Trump Thinks He Is a Scientist

And millions of his followers believe it. Trump can say anything He wants, without discussing it with even his close admirers, without even thinking about it in advance, and it becomes Scientific Truth. This is what happened when Trump speculated that, since Lysol works so well to kill the coronavirus outside the body, it might also work inside the body. All scientists and educators (including me), and the Lysol corporation, issued immediate warnings to everyone we could. In my case, this was to about a hundred students in my classes.

Here is a link to one article that reported Trump’s statement.

Trump believes that whatever pops into his brain is The Truth. His millions of followers believe it too, even though few of them probably rushed off to drink Lysol. Scientists, on the other hand, examine evidence, which is why no true scientist actually publishes or announces his or her very first thoughts on any subject.

A Scripture Verse for Scientists

The last thing that even religiously-inclined scientists might expect is a Bible verse that describes the spirit of science. But such a verse exists. It is Mark 4:22, also found in Luke 8:17: Nothing is hidden that shall not be revealed.

The verse was referring to secrets that we think nobody will ever find out about. But new scientific procedures can reveal old crimes. For example, when the Bolsheviks executed the family of the last Czar of Russia, and buried their bones, they assumed the bones would never be identified. But, decades later, DNA technology made the identification possible.

This is the idea behind forensic science, everything from forensic psychology to forensic entomology. In case you have not heard of forensic entomology, it is the study of insects and their traces to find out more about the circumstances of a death. Knowing about which maggots and other insects are in or have been in a corpse can reveal the length of time since, or the season of, the murder.

You will not get away with it! Our scientific technology will find you!

This is what science is all about: seeking to reveal hidden patterns and truths in the natural and human worlds. There is nothing that scientists consider to be “off-limits” to inquiry. This even includes the psychological processes that underlie religion and what is often called the human soul. How can a person have a brain and a soul that seem to be mirror images of one another? Would it not be simpler to say that it is unnecessary to invoke a soul in order to explain the human phenomenon?

In fact, scientists would not quite go so far as the scripture verse says. We know that there are some things we will probably never be able to explain. Some things will remain hidden. But, scientists would say, not if we can help it!

Darwin Explains the Origin of Feces!

In this video Darwin explains the origin of feces. A body could, in theory, completely assimilate all organic molecules. After all, there is plenty of food value left in feces; just ask your local scarab beetle or bacterium. But the body of each species only digests the food as far as it is economically worthwhile to do so. To completely assimilate all organic material, an animal would need to haul around a gigantic digestive system. It isn’t worth it.

I got to thinking about this when I read the French science fiction novel Le Voyageur Imprudent (The Careless Traveler), by Rene Barjavel. The traveler visited a future in which humans had evolved into huge females with thousands of breasts, and small males with a hole instead of a mouth, into which a female breast could precisely fit. The males had no excretory openings; they completely assimilated the milk. Sounds crazy? It is, but it made me think.

Enjoy the video!

More People Die Each Year of Malaria than Will Die in the Covid-19 Pandemic

You read that right. According to UNICEF, a million people a year die of malaria, over 90 percent of them children n sub-Saharan Africa. In contrast, the total number of coronavirus deaths as of today is 1,414,165, with 81, 217 deaths. The link should update daily.

I do not deny the importance of stopping the coronavirus pandemic. But the reason everyone is freaking out about 81,000 deaths is that they are mostly in the white world. The million people who die each year of malaria live almost exclusively in countries that Donald Trump referred to as “shithole countries.”

This can only mean one thing. Many people, including most of the people who worship Donald Trump and believe He is the man whom God has raised up to lead the world at this time, think that the deaths of little African children is not really very important. Only the deaths of white people get their attention.

Altruism, Infectious Disease, and the Future

This essay should be of great interest during the coronavirus pandemic. But I wrote it before the pandemic began, based on reading a book written in 1965.

I first discovered the scientific principles of the evolution of disease by reading the René Dubos classic Man Adapting. Even though I was a professor, I still had never heard of balanced pathogenicity. And it was even later that I began to read some of the many wonderful books about altruism. But it was only recently that I noticed the connection between the two.

Altruism has evolved by at least three mechanisms: kin selection, and direct and indirect reciprocity. Kin selection (Blood is thicker than water) is widespread in animal societies, and direct reciprocity (Let’s help each other) is common among intelligent animals. Indirect reciprocity (A good reputation is worth more than money in the bank) is nearly absent outside of human society.

In human tribal societies, altruism was extremely important. The best way, perhaps the only way, for a person to rise to the top was with help from friends and supporters (direct reciprocity), and with a good reputation (indirect reciprocity). Trustworthiness was rewarded, and cheaters were hated. At least one scientist, Robin Dunbar, speculated that human language evolved largely as a facilitation of reciprocity.

Balanced pathogenicity is where a virulent disease, so long as it is transmitted by direct contact, usually evolves into a milder form over time. This is because even in prehistoric times everyone around the victim knew that the victim was sick—whether from demons or bad air—and stayed away from him or her. A successful germ was one that had mild effects on the victim, who could then get up out of bed and go around spreading the germs. In this way, an acute disease can evolve into a chronic disease or even all the way to commensalism: Dubos speculated that some diseases evolved themselves out of recognized existence. This has been my experience. Like many people who grew up in Tulare County, California, I had tularemia. I did not know it, however, until a skin test revealed it. The doctor told me I had just felt bad one day, and that was it. In earlier decades, it was often a serious ailment.

The first parallel between altruism and the transmission of infectious disease is this. Just as everyone knows who it is that has an acute disease, everyone knows whom you can trust and whom you cannot, in traditional society.

Today, however, massive corporations conduct much of their business in a way that their practices are shielded from public scrutiny. Even corporations that had infamous practices, as many did during the 2008 recession, remain in business and are profitable, since most customers nationwide do not remember what they did. Reciprocity and reputation have not eliminated them or even, in some cases, reformed them. In modern corporations, oppressive decisions are made in boardrooms, decisions that a CEO might not normally make if he actually looked the customer in the eye.

The second parallel between altruism and infectious disease is this. There are many diseases in which balanced reciprocity does not evolve. Cholera is an example. Potential victims cannot know where the cholera germs in the water came from. Did they come from an acutely sick, or a mildly sick, person? Virulent and mild germs spread equally well. This is how Paul Ewald succeeded in getting cholera to evolve into milder form in some locations: if cholera could not spread through water, it had to spread through direct contact, and by doing so it evolved into a milder form.

In the mass of online information about corporations, a customer is unlikely to be able to determine which banks, for example, have a good reputation and which ones have a bad one. They choose banks the way people drink contaminated water. I certainly did, and regret it.

It can get worse. Some diseases spread more effectively if their victim is very ill. This is often the case with diseases that spread by insect vectors. Mosquitoes prefer to bite victims who are too sick to move around or to swat them. Such diseases can evolve to become worse.

In a similar fashion, some corporations actually benefit from social disruption that they and other corporations create. Consumers who are suffering from inadequate sleep, debt, and job insecurity seek pleasures and entertainment that many corporations are only too happy to provide to them.

In traditional societies, anti-altruistic people were ineffective for the same reason that virulent diseases were. But in modern societies, anti-altruistic corporations can equal the profitability of altruistic ones, the same way cholera spreads, or even exceed the profitability of altruists, the same way that insect-transmitted diseases spread.

If I am right about this, altruism faces significant challenges in the immediate future, even after the current pandemic abates.

This may be no more than an analogy. If so, it is a useful concept for teaching the principles of evolution—principles that show up in such seemingly unrelated fields as epidemiology and altruism. As a result, students may be forced to realize that they cannot consign evolution into an easily-ignored little box in the warehouse of knowledge.

Science Education during the Covid Shutdown: The Barack and Joe Comedy Hour

Like most colleges and universities, Southeastern Oklahoma State University is shut down, while classes continue online. Those of us who were teaching entirely face-to-face (F2F, in educator jargonese) have had to scramble to figure out what to do.

One of the biggest hurdles is what to do in place of exams. Exams require security and supervision. “Online exams” are an invitation to cheating. There are all kinds of technological ways to help reduce this problem: “lockdown,” in which a student cannot browse the internet on the same computer while taking an exam; and video monitors to make sure they are not looking at answers within the range of the video monitor. Of course, students could always look things up on their phones, which they can keep out of video range.

A few students would cheat. I could already tell you their names. But I would have to impose measures on all of the students to keep a few of them from cheating. This would make the good students feel that I did not respect them. Instead, I decided to assign essay questions to the students in place of the exams. These are questions that are not easily copied from the internet (and if they try, I will catch them with the help of Dr. Google). In fact, in a few cases, I invite them to search online. For example, on the topic of pseudogenes in my general biology class, most and maybe all information online (even on YouTube) is very technical. I want them to give short, clear answers.

Each student will receive a subset of my master list of essay questions. That way, it is very unlikely for any two students to work together. Also, since they will not be on campus, they would be unlikely to work together. Or if they do, and they don’t use the same words in their answers, I know that their minds were activated.

In my general botany class, I had already assigned projects for them to do online, for (1) their carbon footprints, and how many trees it would take to compensate for that footprint, and (2) how much transpiration a tree carries out, and how much air-conditioning electricity it would take to equal the cooling power of a tree. These assignments will go on as scheduled.

In my systematic botany course, the students have to know how to recognize and distinguish Oklahoma plant species. Since I cannot do this in an exam situation, I will send them images from my own collection of trees, shrubs, vines, etc. that they need to identify, partial credit if they get close. If I show them an image of a slippery elm, and they write American elm, they get most of the credit; winged elm, maybe half credit or a little less; if they write sycamore (a mistake that has actually been made), no credit. This is how I will assess the recognition part.

(Do you know what tree this is?)

I wrote essay questions for the systematic botany students. But I decided to make it fun. I decided to use the Barack and Joe Comedy Hour approach, with special guest stars Mitch McConnell, Jimmy Carter, Elizabeth Warren, George W. Bush, the Cherokee chief, and the man every farmer (and botanist) loves to hate, Michael Bloomberg. I wanted to share a few of them with you.

• “Look at this cottonwood tree,” said Barack. “That isn’t a cottonwood,” said Joe. “But, it’s by a river and it has triangular leaves!” said Barack. “But look at the bark,” said Joe. What did Joe notice that Barack did not? (Don’t answer, “The bark, you idiot.” Tell me about the bark.)
• I received a letter from Barack, which said, “Dear Dr. Rice. I am going through south central Oklahoma on a vacation trip. I heard there was a rare species of tree that grows along the Blue River. Could you kindly tell me what it is, where to find it, and what it looks like. Please give me enough detail so that I can tell it apart from all the other trees.” What should I tell him?
• Barack and Joe were walking along the creek in Beavers Bend State Park. Being afraid of marijuana trip lines, they stayed on the trail. “I’m having trouble telling hornbeam from hophornbeam,” said Joe. “They’re so easy to tell apart, even a politician can do it!” said Barack. “How?” asked Joe. “You can tell them apart by their fruits and by their bark,” said the man who is retired and no longer needs to worry about leading the free world to the man who still wants to lead the free world. “How?” asked Joe. What answer did Barack give?
• You’ve never seen a fight like two politicians arguing about how to tell a sweetgum from a sycamore. Joe told Barack three ways to tell them apart. What were they? Answer for each species. (There are actually more than three ways.)
• “You’re standing in poison ivy,” Joe said to Barack. “Am not,” said Barack. “But it has three leaflets,” said Joe. “True,” said Barack, “but this is box elder.” “But box elder is a tree!” said Joe. “But these are little box elder saplings,” said Barack. How did Barack know they were box elder saplings and not poison ivy? He had at least two ways.
• “Whar I come from,” said Mitch McConnell, “we know how to reckonize a southern red oak tree.” “But, Mitch,” said Joe, “that’s a northern red oak tree.” “Whah, one look at the lobes, bases, and undersides of the leaves and you can tell it’s a southern red oak,” said Mitch. How did Mitch know the tree was a southern red oak?
• In retirement, former president George W. Bush decided he would get rich by planting a big plantation of persimmon trees. It was easy; just find some wild trees, dig up the clones growing around them, and plant the clones in an orchard. George waited twelve years, from 2008 to 2020, watching his trees grow. But they never produced fruits. Can you think of a reason for this? (The answer is not just “yes.” Explain.)
• Former president Jimmy Carter smiled really big as he explained to Joe, “This here tree is a white ash.” “No,” said Joe. “It’s a hickory.” “No,” said Jimmy. “Look at the arrangement of the leaf scars on the stem. Not only that, but the leaf scars themselves look distinctive.” Jimmy smiled even bigger. What two items of information did he give to Joe?
• “It doesn’t take any brains to be a botanist,” said Michael Bloomberg. “Any more than it does to be a farmer. All oak trees are alike.” He didn’t really say this, but if he had, I would have told him a thing or two. I would have controlled my anger, then told him how and where to find and recognize two rare and unusual oaks found in Oklahoma: Quercus incana, and Quercus durandii. What would I tell him?
• “My grandpappy ruined his saw tryin’ to cut down this here bois-d’arc tree,” said the man. Joe, coming through Oklahoma on a campaign tour, said, “Oh, I thought that was a white mulberry tree.” “They is at least four ways you kin tell that this is a bois-d’arc and not a mulberry.” Indicate four ways. You have more than four to choose from.
• “My ancestors were Cherokees,” said Elizabeth Warren. “Oh, really?” asked Chuck Hoskin, Jr., the new Cherokee chief. “Then maybe you know how to mix up the black drink that the warriors used before going to battle. But first, you have to know how to recognize a yaupon holly. Incidentally, there is a reason that scientists named it Ilex vomitoria.” He then told her how to recognize the shrub, and how it was different from other kinds of holly. How?
• Your supervisor asks you how to tell a saltcedar from a red cedar. “It don’t matter,” you tell her. “We got to cut both of them down.” “But I still want you to know the difference,” she says. You are now on the spot. How do you answer?
• Your task, to help prepare for the Cherokee National Holiday, is to go out in the forest and find some muscadine grape vines (Vitis rotundifolia) so the cooks can make some grape dumplings (http://globaltableadventure.com/recipe/cherokee-grape-dumplings-medicine-for-happy-hearts/). Instead, you found some Vitis mustangensis by mistake. How could you have distinguished these two species and avoided this mistake?
• Feather is a young woman who works with the Ethnobotany office of the Cherokee Nation. (No kidding, there is one.) She is passionate about restoring rivercane to its original habitats in Oklahoma. It has many cultural uses, not the least of which is making blowguns for darts. She has to know the difference between the native Arundinaria gigantea and the invasive Arundo donax. How can she tell the difference?
• “I think the economy needs a great new fruit tree,” said Joe. “Something that grows in Oklahoma, is not already a domesticated tree, and tastes good. It would create a lot of jobs to grow them, harvest them, process them, sell them. Think of how many jobs could be created in Oklahoma!” “Joe,” said Barack, “Can’t you forget for just a minute that you are campaigning for president?” Which species (at least four to choose from) was Joe talking about? Would you invest in such an orchard? Why or why not?
• A thief thought he dug up a bunch of Echinacea rootstocks from a protected native prairie. But when he got them back to the barn, his accomplice told him, “You idiot! These aren’t Echinacea! They’re Symphiotrichum!” What did the thieves want to do with the Echinacea, and how did the second man know it was Symphiotrichum instead?
• “What a pretty fern,” said Bernie. “We have them in the great state of Vermont.” “We have them in Oklahoma, too,” said Tulsa mayor G. T. Bynum. “And it’s not a fern—it is Achillea millaefolium.” How can you tell Achillea is not a fern, even before the flowers (which ferns do not have) open?

 Hope you enjoy these examples. Creativity to the rescue during the pandemic.

Springtime Secrets (Something to Do During the Pandemic)

I am posting this from the midst of the coronavirus pandemic in America. Many of us are down two only two major activities: working online, and taking walks. Like most universities and colleges, the one where I work is closed the rest of the spring semester, and students will complete their classes online. My wife and I take walks out away from other people, and watch all the wonders of nature, even when it is despoiled by human activity. This is what we have always done, but for some people, taking a nature walk might be a new activity. If you are one of those people, let me tell you some of the things you might notice.

Spring has been underway for some time in Oklahoma, where I live and work. But it has only recently been making itself obvious. Spring comes, but not all at once. The first thing to notice as you take your walk is that not all the trees open their buds at the same time. The elms opened their buds over a month ago, and they are now fully displaying their green seeds. Whole forests of elms are blushing a light green right now. This color is due to seeds, not leaves, which are only now beginning to emerge from their own buds.

Meanwhile, other tree species appear to still be dormant. In the photo below, the elms are green but the Kentucky coffee-tree (identifiable by its big seed pods) is still dormant.

Notice, then, that each kind of tree follows its own spring schedule.

The trees also display diversity within each species. The photo below shows two cottonwood trees. One is in full bloom (on the right, with clusters of little reddish flowers), the other is not. In this case, the tree in full bloom is a male tree, while the other one is female. Its greenish flowers will open up a little bit later. Just as male birds migrate before female birds, the male cottonwoods open their buds before the female cottonwoods. In trees, as in animals, the males compete with one another for access to the females even when, as in cottonwoods, it is completely without intelligence.

This is also the time of year that birds begin their social activities. In Oklahoma, mockingbirds and cardinals are already singing.

The final thing to notice is the garbage. Before the leaves open and the grass grows, thousands of pieces of garbage are visible all around the “natural” areas of Tulsa. (We have counted some of them; I do not exaggerate.) March is the best time of the year to see one of the ugly impacts that humans have upon the natural world.

Take a walk. It doesn’t cost anything, and it doesn’t expose you to viruses. You don’t need to download a movie. The natural world around you has plenty to see.