Science doesn't matter

by Martín Bonfil Olivera
Published on Milenio Diario, February 25, 2009
The economy is a Darwinian system. But when neoliberal economists talk about the "principles of the free market" like as if these were natural laws, they forget that the economy is not a natural system, but a human one; therefore, it should be subject to ethics.

Darwin explained that the natural thing is for the more apt to survive and the inept to extinguish. However, we humans consciously choose to go against natural selection, and give glasses to the short-sighted and insulin to the diabetics. Not because it is "natural", but because it's human. It's important to remember this when dealing with the economy, before taking decisions based only in monetary interests.

A clear case is the crisis that currently affects science journalism. Journalism, apart from being a business, has a social function that is fundamental for a democracy, and which gives it sense: to give the citizens information that allows them to form their opinions and take decisions (if not, it's better to sell doughnuts, a much simpler and secure business).

In particular, science journalism democratizes science and allows common citizens, not only business people and scientists, to participate of the discoveries and to be involved in decisions that might have grave social and environment effects.

But the economic crisis has caused numerous media in the world to reduce the spaces they devote to science. One of the most notable cases is CNN, which last December cut the entire staff (seven people) of their science, technology and environment department.

In México, last week Reforma, one of the country's major newspapers, decided to eliminate its science printed pages. They will not fire their reporters, and they assure (just like CNN) that science stories will continue to appear, distributed in other sections of the newspaper, but the "high price of paper" forced them to make the cuts.

Reforma had already cancelled its excellent book supplement, Hoja por hoja. In times of crisis, science —and culture— still don't matter. Unfortunately, the media lack a scientific perspective: in the short term, cuts can be justified; in the long term, only a scientific and technical culture in all citizens can save the country from recurrent economical crises. Bad news. What a shame.

(translated by Adrián Robles Benavides)

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Darwin, wrong?

by Martín Bonfil Olivera
Published on Milenio Diario, February 18, 2009

A kind but pressing reader is worried because, by reading what several science writers, including me, have published about the ideas of Charles Darwin, and comparing it with what he wrote in his books On the origin of species and The descent of man, he finds discrepancies.

He is concerned because some sentences from Darwin can be read to say that human beings are superior to other species, and that they descend from monkeys (which is of course wrong: man and money descend from the same ancestor, not from one another; moreover, species can be well or badly adapted to their environment, but there can be no talk of superiority in absolute terms).

Although Darwin did not say that, he did write things that we now know to be wrong. In part because in later editions he incorporated some changes as a concession to criticism from religious thinkers, changes that introduced confusion in some terms.

On the other hand, in the 150 years since the publication of The origin, knowledge has advanced a lot. The mechanism of inheritance, a key component of his theory of evolution by natural selection, was unknown. For lack of a better explanation, he proposed a hypothesis (pangenesis) to explain it; he was wrong. The correct mechanism —genes— was discovered by the monk Gregor Mendel around the same time Darwin was publishing his book, but it was forgotten and was not re-discovered until 1900.

Genetics was incorporated to Darwinian theory and gave rise to population genetics, and the modernization of evolutionary theory continued during the 30's and 40's up to the "modern synthesis" or synthetic theory of evolution.

Finding ideas that sound wrong in Darwin's texts shouldn't come as a surprise: like any scientific theory, his has been corrected, refined and elaborated. If Darwin could read a modern evolutionary biology book, he would be surprised, but not worried: he'd be happy to see that, far from being taken as an unmoving dogma, his ideas have been part of the evolutionary process that gives science its power not to find absolute truths, but to generate theories in constant change that aspire to describe, in the best way possible, the natural world.

(translated by Adrián Robles Benavides)

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A Toast to Darwin!

by Martín Bonfil Olivera
Published in Milenio Diario, February 12, 2009

Today is the big day. We celebrate that 200 years ago, Charles Robert Darwin was born. Fifty years later he would publish On the origin of species by means of natural selection or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life, the book that turned biology into a full blown science, giving it the conceptual backbone that supports and gives sense to the whole of biological knowledge.

We celebrate the man, but we must also celebrate the idea (an idea that another man, Alfred Russell Wallace, also had, although sadly he will not receive any tributes: history only remembers first places, not seconds).

Darwin's great idea —natural selection as the mechanism that allows species to change, adapting to their environment— has turned out to be, during these 150 years, very polemic. This is due to three public-relations problems it has.

First off, it's an idea that, although simple —the better adapted organisms inherit their advantages to their descendants, which become predominant in the population— is anti-intuitive. Selection allows advantageous changes, produced by chance and inherited from parents to descendants, to accumulate. The reiterated variation-selection process produces, with time, designs that appear to be the product of an intelligence. It is hard to accept that complex creations such as the wing of a bird or the human brain —and the mind— are the results of a blind mechanism.

Second, Darwin's idea is naturalistic: compared to religion, it gives a completely natural —almost mechanical— explanation to the wonderful variety and amazing adaptations of living beings. To abandon a simple and comforting explanation (creation by a superior being) and substitute it by a natural process can be seen as a threat to religious faith. Maybe it is.

Finally, Darwin's idea is powerful. It's applicable not only in biology, but in economy, computing, cultural studies, medicine, chemistry, engineering, sociology, philosophy… That's why it's been described as "dangerous".

However, no matter the reluctances, today, the importance of this idea is undeniable, and its applications are more important every day. That's why Darwin well deserves that we toast to his memory. Cheers!

(translated by Adrián Robles Benavides)

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A Deadly Experiment

by Martín Bonfil Olivera
Published on Milenio Diario, February 4, 2009

Nothing is more terrible than a useless death. On December 27 the media announced the death of Christine Maggiore, an important American activist in favor of an idea as absurd as dangerous: that AIDS is not caused by a virus and is not contagious.

The so called AIDS denialists base their beliefs in the conjectures of various supposed experts, particularly Peter Duesberg, a molecular biologist that sacrificed his important reputation when he convinced himself, against all evidence and the opinion of almost all AIDS experts in the world, that the cause of AIDS is not HIV, but malnutrition and drug abuse.

Maggiore discovered she was seropositive in 1992: in 1994, when she learned about Duesberg's ideas, she turned into an active promoter of denialism. She founded the Alive & Well organization, dedicated to "present information that raises questions about the accuracy of HIV tests, the safety and effectiveness of AIDS drug treatments, and the validity of most common assumptions about HIV and AIDS".

Perhaps behind the fanatic conviction many denialists show is the natural human tendency to deny anything unpleasant, combined with the hope that what many consider —wrongly with today's treatments— a death sentence is wrong.

Maggiore took her fanatism to the extreme, when pregnant, of ignoring recommendations to use antiretroviral drugs to prevent transmission of the virus to her future daughter, Eliza. She then refused to practice HIV tests on her. In 2005, three-year old, Eliza died from a pneumonia caused by Pneumocystis jirovecii (known before are P. carinii), a fungus that typically causes pneumonia in AIDS patients.

Maggiore continued to deny AIDS and managed to avoid the legal complications of her criminal negligence. Her death in December was due, too, to P. jiroveci pneumonia . Her denialists friends, however, insist that "her legacy will continue to go on".

Ironically, Maggiore may have done a service to science: through the two unfortunate experiments she performed, at a deadly cost, dhe confirmed that the reality of AIDS does not depend on our beliefs. Despite their obstinate blindness, denialists will not be able to keep using Maggiore's life as proof to disqualify the scientific knowledge about AIDS .

(translated by Adrián Robles Benavides)

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