Darwin's Doubt I

Recently, I watched an interview with Stephen Meyer on Vimeo. In the interview, he discusses his latest book 'Darwin's Doubt'. Meyer is a member of the Discovery Institute and promotes the idea of 'Intelligent Design'. Now, I, as a molecular biologist, know for a fact that life is very poorly designed. Consider us, humans: we suffer backaches, headaches, joint pains, women run tremendous risk when giving birth and we need to wipe our asses after we poop. All results of piss-poor design. Our body plan doesn't suit our upright gait and our brains are too big. On the molecular level it gets even worse. Seemingly simple tasks are executed by hugely complex molecular machines and there's a lot of wasteful cycling of components. All this is easily explained from our origins. We gradually developed through evolution to become the diabolical master minds that we are today.

Since gradual evolution, through mutation and selection, is such a blatantly obvious process and such a beautiful and explanatory theory, I decided to read the book and try and discover what Meyer's problem with the theory of evolution was. I knew from the interview that he was wrong on many issues but Meyer struck me as too intelligent a man to be simply ignorant. He was clearly educated, so how could he be so wrong? I don't readily attribute to malice that which can be explained by ignorance, but perhaps he had a hidden agenda? Or was there something else to his theories?

Short answer: no. Meyer speaks with eloquence and authority about a subject he doesn't even begin to understand. In the next blog posts, I aim to enlighten my readers about Meyer's mistakes while I'll try to explain why he's wrong and what's the right way of interpreting the data. I fully understand that not everyone is a trained molecular biologist and so the intricacies of the evolutionary process may be hard to understand. Unfortunately, the headlines don't help you much, as the media frequently over-states the conclusions from scientific research. Even the actual research papers won't help you much, as scientists nowadays are inclined to over-state their conclusions too. It's understandable, since otherwise we can't convince journal editors or peer-reviewers to publish our work. Thus, the only way to really determine what can and can not be concluded from scientific research is to dig into the data and find out for yourself what they say. Data never lies (unless it's fabricated, but that's not so easily done anymore).

So is Meyer just ignorant then? Well, no, not really; he could have asked for an explanation of the data, so ignorance is no excuse. Fact is, as he reveals in the last chapter of his book, that he lives in mortal existential terror. He's simply afraid that is he wasn't created by some creator for some purpose, his life is meaningless and therefore worthless.

Since I was born and raised without religion and never felt the need for any gods in my life, this attitude always puzzles me a bit. Yet, I've have, through my travels, frequently encountered true believers who were simply afraid of divine punishment if they didn't fulfill their duties as good Christians, Muslims, Buddhists or what have you. This is perfectly understandable in rural areas where petty farmers are completely dependent on random natural forces for their existence. The only thing the can do is pray and hope their gods will listen. Yet, in modern society, this need for faith seems a bit redundant.

Why would your life be meaningless, unless there was a god who created you? Your life has as much meaning as you give it. The odds of you being alive today are negligible and yet, here you are! Bravo, I say! Now go and make the best of it. You'll never have another chance. It also doesn't really matter how you live your life, as long as you live it well. The only important thing is that everybody else has as much of a right to a good life as you do, so do well to others. Not for a divine reward, but simply out of respect. Is that so hard? Does that really require divinity?

In episode 20 of season 6 from Star Trek: The Next Generation, the Enterprise crew discovers a series of clues hidden in the DNA of distinct alien races that lead them to uncover that all of those races had a common ancestor. The figure in white is a projection of this ancestor revealing her message, as hidden in the DNA of humans, klingons, cardassians, romulans and some other spcies. It's a good episode!

Either way, Meyer doesn't want to preach in his book, so instead he constructs an elaborate argument on why Darwinian evolution can't explain the Cambrian explosion (the sudden appearance of many animal life forms in the fossil record some 540 million years ago) and that this must have been a creation event. He's careful not name his creator, lest he offend some god or another, I suppose, so I'll make a logical assumption that explains the creator: Life on Earth was seeded by an alien race who carefully programmed the DNA of early life forms to evolve into us today. This is how I chose to interpret the theory of intelligent design and it's a fair interpretation. Those aliens themselves, of course, evolved through random Darwinian mechanisms, but since the odds of this occurring are quite rare, they found themselves rather lonely. Thus they seeded some other planets with life, in the hopes of having someone to talk to eventually. Bit of a stretch, but it's also the plot of a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode and more likely than divine creation, so I'll go with it.

Over the next few posts, whenever I find the time and motivation, I'll go over Meyer's arguments and explain exactly how wrong he is (every single time). Nothing personal, of course, everyone is free to believe what they want to believe, but when they start telling lies on my turf, I get a little cranky. I won't tell you how to read your Bible either and I won't have you converting the innocent with pseudoscience.

What’s up with the bees?

No bees here!

Bees are dying and blogs are buzzing. A phenomenon called ‘colony collapse disorder’(CCD) has been decimating bee populations in North America and Europe. Bloggers are eager to put the blame pesticides, herbicides, GMO crops and mono-cultures, but what’s really going on? What’s this mysterious bee disease, what should we do to prevent it and should we be really worried? Will our crops fail and nations starve when the bees die out? Time to review the different facts and factors involved and see if we can make some sense out of all the buzzing.

Bees: who are they and why should we care?

First of all: not every bee is a honey bee but, in the context of CCD, honey bees are all we care about. It’s the honey bees that are dying. Solitary bees, carpenter bees, bumblebees and what not are not under threat. There are in fact almost 20.000 known species of bees . Yet, honey bees are important pollinators. By buzzing around and hopping from flower to flower they pollinate the flowers and this is essential for some plant species to bear fruit. Without pollination, we’d have no  apples, no pears, no grapes (and no wine), no kiwi’s and no cacao. The list goes on . Are honey bees the only pollinating species? Not at all. We won’t see the instant demise of all of our crops once the bees are gone. Honey bees are an important pollinating species, but far from the only species. Other insects pollinate too, such as bumblebees, hoover flies, midgets and even mosquitoes. In addition, animals such as humming birds and fruit bats pollinate many crops in regions where they’re abundant. Farmers tend to utilize honey bees to pollinate their crops, since it’s simple enough to put up a couple of hives in your orchard and their honey is a nice bonus, but they’re hardly essential. As far as I could find, only a few fruit crops appear to depend on pollination by honey bees alone, such as lemon and lime. Still, honey bees do put in a lot of effort in the pollination of many of our crops and crop-yields may very well be severely reduced without honey bees around. However, it’s a gross overstatement that our world would perish and our civilization collapse without the bees. Such overstatements sell movies, but don’t really help us much otherwise.   

Colony collapse disorder: what’s that then?

The sudden disappearance of all the worker bees from a hive is what causes a bee colony to collapse. No worker bees, no food, no hive. This is not a new phenomenon, though the name CCD was only coined in 2006. Entire bee colonies have disappeared since ancient times and this phenomenon has been labelled as “disappearing disease” or “spring dwindling” (Oldroyd, 2007). However, the rate of honey bee colony loss reported in particular since the 2006-2007 season, is quite unusual. What really happens in CCD is unclear. The bees don’t die at the hive, as such, they simply disappear. They fly out and never return to their hives. Do they get disoriented and lose their way? They fly out and die elsewhere? Nobody really knows. A number of causes have been proposed for this phenomenon, primarily infectious diseases and chemical contamination of the bees’ environment with pesticides and/or herbicides.

Infectious diseases

Bees, like any other living thing, are susceptible to a number of pathogens including mites, fungi and viruses. The most prolific bee-killer is the mite Varroadestructor. This mite has been spreading throug the world since the 1960s and has, in fact, been responsible for decimating bee colonies, including domestic honey bees and wild bees. However, chemicals have been developed that kill the mites, so called ‘miticides’ and, although the mite still infects virtually every colony, the infection is under control and rarely results in colony destruction loss (Oldroyd, 2007).  In addition, it seems that the mites have become less virulent while feral bee populations have mostly become resistant. Another likely candidate for an infectious disease contributing to, if not causing, CCD is a combination of a fungal and a viral disease. Invertebrate iridescent virus (IIV6) and the fungus Nosema caranae have been linked to CCD. However, the study identifying the IIV6 has later been called into question. Another pathogen associated with CCD is the parasitic phorid fly. This fly lies its eggs in life bees and when the eggs hatch the larvae eat the bee alive. Before the bee succumbs, the larvae control the bee turning the bee into a ‘zombee’. Such a scenario might explain why the bees of CCD colonies go missing since infected bees won’t return to the hive to die. However, further investigation into the role of the phorid fly is still pending and if you think you see a zombee you can help by catching it and reporting your find on the Zombee Watch site. Altogether, although CCD appears to be linked to an infectious disease, no clarity exists yet about the pathogen that may cause it.

Pesticides, herbicides and GMO crops

First, there’s absolutely no evidence that genetically modified crops are associated with CCD. To the contrary, in areas where high amounts of GMO crops are present, such as in Illinois, no cases ofCCD have been reported. The alarmist blogs have been blaming the herbicide Round-up, glyphosate, for the death of bees, but again, there’s no evidence for such claims. In fact, the latest research shows no effect whatsoever of glyphosate on bee health. The only substances that seem to affect bees negatively are the neonicotinoids used as pesticides. These compounds were designed as relatively safe insecticides to control pest-species that damage our crops. Initial studies showed little to no effect on foraging honey bees, that might ingest the compound through contaminated pollen. However, a concurrent study indicates that ingestion of the compound might render bees more susceptible to viral diseases. Thus, the neonicotinoids are still suspect and will remain so, pending further investigation. The E.U. has therefore banned the use of these substances for the time being.

Conclusions

We still don’t know for certain what’s causing CCD. A combination of factors seems likely. Over-all, the phenomenon appears to be pathogen-related and the parasitic phorid fly seems a likely cause. A loss of plant diversity may also be a contributing factor, as may certain chemicals in the environment that render the bees more susceptible to infection. However, bee populations are already seem to be recovering, bees are not exactly on the brink of extinction. I don’t think there’s a reason to panic, but it never hurts to be cautious.