The Association for Psychological Science (APS) is the largest research oriented Psychology conference in North America. One often sees renowned researchers from earlier academic generations as well as those at the height of research productivity. I was in the conference hotel for less than five minutes when I saw Gordon Bower talking to someone in the hall, perhaps without even noticing that he was standing in front of a poster of himself.

APS is a fairly large conference, yet the organizers have strategized to keep it from becoming too unruly (in terms of seeing the presentations one is interested in). APS restricts oral presentations to symposiums and invited talks and has a bountiful number of poster presentations. In the ten poster sessions, there are likely over 1,000 individual poster presentations. This gives one the opportunity to forage across a large number of presentations and focus on those that are most appealing.

APS usually has specialized workshops before the Opening Ceremony, but this year there was a full day of regular sessions scheduled before the Opening Ceremony. Perhaps this is a sign of growth, though I will not be able to make travel plans so far in advance next year. Although I arrived in the afternoon, I had a smooth transition from the airport to the conference and was able to see the last session of “Evolutionary Economics: Synergistic Insights into Motivation, Satisfaction, and Consumer Behavior.” Kristina Durante showed that single women shifted purchasing towards revealing outfits when ovulating, but only when primed with attractive female competitors. The effect was not seen when attractive females were in a different region or when attractive men were shown. From the discussion, it sounded like the rest of the session was also quite interesting.

As has been the case in recent APS conferences, there were several invited talks of interest to evolutionists. Daniel Fessler discussed disgust as an emotional mechanism that shapes behavior to guard against pathogens, particularly concerning the body-environmental interface. Steve Cole gave a presentation on the “Social Regulation of Human Gene Expression,” describing how stressed people are more vulnerable to viral infections because they cannot turn on the genes to fight these infections. Rather than organizing his presidential symposium on time perspective, Walter Mischel chaired “The New Genetics and What It Means for Psychological Science,” featuring one of the newer faculty members in his department, Frances Champagne and her academic mentors. The speakers discussed the epigenetics of offspring licking and grooming in rats and foraging strategies in fruitflies. One of the speakers conveyed the message that genes influence the probability that behavioral differences will be expressed in a given environment, which should hopefully allay fears of genetic determinism. I have to wonder how many audience members got lost in the highly technical discussion of mechanics. For most psychologists, a functional approach may provide greater comprehension and appreciation.

Dario Maestripieri also presented on epigenetics, describing cross-fostering experiments with rhesus monkeys having either the short or long allele of the serotonin transporter mechanism. Rhesus mothers who carry the short allele are more likely to abuse their infants; cross-fostering experiments show that daughters follow their mother’s behavioral patterns. Given the considerable risks that were apparent for abused infants, the question of what possible benefits the short allele might give was left hanging. After the talk, I asked Dr. Maestripieri why the short allele is perpetuated in the gene pool. He replied that males with the short allele are more competitive and likely have higher reproductive success. I had to wonder why this was important consideration was not emphasized or even stated in the presentation. Are most psychologists so Pollyannaish that they would be horrified to learn such a fact?

There were also several evolutionary poster presentations, some given by folks who were later seen at HBES. I noted that there were several EP enthusiasts who were seen viewing multiple evolutionary posters. I suspect that APS will continue to be an attractive venue for evolutionary researchers. The conference combines presentations by the “best and brightest” across widely ranging areas of Psychology as well as considerable representation of the evolutionary perspective.

Mixed-age learning is something that came naturally to our ancestors but must be rediscovered in modern education. Even though children from all cultures have much to learn, formal schooling didn’t exist until recently. Moreover, there is often little adult instruction of any sort. Instead, children spend most of their time in mixed age groups and learn from each other. Not only do younger children learn from older children, but older children learn by teaching younger children, just as all professors know that the best way to learn new material is to teach it.

Against this background, segregating children into same-age groups is pathological. Peter Gray, who wrote the first introductory psychology textbook from an evolutionary perspective (now in its fifth edition: Gray 2007), has become passionate about this point based on the experience of his own son, who became a rebel in public school and then thrived at an alternative school that (without intending to) recreated the learning environment of hunter-gatherer society. Peter has conducted research and written eloquently about this subject. His academic articles (Gray and Chanoff 1986, Gray and Feldman 2004) and Psychology Today blog (http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn) should be read by everyone interested in childhood education. A video presentation by Peter is available at http://evolution.binghamton.edu/evos/MiamiWorkshop.html.

The importance of mixed-age learning does not stop at childhood.  When my daughter started taking karate lessons, I decided to join her rather than sitting on the sidelines. I was amazed at how well the dojo worked as a learning system in which everyone, from white belt to black belt, simultaneously functioned as both student and teacher.

Graduate education functions much the same way. Most of what graduate students learn comes not from formal classes, but from informal interactions with peers of different skill levels. It never stops. I was trained as an aquatic ecologist but now I am studying human evolution. Most of my colleagues have also switched organisms and research topics, all by learning from more experienced peers.

Once I began to appreciate the importance of mixed-age learning, I realized that it might partially account for the success of our EvoS program, especially the “Current Topics” course built around the EvoS seminar series. As I have described in more detail elsewhere (Wilson 2005, 2007), the EvoS seminar series brings approximately ten distinguished speakers to campus every semester.  Students in the 2-credit “Current Topics” course read one or more articles in preparation, write a commentary, attend the seminar, and attend a light dinner and continuing discussion after the seminar, which is also open to the rest of the EvoS community.  The course is restricted to students in the EvoS program and must be taken twice to earn the certificate, which means that the experience is repeated twenty times, for subjects ranging from molecular biology to moral psychology, providing a vivid demonstration of the breadth of evolutionary theory.

I now realize that the dinner and continuing discussion provides a learning environment like a martial arts dojo. The audience includes the full spectrum, from freshmen just entering the program (white belts) to graduate students and faculty (black belts). Everyone has prepared by reading, writing, and listening to the seminar, and now they are directing questions to the speaker in a convivial unthreatening atmosphere.  Novices who are hesitant to speak can listen and compare themselves to their more advanced peers, who in turn can explain their points in public discussion or private conversation. There is also a convention of choosing some students at random to speak. Everyone must be prepared to ask a question and those who are mortified to be chosen are usually relieved to discover that their question was a perfectly good one.

The “Current Topics” course is one of the most popular components of the EvoS program and is frequently described by the students as their best intellectual experience at college.  It is also an impressive experience for the EvoS speakers. After all, when most scientists are invited to give a talk, it is usually a departmental seminar attended by a few dozen faculty and graduate students, followed by a small reception or dinner with a small group. EvoS seminars are attended by a large audience of undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty from all disciplines. The dinner and continuing discussion takes place in a large room in the University Union. The discussion can last an hour, can achieve a very high level of discourse, and usually ends with loud spontaneous applause. Many of our EvoS speakers are amazed that most of the people in the audience who are asking such sophisticated questions are undergraduate students.

The “Current Topics” course is just one example of how an EvoS program can take advantage of mixed-age learning.  Among its other virtues, mixed-age learning can be simple, enjoyable, and inexpensive—emerging spontaneously, much as it did before the days of formal education. 

Literature Cited

Gray, P. (2007). Psychology (5th ed.). New York: Worth.

Gray, P., & Chanoff, D. (1986). Democratic Schooling: What happens to young people who have charge of their own education? American Journal of Education, 94, 182-213.

Gray, P., & Feldman, J. (2004). Playing in the zone of proximal development: qualities of self-directed age mixing between adolescents and young children at a democratic school. American Journal of Education, 110, 108-145.

Wilson, D. S. (2005). Evolution for Everyone: How to increase acceptance of, interest in, and knowledge about evolution. Public Libarary of Science (PLoS) Biology, 3, 1001-1008.

Wilson, D. S. (2007). Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin’s Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives. New York: Delacorte.

Making Sense of Biology

Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution, Theodosius Dobzhansky. (1973). The American Biology Teacher, 35(3), 125-129.

     Two hundred years after the birth of Charles Darwin and one hundred and fifty years after the publication of On the Origin of Species the majority of Americans do not accept organic evolution. How can this be? They disbelieve in evolution despite the overwhelming evidence demonstrating the falseness of special creationism and supporting the unity of life via descent with modification.  If we are to comprehend this phenomenon, we must look to Dobzhansky’s essay in The American Biology Teacher.  The title states: “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.”  If we accept the notion that humans are biological organisms and that therefore their behavior has its roots in our biology, then we can understand how so many people in an advanced industrial nation can still reject evolution.  Specifically, we must examine how people come to believe anything and how this process in the human mind is itself strong evidence that our species evolved.

The situation

     Over the last 30 years or so the Gallup Poll has consistently queried Americans concerning their views of evolution and creation.  Particularly instructive are the results from the question that asked whether humans were the result of a special act of creation by a supreme, supernatural being (God): Creationism, that is, the idea that God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years is definitely true.  In 2008, 44% of those who responded said that this was definitely true.  The numbers have run between 47 – 43% between the years 1982 – 2008.  Those who felt that humans developed but that God guided the process has run between 40 – 35% in those same years and finally those who felt that humans developed without God guiding the process have varied between 9 – 14% over those years (Gallup Poll 2009¹.)  This same poll found that in September 2005, 53% of Americans agreed with the statement: “God created man exactly how the Bible described it.” 

     These data are alarming.  Modern scientific research has established beyond any reasonable doubt that life on this planet evolved, including humans.  Therefore, no one in modern society who consistently employs rational thinking should accept the idea that humans appeared at the result of a miraculous special creation event.  Sociological research indicates that certain education, class, and geographic factors correlate with adherence to creationist views in the United States.  However, with 53% of Americans agreeing to the Biblical version of creation, this cannot be solely a function of education and class. Something else is going on here.  This is best explained by the irrational character of the human mind and the inability and unwillingness of our educational system to address this problem.

The imperfect mind

     One of special creationism’s favorite saws against evolution is what Darwin described in The Origin as “organs of extreme perfection.”  Examples in their literature abound, such as the human eye or brain.  Their fundamental error is in claiming that any human organs are perfectly or even well-designed.  In the case of the human brain, no better case against perfection can be cited.  The human brain developed over millions of years of animal evolution.  Yet, all popular notions to the contrary, biological evolution does not produce perfect organs.  Evolution is always constrained by past history, so it makes incremental improvements over previously existing organs and structures.  However, improvement at one thing, are not always improvements at everything.  Neurological and physiological capacities which are optimal for interpreting some kinds of sensory input and making decisions concerning them develop at the expense of others forms.  For example, we see in a very narrow spectrum of light wavelengths from 400 nm (deep blue, a nanometer is 10^-8 meters) to 700 nm (deep red.)  We can’t see long radio waves (108 meters), short radio waves (1 meter to 10^-4 meters), microwaves (10^-2 – 10^-4), infrared (10^-4 – 10^-6), ultraviolet (10^-8 – 10^-9), x-rays (10^-8 – 10^-12), or gamma-rays (10^-11 – 10^-16.) Certainly, if the human brain and nervous system were perfect, they should have been able to see these sources of radiation without the aid of instrumentation.  Yet we cannot, and just in case you think it is impossible to see in the rest of the spectrum, many insect species can see in the ultraviolet.  Neither can the human brain navigate via the earth’s magnetic fields.  This is a feat that pigeons and other migratory birds can accomplish with relative ease. 

     These examples may not seem entirely relevant to human experience.  However there are several examples of the natural fallacies which result from the way the human brain functions, such as optical and cognitive illusions.  Color constancy is well known from psychological experiments.  In this case, people see objects as a certain color because they believe that they are supposed to be that color (even when they are not that color.)  Size constancy occurs when objects pass us and move into the distance.  The actual image formed on our retina gets smaller, but our brain compensates and tells us the object is still the same size as when we saw it up close.  Size constancy is learned, we are not born capable of doing this.  The Ba Mbuti pygmies did not know size constancy because they lived in thick jungles were objects were always only a few feet away.  When these individuals were taken to a plain and saw buffalo grazing in the distance, they asked the researchers what kind of insects they were observing².  Another example of this can be observed from Piaget’s classical experiments with children and the conservation of matter.  Young children were asked which container held more liquid (a long narrow one or a short wide one.)  The rub was that both containers had the same volume, yet the children always identified the tall, narrow container as having more liquid.  They did this even after they were shown that both containers had the same amount of liquid. 

     Human memory is now known to amazing unreliable, especially in cases of trauma.  This has now thrown tremendous doubt on the validity of eye-witness testimony in criminal cases involving violent crime.  A well-known recent example of this is illustrated by the case of the Virginia freeway snipers.  Witnesses claims that they saw shots fired from a white van and that two “white” men sped away after one of the shootings.  The certainty associated with the witness identifications follows from a deeply held preconception (based on empirical data.)  So far, in American society, most serial killers have been European American men.  In actuality the freeway snipers drove a Blue Chevrolet and were African American men.  Tragically, when Lee Malvo called the police tip lines to demand an extortion payment to end the shooting, the police ignored the call because they determined that the caller was African American³.

     The human brain’s activity can also be altered by chemical substances and other toxins.  A classical example of this is how the brain reacts to the drug LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide.)  LSD is a compound produced by the Ergot fungus which often grows on rye.  LSD causes a dream-like state, including dizziness, hallucinations, weakness, nausea, lack of self-control, and in some cases extreme terror.  It is still debated whether a case of mass ergot poisoning occurred in Pont St. Espirit, France in August 1951.  Ergot contaminated rye was used to make bread at a local bakery, a mass outbreak of hysteria occurred in those who eat the bread, leading to four deaths.  Many claimed they were demonically possessed, and eventually an exorcism was performed at the bakery in question.  The scientific debate concerning the Pont St. Espirit case revolves around whether it was LSD from the rye or poisoning caused by a mercurial based pesticide used to treat the rye before it was harvested.  Historians also suspect that ergot poisoning played a role in the Salem witch trials hysteria of the Massachusetts Colony in 1692.  Finally, it is argued that Ergot poisoning killed 20,000 people (1/2 population) of the Aquitaine region of France between 944-45 AD⁴. 

     Humans clearly learned about the pharmacological properties of many plants early in our history.  For example, Mesoamerican shamans utilized peyote to enter trance-like states and receive visions.  The Aztecs also used the seeds of the morning glory plant.  The morning glory plant belongs to the deadly nightshade family which contain at least three powerful alkaloids, pyridine, steroid, and tropane.  The American Indians were using tobacco when the European colonists arrived (tobacco is a nightshade.)  In addition to drugs, physiological stress can also cause hallucinations.  Powerful hallucinations can result from lack of water, sleep, or hunger.  A common theme found in religious narratives worldwide involves people wandering without food, water, or sleep to receive spiritual visions⁵.  It has also been shown experimentally that “out-of-body experiences” can be generated by stimulating the posterior portion of the superior temporal gyrus.  In the out-of-body experience, patients describe seeing their body from an elevated and distanced prospective⁶.    Out-of-body experiences have also been described by patients with tinnitus and epilepsy.  Some have claimed that out-of-body experiences are proof positive of the existence of the spiritual world.  These experiments logically demonstrate that this claim is not necessarily true, since the experience can be generated by entirely natural means.

     Finally, many disease states can cause altered senses of reality.  One of the most well known is schizophrenia.  Schizophrenics will see and hear things that are not present.  John Nash, the Nobel Prize winning mathematician suffered from schizophrenia, as did David Berkowitz, the serial killer dubbed: “The Son of Sam.”  The success of the American Revolution was in part caused by the fact that the English King George III suffered from porphyra.  Porphyra is a genetic disease in which copper metabolism is impaired.  Porphyra was common amongst the royal families of Europe, and causes urine to be colored blue (hence the term “blue blood.”)  A side effect of this disease is impaired mental function, including what is called “insanity.” 

     Evolutionary legacies also influence how our brain copes with the modern world.  First, we did not evolve an organ that has infinite memory.  We do not possess high fidelity memory in the way that computers do.  Our brains have to locate memories within a specific context, as opposed to utilizing all of our experiences in an unbiased way.  Furthermore, our brain is capable of two types of thinking, reflexive and deliberate.  The reflexive type, evolved earlier, and governs most of our behavior.  The reflexive system can quickly assess statistics, such as the likelihood that a person with a given set of features is likely to be dangerous⁷.  However, it is therefore prone to making hasty generalizations (which are informal logical fallacies.)  The deliberative system, on the other hand, is slower, and is capable of greater logic (and this ability is strongly influenced by training.)  Clearly, we would make fewer errors in either our judgments of phenomena in the natural and social world, if we made more use of our deliberative systems⁸.  The problem, of course is that reflexive system often supplies the deliberative system with inaccurate data for it to make judgments.  For example, humans tend to believe that whatever is familiar is good.  This leads us to further believe that whatever social policies that are in place, must be good.  The experimental evidence strongly supports this assertion.  One such experiments asked subjects if feeding ally cats was good (one group was told it was legal, the other that it was illegal) or experiments in which students were asked how many hours of instruction should be given for a particular course.  In each case, there was a statistically significant difference in the favor of the existing policy.  This phenomenon can easily explain the persistence of religious views of nature.   What is worse is that when humans feel threatened, our tendency to cling to the familiar is pronounced⁹.  It is clear that politicians have realized this feature of human behavior for some time.  The Nixon administration coined the modern Republican strategy of pandering to the fears of European Americans against the social advancement of African Americans.  In 1972, this helped Nixon win the largest mandate of a presidential candidate in history up to that point¹⁰. 

How does our imperfect brain explain widespread belief in creationism?

     While the practice of critical thinking is made possible by the structure of the human brain, most people never develop or employ such skills in their lives.  Unfortunately even those that do develop critical ability do not always apply it in all aspects of their thinking¹¹.  Why is this so? My answer to this quandary will be shocking for some.  However, the root of the failure lies in fact that not enough people are encouraged to practice these skills and to mature them to the level required to be effective thinkers.  This in turn occurs because of the nature of human social structure, particularly social dominance hierarchies.  Such hierarchies are the result of evolutionary processes, engaged in my individuals and groups to control access to resources.  Throughout our history, control of resources leads to happier, more comfortable, disease-free lives and such circumstances increased the likelihood of individuals reproducing children who survived to reproductive age.  For example, the poorest nations in the world reside on the African continent.  Sierra Leone has an infant mortality of 169 per 1,000 live births compared to France or Germany which show only 5 per 1,000 live births.  The gross domestic product per capita of Sierra Leone is only 900 dollars per year compared to > 31,000 dollars per year in France and Germany.  This comparison is important because the development of European industry was made possible in part by their past colonial exploitation of African resources and labor.  Their past colonial domination of Africa was in turn made possible by their greater military-industrial complex and maintenance of colonial rule in Africa was facilitated by the denial of education to the colonized Africans.  Chattel slavery in America operated under similar procedures.  The slave holding states made it a crime to teach slaves how to read.  Thus by controlling their minds it was easier to control their bodies.

     One could argue that the previous examples do not explain the preponderance of non-critical thinking in a modern industrial country such as the United States.  However, it would be hard to imagine how the existing social inequities in our nation could continue to exist if the majority of our population were critical thinkers.  Critical thinkers contain a variety of attributes which are antithetical to the social domination of others.  The attributes of such individuals are thought to include analytical skills, effective communication, research and inquiry skills, flexibility and tolerance for ambiguity, open-minded skepticism, creative problem solving, curiosity, and engage in collaborative learning, and consider the perspectives of all-stakeholder groups in issues¹².  Charles Darwin employed some of these techniques when he concluded that slavery was in intolerable evil, despite the widespread belief amongst Europeans in the inferiority of non-Europeans and that this justified their enslavement to serve the ends of European nations¹³.  In the modern context, it would have been impossible for Alaska governor Sarah Palin to have become as popular as she was in the 2008 electoral contest if critical thinking was widespread in this country.  Palin is a religious fundamentalist who is opposed to birth control, abortion, and the teaching of evolution in the public schools.  Thus if the majority of Americans never develop critical thinking skills, it is not hard to understand how 53% accept the claim that humans were created according to a literal interpretation of the Bible (Genesis.) If so, which literal interpretation are they agreeing to? The one in Genesis 1 in which the order of creation is seed-bearing plants, aquatic creatures, flying birds, land creatures, and Adam and Eve are created simultaneously out of the dust of the ground or Genesis 2 in which the order of creation is Adam, trees in the garden of Eden, beasts of the fields, birds of the air, and Eve out of Adam’s rib.  Aquatic creatures are not mentioned in Genesis 2.  Logically, both cannot be true, and if both cannot be true, how is it possible to read the Bible literally?

     Even amongst people that do develop general critical thinking skills, it is possible for them to question organic evolution, due to lack of discipline specific knowledge.  An appallingly small percentage of American high school students receive focused instruction in evolutionary biology¹⁴.  In a large national survey of high school teachers, the most common percentage of coverage was 1 -2 hours for human evolution (35%) and on general evolutionary processes 6 – 10 hours were covered by 26% of the teachers surveyed.  Given Dobzhansky’s dictum these numbers are way out of line.  In that same study, teachers reported significant external pressure to not cover evolution.  In addition, the majority of American college students do not take classes in biology, let alone evolutionary biology or anthropology.  This leads to college students adopting a number of uncritical and uninformed attitudes toward biological organisms, especially humans¹⁵.  For this reason at my institution we have incorporated evolutionary concepts in a number of our general education courses.  These courses apply general critical thinking skills to address the theories which purport to explain the diversity of life (special creationism, transformationism – Lamarckian evolution, and descent with modification—Darwinian evolution.) 

 A Nation Still at Risk

     In 1983 we were warned that other nations were matching and surpassing our educational achievements and that our educational system was miring in mediocrity¹⁶.  In 2002, not much had changed.  The performance of American students in mathematics and science was still declining relative to the rest of the industrialized world.  Leaders in higher education began to call for a new emphasis on critical thinking in the curriculum K – 20¹⁷.  Do they really know what they are asking for?

     If we were to truly emphasize critical thinking in the biology, chemistry, and physics curricula, then the majority of Americans educated in the public schools would begin to seriously question the legitimacy of special creationism.  Indeed, this might be an important metric illustrating that critical thinking applied in the sciences was actually succeeding.  In addition to the sciences, critical thinking widely practiced would severely threaten American social practice.  For example, the widespread an ongoing denial of basic human and civil rights to gay/lesbian or transgendered Americans would fall.  In addition, social constructions of race would no longer continue to confuse us¹⁸.  We would no longer be content with allowing a small elite group of greedy and immoral individuals to determine how we should live, what food we should eat, what energy sources we should use.  Taken to its logical end, critical thinking may be the most dangerous threat to the status quo that has ever existed.  This is precisely why as an evolutionary biologist, I champion it.

Notes and References

1. http://www.gallup.com/poll/21814/Evolution-Creationism-Intelligent-Design.aspx
2. Schick, T. and Vaughan, L., How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age, (New York, NY: McGraw Hill), 2005, pp. 38-39.
3. Leyton, E., Hunting Humans: The Rise of the Modern Multiple Murder, (New York, NY: Running Press, 2005) and Johnson, D. and Van Nitta, D., Retracing the trail: The investigation; miscues in sniper pursuit, then calls and a big break, The New York Times, October 27, 2002.
4. Burgen, A., St. Anthony’s Gift, European Review no. 11: 27-35, 2003; Shiff, P.L., Ergot and its alkaloids, Am. J. Pharm. Education, 2006.
5. The gospels tell of Christ wandering in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights.
6. De Ridder, D.E., Van Laere, K., Dupont, P., and Van de Heyning, G., Visualizing the out-of-body experience, The New England Journal of Medicine 357:18, 1829-1833, 2007.
7. There is an interesting experiment being conducted that addresses this topic at  http://backhand.uchicago.edu/Center/ShooterEffect/.  In this experiment, you are asked to push a key on your keyboard to determine whether you should shoot a person holding a gun, or holding a non-threatening object.  The images are of African American and European American men who are presented in different contexts.  This experiment tests the user’s reflexive system, in that you may either correctly/incorrectly shot an African American holding a gun/non-lethal object, European American holding a gun/non-lethal object.  The operational hypothesis of this experiment is to test whether a person’s racial socialization impacts their reflexive response to the images.  Thus, we might predict that a European American may be more likely to shoot an innocent African American, and not shoot a threatening European America, or vice versa.
8. Marcus, G., Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind, (Houghton Mifflin), 2008 and Linden, D., The Accidental Mind: How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams, and God, (Belknap Press), 2007.
9. Marcus, G., Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind, (Houghton Mifflin), 2008  pp. 41-51.

10.  Mayer, J.D., Running on Race: Racial Politics in Presidential Campaigns: 1960 – 2000, (New York, NY: Random House), 2002, pp. 97-122.

11.  Royalty, J., The generalizability of critical thinking: Paranormal beliefs versus statistical reasoning, J. General Psychology 156(4): 477-488.

12.  Boss, J., Critical Thinking and Logic Skills for Everyday Life, (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill), 2010 or Moore, B. and Parker, R, Critical Thinking, 9^th ed., (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill), 2009.

13.  Desmond, A. and Moore, J, Darwin’s Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin’s Views on Human Evolution, (New York, NY: Houghton-Mifflin), 2009.

14.  Berkman MB, Pacheco JS, Plutzer E (2008) Evolution and creationism in America’s classrooms: A national portrait. PLoS Biol 6(5): e124. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060124.

15.  Graves, J.L. and Bailey, G.L., (in press) Evolution, Religion, and Race: Critical Thinking and the Public Good, Forum on Public Policy: A Journal of the Oxford Round Table.

16.  The National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform, United States Department of Education, 1983.

17.  American Association of Colleges and Universities, College Learning for the New Global Century, a Report for Liberal Education and America’s Promise, AAC&U, 2007.

1. Graves, J.L., The Race Myth: Why We Pretend Race Exists in America, soft cover edition with a new preface by the author (New York, NY: Dutton Books), 2005.

“The great tragedy of Science – the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.“

Thomas H. Huxley (1825 – 1895)

English biologist; supporter of Darwin;
father of Aldous & Julian Huxley.

Missed Opportunities

In the lead up to this, the 200th anniversary year of Darwin’s birth, I’ve attended my fair share of evolutionary research seminars. Surprisingly, few presented alternative hypotheses, or better yet, multiple alternative hypotheses. In fact, rarely was a specific evolutionary hypothesis enunciated. And when one was, the speaker usually failed to point out what critical experiment or observation could falsify it. Admittedly, these talks were directed toward a general, non-specialist audience. But many of those in attendance were students and this “omission” seemed like a missed didactic opportunity. Moreover, Evolutionary Theory is championed (all too often in courthouses in the United States) as a true science (as opposed to Creation “science”) because its hypotheses are falsifiable. So where are all these falsifiable hypotheses????

My undergraduate Invertebrate Zoology professor, Demerest Davenport emphasized (i.e. drummed it into our skulls) that adaptive questions can be addressed using “Strong Inference”. He had us all read the 1964 SCIENCE article of that name, by John R Platt1. At the time I was not especially impressed because it sounded like what we had been taught in General Biology and General Chemistry and had already accepted as standard operating procedure. In his recent blog, Massimo Pigliucci2 suggests that the main point of Platt’s article was to explain why the “soft sciences” (including the evolutionary sciences) were less successful than the new (at the time) “hard sciences” like molecular biology and modern physics. I am not sure I agree with Pigliucci’s hard- vs soft-science dichotomy (perhaps that is a discussion for a later blog). In any case, as a young scientist, my take home message was that “Strong Inference” could be applied to all kinds of questions and that it should have been applied more often than it had. Perhaps, that is still so today.

Strong Inference

“In its separate element, strong inference is just the simple and old-fashioned method of inductive inference that goes back to Francis Bacon. The steps are familiar to every college student and are practiced, off and on, by every scientist. The difference comes in their systematic application. Strong inference consists of applying the following steps to every problem in science, formally and explicitly and regularly:

1) Devising alternative hypotheses;

2) Devising a crucial experiment (or several of them), with alternative possible outcomes, each of which will, as nearly as possible, exclude one or more of the hypotheses;

3) Carrying out the experiment so as to get a clean result;

1′) Recycling the procedure, making sub-hypotheses or sequential hypotheses to refine the possibilities that remain; and so on.”1

The advantage of testing a main hypothesis against multiple, alternative hypotheses is that it protects the scientist against what T.C. Chamberlin called over “affection for his intellectual child”:

A Beautiful Hypothesis

Dr Stephen Colbert (Hon DFA) has pointed out, sometimes you have to think with your gut. And evolutionary theory can generate some great gut-worthy hypotheses that simply “feel” right. Here is an example: You all know “Why” the giraffe has a long neck? As long ago as Lamarck, the explanation has been “to get to the top of the acacia tree to reach the tender, most nutritious leaves’” Darwin and Lamarck may have differed in their notion of “How” the giraffe acquired its long neck but they would have agreed that it was advantageous in competing for food. We’ll call this the Interspecific Foraging Competition Hypothesis (IFCH). Soon after Darwin and Wallace proposed Natural Selection theory, the IFCH had become the accepted explanation for the giraffe’s long neck.

Now you have to admit that the IFCH is a beautiful hypothesis. It just feels right (sensu “Truthiness”). It just makes sense. It fits (with Darwinian natural selection).

Why ruin it by testing it?

An Ugly Fact

Why? Because there might be a better explanation. One obvious test of IFCH is to determine how giraffes actually USE their neck? In 1996, Robert Simmons and Lue Scheepers decided to do just that, and in their review of the literature, Simmons and Scheepers found that giraffes don’t use their neck in a way consistent with the IFCH — they tend to spend most of their time foraging at about shoulder height even when food is scarce and competition high. Now you could attempt to “save” the beautiful hypothesis by special pleading, or by suggesting that all of the many studies cited by Simmons and Scheepers “missed” something. Of course, then you would be reduced to simply refuting ugly facts. However, if there were plausible alternative hypotheses, then those could be explored and perhaps we can reject the IFCH without feeling empty-handed. The irony of the story of the giraffe’s long neck is that Darwin had developed another theory (Sexual Selection Theory) that could have been used to generate plausible alternative hypotheses to IFCH (although he didn’t know it at the time, he came close when he recognized that male giraffes use their long necks to swing their heavy skulls and stubby horns as weapons). But the rest of Simmons and Scheepers story will have to wait until next time.

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In the next few months, I plan to discuss other missed opportunities and other ugly facts. I invite you to comment and perhaps suggest your own ugly facts, and/or alternative (beautiful) hypotheses. One difficulty is developing multiple, plausible, alternative hypotheses and this could be a place to air your ideas and perhaps get feedback. Science really is a collaborative effort.

– Tom Nolen, New Paltz, NY

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Citations (Read these before posting comments –start by Googling the authors)

1. Platt, JR (1964). Strong Inference: Certain systematic methods of scientific thinking may produce much more rapid progress than others. SCIENCE 146(3642), pp: 347-353.
2. Pigliucci, M (2009). Strong Inference And The Distinction Between Soft And Hard Science. http://www.scientificblogging.com/rationally_speaking/strong_inference_and_distinction_between_soft_and_hard_science cited on the web, May 31, 2009.
3. Chamberlin, TC, cited in Platt (1964) above.
4. Simmons, R and Scheepers, L (1996). Winning by a neck. Sexual selection in the evolution of giraffe. American Naturalist. 148(5), pp: 771-786.

I type on a plane that just left Los Angeles – bound for the East Coast – where I will need to switch from my HBES (Human Behavior and Evolution Society) identity to my identity as husband, dad, dog owner, New Paltz faculty member, vice president of the Friends of the Plattekill Public Library, etc. Back to the real world.

HBES is decidedly not the real world. And I mean that in a good way. HBES is something of a Mecca for evolutionists – and this year’s meeting in LA – my fourth HBES meeting – was as great as ever. Surrounded by such luminaries in the field as David Buss, Steve Gangestad, Pete Richerson, and, of course, the driving force behind the EvoS movement, David Sloan Wilson, attending this conference is sort of like being immersed in the Major League All-Star game – and even being allowed to swing the bat a few times. Being surrounded by so many important minds – each with an understanding of the shared principles that comprise evolutionary theory – is simply awesome.

This year, we were fortunate to have an HBES symposium dedicated to the single most important idea that I’ve come across in higher education: EvoS. I’ve done a good bit in my career – and am pleased with many of the courses I teach, papers and books I’ve published, students I’ve sent into the real world with their own wings, etc. – but it is without question that starting the EvoS program at New Paltz is, in my mind, the singular most important accomplishment of my career. I was totally honored to be part of the EvoS symposium at HBES – along with such academic rock stars as Rosemarie Chang, Dan O’Brien, and David Sloan Wilson. In this blog, I hope to continue where our symposium left off, elaborating on the pedagogical excitement that is unique to EvoS.

Before the advent of EvoS-New Paltz, as a member of a psychology department teaching evolutionary psychology, I just felt that my passion for teaching this stuff was stifled – and that was disappointing. While students would just line up to take the class – fill all the seats within hours of pre-registration – and rave about its impact on their thinking afterward – my position as the sole evolutionary psychologist on campus sort of made my evolutionary psychology course a curricular dead-end. They would take it, tell me how much they loved it, ask why it was “only an elective” in the psychology major (don’t ask – long and unpleasant story on that!), and ask and ask and ask for more related courses.

The second I heard about David Wilson’s groundbreaking work with EvoS-Binghamton, I immediately saw the potential of this program for our campus. In fact, it struck me as such a great idea that I almost felt like a nit-wit for not thinking of it myself. Of course! Students with interests in my evolutionary psychology course SHOULD take a course with Tom Nolen in evolutionary biology. They should take a course in genetics with Jeff Reinking or Jen Waldo. They should take a course about bugs with Aaron Haselton. They should take Ken Nystrom’s human evolution course in anthropology. They should take a course with Alex Bartholomew in paleontology. They should hike into the Gunks – our local mountains – and learn about the evolutionary stories told by both the fossil-laden rocks and the rich biodiversity found in the forest – just minutes from our campus. Think about how much that would embellish their education! And we should bring in speakers on various topics related to evolution – to help students make connections across these courses – using the famously powerful nature of evolutionary theory – as a map that would allow for the building of intellectual bridges across different academic disciplines (AKA, “the islands of the ivory archipelago” (Wilson, 2007)).

Post-script: The EvoS program at SUNY New Paltz, about to enter its third year of existence, has exceeded any and all expectations I had when I worked to help launch it just a few years back. I really can’t overstate the excitement associated with this program in our community. Keep an eye out for updates to “Building Darwin’s Bridges” for details regarding EvoS-New Paltz as well as commentary on the EvoS Consortium. I’m fully convinced that the EvoS Consortium has potential to be the event that successfully (and finally) leads to the integration of Darwinism across all scholarly areas.

Post-post-script: Thanks to EvoS webmaster and journal editor, Rosemarie Chang, a true inspiration, for giving me the nudge I needed to start this blog!