As I mentioned, I am an editor of Wikipedia, helping to create the most awesome encyclopedia in the world. The price is great, free in price as well as free from ads, viruses and pop-ups. Summer 2011 I launched a focused campaign aimed at the skeptical/secular community asking them to become editors and focus on improving critical thinking content in all languages on Wikipedia.

The project has several goals all of which require people to join in our movement to learn how to edit Wikipedia either improving articles by adding critical thinking articles, removing unsourced opinions on paranormal pages to improving the pages of our spokespeople. I’m writing here today to discuss this project which I call We Got Your Wiki Back!

We know that people are using Wikipedia as their source for neutral general information. We also know (using this cool tool) that whenever anyone/anything is in the public eye there will be a spike in hits.

As an example I’m going to bring up the Rebecca Watson elevatorgate event. Please set aside your opinion and just see this exercise from a quantitative viewpoint. Normally Watson’s Wikipedia page receives 100 hits a day. We can see this in May – June 2011. In July 2011 she averages 675 hits a day, on July 2nd Popular blogger P.Z. Meyers wrote about the elevator story on Pharyngula Blog. That same morning Richard Dawkins responded in the comment section which was like dumping gasoline on the embers. About July 5th (as this statistics tool is off by a 24-36 hours) Watson’s WP page hits 2,038. August and beyond go back to normal plus 10% hits (about 110 per day.) I do not follow Watson’s career so I don’t know if there might have been other reasons why she had nearly a 2K percent spike in people wanting to know more about her on that day.

As I said, I am using this solely as an example. People are using Wikipedia as a source of neutral information. We don’t always know when suddenly the public will become fascinated with one of our own. Sometimes like in the case of the CFI conference we know who the speakers are going to be, and know that a few days before and after there will be an influx of people wanting to know more about these women. Are we prepared?

The Center for Inquiry is sponsoring a Women in Secularism conference May 18-20, 2012 in Virgina. They state “Outspoken, influential secularist speakers at Women in Secularism will discuss and examine the role religion has played in the repression of women.” Who are all these influential women that are representing the secularist community? I don’t know all these names, and doubt that most people do. So I’ve done what most people will do and looked them up on Wikipedia. Here is what the world will see if nothing changes between now and May 2012.

Lauren Becker does not have a Wikipedia page.

The Ophelia Benson page is a stub, missing a picture as well. 457 hits Dec 2011 – almost all the references on the page are by Benson. In order to prove notoriety, prominent secondary sources need to talk about her.

Jamila Bey does not have a Wikipedia page.

The Greta Christina page needs a bit of work also. She received 867 hits Dec 2011. The page has a reference flag which means that only primary sources are used. This challenges her notoriety, as in Benson’s case prominent secondary sources need to be found. The writing on the page needs some work as it reads like a fan has written the page.

Elisabeth Cornwell does not have her own Wikipedia page, but is mentioned in a sentence on the Dawkins Foundation page.

Annie Laurie Gaylor has her own page but like Benson’s it is a stub. 2,176 hits for Dec 2011.

The Debbie Goddard Wikipedia page was flagged for notability Sept 2011. Without a lot of improvement the page will soon be removed. 117 hits Dec 2011. Reading over the talk page for Goddard it seems that its deletion is only waiting until the editor remembers it was supposed to be pulled down months ago.

Jennifer Michael Hecht has a well tended page. 663 hits for Dec 2011.

The Sikivu Hutchinson page is in terrible shape, 3 flags from August 2011, one even stating that the page has no other links to it making it a “orphan”. Its only a matter of time before this page gets deleted. 212 hits to her page Dec 2011.

The Susan Jacoby page looks to be in pretty good shape, though missing a photograph of her. 1,713 hits in Dec 2011.

The Jennifer McCreight page has been improved a lot in the last few months when McCreight noticed that her page was on the list for deletion because of notoriety. McCreight wrote a blog about how it felt to have a Wikipedia page and then to have it taken away, this led to an outpouring of support by her fans. They sought out references and made a good effort to improve the page, the noteworthy flag remains. The page received 535 hits Dec 2011.

Wafa Sultan has a nicely written page though missing a picture. The page had 3,217 hits Dec 2011.

The Rebecca Watson page has 3 flags (one for notoriety) and a nasty bright red citation error in the references section. Hits are 5,961 Dec 2011.

Some might see the glass half-full and be thankful that our female representatives even have this much prominence. I’m usually a pretty optimistic kind of person, but in this case I’m a bit embarrassed. These are some of the top female secular speakers we have and 2 don’t have Wikipedia pages, and several are near deletion. Of the remaining pages only a few are in good shape. I will be bold and say that these sorry excuses for Wikipedia pages ALMOST matches the bad shape that some of our male spokespeople’s pages are in.

Why has this been allowed? These are our representatives, whether or not you agree with their message, by allowing these pages to turn into litter filled vacant lots we are giving the impression that we don’t care about our spokespeople and the world probably shouldn’t care either. If we don’t have their backs who will?

What to do about it? There is a lot that can be done. It isn’t that difficult. Can you supply a current nice portrait of one of these women? Can you help find the links necessary to improve these pages? Improving the writing/grammar on these pages will help make them more scholarly and readable. My blog Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia has hundreds of ideas of how to edit. My offer to virtually hand-hold anyone willing to learn editing stands. This is your chance to make a real difference in the skeptical/secular movement, improving the visibility and prominence of our spokespeople (both female and male) by editing Wikipedia pages is a win-win for everyone.

If you can help, please contact me susangerbic@yahoo.com

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This post, Wikipedia and Skeptic Women, originally appeared on She Thought on January 30, 2012.
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The accessiblity for writing in public and self-publishing is amazing. I feel very fortunate to enjoy a few venues in which to do this. I have a passion for factual reality, and I want to spread the good news. I do love the opportunity to put my ideas out there for critical thinkers to pick over. I love learning and refining my perspective, and I love lively discussion in the comments here.

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This post, Science is Real!, originally appeared on She Thought on January 27, 2012.
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Imagine no Google, no Wikipedia, no facebook and no twitter.

Then remember. Remember how the Egyptian protests were organized and viewed through twitter. Remember how campaign information, right now, is being shared through facebook and how we’re seeing the world moving and flowing right before our very eyes on various news outlets. Remember how you have access to a great, instant education just by spending a few moments online. What would it be like if it were all gone?

How would you feel without activists like myself, or bigger ones like the skepchicks, like Brian Dunning, Ben Radford, James Randi or even Neil DeGrasse Tyson right at your fingertips? That also means no wikileaks and, in contrast, even  Fox News websites would be at risk (hey, in the interest of full disclosure, I felt the need to point that out).

Imagine that your internet was almost empty.

That’s what today is about. Protests against SOPA and PIPA are abundant, today, and part of your internet is empty to show you; to remind you of what it might be like if they were in effect. Please consider this carefully and take a look at the following links in the next few hours:

http://moveon.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/fx/
https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/
http://www.reddit.com/
http://americancensorship.org/modal/state-dept-petition/index.html
http://twitpic.com/sopapipa

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This post, Imagine this isn’t here., originally appeared on She Thought on January 18, 2012.
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Actors’ representation of American political discourse.

Marc J. Hetherington and Jonathan Weiler examine major psychological currents that contribute to dysfunction in American politics in their book, Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics.

They gathered a wealth of information from the American National Election Studies data to explain the current polarized disarray of American political discourse. In particular, they sourced a four-question inventory to sort respondents along a continuum from authoritarian to non-authoritarian. The questions have to do with how people view authority and control in parent/child relationships.

Hetherington and Weiler don’t provide a convenient one-line definition of the term authoritarianism because the concept is complex, and they wanted to avoid just the sort of negative bias that I read into it.  My understanding, based on the book as well as a bit of Googling, is that authoritarianism appears to be a type of cognitive deficit style.

“The thing that makes authoritarians distinctive is their reliance on established authorities [...] we suspect that those who score high in authoritarianism have (I) a greater need for order and, conversely less tolerance for confusion or ambiguity, and (2) a propensity to rely on established authorities to provide that order. [...]

Specifically, those scoring high in authoritarianism will probably tend to rely more on emotion and instinct than those scoring low because they (I) have, on average, fewer cognitive tools and (2) feel more threat from the often ambiguous nature of the complicated world around them.” _(p.34)

The most difficult thing about reading the book was maintaining my objectivity. It was very easy to read strong confirmation of my own biases into many aspects of the discussion. Of course I scored myself. I’m not good at dichotomous survey questions. After I mentally qualified my answers, “Yes, but….” I estimate my personal score is around -2. Beyond non-authoritarian. Anti-authoritarian.

My impression from the book and my own anthropological observation is that most authoritarians tend to be republican, white, Christian, heterosexual traditionalists. They want things to be the way they have always been. They tend to favor forceful, aggressive political candidates. The world is black and white for authoritarians, and they don’t let a little thing like objective reality get in the way of their opinions. These are the “shoot first, ask questions later” people.

Although authoritarians are generally less rational and more reactive than non-authoritarians, it turns out that even non-authoritarians commit serious errors in cognition when they feel threatened.

While authoritarians tend to feel threatened all the time from the diversity and complexity around them, non-authoritarians tend to remain calm most of the time. Non-authoritarians briefly trended toward the authoritarian side of the spectrum immediately following 9/11. President George W. Bush’s approval rating was around 90% shortly after the attacks. Fear erodes cognition for all of us, but the non-authoritarians return to deliberative calm when the threat recedes.

The republican political elite is masterful at reminding its base to be afraid, very afraid. The more authoritarian candidates are currently arousing the passions of their base with seriously scary issues like these:

Teh Gay:

Teh Birth Control:

At the extremes of the authoritarian spectrum, it really is impossible for authoritarians and non-authoritarians to imagine what the hell is wrong with people on other side. Which is both fascinating and incredibly depressing.

I contacted Jonathan Weiler via email with some questions. Both he and Marc Hetherington were very generous with their time. The discussion follows:

Me: After hearing your recent interview on the Point of Inquiry podcast, I read your fascinating book.

I find the authoritarian paradigm as you and Hetherington describe it incredibly compelling, but I have a few follow-up questions.

1. The issue of climate change seemed to be missing from the discussion. Why?

Jonathan:  I agree about climate change. A telling moment during the 2008 campaign – I thought – was Palin’s “drill, baby, drill” line, which seemed to represent a pivot from a conservationist approach to such issues (and one which, historically, many conservatives were sympathetic to) to an issue framed by the need for cognitive simplification.

Marc notes as well as that climate change is, assuredly, part of a bigger suite of issues that involve the rejection of science.

Me: 2. How do those of us on the non-authoritarian end of the spectrum rebrand ourselves as having the greater amount of courage because we don’t freak out in crises?

Jonathan: number 2 is a great question and I am not sure of the answer, but I will say that Ron Paul has framed his opposition to overseas adventures in terms of strength, not weakness. 

Marc notes that non-authoritarians probably do freak out during a crisis – that’s what humans do. A difference is that non-authoritarians disposition don’t seem to be freaking out all the time. After 9/11, almost everyone was in a high state of anxiety. That state receded for some, but not for others.  

Me: 3. Chapter 6 contains this passage: “Republicans seem to benefit by raising the specter of threat, especially as it relates to terrorism. In making this observation, we do not mean to suggest that this is a cynical strategy…” I recall a carpet bombing of terrorism-based political hay in the months and years following 9/11. My bias is showing, but it sure seemed to me like a cynical strategy at the time.

Jonathan: The cynicism statement was us being careful academics. Your bias is well-founded. To my comments about cynicism,

Marc adds that there was likely some real fear among GOP leaders. If you’ve read Ron Suskind’s “The One Percent Solution,” you get a sense of this. It’s probably not an either/or proposition, even if the motivation was *mostly* cynical.

Me: 4. I’ve read Nyhan and Reifler’s research into the backfire effect.

[The backfire effect occurs when people are so emotionally invested in an opinion that factual counter-evidence causes them to double-down on their misinformed stance. For example, there are some people who continue to believe there were WMDs in Iraq to justify their support of the war. All evidence to the contrary simply reinforces their anti-factual position.]

Are you familiar with this? If so, is there a relationship between high-ranking authoritarians and the backfire effect?

Jonathan: I am guessing you’d be right about the backfire event. It’s certainly consistent with what studies, in general, show about how they process information and make it conform to their worldview, though Chris Mooney has noted that progressives are not above doing this themselves (that’s not necessarily the same as non-authoritarians, but surely there’s some of that among non-authoritarians).

Me: 5. Speaking to the powerful impact of symbolism on people who rank high on the authoritarian index, I’m fascinated by how authoritarian issues play out in everyday situations. I have heard reports of people whose self-reported basis for their political opinions would place them very high on the authoritarian index.  These individuals are viscerally fearful of ethnic cuisine. It’s racist, of course, but beyond that it’s a fascinatingly powerful aversion. It’s as if they fear consuming the food of people they fear will turn them into Other. (Other being non-white, non-Christian, college educated, New York Times reading, non-heterosexual, etc.) Have you encountered similar everyday glimpses into the impact of authoritarianism?

Jonathan: Marc has actually looked at some data on the relationship between ethnic food preferences and authoritarianism and, as you might expect, there is much less desire for experimentation/trying new things among high authoritarians.

Me: 6. Where can we follow your analysis of the shenanigans leading into the presidential election?

Jonathan: I write for a few sources – I am a regular political columnist for the Independent Weekly of North Carolina – my columns come out on the second and fourth Wednesday of each month. I write pretty regularly for Huffington Post. Finally, I have started doing regular podcasts with my close friend, Marty Beller, who is the drummer for They Might be Giants. The podcast is called The drummer and the professor. It’s not just about politics, but that is a focus, and the most recent one was from Iowa, where I was covering the caucuses.

The book was genuinely fascinating, and I love the idea that there is at least one reasonable explanation for the appalling dysfunction in contemporary American politics. I highly recommend it as a primer for tracking the debates surrounding the upcoming presidential election.

An earlier version originally published at Open Salon and DTMS

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This post, American Political Dysfunction Explained, Sort-Of, originally appeared on She Thought on January 17, 2012.
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There is a strange conflict in the scientific community that revolves around some bizarre understanding of types of science and, seemingly, the scientific ego. Many people categorize some subjects of study as “hard science” and some as “soft science.” We’re talking No True Scotsman seems to have sneezed on the scientific community and people don’t seem to be inclined to wipe the fallacy boogers off. This categorization, seemingly, is to give one set of scientists a different class as another – it seems to serve the purpose of indirectly claiming that certain sciences are above others. Often times, these “soft sciences” are said to not even be sciences at all. Subjects such as psychology, sociology and anthropology are treated like the outcasts on the playground in the scientific community.

I know I’m not a scientist, at least not formally, in any of these fields, but this science elitism doesn’t make sense. It is as if, because of these conflicts, the basic ideas and definitions in science are ignored in order to serve some strange form of classicism.

I shouldn’t have to point this out, but science is a process. If people within a certain field are using that process to learn something more about a topic (no matter if it is about the physical properties of a crystallized form or if it is about operant conditioning), then it is science. Of course the beginnings of psychology were controversial and science wasn’t used to see if psychoanalysis would actually work, but we have produced studies that have proven operant conditioning to be an effective way to modify behavior. That’s right, outright manipulation by redundant stimuli (otherwise known as f***ing with people’s heads) can be a part of the scientific process. So, that means that psychoanalysis isn’t, itself, supported by science and operant conditioning is. When questions arise in other fields of science, the same type of thing holds true. Medical science showed us that the theory of humors* wasn’t valid, but that the Pathogenic Theory of Medicine has merit. Likewise, we’ve learned through science that classical thoughts on the elements were inaccurate. We haven’t dismissed Earth Science or Physics based on that, though. Instead, we used the scientific process to come up with better, more accurate (and way more awesome) ideas (to be clear, we’re talking about ideas that let us play with fire in more interesting ways and that enable us to discover adorable things like this).

I do understand that some subjects have the luxury of being more straight forward when it comes to finding answers. Since it seems easier to eliminate variables (I say “seems” because it certainly isn’t easy to eliminate variables in most theories in physics or chemistry, even), it makes it easier to develop a bias against other sciences. The environment that this creates, though, is one that says that a physicist is somehow a higher quality scientist than, say, an anthropologist. It is also one which oversimplifies topics in science, as if forensic anthropology and cultural anthropology are so closely related that on this bizarre view of science, they are both the same level of lower-tiered science than physics (and some of us like playing with dead things than trying to figure out foreign cultural dynamics, even though the latter is probably more socially helpful; the former is HARDCORE). Of course, there is probably some sort of ranking system of sciences, where the fewer the variables in a study or subject, the more accurate it probably is. That doesn’t make one thing a science or not, though.

Trying to dismiss psychology, sociology and anthropology as “soft science,” or “not real science,” is only distorting people’s understanding of what science is. It isn’t helpful to science or to teaching critical thinking skills. How can we expect the general population to understand science if we behave as if certain sciences are better than others? The reality is, the thing that makes something scientific or not is that subject’s relationship with the scientific process. If scientists who play with brains are using the scientific process, they’re as much a scientist as those who mess with people’s heads to test a theory, who are as much a scientist as those who play with different states of matter.

*Though, it is awesome that we tested something called “humorism” – we really should just revise the definition as being about the value of scientifically testing comedy or something similar. I want to see an international scale of humor invented. I’m not sure what archetypes to use to describe it, but someone must have an impressive idea out there, somewhere.

Note: I can understand dismissing sub-categories of a subject as unscientific when it is shown that using the scientific process to examine them shows them to be unsupported by evidence. Thus, dismissing psychoanalysis as unscientific might be reasonable while dismissing classical conditioning would be unreasonable.

Post Note, Note: I still love all my scientist friends, no matter which type of scientist you are.

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This post, Elitist science, originally appeared on She Thought on January 15, 2012.
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It expresses my own belief that “when the time comes” I’d like as little treatment as possible.  However, the reality, at least from the stories of my friends today, shows that end of life decision to be very complex.

My first friend is Deb.  She’s the daughter of a good friend of mine that died of cancer over 5 years ago.  I helped in the last few months with her mother, and to everyone’s horror, Deb was diagnosed with lung cancer.  You can imagine, the mother, dying of breast cancer, knowing her daughter had lung cancer.

Deb has never smoked, and only worked in hospital environments as a nurse. Lung cancer is even more difficult for people like Deb, as people assume she smoked.  We all like to take a small comfort in the thought “Well I never smoked so won’t get lung cancer”.

Link: Lung Cancer Incidence Rates High Among Women who Have Never Smoked

Up to 1 in 5 women with lung cancer have never smoked or lived with a smoker.   Deb though refuses to waste time explaining to people “No I never smoked”.  To her, cancer is the great equalizer, those suffering and battling it, all deserve compassion.  It doesn’t matter if you smoked or not, lung cancer is a horrible thing to face.  No one “deserves” it  because of a habit.

Deb decided to go on chemotherapy and experimental treatments.  She’s been through them all, or so it seems.  Pills, shots, infusions.  Some make her sick, some she barely notices.  Treating lung cancer long term means switching treatments, keeping with one until the cancer stops responding and then going on to the next.  Deb will never, ever, stop chemotherapy of some sort.  It’s taken a toll.  But her quality of life remains very good.  She works 2 jobs.  She joined weight watchers (with her doctor’s permission) and looks fabulous with her new thinner figure.  (Chemo doesn’t always make you lose weight).  She travels to Hawaii and to visit family.  Best of all she has 2 new grandchildren she never had before she was diagnosed.  They are the delight of her life.  Deciding to go the aggressive treatment route has worked out well for her.  She’ll never be cancer free, but each year she gains is another victory for science.

My other friend I ran into by accident at the food store.  I hadn’t seen Joan for many months.  I asked about her husband, and she began to tear up.  She said her husband had died, and then immediately added “We should have listened to him”.  She then went on about how her husband when diagnosed with cancer had said “I don’t want any treatment” and said he was “ready to die”.  She said her children and doctor had all convinced him to get treatment. She was almost in tears (in the dairy aisle) as she said “It was wrong of us to do that”.  Her husband suffered horribly and in the end she said it was “just one thing after another”.  I knew this was something she felt strongly about, because usual dairy aisle conversation is “oh hey, how’s it going?”

The difference perhaps between my friend Deb and my other friend’s husband is that for one science offered results and the other science offered pain and misery.  Deb’s lung cancer results are not typical.  But her taking a chance gave her years that have perhaps been the richest she has ever had.  My friend’s husband was older.  He had lived his full life.  The difference between cancer diagnosis in your early 40′s and in your late 70′s, both with poor results from chemotherapy, is that in your early 40′s you aren’t even thinking about death.  In your late 70′s you’ve at least thought about it some.

Deb made her choice by herself.  Her family had input but from the start she was ready to fight the cancer.  My friend’s husband had to be talked into it.  He was fine with just pain killers and quiet time with family before he died.  I know a lot of older friends that would choose full throttle chemotherapy, and some younger ones that might not want the endless regimen of chemotherapy Deb goes through.

No matter what, fighting cancer is very difficult for both the cancer patient and the family and friends.   Life, and death, doesn’t always give us clear choices.

I think in the end, how one chooses to battle an illness needs to be a personal choice.  My hope is that those choices are respected and supported.

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This post, A Tale of Two Treatments, originally appeared on She Thought on January 13, 2012.
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Although I am a godless liberal, I am not generally opposed to religion. I understand that religion has the potential to do a lot of good for many people. I realize that shared mythologies can be powerful contributors to cohesive societies. That said, what I am strongly opposed to is the harm that arises from intolerant patriarchal dogmas. I especially dislike the way that superficially innocuous behavioral strictures seem to always lead to bigotry, subjugation, and even acts of violence against large swaths of people. In some cases, roughly half of all people are targets.Maintaining power and control over women appears to be a common theme that underpins prominent factions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.  The three major religions all have strong edicts about women’s sexuality (they’re against it).

Religious patriarchs frequently appeal to the authority of their particular god to dictate women’s behavior, including micromanaging how women dress themselves. Women’s clothing becomes a form of religious regalia that places women in a lesser social strata than the men who are largely free to dress however they like. Adherence to the clothing memes of one’s faith can even become a marker of status among followers.

Women’s clothing seems to me like a laughably trivial concern in a world wracked with wars, poverty, hunger, and myriad other instances of abject human suffering. I can only wrap my mind around it as a tool for infantilization and control.

It’s easy to dismiss Middle Eastern religions as the only violent fashion-police outliers, but some Christian men also have strong opinions about women’s clothing. I saw a link to an instructional video on Jezebel recently. It is a glimpse into what some Christian “guys” think about how women should dress.

If you don’t have time to watch it, the overview is that owning a penis is an endlessly distracting and onerous burden. It is incumbent upon women to keep men’s penises flaccid (?!) by obliterating any evidence that they are women.

Because, and this is important girls, that ominous-looking black fellow at 2:20 is becoming aroused by momentarily glimpsing the outline of your patellae. Even now, he’s imagining feasting you with all kinds of delicious chocolate sin. He is having impure thoughts about you. (Which I would love to speculate about at length here, but I don’t type well with just my left hand.)

Here’s the video.

Another helpful Christian clothing-related resource from the Jezebel comment thread is this modesty survey. It’s both hilarious and endlessly fascinating:

“We’re not telling you what to wear — we’re just telling you what we, as guys, have to guard against. It is God’s Word, your own heart and conscience, and your parents and godly friends who should help you decide what to do about it. But, to help you reach your own conclusions we’ve provided some excellent resources that strike a balanced, non-legalistic tone.”

From here on the outside, all the handwringing about women’s clothing seems creepy and insane. Especially when dads get involved in choosing their adult daughters’ clothing.

Throughout the survey, the phrase “stumbling block” seems to be code for “gives me an erection.” Everything is a “stumbling block” for the young men who took the survey.

Millimeter of exposed skin below the collarbone? Stumbling block.

Pantyhose that mimic bare skin? Stumbling block.

Messenger bag slung across your body? Stumbling block.

I attribute this hair-trigger arousal response to the developmental biology of the guys who answered the survey (most were aged 12-19) rather than to a credible data set that reflects arousal responses for men in general. I might pay more attention if the age distribution wasn’t so heavily skewed to pubescent teenagers.

I also can’t help but wonder if the survey failed to account for cultural diversity. From the limited respondent demographic information, it appears that the majority of respondents were (probably white) Christian teenagers, 43% of whom had been home schooled. What this demographic finds arousing might not translate universally across other demographics. For example, the ominous-looking African American man in the video might not respond in an immediate and sexual way to a momentary glimpse of knee. His trigger, perhaps, is not quite as risible as those of the survey respondents.

There was one interesting article in the modesty literature that explicitly lays out why men get to tell women how to dress. Women are not autonomous beings. We do not own our bodies. God does, and men are in charge. Which brings me to a major reason I harbor deep and cynical reservations about religiously-inspired power disparities and the attendant edicts that open the door to abuses.

Violating subjective stylistic standards is often conflated with invitation to rape, even in the larger American society. Sadly, every single time I read a news item about the rape of a woman, or even of a young child for that matter, someone arrives to comment on how she was dressed, or to ask what she was drinking, or to determine if she was physically small or otherwise vulnerable in any way. Somehow and always, the victim must have provoked the attack.

Women can be lured into believing this myth as well, because it allows us to cast the victims as Other and falsely conclude that rape would never happen to us. Except that it does. In a society that systematically fails to render equality, anyone can fall victim to a crime that is based solely on power and control.

Criticism of religion has the potential to offend some readers, and that is not my intent. I do use  what I believe are representative examples of religious fucknuttery to illuminate my perspective as an outsider looking in. I acknowledge that not every religion, or sect, or individual of faith confirms my biased analysis. In all seriousness, I would love for readers to prove me wrong in the comments.

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This post, I Can Dress Myself, Thank You., originally appeared on She Thought on July 23, 2011.
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Alice and the Red Queen, from Lewis Caroll’s illustration for “Through the looking glass” (1871).

Today, I want to write about sex (but, do not be worried, nary shall a mention be made of Dublinian elevators or, as they say in Dublinese: “lifts”).

You see, sex comes with a bit of a biological riddle: it is near omnipresent in higher metazoans. It is also very persistent (we have many examples of lineage abandoning sexual reproduction and reversing to an asexual mode of reproduction, but these seems short-lived episodes in evolutionary terms, often followed by the extinction of the lineage: sexual reproduction seems to be there to stay) [1]. These two factors, that sex is so present and so enduring, point to sex being a highly valuable trait, one that it is strongly selected for.

And yet, sex is very costly, and represents a considerable drain on an organism resource. And we are not just talking about sport-cars and toupées here: many species, including vertebrates, display gonadosomatic indexes that are routinely between 15 to 20% (meaning that the gonads represent 15 to 20% of the animal’s total body mass, quite considerable). And that is not even mentioning the time and energy spend in courtship behavior, sometime extensive secondary sexual characteristics, such as a peacock’s obnoxious displays…

This is compounded in species with males and females (keep in mind that, despite our somewhat myopic views, other arrangements exist – an idea I had the opportunity to mention before), because of something referred to as the “twofold cost of sex”. Imagine, you have a 50% male female ratio and that each female can have a maximum of two offspring. That means that, in average, each generation one male and one female will be produced, and that this one female will in turn produce another male and female. This would translate in a stagnating population. On the other hand, if you imagine a similar species but that reproduces by parthenogenesis, each individual would produce to offspring that can, in turn, produce two more and so on. Far from being stagnant, the population numbers could theoretically double every generation.

So, in view of the steep price of sex, it is not surprising that population reproducing asexually generally display a much higher growth rate than sexually reproducing ones. And so, logic dictates that sex much have some rather awesome evolutionary payback to still be so consistently selected for. The riddle, therefore, is: “which one?”. In which currency is the (evolutionary) bill for sex paid?

And that’s where the red queen comes in. The expression was first coined by Van Valen in 1973 and references a passage of Lewis Caroll’s book:  “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place”.

Initially, Van Valen’s metaphore had a broader meaning and was applied to any “evolutionary arm race” situation. A common example is that of a forest: the height of tree trunks is not in itself required. In an open space, trees would function just as well, even better, as just a carpet of leaves. Except that, in a forest, other trees would outgrow them and spread over them, intercepting sunlight and letting them in the shade. So trees have to compete with each other in a race toward the sky; always running just to keep in the same place (in the canopie). Despite the added cost, trees’ evolution was driven by the risks inherent to “a tree trunk gap”. A typical “red queen scenario as Van Valen’s imagined it.

Since this initial implantation, however, the definition of the Red Queen hypothesis has taken a more specific meaning and one more relevant to our current discussion. Sex, it is argued, permits a prompt diffusion of new alleles and a constant mixing of the most successful genetic formulas, allowing for a quick adaptation to new or changing environmental conditions (which tend to be transient) as well as to an evolutionary arm race.

Furthermore, of all the evolutionary arm races, this new version of the hypothesis goes, few are more intense than the one between pathogens and their host. The former, it is well known, are constantly evolving and becoming better adapted to their host, whose immune system, on the other hand, is always evolving to try and curbing the impact of the infections. In such an arm race, the pathogens, characterized by shorter life-cycle, would have the advantage but sex, in this hypothesis, acts as the great equalizer, allowing the host’s evolutionary response to match the levels of its pathogen…

There have long been some hints that the Red queen hypothesis was correct. For example, it has been shown that snail populations in which parasites were more prevalent were more likely to sustain a sexual reproduction mode [2]. But correlation, as we skeptics love to argue, is not causation…

And that was that, until an article published a couple of weeks ago by the prestigious journal Science. In this, Morran and his colleagues [3] focused on a nematode, called Caenorhabditis elegans, that has the ability to switch from asexual to sexual reproduction when the mood takes it. Their first step was to maintain the population under three conditions: a control, with no infection; one where the population of nematode was left to evolve alongside a population of the bacterial pathogen Serratia marcescens (to allow for an evolutionary arm-race) and one where the bacteria were regularly replaced by “naïve” bacteria from the freezers. In this last set-up, the nematodes were left to evolve, but the “evolutionary counter” of the bacterial population was periodically reset, “fixing”, to use the autors’ terminology, the strain of S. marcescens. During this first experiment, the team realized that while the rate of sexually reproducing nematodes remained constant in the control, it increased in the arm-race scenario and decreased in the later one.

Next, the researchers were able to block the nematode’s genetic switch in one position or the other, essentially producing asexually and sexually reproducing version of otherwise identical nematodes. They then maintained these populations alongside either co-evolving bacteria or refreshed populations of it described above, for a duration of 10 generations. At this point, they confirmed that while the asexually reproducing nematodes were doing fine against the fixed bacteria, their mortality rate rose more than three times when confronted with the evolved bacteria. Clearly they were evolutionary outspaced and loosing the arm-race. On the other hand, the sexually reproducing nematodes were able to follow and showed no increase in mortality and displayed, on the contrary, an increased resistance to the “fixed” bacteria.

All of this is a perfectly consistent with what the red queen hypothesis that sex is an advantage to respond to the pressure of co-evolving pathogens, and constitute some rather strong support for an important, but previously quite hypothetical, piece of evolutionary science… Which, as far as I am concerned, is really cool.

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1.            Otto, S.P., Sexual Reproduction and the Evolution of Sex. Nature Education, 2008. 1(1).

2.            King, K.C., et al., The Geographic Mosaic of Sex and the Red Queen. Current biology : CB, 2009. 19(17): p. 1438-1441.

3.            Morran, L.T., et al., Running with the Red Queen: Host-Parasite Coevolution Selects for Biparental Sex. Science. 333(6039): p. 216-218.

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This post, Of sex and red queens…, originally appeared on She Thought on July 22, 2011.
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This week I’ll be attending The Amaz!ng Meeting 9 (TAM9) in Las Vegas, Nevada, along with many of my SheThought co-writers. TAM9 is the annual conference of The James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) that brings together skeptics and critical thinkers for several days of talks, panels and myriad activities. Each year TAM gets bigger and bigger whilst expanding content, diversity and attendance.

This year’s schedule contains two keynote addresses that are open to the general public. The first is given by Neil deGrasse Tyson, host of Nova ScienceNow and director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. Dr. Tyson brings a passion for astrophysics and a strong, persuasive message of the necessity for science education and communication to the general public. The second keynote is Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist, prolific bestselling author and director of the Richard Dawkins Foundation. Dawkins is a foremost speaker on the importance of evidence-based thought in science and public life. He has the distinction of being perhaps the world’s best known public atheist.

The rest of the TAM9 schedule is the most varied and diverse yet. Included are artists, poets, scientists, activists, journalists and television personalities. The full schedule is here. The program covers immense ground in critical thinking, from Phil Plait to Jennifer Michael Hecht to Carol Tavris to Sarah Mayhew to Bill Nye to Adam Savage to Elizabeth Loftus to Skepchick bloggers to the hosts of MonsterTalk, and many, many more. The schedule is full and appeals to a wide variety of skeptics, not just serious scientists and intense science enthusiasts. This program emphasizes critical thinking for people across disciplines.

Beyond the official TAM program, there’s a full slate of fringe events which emphasize the diversity that TAM represents this year. Side trips are planned to Red Rocks and the Grand Canyon as well as daredevil activities. There are meetups for myriad subgroups, including various nationalities, vegetarians, LGBT folks and others. The most notorious of the unofficial events is Penn Jillette’s Bacon and Donut Party, which is a fundraiser for JREF.

The diversity of the official and non-official schedules of TAM9 elucidates the changing face of skepticism. No longer are cries of the skeptical movement as a bastion of privileged white men accurate or productive. This year’s Amaz!ng Meeting holds promise to be one that moves beyond talk of inclusion into one of outreach.

TAM9 will be held at the South Point Hotel, Casino and Spa from July 14-17. I will be posting daily blog updates from Las Vegas throughout the conference. If you have any particular questions for interviewees or issues you’d like me to address, please leave me a comment here or through Twitter.

This entry is cross-posted at Skeptical Humanities.

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This post, SheThought Happens in Vegas, originally appeared on She Thought on July 10, 2011.
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