wish” and why are we taking precious space away from Viagra advertisements to talk about them?

Behind every major scientific discovery, there are a thousand, if not ten thousand, assembled facts. Behind every Big Name in the sciences, there are a thousand Ph.D.s whose names are known only to the author indices of the scientific journals, but without whom the Big Names wouldn’t be. The lone scientist working in the wilderness and coming up with The Discovery was always something of a myth, and is even more so now, when significant resources in materials and personnel are necessary to make even the anonymous research findings possible, never mind those that make News.

It’s been written that the prime mission of today’s scientist is not to serve the community, but to keep the laboratory in funds. To a degree this is true. After all, we no longer deem it appropriate for science to be conducted only by independently-wealthy gentlemen, so we now have a cadre of professionals for whom The Mortgage Payment dictates the direction of the search for Truth.

But shall We the People strip the resources from a group of people whose efforts will make a difference in our ability to survive and thrive on this planet, even if we don’t understand those efforts, in order to promote those things that we think we do understand? American Idol, for instance?

About those resources. The three Nobel Prize winners will split a prize that (before taxes, I suppose) amounts to the grandiose sum of $US1.4 million.

Let’s see. If I have my arithmetic right, and if our Nobelers do some really hard bargaining with the suppliers, that $1.4 million will get the three of them one cruise missile each. Without the launcher.

Choices, choices …

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

She: Have you heard about the campaign?

He: The campaign? Sarah Palin’s started running already?

She: Not that campaign. This one. The one to take back the beep!

He: You’re not telling me that the coyote actually caught the Road Runner?!?

She: Will you be serious a minute?

He: I’ll try. But stand back. You might get burned.

She: Oh, stellar. Don’t you care that this is costing us money?

He: Tell it to get in line. We’re back in Hawai‘i, dear, if you’ll recall. The only thing that doesn’t cost an outrageous amount of money is the air we breathe. And I’m sure they’re working on that.

She: They’ve done it. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.

He: OK …

She: You know, when you leave a message on your cell phone …

He: Unless it’s absolutely necessary, I don’t. I call back later. But go on …

She: Well, when you do leave a message, you have to wait forever and listen to all this meaningless dialogue before you can actually leave the message. And you know who pays?

He: If you both have cell phones, the caller and the recipient. Just like everything else that happens on cell phones.

She: Do you have any idea how much the companies make while we’re waiting for those messages?

He: I’m sure I could run my lab for the rest of my career on a day’s worth. And we won’t even talk about the one-fifth of us who survive on a dollar a day.

She: That’s about right. The take for just one company is estimated to be about US$620 million a year. Which is why this New York Times fellow wants us to tell the phone companies to stop with the unnecessary, time-wasting messages already. Wants us to take back the beep.

He: Right. So the agent of one megacorporation is egging us on to volunteer our time so that we’ll take megaprofits out of some other megacorporation’s pockets and deposit them in his own? Sounds like it’s working, too. I’m not impressed.

She: You’re not?

He: Look. The whole cell phone thing has been a scam from the very beginning. The ridiculously high rates and charges. The extortionate long-term contracts. The poor sound quality. The dropped calls. The wide stretches of country where you still can’t get calls. Did We the People tell the scammers to stop gouging us, or they could stick their Nokias where the sun doesn’t shine? No, of course not. And now we’re complaining about a few seconds here and there? It’s a little damned little, and a lot damned late. You remember POTS?

She: You mean the ones I finally got out of storage for the kitchen?

He: Not those pots. These POTS. Plain Old Telephone Service. Universally available, efficient, and above all cheap. Unless you needed to call Egypt or something. The regulators pretty much made sure that We the People could afford to talk on the phone. There’s no reason why cell phones couldn’t have been developed under this system. Except one.

She: Which was?

He: What else? The moguls declared that they wouldn’t pursue technologies like cell phones unless they could make enough money off them to finance their yachts. Deregulate or else, they said. And we, like fools, said OK.

She: We’re getting some of this back now, aren’t we?

He: Y’think? This Pogue fellow got one thing absolutely right. ARPU. Average Revenue Per User. The “leave a message” trick is just one sneaky way that the companies have to get us to spend more money on our phones. You don’t think they’ve got a million more up their sleeves? So many that they could afford to let Pogue beat down on this one? “Hey, we beat the phone companies! Yay!” And meanwhile they’re implementing ARPU plans J, Q, and ZZ. They don’t get their money this way, they’ll get it some other way. They’ll have to.

She: They’ll have to?

He: Yeah. Because otherwise, We the People who own their stocks will dump them faster than you can say “dropped call”. And the moguls will all have to sell the yachts that we shouldn’t have let them have in the first place to the Sheik of Araby.

She: But what do we do now?

He: We should have thought about that a long time ago. Now, all we can do is the best we can.

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

Once upon a time, back when elephants had fur, humans were hunting them with pits and spears, and I was a high school freshman …

Bah. That was yesterday. You’ve got no clue, pal.

Who said that?

I did!

My eye doesn’t talk.

Apparently it doesn’t see very well either. I’m right in front of your nose. Maybe that’s the problem, your nose is getting in the way.

Oh great. An insult comic I can’t find is …

Hi, Jack.

And with prehistoric jokes too. Who the hell are you, newbie? Identify yourself!

Newbie?!? I’ve been here since the beginning! You’ve been putting me out there ever since you started posting on this site. Every day for almost two years, human. Which I’ve been meaning to talk to you about. Can’t a protozoon have any privacy? You know what would happen if I put up a picture of your naked butt. Put a screen on that microscope or something, for decency’s sake. Besides, it’s hot under there!

The avatar!

Happy happy joy joy. Light dawns on Marblehead. Yeah, I’m the amoeba, “Amoeba”. I oughta sue for copyright infringement. Get your wrongs deplored all the way to my bank account.

Somebody your age oughta know by now whose bank account wins that transaction, my protoplasmic friend.

Aha! So you acknowledge my seniority!

Yeah, by about a thousand million years or so. For what it’s worth.

“For what it’s worth”?!? What, do you think we spent all our time skulking around in the primordial ooze or something? We had networks, man! Construction projects! We had our own civilization! The world was ours!

Yeah? So what happened?

C’mon. Even you greenhorns can figure that out. Some of us got greedy. Tried to build bigger and better towers. Air conditioning, running water, cable TV, all that stuff. And some of us sold out. Chose to be slaves to the Bosses and their constructions rather than live as free cells. And though most of them were transformed into monsters, a few still look and act like us. Traitors!

So, you’re telling me that I’m really nothing more than a big pile of renegade amoebae?

Yeah!

Well, there goes your copyright infringement suit.

What? Damn!!

But I gotta thank you anyway.

Jeez. Charity. For why?

Because I was going to spend this post complaining about text messaging and my inability to do it – seeing as how I once tried to enter J-O-E into my cell phone’s address book and, by the time I finally succeeded, realized that I’d wasted a good half hour. But I think instead I’ll just stick with good old-fashioned voice phoning and be glad I’m not a slime mold.

Good pla … HEY!!

[Thanks to the Harmonica Man for the inspiration. Or maybe apologies are in order ...]

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.