Science literacy
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Nathan McCorkle
Dec 26, 2020, 8:48:26 AM12/26/20
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I have encountered some "older" person, likely in their 50s or 60s, she raises goats and has sold kefir grains for many years. She does not believe in viruses, or that they have ever been isolated. She does not believe that TEM images are actually of viruses. Apparently due to some quack named Stefan Lanka.
I don't even know where to go from here. Why is this even a possibility in the modern world? I think anyone on this forum is healthy skeptic, or at least overly curious. But I'm left to wonder how common is this type of "denier". I'm left to wonder if I'm suffering "expert bias" and left unable to tolerate explaining such seemingly obvious things. Even given the faults of human researchers, retractions, faked data, complexity of the universe and the ever expanding knowledge and knowledge of a knowledge-gap.
Biohacking is so commonplace to me, in mindset anyway... Nanotech fab hurdles and limitations... Microscopy (and nanoscopy)... I'm concerned that with as much time as I've spent typing to some random facebook thread, that it's a sisyphean effort. That I'm scooping out water from the Titanic with a cup, but it's pouring in through a gaping hole in the lower level that I'll never see (let alone be able to help).
People talk about fixing earth before rocketing to Mars, but is this validation for the desire for near-term interplanetary emigration?
If this was a contaminated environmental culture in the lab, you'd either use a selective agent (antibiotic) or perform serial sub-culturing until you purified your strain of interest.
I'm not looking for answers, but maybe some encouragement. I'm otherwise more interested in social distancing than ever.
Rikke Rasmussen
Dec 27, 2020, 8:21:28 PM12/27/20
to diy...@googlegroups.com
Ouch. I feel your pain. That's....tough.
If you don't mind me asking - out of sheer curiosity - did she tell you what she thinks is the causal agent of all the phenomena we ascribe to vira? Or what she thinks the many excellent TEM/SEM images of e.g. T4 bacteriophages actually show?
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Jonathan BISSON
Dec 27, 2020, 11:18:16 PM12/27/20
to Nathan McCorkle, diybio
Nathan McCorkle <nmz...@gmail.com> writes:
> I have encountered some "older" person, likely in their 50s or 60s, she
> raises goats and has sold kefir grains for many years. She does not believe
> in viruses, or that they have ever been isolated. She does not believe that
> TEM images are actually of viruses. Apparently due to some quack named
> Stefan Lanka.
Hi Nathan,
> I have encountered some "older" person, likely in their 50s or 60s, she
> raises goats and has sold kefir grains for many years. She does not believe
> in viruses, or that they have ever been isolated. She does not believe that
> TEM images are actually of viruses. Apparently due to some quack named
> Stefan Lanka.
I had a talk a few months back with my neighbor (40's gym trainer and
trainer for people selling houses). It was the exact same thing, virus
does not exist, we never saw it. But the discourse was completely whack,
because then he talk about hydroxychloroquine and how it was hidden…
There were a lot of things mixed in his discourse, things about Soros
and Gates responsible for massive immigration, Trump behind the savior
of the country… And that he was right because I read about all those
doctors (and then gave a list of names) that were saying all of that…
Talking with a few people across the country, these beliefs are more
common that I would have thought. And I'm afraid there isn't much to do
when people getting intubated for COVID are telling the doctors that
they are wrong that COVID doesn't exist and that their diagnostic should
be wrong, it is probably cancer… (check that nurse interview, that's
quite a shock)
I listened to a podcast you will probably be interested in, they
talk about how people behaved during the plagues in England:
https://timharford.com/2020/07/cautionary-tales-the-village-of-heroes/
Stay strong, there has always been an obscurantist ground wave that
emerge regularly, but for now, we have all been able to make science
stay strong and make sense of our world…
J.
Jonathan Cline
Dec 30, 2020, 2:48:04 PM12/30/20
to DIYbio
The symptom has shifted but America is no stupider than before, meaning, America always fostered stupid. Consider that just 1 generation ago, the ignorant person would have claimed this instead: "I don't believe in viruses because Jesus said, 'I am the Lord Jesus Christ, I died for your sins. Repent and come to Me before It's too late. I will save.' Jesus will protect and heal me. Jesus IS LORD. He loves all his children. His Father's arms are open to his disciples. Lord sent Jesus to die for you on a cross so you and I wouldn't have to! Jesus protects me from evil. He is love and he will protect you, if you join in our love of him." Basically, the ignorant person is allowed to express this because of freedom of religion, which is a foundational aspect of America. Basically America was created in the spirit of allowing ignorance & stupidity to thrive. In fact this year I had a friend who has become more of a bible thumper over the years tell me they weren't taking precautions during the pandemic because, "The Lord decides when it's my time or not." Roughly 50%-70% of America has always been "a believer" type, that's roughly 2 out of 3 people. Religious zealotry has been on a strong decline in America since the 1950s and it has been replaced by conspiracy theorists, who find many gullible fans. In general that means: in any group of people, look to your right, then look to your left, those 2 people are both nutters i.e. uneducated, ignorant, gullible people.
What biologists should be asking is this: Since the traits which cause these symptoms continue to thrive, why is there no selective pressure to suppress these traits? Where is the selective pressure(*) for humans to become smarter i.e. stronger critical thinkers? One interesting aspect of the selective pressure against stupid gullibility is that organized religions train disciples to have much higher than average number of offspring. Mormons are an easy example. Mandating a rule like, "have more kids for The Lord," operates against natural selective pressure. But otherwise biology fails to explain this phenomenon of the success of ignorance.
(*) This is not to imply that anyone should ever adopt eugenics as a belief system or practice. Especially because the word "smart" is a heavily biased term. There is a significant population in diybio which mistakenly believes in eugenics and genetic determination, beliefs ironically directly inspired by biologists themselves.
The solution to your situation is unpleasant yet simple and is in line with what social scientists teach currently (whether that's correct or not, I don't know, but it is what they teach): call out the ignorance, don't argue, and state the facts. I guess this is based on the idea that you can't help someone who won't help themselves. The distilled version is to tell the person: "You are an ignorant crackpot. You need to get an education. Get help. Later."
There's no consolation in recognizing that social media has exposed and amplified the gullibility traits of Americans. #DeleteFacebook because Zuckerberg fosters it to profit from it. The internet itself has been on significant decline in signal to noise ratio for years. It used to be enough to say RTFM. People don't even remember what that means today. (Look up any of the research done on the purposeful, engineered spread of the "flat earth" conspiracy in just the past 5 years.)
What bothers me more than the percentage of ignorance in America is the significant gap between the ignorant and the smart, which was much narrower in 1950. Not so long ago the "older person" in the story would have been made fun of for not being able to set a digital clock to the correct time, which is funny but a relatively harmless gap between competence and incompetence. Imagine that level of ignorance existing on the human-colony Moon base or a manned mission to Mars, both of which will exist within our lifetimes?
There's no consolation in recognizing that social media has exposed and amplified the gullibility traits of Americans. #DeleteFacebook because Zuckerberg fosters it to profit from it. The internet itself has been on significant decline in signal to noise ratio for years. It used to be enough to say RTFM. People don't even remember what that means today. (Look up any of the research done on the purposeful, engineered spread of the "flat earth" conspiracy in just the past 5 years.)
What bothers me more than the percentage of ignorance in America is the significant gap between the ignorant and the smart, which was much narrower in 1950. Not so long ago the "older person" in the story would have been made fun of for not being able to set a digital clock to the correct time, which is funny but a relatively harmless gap between competence and incompetence. Imagine that level of ignorance existing on the human-colony Moon base or a manned mission to Mars, both of which will exist within our lifetimes?
Secondly, the person's ignorance and gullibility is independent of her raising goats and growing kefir grains. Unless she eats the goats or drinks its bodily fluids, both of which are ignorance. Don't eat animals or drink their milk.
On Saturday, December 26, 2020 at 5:48:26 AM UTC-8 Nathan McCorkle wrote:
I have encountered some "older" person, likely in their 50s or 60s, she raises goats and has sold kefir grains for many years. She does not believe in viruses, or that they have ever been isolated. She does not believe that TEM images are actually of viruses. Apparently due to some quack named Stefan Lanka.
Message has been deleted
Biology Discussions
Jan 2, 2021, 11:25:39 PM1/2/21
to DIYbio
Facebook is worthless when it comes to talking science though. At least some professors have released youtube videoes and podcasts on science communication at least in their area of concentration as in the case of Vincent Racaniello. I know Peter Hotez and Dr. Richard Pan have been on Twitter trying to bring sanity to that social media venue in a sea of political rantings in that area. David Gorski has been writing medicine editorials on his blog but his audience is mainly med school students. There are people actively trying to increase science literacy but the audience in question is mainly people who are already STEM majors.
On Saturday, December 26, 2020 at 5:48:26 AM UTC-8 Nathan McCorkle wrote:
safrazine
Jan 5, 2021, 12:52:24 AM1/5/21
to DIYbio
Evolutionary pressure doesn't necessarily select for the "best" (to our point of view) option, just the "good enough" option, kind of unfortunate for us. In general people aren't so much logical or intellectual as they are social - I think this is the strategy that was selected for primarily, and the "logical" strategy might conflict with it, though it also has some benefits (this is very simplified). Social media is so new, we're not adapted to it (genetically), so it exploits the way we are rather than the other way round (except perhaps for the people making money from it). I think a good amount of scientifically literate people would act just like the kefir goat lady if they were brought into her social circle and cut off from the scientific circles ... like how cults convert many relatively normal people. So, I think a strategy of changing the environment would work, but it is really hard to control the environment. The way the social media algorithms work is counterproductive to this goal. The whole situation is definitely frustrating! Though I do have a curiosity about this sort of thing, which I try to encourage when I talk to people like the goat lady, I've had some mild success with this method but only in person and 1:1 - not an efficient method but at the least makes me feel a little less hopeless.
It'd be interesting to see the organizations promoting science literacy attempt to market it to people outside of STEM.
Stay curious! And in my opinion it's not a loss to just block/unfollow/hide anyone on social media that's bothersome, or to take a break from it entirely. There is so much more to be done elsewhere.
Cathal Garvey
Jan 5, 2021, 9:07:31 AM1/5/21
to Diybio
I feel like it's kind of dangerous that the conversation switched so quickly toward assuming some kind of evolutionary component, here.
People are only as rational or clever or politically-incisive as the information they are provided with.
Your ancestors were as thick as muck, and believed in things that would put you in fits of laughter. It wasn't because their "genes" were inferior, it was because belief in those things was often the only option presented.
Today, most people are corralled into information farms where they are presented with facets of the real world through a 'personalised' lens. The marketing matter for this process makes it sound like it's a refinement that shows people what they are most 'interested' in, but all evidence suggests otherwise. These algorithms are trained end-to-end to do one thing: keep people using these services as much as possible. And even Youtube staff were warning executives there that the algorithms were displaying videos in such as way as to radically misinform viewers, pushing people to political extremes and presenting conspiracy theories alongside fact.
All these science-advocates on Youtube, Facebook, and blogging to the abstract SEO-network of Google Search won't achieve much if the viewers they are trying to reach are not being shown factual content.
People don't believe in this crap because they are genetically inferior. They believe it because their Facebook feed filters out 'boring' scientific content, because Google Search knows they're more likely to click on clickbait results, and because Silicon Valley make more money when people start to align with the models they have built to shape them.
Put it like this: these massive statistical models to decide what bucket to put people in, can only have N categories because of comptuational constraints. But if you keep guessing which bucket to put people in, they start to conform into their nearest bucket until most people actually start to fit into N categories. As long as thsoe are the N information-environments that are possible to inhabit, most people will inhabit those environments.
If you're in one of the buckets with access to factual content, congratulations. Your odds of ending up in the 'right' buckets is higher if you were born into a family with enough money for education, food, and shelter, so the usual inequalities still get a look in on this information-dystopia, but maybe you lucked out. But then again, if you've started taking an interest in modern-nerd stereotypes like Eugenics, are you sure you're in the 'good' bucket?
Is there a 'good' bucket? There's no market incentive for one - tolerantly-rational, emotionally-secure, communally-connected people are less likely to spend hours watching videos, or making click-through impulse buys, or click on ads, or making angry posts on social media..
If people thing vaccines cause autism, or that GMOs cause cancer, or that Bill Gates is using microchipped vaccines to oust Trump, or whatever... those ideas didn't come from nowhere. The values underneath them didn't come from nowhere. The emotional impetus didn't come from nowhere.
But it certainly didn't come from their genes.
Biology Discussions
Jan 5, 2021, 2:16:48 PM1/5/21
to DIYbio
In States like California the choice to support Science Literacy at least we can vote on people who supported California's vaccine laws SB276 and SB277. In other states I'm not so sure about this.
Nathan McCorkle
Jan 5, 2021, 7:01:22 PM1/5/21
to diybio
On Sun, Dec 27, 2020 at 5:21 PM Rikke Rasmussen
<rikke.c....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Ouch. I feel your pain. That's....tough.
>
> If you don't mind me asking - out of sheer curiosity - did she tell you what she thinks is the causal agent of all the phenomena we ascribe to vira? Or what she thinks the many excellent TEM/SEM images of e.g. T4 bacteriophages actually show?
At one point she mentioned something about "could this be the effects
<rikke.c....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Ouch. I feel your pain. That's....tough.
>
> If you don't mind me asking - out of sheer curiosity - did she tell you what she thinks is the causal agent of all the phenomena we ascribe to vira? Or what she thinks the many excellent TEM/SEM images of e.g. T4 bacteriophages actually show?
of some worm". She basically completely ignored my links to TEM
images, I'm guessing the technical level of detail is just too above
many folks. Presumably the technical level of detail involved in an
AM/FM radio, cellphone, computer, car... all would also be "too much",
yet these sort of people use such devices regularly (and even to reply
to that exact facebook post!). There was one comment about the pics
being so blurry, and all the images of sars cov2 being CGI... so
obviously I replied with info on cryo-TEM tomography.. but whiz, right
past them.
Nathan McCorkle
Jan 5, 2021, 7:03:39 PM1/5/21
to diybio
On Tue, Jan 5, 2021 at 6:07 AM 'Cathal Garvey' via DIYbio
<diy...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> I feel like it's kind of dangerous that the conversation switched so quickly toward assuming some kind of evolutionary component, here.
>
> People are only as rational or clever or politically-incisive as the information they are provided with.
>
> Your ancestors were as thick as muck, and believed in things that would put you in fits of laughter. It wasn't because their "genes" were inferior, it was because belief in those things was often the only option presented.
Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see anything about evolution and
<diy...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> I feel like it's kind of dangerous that the conversation switched so quickly toward assuming some kind of evolutionary component, here.
>
> People are only as rational or clever or politically-incisive as the information they are provided with.
>
> Your ancestors were as thick as muck, and believed in things that would put you in fits of laughter. It wasn't because their "genes" were inferior, it was because belief in those things was often the only option presented.
genes. I mean, societies evolve too, even people's mentalities
evolve... presumably with little or no gene changes.
Biology Discussions
Jan 12, 2021, 10:48:20 PM1/12/21
to DIYbio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TMLtFed0Mg
There are 2 Youtube Hosts that did talk about science literacy to a general audience but they have to respond to being run over by political rantings in relation to COVID-19 in the past year.
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