Evolution: Theory or Fact?

In arguing against evolution, critics often cite its ranking as merely a "theory”.  Since scientists refer to the “Theory of Evolution”, does this give credence to the critics?

No, is the simple answer.  The problem that arises is a discrepancy between what constitutes a theory for laymen and scientists.  For laymen, a “theory” can mean something speculative and tentative.  We use it in everyday speech like this.  Scientists, however, use it in a much different way.  The Theory of Evolution has been grounded in an enormity of evidence. 

Richard Dawkins recently explained this in an interview with BigThnk, a "forum where top experts explore the big ideas and cores skills of the 21st century".  In his interview he stated that “the evidence that makes it a fact is partly fossil evidence, partly comparative evidence, looking at modern species and comparing their bones, their organs, their structures generally, and especially their molecules, their genes, at a molecular level. This is extremely persuasive and powerful evidence. You compare the genes of animals and plants. You find that the pattern of resemblance is a tree, a branching tree. And that branching tree could only be a family tree.”  Watch the full interview here. 

Dawkins argues that if we are going to refer to evolution in laymen’s terms, the term “fact” is more accurate than “theory”.  I tend to agree with this.  People who flatly deny any of the evidence that supports evolution or natural selection do so because they don’t want to believe it.  This is called confirmation bias and is one of the faults of the human brain. 

Though I agree that in laymen’s terms evolution is closer to a fact than a theory, I think it’s important to choose our words carefully.  Ultimately, I wish that laymen had a basic understanding of science so that we wouldn’t have to worry about confusing scientific and laymen’s terms.  I wish people knew that Theory of Evolution is just that – a scientific theory that’s been supported by mountains of evidence.  This should be amazing enough.

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The Takeaway: Let’s not mix terms.  Let’s teach everyone a basic understanding of science so that everyone can appreciate its brilliance.

Faster Than the Speed of Light? Not so Fast...

Physicists may have discovered a particle that can travel faster than the speed of light.  This discovery – if confirmed –could rock the scientific world.

Nothing travels faster than the speed of light. Since Einstein made this claim, no one has offered any evidence to the contrary.  In fact, for the better part of the last century this has been one of the mantras modern physics.   

In September, a team of scientists first claimed that a sub-atomic particle called the neutrino could travel faster than the speed of light. This caused a firestorm of skeptics. It was almost a sacrilegious (irony intended) statement.  Now, a handful of physicists have claimed this again, using a fine-tuned experiment that matches the previous results.

First of all, why is this a big deal?

For those not acquainted with physics, it’s hard to comprehend the magnitude of stating that “there is a particle that can travel faster than the speed of light”.  Light as the ultimate speed in the universe is the backbone of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, which is a foundation of physics. 

Second, can a particle actually travel faster than the speed of light?

It depends on who you ask.  The experiments that have gotten a handful of physicists excited and the rest skeptical are very difficult to replicate.  The physicists that are conducting these experiments are essentially measuring subatomic particles – known as neutrinos – as they travel extremely quickly through other matter.  Here is Brian Greene, a professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University, explaining the experiments on NPR’s All Things Considered:

“In principle, it's quite straightforward. They take these particles and they fire them from Switzerland to another receptor at another laboratory in Gran Sasso in Italy. And what they do is they calculate how long it took the neutrinos to get there and they calculate how long the journey is and that's all you need to figure out speed.”

Third, why are so many physicists skeptical about these results?

Because the neutrinos are passing through the earth's crust, it’s very hard to precisely measure the distance between two places.  As Brian Greene stated, “It isn't as though you can just lay out a tape measure…”  What’s even more difficult is syncing the clocks at both locations.  This isn’t like syncing your alarm clock to the one in your kitchen.  These two clocks need to be synchronized to a fantastic precision. 

Lastly, if these results are true and can be replicated in other experiments, what does this mean for the Theory of Relativity, Einstein and Physics?

Though the notion that nothing travels at the speed of light is at the heart of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, according to Brian Green we would have “all of the wonderful features of relatively still with us.”  In essence, we would just have to live with a more refined version of relativity.  Einstein would still be the figure head of physics.  E = MC², the true unifying equation of modern physics would still be around.

It seems to me that the struggle between the physicists conducting the experiments and the skeptics is what makes science so promising.  It’s clear that the scientists who conducted the experiments are excited about those results.  They should be!  But, what separates science from other means of inquiry is that it requires evidence.  Skeptics like Brian Greene demand that the results be replicated in an entirely independent experiment.  I agree with the skeptics that only after such an experiment can we claim that something travels faster than the speed of light. 

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The Takeaway: I ❤ science.

Economics 101: The $200,000-a-Year Mine Worker

How would you like to earn $200,000 a year to extract gold and other minerals from the ground?

Three important concepts in economics 101: supply, demand and price.  With all else being equal, these three functions all work together in equilibrium.  If the price of something gets too high, the demand goes down.  If there is an excess of a good or commodity, then the price will go down.  Whether you’ve formally studied economics or not, our everyday experiences have codified these working relationships in our minds. It’s intuitive to us.

I’ve found no clearer example of this than a Wall Street Journal headline I stumbled across earlier today.  It read: “The $200,000-a-Year Mine Worker”.  Can this be true?  As it turns out, it is.  The article, which you can read in its entirety here, describes James Dinnison, a 25 year-old high school dropout in Australia.  He makes $200,000 a year running drills in underground mines to extract gold and other minerals.

He’s been mining for seven years now.  In that time period he’s doubled his salary.  He is in himself a precious commodity.  In Western Australia, mining companies are investing heavily to develop and expand iron-ore mines. Demand is significant for those willing to work 12-hour days in sometimes dangerous conditions, while living for weeks in dusty small towns. 

According to Sigurd Mareels, director of the global mining for research firm McKinsey & Co, the worldwide mining industry expects a shortfall of 60,000 to 90,000 workers by 2017. Peru alone must find 40,000 new miners by the end of the decade.

I suppose this is one of the effects of the “flattening of the world”.  See this for an explanation. When countries like China, India and Brazil – once thought of as “emerging” markets – are the drivers of a significant portion of global economic grown, there is a huge demand for infrastructure and resource-driven industries.   We should also keep in mind that the costs of these economic expansions are not without concern.  Many of the Earth’s resources are finite and most estimates show that if countries like those listed above want to “live like Americans” in terms of energy and resource use, we are headed down an unsustainable path. 

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The Takeaway:  As emerging markets continue to grow there will be a great demand for specific industries, like infrastructure-building and mining.  Though bad for the Earth, they do provide access to high-dollar jobs for those who previously did not have it.

Not a Smoking Ban, but a Cigarette Ban?

Could nicotine regulation be the silver bullet that  advocates of banning cigarettes have been searching for?

First, some stats about cigarettes:

1.   Although smoking has fallen sharply in the U.S., from about 40% of the population in 1970 to only 20% today, the proportion of smokers stopped dropping around 2004.
 
2.   There are still 46 million American adult smokers, and smoking kills about 443,000 Americans each year. Worldwide, the number of cigarettes sold – six trillion a year, enough to reach the sun and back – is at an all-time high.

3.   Six million people die each year from smoking – more than from AIDS, malaria, and traffic accidents combined.
 
4.   Of the 1.3 billion Chinese, more than one in ten will die from smoking.
 

Recently, the FDA announced that it would spend about $600 million over the next five years to educate the public about the dangers of tobacco use.  Most would agree that this is a necessary step to reduce the number of the people who smoke cigarettes and ultimately die from them.  However, Robert Proctor, a historian of science at Stanford University, believes that educating the public isn’t enough.

“Tobacco control policy,” Proctor says, “too often centers on educating the public, when it should be focused on fixing or eliminating the product.”  In other words, Proctor believes that cigarettes should be banned!  Though this seems extreme to most, he argues that we don’t just educate parents to keep toys painted with lead-based paints away from their children’s mouths; we ban the use of lead-based paint. Similarly, when thalidomide was found to cause major birth defects, we did not just educate women to avoid using the drug when pregnant.

Rather than completely banning cigarettes, Proctor believes that the FDE could regulate the contents of cigarettes.  Here is his main proposal:

Because cigarettes are designed to create and maintain addiction, the FDA should limit the amount of nicotine that they contain to a level at which they would cease to be addictive. Smokers who want to quit would then find it easier to do so.

What are the chances of this happening?  They’re probably not great.  Tobacco lobbies are still very strong and public opinion on banning cigarettes isn’t overwhelmingly high.  However, public support of reducing the amount of nicotine in cigarettes could be significant.  Personally, I had never considered this opinion, but it would prove effective.  There are numerous cigarette smokers who wouldn’t still be smoking if they had been able to quit.  Perhaps when Proctor’s newest book, Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition, comes out in January there will be more momentum for nicotine regulation.

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The Takeaway: Regulating the amount of nicotine in cigarettes is a sensible step in weaning Americans off of the deadliest drug in their history.

New Progressive Era?

Is America ready for a new Progressive era?

Jeffrey Sachs, author and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, recently wrote an article for the Times arguing why he believes Americans are on the precipice of a new progressive.   I outline his arguments and offer my thoughts below:

Sachs sees the Occupy movements around the country as evidence that we are finally leaving the “Regan Era” and entering some kind of new progressive era.  According to him (the data back him up on these points) the “Regan era” has culminated in soaring income for the top 1 percent and crushing unemployment or income stagnation for much of the rest. He believes that the new progressive era will be characterized by meeting the most important challenge for future generations: restoring prosperity and power for the 99 percent.

For those not familiar with Reagan, he was an extremely charismatic and likeable man.   Politically, he was arguably the second most influential 20^th century president behind F.D.R.  I suppose the fact that there is such a thing as the “Reagan era” is a testament to that.  Reagan famously said: “Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.”  Though this was a common attitude for conservatives prior to Reagan, it has become almost an obsession with contemporary Republicans.  For that, Reagan is credited.

Unfortunately, Reagan misdiagnosed the problem facing America.  He argued it was the government. In his article, Jeffrey Sachs argues that it was (and still is) the rise of global competition in the information age.  The government was merely a “bogeyman”.

Since Reagan has left office, Americans have had essentially three terms of both a Democrat and Republican president.  The effects of Reagan still live with us today, however.  According to Sachs both political parties have joined in devaluing the government in response to the demands of their wealthy campaign contributors, who above all else insist on keeping relatively low tax rates on capital gains, top incomes, estates and corporate profits.  Corporate taxes as a share of national income are at the lowest levels in recent history. Rich households take home the greatest share of income since the Great Depression.

So what’s the historical precedence for this kind of wealth inequality?  Twice before in American history, powerful corporate interests dominated Washington and brought America to a state of unacceptable inequality, instability and corruption. Both times a social and political movement arose to restore democracy and shared prosperity.

The first age of significant inequality was the Gilded age at the end of the 19^th century.  The two major political parties tended to pay lip service to the middle and lower economic classes, while ultimately serving the interests of the corporate upper class.  Soon after the financial crisis of 1893 a progressive movement arose (sound familiar?).  Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were elected in the following years and ushered in an impressive era of reform.  This included fair labor standards, direct election of senators, women’s suffrage, the federal income tax and trust busting.

The second was the “Roaring Twenties”.  The pro-business administrations of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover once again opened up the floodgates of corruption and financial excess.  According to Sachs, this culminated in the Great Depression. Not surprisingly, F.D.R. quickly began to push society in the other direction. . F.D.R.’s New Deal marked the start of several decades of reduced income inequality, strong trade unions, high tax rates for the wealthiest Americans and strict financial regulation. After he was elected, Reagan began to dismantle many of the components of the New Deal.

Sachs goes on to argue that now a third progressive era is likely to be ushered in.  He believes that it should aim for three things:

1.   1.  A revival of crucial public services like education, training, public investment and   environmental protection.

2.   2.  An end of a climate of impunity that encouraged nearly every Wall Street firm to commit financial fraud.

3.   3.  To re-establish the supremacy of “people votes” over “dollar votes” in Washington.
 

Sachs realizes that this kind of reform will not be easy.  He readily admits that and argues for both hard work and patience: “The New Deal struggled for a decade to overcome the Great Depression, and the expansion of economic justice lasted through the 1960s. The new wave of reform is but a few months old.”

I agree with much of what Jeffrey Sachs writes in this article.  For my country’s sake, I hope that reforms are created that will help revitalize it.  I’m curious what the Occupy movement will look like at the first of the year.  Will it last?  I suppose the numbers of people who are willing to stand outside might dwindle in the cold, but the feeling shared among millions of Americans won’t.  Sachs believes that Occupy movement already has a basic policy platform: tax the rich, end the wars and restore honest and effective government for all.

That sounds wonderful, but I disagree that restoring honest and effective government for all is a public policy position.  What “effective” government look like?  I suppose having Congress actually pass a bill one of these days would count…  If we want that to happen, we should limit the number of filibusters that can happen within a certain congressional season.  That’s a specific and tangible reform.  Taxing the rich will not solve all of Americans’ problems (thought it could help), but reforming the tax code so that loopholes are eliminated would be a monumental victory for any Congress and the American people.  And with bi-partisan support, this would be a serious policy achievement for both parties.   These are the sorts of specific policy changes that should be enacted immediately. 

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The Takeaway: Those wanting Progressive reforms should be both diligent and patient.  If they look at U.S.  history they might even be optimistic...