Science questions for liberals

I came across a list of “science questions” a while ago. It’s presented as a challenge to the idea that conservatives in the US are anti-science, and meant to stump liberals and show that they too are anti-science, just in different domains of science. Certainly the point is a good one; look especially at empirical economics to find areas where liberals are the ostriches. But I didn’t think these questions were particularly difficult, and some weren’t even really science questions. Still, I thought it would be fun to answer them, since I still self-identify, often begrudgingly, as a liberal. I’m sure other self-identified liberals will object to some of my responses.

What is evolution?
Evolution is any process of gradual change, but the question clearly intends evolution through natural selection (as distinct from other hypothesized forms of biological evolution, like lamarkian evolution). In that sense, evolution is the gradual, unguided change of biological life that has led to the diversity of life on earth. It requires that traits are passed down imperfectly from generation to generation, and that those traits influence the likelihood that an organism will reproduce.

Of note, evolution is distinct from abiogenesis, the process where something we would call “life” develops from something we would call “non-life”.

Does human life begin at conception?
Yes, in the sense that a skin cell replicating in a petri dish is “human life”: a fertilized egg begins replicating at conception, and those replicating cells are genetically human.

Is a 20-week-old unborn child a human being?
This question has a lot to unpack, but again I would say yes, a 20-week-old developing is a human being, albeit one with fused eylids, non-functional lungs, transparent skin covered in fur, and with only a rudimentary nervous system. It is human (again as any cell with human DNA is human), and it is a “being”. But calling it a human being means that the right answer to the question, “do human beings have gill slits?” is, “Sometimes”.

Do you believe there are too many people on Earth?
No. Humans are a valuable resource. I acknowledge that this is not a very liberal position on my part, both because it doesn’t signal proper environmental deference (which can be taken as an indication of climate change denial), and because it acknowledges humans’ instrumental value (which can be taken to imply a lack of intrinsic value). I think liberals are often ostrich-y about this question.

Is nuclear power the safest energy in the world?
Probably not, but it depends what we’re counting as an energy (sandwiches are pretty safe, but few TVs run on sandwiches), and also if it’s safety by time or by unit of work. Solar is relatively safe, but nuclear is a much more effective power source. But I think the point here, one which I agree with, is that we would be much better off if we had more nuclear power. (Is this really illiberal? Is pro-nuclear a conservative position?)

Do you believe GMOs are safe?
Yes. In fact, banning GMOs is a much more dangerous proposition.

Do your chromosomes have anything to do with determining sex? What role do they play in a person’s gender, if any?
They do determine sex, they don’t determine gender (although they are strongly correlated with it). Gender and sex are different concepts. Whatever the historical origin of the words, the distinction is a useful one. Sex is the biological trait, gender is the social trait. Historically, sex determined social roles, so gender mapped well, and and to a lesser extent still maps, to sex. At this point we can say pretty clearly that chromosomes map just shy of 1-to-1 to sex, and they map somewhat less well to gender.

Do you believe carbon dioxide is detrimental to human existence?
Yes. In concentrations as low as 1% it starts to adversely affect humans, and becomes lethal upwards of about 7%. Is releasing it into the atmosphere detrimental to human existence? Yes, it’s a part of what’s driving climate change, which is slowly making certain historically habitable areas uninhabitable (like New Orleans).

Do you believe a slight variation in the climate over a century is unique to contemporary times?
The way the temperature record has changed in the past century is unique. There’s no question that the world has warmed significantly in the past century. There’s little doubt that it will continue warming for the next half century. There is a broad consensus that most of this warming is anthropogenic.

What was the average surface temperature of the earth last year?
I don’t know. But I don’t think such a data point, standing alone, tells us very much.

Is certain birth control correlated with brain cancer?
I had not heard of this until this article, but now that I’ve am inclined to say yes.

What is a stem cell, and what are the differences between adult and embryonic stem cells?
A stem cell is an undifferentiated cell that can develop into any kind of body tissue depending on its environment. An embryonic stem cell is a stem cell because it is young. An adult stem cell is an adult cell (or cell line) that has been coaxed into regressing into its pluripotent, pre-differentiated state.

Do you ever question settled science?
Weeeeelll, there’s not really any such thing as settled science. The way science works, ideally, is by making hypotheses and attempting to disprove them. “Settled science” could be that set of hypotheses that have been particularly resilient to disproof. Or it could be the set of beliefs held by most scientists, or by domain experts. Or it could be the set of beliefs that society at large considers “settled”.

So do I question them? Yes, but in different ways. I know that most people are wrong about certain claims that have been thoroughly debunked; I know that scientists are human and frequently irrational; and I know that some scientific hypotheses will be proven wrong. I am usually a contrarian about public opinion, I harbor pet beliefs in domains about which I don’t know of good studies, and sometimes I doubt what seems to be the scientific status quo. But science is quite often the best we have, and I more often give up my intuitions in the face of scientific evidence than I give up science that doesn’t mesh with my intuitions.

…definitely the globalist-liberal (soon to be fascist) answer.

Care to explain why you believe that one?

Adaptation to the environment.

No. Life implies the ability to maintain itself. The embryo is completely defendant on the mother.

No. It’s a human when it is born. It is however a transition point when it is appropriate to stop messing with ideas of abortion.

Too many for what? The current levels are sustainable if people are not wasteful.

After all these decades there is still no place to put the waste.
Chernobyl shows that the plants can be extremely dangerous.
Is it better than burning hydrocarbons? Probably, if the management is anal retentive and paranoid about safety and controls.

No. They destroy biodiversity. They lock farmers into a capitalist slave culture. They promote industrial farming which is destroying the integrity of the land and water by overusing pesticides and fertilizers. Nobody knows how they will interact with other plants and animals in the long run. Extremely high risk with low benefit.

A person is his body to a large degree.

Animals and plants are adapted to an optimum level. Too high and too low is detrimental.

That’s not the important question. The real question is : what is the impact of a variation in climate and should we attempt to avoid it?
The planet will go on existing even if sea levels go up by 10 meters. It’s the impact on our lives, and the lives of future generations, which matters.

First, the definition of a GMO is poorly pinned down. We basically don’t eat anything that isn’t a GMO, except fish and other wild caught animals. We’ve been exerting artificial selection pressure on plants and animals for literally thousands of years, and what we consume now is often very little like the wild equivalent (c.f. cows, pigs, corn, bananas, etc.)

Even by slightly a more restrictive definition (cross-breeding and hybridization), GMOs are still safe, and are absolutely essential to feeding the global population. Contrary to what Phyllo alleges, GMOs allow the use of less fertilizer and fewer pesticides, as crops can be modified to be heartier and pest resistant. Using less land and fewer chemicals, we can grow more food. This is the current status quo, and without it there would be widespread starvation.

And I’d argue that even the cutting edge techniques (CRISPR) are likely to do more good than harm, as they will produce more, more nutritious food using fewer resources and polluting less. The concerns that the results might be harmful don’t seem very scary to me, and the potential benefits are great.

GMO resistance is like anti-vaxx, it’s this hippy notion that what isn’t natural is somehow worse. But for all the worry, there aren’t much in the way of concrete harms traceable to GMOs.

(I actually agree with Phyllo with respect to ownership issue surrounding GMOs can be a problem, but I think that is a problem with the system of intellectual property and not with GMOs themselves.)

Fallacy. Organic plants evolved alongside humans, in the same timeline.

You are making the equivalent of alien plants, and force feeding them to humans, and saying “hey they are just as natural as organic plants, so they must be compatible with human biology.”

How would you measure the side effects? Everyone’s already ate them!! How can you tell the difference between someone who ate them and who hasn’t?? There is no control to measure against!!

Yeah, that’s the theory, but in reality use of herbicides has increased.

reuters.com/article/us-usa-s … 24PMrW5.99

Counterpoint: This post on Discover makes several good criticisms of the study your article discusses, and of the article itself for failing to go beyond the press release for information on the merits of the study. The study is criticized for seeming cherry picked, for lumping together significantly different GM crops, and for measuring herbicides only by reference to gallons with no account of the decrease of the level of toxicity per gallon that have resulted from increased use of GM crops.

A better source would be a meta-analysis, like the one that found:

But of course, that is only with respect to pesticides, and not herbicide. Still, even granting that herbicide use has increased, and ignoring that the herbicides being used are less toxic, the increased use has to be weighed against the other findings mentioned in the quoted passage: increased crop yields and increased profits for farmers. That again doesn’t touch on the increased nutritional value of certain GM crops (e.g. Golden Rice). Add to this the fact that the benefits of GM crops in terms of yield and profit gain are actually higher in the developing world than in the developed world, and it looks like there’s a lot of humanitarian good to be weighed against any increased herbicide use (again, assuming there is such an increase, and that it represents a net increase in toxicity).

Insects and bacteria eat food that are healthy. They do not eat mcdonalds. If the insects do not feel safe to eat it, why should we?

You can look at the raw data provided by the USDA in terms of a single crop and in terms of quantity of active ingredients. For corn, after GE was introduced, there was a dip in herbicide use and then it rose once again - admittedly not to the previous levels but it’s still early days in terms of plant and insect adaptation. Page 71 in this pdf:
ers.usda.gov/media/1424185/eib124.pdf
Page 3 of this pdf, shows a rise herbicides used on corn, by state, from 2002 to 2010 :
nass.usda.gov/Publications/A … pter14.pdf

Initially the pests are controlled which produces higher yields, but pests adapt quickly.

npr.org/sections/thesalt/201 … orns-armor

Sure, pests will adapt, but GMOs will be adapted apace. It doesn’t have to be a steady state. We’ve had a decade of Bt corn, a decade of reduced pesticide use and increased yields. If Bt corn stops being effective for that, we’re still up overall, and the next generation of GM crops will replace Bt corn as necessary.

As long as there are nutrients in the food, pests will adapt to get at them. That doesn’t seem unique to GM crops, nor to be an argument against their use.

As the discussion seems to be now about GMO I have issue with a bit of the language used.

GMO is the genetic infusion of one species DNA with another. Insect DNA with vegetable DNA as example. That’s not human controlled natural selection also called animal husbandry.

Are GMO’s safe? Safe for what? Safe to eat? Safe for the environment? Safe for other organisms?

Maybe safe to eat. A human only has to worry about eighty or a hundred years; not sure. Safe for the environment? Not sure. A species of corn pollen carries the mutations. Monsanto would not be so concerned about their patents if it didn’t. Not so safe for other similar species. There are few native corn species left on the planet. I’m not sure we’ve got the smarts to imagine the potential effects environmentally. Do we really want all our crops grown “round-up” inoculated with bug genes? Bee problems? Correlation is not proof of cause but maybe there is some valid data there?

The GMO question seems related to the overpopulation question which seem relative to the power plant safety question. What do they have in common?

Who knows how safe it is to eat bt toxin for decades?

Monsanto said it would not get out of the intestine but it has been found in human blood.

We are just guinea pigs in a huge experiment.

Sure, but up until recently the organisms had to have something like sex with each other. They had to be that compatible. This is a difference not only in degree but in kind. Though even here we get allergies and problems because of changes in grains and gluten content, for example. WE have also developed all sorts of problems because of the foods that livestock eat, as opposed to wild animals and the kinds of fat content we end up eating, which can be seen in all sorts of degenerative diseases. So this defense is weak in a couple of ways. One it assumes that changes via one method, which are incredibly restricted since organism must mate to generate newness, it also assumes that the changes made via the old methods are safe and fine, when many are not.

Thats just GM corp pr. Look at the changes in pesticide use with GMS that are bred to tolerate pesticide use better than other plants. IOW more can and will be used.

But the main problem with your industry created view is that all the information you have is industry generated. There is no government oversight of what is going on. There is a revolving door between industry and its own oversight. IOW the science cannot be considered valid. It shouldn’t be considered valid since they never check long term effects anyway. All the studies go over short term effects.

Last anyone with the slightest intuition should realize that one, there is no way to track, predict or test for the effects when so many variables are involved. Two, viruses allow for transspecies movement of genes.

And monsanto bought a company that has design corn that makes the eaters of that corn sterile, men that is, and in women will make their genitals spermicidal. Monsanto promises not to plant this corn near other corn.

The effects in Latin America, for instance, have been devastating, in terms of pesticide exposure to humans - which has gone UP due to GM - devastation of soil, economic devastation. And this last should be in part obvious. It leads to the flight of capital towards the corporations from whatever country starts using it. And then there is the way the GM companies pressure, control and bribe countries to use GM foods and seeds. The whole thing is a bit like steroid use. Oh, it’s natural, we have always used steroids, it helps you compete - of course this effect is eliminated since others essentially become addicted to the steroids…

Anyway one link amongst millions.

grain.org/es/article/entrie … -colonizer

How nice of them`

I mean the American Engineers who designed and built the reactors at Fukishima were nice guys with good intentions also, right? How could they possibly have known that there was earthquake and tsuanani activity in Japan. I mean, that information was just not available.

The nice thing about Fukishima, however, is that compared with a genetic boo boo, it is a local event. Of course it is not a local event, but compared to Pintos with explosive gas tanks, or a pig farm shit spill into a river, etc. it is relatively local compared to what the fast and loose idiots at these companies are risking with their games.

Ah, fuck, then theres the whole economic agenda, making farmers addicted and controlled by Monsanto. The end of the commons. The leasing of evertyhing on the earth. You will be paying for the air soon. And if you laugh at that, look at how the corporations have been trying to lease water, patent human genes, claim ownership of the Neem tree.

Carleas, you are living in a delusional box.

At least read some of the critics. Choose just the doctors.

The precautionary principle is being raped by gene modification. And soon AI and nanotechnology will also raping the precautionary principle just as much.

In the past, yes, a poorly designed dam might destroy a town. When these fuckers fuck up - in the model that they are filled with hubris and will make mistakes - it will be global. Of course I am cynical not just about their ability and interest in not making big boo boos but about their goals. I see how little they care about healthy, democracy, effects on economies and so on. I see no reason to see their disdain for humans as merely tactical.

No control especially given how fast, in the US, corn and soy gm products spread. And these are used in all sorts of food products. Biggest fucking russian roulette impossible to track non-experiment in history.

Food allergies have gone up radically following nicely the introduction of gm foods. Of course there are so many other variable it is very hard to prove to the ‘satisfaction’ of governments owned by the corporations that they should be a little, itsy bit more careful.

youtube.com/watch?v=aFVF3MJNOHg
Seeds of Death doc.
Puts Monsanto in perspective…

This seems like a real problem with your argument: There’s no oversight, if there were it would be false oversight not supported by science, and if science supports it that science must be invalid industry propaganda. This is an unworkable standard of evidence, which rejects evidence that contradicts a favored position on the basis that it contradicts a favored position.

The meta-analysis I linked above is not industry funded, it is funded by a government that is historically opposed to the introduction of GMOs (Germany currently bans all GMOs), and was published openly for peer review. If there’s a problem with the study methodology, by all means point it out, but failing such criticism, a study with all indicia of reliability finds that GMO crops have decreased pesticide use, increased yield, increased profit for farmers, and benefited farmers in the developing world more than those in the developed world.

The anti-GMO argument boils down to what if: the precautionary principle that we shouldn’t do anything it there might be negative consequences. But when we have significant, rigorously established benefits from doing something, and only vague possible future harms from it, the benefits outweigh the risk-weighted harms.

We can mitigate harms if and when they arise without damning the whole beneficial enterprise because of fear and uncertainty. One can be too careful.

Expect that you have accelerated the adaption process and created weeds and insects which will be a problem for other crops. And that particular pesticide will need to be used in larger quantities if it remains effective at all. BT is used as a spray on lots of crops.

You’re going to have to create another GMO and you will need to test it over many years to make sure that it is safe. And let’s face it, the testing will be more and more lax. The risk of releasing a very dangerous GMO will increase.

You’re going to need to create more pesticides, with the associated risks.

Your argument sounds similar to : “We don’t need to worry about antibiotic resistant bacteria because we will just create new antibiotics to deal with them”.
Easily said.

And yours seems to be that because bacteria would eventually develop resistance to antibiotics, we should never have used antibiotics to save so many lives.

My argument isn’t that we shouldn’t worry; as I said, we’ll need to adapt apace. My argument to this point is that the fact that pests will adapt to GMOs does not entail that we shouldn’t use GMOs to do good while we can.

And, as your article points out, there are better and worse ways to use GMOs: misuse can speed adaptation by pests. We should take rational steps to limit that. But that’s a far cry from banning all GMOs. Like with antibiotics, we should use GMOs wisely to maximize their effectiveness while we look for the next generation.

I don’t see any benefits. GMOs were supposed to reduce food prices, yet the price of fruit is steadily going up. I can buy organic carrots cheaper than GMO carrots.

The fact is, you have no control population to test whether or not GMOs are harmful. Everyone’s ate them, so how can you tell the difference? Theres no way to isolate or discern its behaviors. You are just pumping out shit into the environment, and you have no idea what it fucking does.

I think that you are now distorting it and dumbing it down to an insulting level.