Missouri’s Turn for Anti-Science Ridicule

A minor brouhaha erupted over a t-shirt in Sedalia Missouri. But this isn't about an uppity student. The band director designed an official band t-shirt to illustrate the evolution of brass music. What image did he choose to evoke the idea? Yep, a common ascent-of-man icon from the early 20th century. After some parents saw the shirt proudly worn at the Missouri State Fiar parade, they complained. From the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch:

"I was disappointed with the image on the shirt," said Sherry Melby, a band parent who teaches in the district. "I don't think evolution should be associated with our school."

What sort of science program do you think she had? What sort do you think she would vote for? The school quickly recalled the t-shirts, eating the cost of their production, and will be designing new shirts that don't offend by presenting an image that obliquely refers to actual science. Naturally, Pharyngula jumped on it. And in the Sedalia Democrat, they quote the assistant band director about pulling the shirts,

"If the shirts had said ‘Brass Resurrections' and had a picture of Jesus on the cross, we would have done the same thing," he said.

Apparently there is a strong belief that science is a religion that should not even be tangentially promoted over any other belief. And people wonder why I sometimes write that I live in the state of Misery.

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John Adams and Modern Perceptions

We just watched the last episode of John Adams. I got the DVD from the library and we went through it in one week, all seven installments. I have to admit, the last episode brought tears. The partnership between John and Abigail was well-portrayed and deeply moving. The older I get, the more I find the strongest story resonance with depictions of deep, deep friendships, especially those that exist between lovers, spouses, life partners. I cannot imagine losing Donna, who has become exactly that for me, in spite of the fact that I have friends of longer acquaintance, good friends, too. The casting was incredible, the make-up superb, the writing first class. What struck me most about this as well was the marvelously-nuanced dramatization of the fundamental differences in political philosophy between Adams and Jefferson. I can't help but think that when Adams declared that "the true history of our revolution is lost" he must have been thinking of the initial partnership and later dissolution of like-mindedness between himself and Thomas Jefferson, whom Joseph Ellis depicts an an American Sphinx. Adams is here portrayed as an idealist who cannot separate his philosophy from his pragmatism. In the first dozen years of the new republic, there was enormous public sentiment for France and when that country descended into the frenzy of its own revolution gone mad, that sentiment demanded that we support the revolutionaries. The irony that France supported us when it was still a monarchy and now those very people that had backed us (granted, as a move in their own war with England) were the victims of the mob ascendant was lost on most people, and apparently even Jefferson, who wanted us to embroil ourselves immediately and deeply in support of the revolutionaries. Washington---how lucky they were to have him---refused. He was a militaryman by training and he understood how to assess the chances of success and how to go about surviving a conflict in which you are outmatched. He had seen more than his share of defeat in a long career and knew well that ideology needed a strong hand to keep it in check, lest it carry you over the precipice. He refused to side with France, believing that neutrality was the only way for the United States to survive. Adams shared that belief.

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Is living in a city damaging your brain?

If we are to believe the results of a new study from Marc Berman, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, the answer is "yes". These finding come at an interesting crossroads-- for the first time ever, more humans live in cities than in rural settings. The findings argue that the brain becomes confused and tired as it is forced to respond to the massive amounts of stimulii that are present in cities. The brain is constantly searching its surroundings, trying to anticipate threats. Not only does one have to negotiate traffic and constantly re-assess the changing visual landscape, but this is often done while carrying on a conversation or mentally planning a route through the city. Quoting from Boston.com:

The reason such seemingly trivial mental tasks leave us depleted is that they exploit one of the crucial weak spots of the brain. A city is so overstuffed with stimuli that we need to constantly redirect our attention so that we aren't distracted by irrelevant things, like a flashing neon sign or the cellphone conversation of a nearby passenger on the bus. This sort of controlled perception -- we are telling the mind what to pay attention to -- takes energy and effort. The mind is like a powerful supercomputer, but the act of paying attention consumes much of its processing power.
Interestingly, the researchers found that just showing people a picture of an urban environment was enough to cause substantial impairment to the test subject's levels of attention and working memory. Similarly, a different study quoted in the article shows that even very small amounts of exposure to nature were enough to confer significant improvement on subjects' cognitive abilities and sense of well-being. Additionally, the research indicates that living in cities may also have a harmful effect on one's level of self-control.

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Government-Hating: An American Value

G.O.P. Chairman Michael Steele made a few remarkably in-your-face comments recently about the health care debate. Here, in his own words, is pretty much where he thinks the nation is going, why it shouldn't go there, and what the Republican Party stands for. This morning on NPR he tangled with Steve Inskeep, in particular over this. One quote in particular caught my eye: " Simply put, we believe that health-care reform must be centered on patients, not government." When you listen to the NPR interview it's clear that we're hearing another in the now decades-long tirades against the government which has become the hallmark of Right Wing politics in this country. In this country, in theory, the government is supposed to be us, the people. We elect our representatives, we tell them how we want them to vote, we change our minds, we are supposed to be in charge. In theory. Obviously, the reality is far from that. For one, we are not a full-fledged democracy, we are a republic, and while we elect those who operate the machinery of the republic on our behalf, we do not have a direct say in the running. Nor could we, really. it is simply too complex. We send our representatives to the various points of departure---state capitols, Washington D.C., county seats, city halls---to do that for us because it is a big, complex, often indecipherable melange of conflicting goals, viewpoints, and problems. We do not have the time to pay the necessary attention to do that work ourselves, so we pay people to do it for us. So why do we distrust it so much? Well, because we distrust each other.

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Inferred justification: We invaded Iraq, therefore Saddam Hussein caused 9/11

According to Sharon Begley's article at Newsweek, "Lies of Mass Destruction," people are susceptible to upside down reasoning. She cites a large team of researchers who studied the people who believe the lie that Saddam Hussein caused 9/11. The researchers concluded that these believers believed that lie because the U.S. invaded Iraq. They refer to this upside-down process as "inferred justification." Begley sums it up:

Inferred justification is a sort of backward chain of reasoning. You start with something you believe strongly (the invasion of Iraq was the right move) and work backward to find support for it (Saddam was behind 9/11). "For these voters," says Hoffman, "the sheer fact that we were engaged in war led to a post-hoc search for a justification for that war."

The researchers published their findings in a paper entitled "There Must Be a Reason”: Osama, Saddam, and Inferred Justification." Here's an excerpt from Sociological Inquiry.

The primary causal agent for misperception is not the presence or absence of correct information . . . Our explanation draws on a psychological model of information processing that scholars have labeled motivated reasoning. This model envisions respondents as processing and responding to information defensively, accepting and seeking out confirming information, while ignoring, discrediting the source of, or arguing against the

substance of contrary information. Motivated reasoning is a descendant of the social psychological theory of cognitive dissonance, which posits an unconscious impulse to relieve cognitive tension when a respondent is presented with information that contradicts preexisting beliefs or preferences. Recent literature on motivated reasoning builds on cognitive dissonance theory to explain how citizens relieve cognitive dissonance: they avoid inconsistency, ignore challenging information altogether, discredit the information source, or argue substantively against the challenge. The process of substantive counterarguing is especially consequential, as the cognitive exercise of generating counterarguments often has the ironic effect of solidifying and strengthening the original opinion leading to entrenched, OSAMA, SADDAM, AND INFERRED JUSTIFICATION polarized attitudes. This confirmation bias means that people value evidence that confirms their previously held beliefs more highly than evidence that contradicts them, regardless of the source.

In her article, Begley suggests that the current health care debate stems from the same cognitive vulnerabilities.

There are legitimate, fact-based reasons to oppose health-care reform. But some of the loudest opposition is the result of confirmatory bias, cognitive dissonance, and other examples of mental processes that have gone off the rails.

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