Scientific Firewalls: Vrtpaleo, CERN, Koch Hall of Human Origins

A trio of stories prompted thoughts about the influence of politics and corporate interests on science and scientists.  Science separated from politics, or science separated from financial interests – interesting concepts, but I’ve always assumed that any firewalls surrounding science are very suspect, very porous.  I forget that sometimes.

Vrtpaleo

Scientists are political animals who are able, like the rest of us, to act poorly when debating their beliefs, be those beliefs political, religious, social, scientific . . . .  Consider the recent kerfuffle on Vrtpaleo, the listserv intended to serve the vertebrate paleontology community.  Among the enlightening exchanges were the following:

Comment:  I'm sick of checking my email and seeing your stream of perverted right-wing slander. . . .

Rejoinder:  I am neither a racist nor a bigot. Such terms are used by leftist idiots (or as Lenin used to call them, 'useful idiots') to slander and smear people whose views they find objectionable . . . .

The language was coarse, dripping with vitriol, and so over the top it was almost funny.  Almost.

Should it be surprising that some scientists and science hangers-on (who’s commenting isn’t always evident on the listserv) have obnoxious political, social, racial, or economic opinions?  We’re talking about human beings, a species whose members are well known for embracing the rational and irrational in the same thought.

I wasn’t the only one put off by the Vrtpaleo display.  This latest flare up of political crossfire was the last straw for several members.  The best announcement of an intention to drop out of the listserv came from Chris, a museum curator, on his fine blog Prerogative of Harlots.  (Thankfully, he didn’t do what many on the listserv do, send an unsubscribing message to the whole list.)  On point, he observed,

I think it's great that the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of expression - I just wish it carried a rider that citizens think before they exercise that right.

The whole thing reminds me of Charles Ives’ Three Places in New England.  Nicolas Slonimsky, who conducted the world premiere of the piece, described the relevant portion perfectly.

In the second movement there is a scene which represents the meeting of two marching bands in the village, and they play the same marching rhythm but at different tempi because they are coming from different directions.  (Charles Ives Remembered:  An Oral History by Vivian Perlis, 2002, p. 148.)

The result, for me at least, is a discordant mess.

European Economic Crisis and Science

The current financial crisis has directly affected science and science education worldwide.  These funding decisions are not in the hands of scientists, they are decisions being made by politicians, among others.  The closing of university science museums in this country is but one case in point.

According to a recent article in the Washington Post (In Europe, Science Collides With the Bottom Line, September 7, 2010), the severely constrained budgets of European nations are now forcing governments there to take whacks at some of the most exciting pure science going.  Reporter Anthony Faiola, describes several European scientific agencies and efforts that are being cut back, put on hold, or coming under the threat of such action.

I found it particularly dismaying that the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is shutting down all of its particle accelerators beginning in 2012.  Okay, the Large Hadron Collider, that $10 billion accelerator near Geneva, was already slated for a year-long hiatus for upgrades.  But, now, none of the CERN’s nine particle accelerators will be functioning.  Faiola writes:

The move will mean a critical period of lost opportunities for visiting research fellows and a year without fresh data for projects, including one on the cusp of trapping an atom of antimatter to better understand the early formation of the universe.

Sad.

The Smithsonian’s Koch Hall of Human Origins

For the August 30, 2010, issue of The New Yorker, Jane Mayer wrote a fascinating piece (entitled Covert Operations) on the Koch brothers, David and Charles, libertarian billionaires with a profound dislike of government in general, and the current administration in particular.

The industries that make up the Koch brothers’ corporate holdings are, reportedly, serious environmental polluters.  So, it may not be surprising that Mayer describes the Kochs as advocates of “much less oversight of industry – especially environmental regulation.”  Climate change denial is apparently one of their causes.

At the same time, David Koch, in particular, has been providing substantial funds to various medical and scientific institutions.  The signs of that generosity abound.  The American Museum of Natural History’s wing housing dinosaurs is now known as the David H. Koch Dinosaur Wing.  The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History recently opened the David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins.

Private philanthropy in support of science – good thing . . . if the financial largesse doesn’t come with pressure to influence the science supported and displayed by the recipients.  And that’s what some have alleged about the Koch Hall of Human Origins.  Mayer outlines the arguments in her piece.  Among those she quotes is Dr. Joseph Romm, physicist and climate expert.  Romm, blogging on ClimateProgress, had this to say:

Two things are clear if you visit America’s leading 'science museum' — the National Museum of Natural History.  First, the Smithsonian downplays or ignores the risks posed by human-caused climate change in a number of exhibits.  Second, the worst of the exhibits is the David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins.

Yes, the Smithsonian took $15 million from a billionaire polluter — who is an even bigger funder of disinformation on climate science than Exxon Mobil — to fund a misleading exhibit on evolution and climate change.

That appears to be the crux of the indictment of the Hall of Human Origins.  According to its critics, while positing that climate is a key agent in the human evolutionary history, winnowing the various human species down to one, the exhibits (1) fail to attribute current climate changes, including the record high (and rising) levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, to human action and fossil fuels, and, by making those changes appear to be part of a natural cycle, (2) posit human adaptation as the only rational response.

Mayer says that the messages from the Koch Hall of Human Origins “uncannily echo the Koch message” on climate change.  She quotes from a Koch Industries in-house publication which argues, “Since we can’t control Mother Nature, let’s figure out how to get along with her changes.”  That quote is from a column entitled Blowing Smoke in Discovery, a Koch Industries newsletter (January 1, 2010).  The Discovery piece is an amazing read.  Particularly, in its consideration of what was learned from the pilfered e-mail correspondence of climate scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit.

But what the recent 'Climategate' scandal at the University of East Anglia may have illustrated is just how suspect many of those scientific assumptions [behind man-made greenhouse gas emissions] may be.

Correspondence indicates that when the data didn’t support their hypothesis, leading climate change advocates in England decided to change, hide, or, if necessary, destroy conflicting data.

The author goes on to write:

The scientific process of discovery is completely undermined if important information gets modified, manipulated, distorted or dropped if it contradicts a preferred outcome.

Amen, brother.  Hard to disagree with that last sentence, though I don’t think that is what’s revealed by the stolen e-mails from the Climate Research Unit.  (But, that’s another story.)

Is that, though, what happened with the Hall of Human Origins and its treatment of climate change?  Should it have explored the causes of global warming and proffered possible solutions to same?  I’m not sure, but I’m inclined to think not.  Still, when I read Mayer’s treatment of the Kochs, I was struck by how oblivious I was the couple times I toured the Hall to even the possibility that what was on display might have been skewed to serve special interests.  Pretty stupid of me, because, as I stated at the outset, I don’t believe there’s an effective firewall separating science from the influence of other interests.

Yet, it’s ironic that, if, indeed, the Hall of Human Origins has this nefarious intention – acceptance of global warming as just part of the nature of things and something we should adapt to – it failed to deliver the message, at least to me.  Maybe I was just asleep at the switch.  The message I felt it was sending, as I described it in a previous posting, was that

climate change has made a huge difference in the high stakes hominid species-survival lottery. . . . Climate change takes on the role of an evolution machine.  In the human family tree, Homo sapiens is the sole survivor, in part because our great capacity to adapt to variable climate.  Yet there was nothing certain about that survival.

Can a visitor take the displays to be saying that extreme climate shifts, including the one ongoing, are part of natural cycles?  Sure.  But, they don’t, in my mind, promote complacency in the face of those climatic changes.  Even a slightly attentive visitor (the category I guess I fell in) should came away with an understanding that there’s nothing certain about our future survival in the face of severe climate change.  I don’t see the displays purposefully advocating any response, including one that concludes we’ll just have to adapt.

Anyway, it’s good to be reminded that science and scientists function in the “real” world.

I Do It Wrong ~ The Smithsonian’s Hall of Human Origins

The newly opened David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins, which celebrates the 100th anniversary of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, is impressive, well laid out, and ambitious. So, it’s ironic that curator Rick Potts’ overarching intentions fell flat and not because there is anything wrong with them. I’ll share my impressions of the new hall, first, and then try to explain my way out of the conundrum of really liking it while, at the same time, rebuffing Potts.

Though I may be something of a contrarian by nature, that’s not why I came into the new exhibition the wrong way, through the “backdoor.” It was an honest mistake, but, hey, as the exhibition makes clear, I’m a member of an adaptable species. Visitors are supposed to enter the new hall through a “time tunnel” that opens off the Sant Ocean Hall (that hall is well worth a visit). I misread the article in the Washington Post and very carefully walked in from the Mammal Hall (stuffed mammals move me, but not as the folks behind that exhibition intended, so, skip that hall).

I was greeted by a group of models and casts of fossil skulls, each on its own pedestal. A diverse crew, to be sure; among them, the earliest hominid in the exhibition, the 6-7 million year old Sahelanthropus tchadensis with a narrowing and protruding snout, as well as, Paranthropus boisei with its alien and prominent sagittal crest, and Homo heidelbergensis seeming, in comparison to either of those others, so modern. But, for each, the black shadows in their vacant eye sockets seemed to signal that their lives were, indeed, nasty, brutish, and short – a recurrent theme in the exhibit.






In retrospect, beginning with the fossils seems right. Not just because, as I describe later, the intended entrance leaves something to be desired. The fossils are where the science begins. So, as I went through the exhibition in reverse order, the fossil skulls acquired eyes, donned flesh, grew hair, acquired the attributes of humans, a process representing our growing understanding of who and what these hominids were. This is how it has worked in our study of early humans and prehumans, and, I think, it makes for a deeper appreciation of what we have learned.

Overall, the new hall is welcoming (particularly if you come in the back way), a wide open L-shape that never feels confined or cluttered despite containing a wealth of material – over 75 skulls (nearly all models or casts) dominate this space, with a complement of several life-sized bronze statues of hominids engaged in the work of survival, 8 startlingly life-like busts of several hominids (see H. heidelbergensis below), many, many tools ranging from the bulky and crude to the streamlined and refined, as well as beautiful examples of prehistoric art work. Along one side of the hall are three shallow cave-like openings with displays that make a feeble gesture toward interactivity. These displays highlight some of the research that has reconstructed the lives of ancient hominids, actually involving caves.


The exhibition is organized around a couple of questions. One entire wall is dominated by a series of displays that offers answers to a framing question: What does it mean to be human? Described by curator Potts as the “spine” of the hall, this area explores such aspects of humans and human experience as walking upright, new tools/new food, changing body shape and size, bigger brains, and social life.

Another question I saw cutting through all of this was: What role did climate change play in the evolution of humans? The exhibition’s answer is certain: climate change has made a huge difference in the high stakes hominid species-survival lottery. Lives were, indeed, Hobbesian. Climate change takes on the role of an evolution engine. In the human family tree, Homo sapiens is the sole survivor, in part because of our great capacity to adapt to variable climate. Yet, there was nothing certain about that survival. Roughly 74,000 years ago, according to exhibition materials, modern humans were down to the last 10,000 adults of reproductive age, a consequence of severe climate change.



I would recommend that, before visiting the new hall, a prospective visitor watch a brief video in which Potts describes what guided the development of the exhibition. Entitled “Designing the Exhibition,” the video provides a helpful framework within which to place what is on display. Frankly, some of what Potts intended will emerge naturally, while some of it may too subtle to come through without help. (The video is at the official Smithsonian website for the new hall.)

Finally, at the end of my visit, I reached the time tunnel which was supposed to have been my portal into, rather, than my exit from, the new hall. It offered a relatively short, darkened passageway with walls onto which was projected a panoramic view of paintings of some of the actors in the human family drama, including the fully fleshed busts of Homo floresiensis (aka the “Hobbit”), Homo neanderthalensis, and Australopithecus afarensis. I really wonder at the impact of this tunnel on the casual visitor to the exhibition, particularly if this is his or her introduction. The dates below the faces clearly showed that, if you came in the proper way, you would be traveling from the near present to the distant past in our history, but the pictures also may plant the misleading idea that the hominids featured belong in some sort of direct lineage of ours – one evolving from the other. And that’s just wrong. Take but one example, H. floresiensis, who is, I think, really just a relatively recent evolutionary sideshow.











I’ve also heard the time tunnel described as a way to suggest the confluence of changing hominids with changing climate (ah, a subtext for the entire exhibition). If so, it fails on that score, too. The changing environment depicted below the hominid busts simply does not register on the casual viewer whose attention will, I suspect, remain focused on the faces. In the final analysis, the supposed message of the time tunnel doesn’t come through and something misguided may, instead.

There’s a powerful subtext to the entire exhibition. All of those other species displayed here have come and gone. The exhibition states in no uncertain terms – forget all of the features people have used in the past to separate and divide members of our species, forget race. We are all one species. That’s what counts.

Now to tackle directly the conundrum posited at the outset. I think Potts’ intentions for the exhibition weren’t realized with me because he succeeded in another way. To be honest, the framing questions he posed – what makes us human and what’s climate got to do with it – just didn’t seem very interesting, particularly the first. Rather, I could not move beyond my awe in the face of the more than six dozen fossil skulls on display here. And I didn’t want to. Maybe on future visits, but, not this time. I found it difficult to turn away from the original Cro-Magnon skull displayed beside an actual Neanderthal skull from La Ferrassie (France). (Both of these skulls are on loan and will be returning to France in 3 months’ time.) I recognized this particular Neanderthal skull as one of us. I don’t know how else to describe it. Recognition.

So, it’s fossils, fossils, fossils – by far, the most compelling feature of the new Hall of Human Origins.