If you think David Frum will change people’s minds, think again

David Frum is a conservative Republican, a neo-conservative cheerleader who supported George W. Bush’s disastrous war in Iraq and the Israeli occupation of Palestine, who was an apologist for Sarah Palin, worked for Rudy Giulani’s short-lived presidential campaign, etc., etc., etc. He’s a deep Republican insider, although in recent years he has been rather unhappy with the radical turn towards idiocy that he’s observed in the party.

So maybe, you think, Republicans will pay attention to Frum’s agonizingly detailed chronicling of all of Trump’s failures? Maybe? Liberals have been saying the same sorts of things about Trump for years, and they’ve all failed to penetrate, so can we dare to dream that an arch-conservative pointing out the same issues might finally get through?

Nah, we still have meatheads like Joe Rogan favoring Trump. Fox News is still making excuses for him. Ron Paul thinks Fauci should be fired for disagreeing with Trump. Rush Limbaugh thinks the coronavirus pandemic is all hype.

Frum came up with the phrase “axis of evil” to label Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. Maybe he would have been better off using it on evangelicals, billionaires, war profiteers, the Tea Party, Fox News, Wall Street, and other enemies of the people right here at home. They’ve already got an ill-gotten conclusion about the right way to run the country, and they aren’t going to change it because of piddly little annoyances like the facts, or even tens of thousands of dead. The hundreds of thousands of dead in Iraq had no effect on Frum’s views, after all.

The gift of Easter

Oh, boy, Easter is this weekend! Aren’t you all excited and looking forward to it? When I was a kid, it was all chocolate bunnies and easter eggs, and we didn’t even think about the religious side of it. I think we might have gone to church services a few times, but that wasn’t something to be happy about, it was kind of a drag.

Now, though, I’m dreading it. A lot of Christians think Easter is a great excuse, even an obligation, to gather together in large groups and infect each other. I think we might even be able to predict a blip in the COVID-19 statistics 2-3 weeks after this weekend. God won’t save you because your purpose is pious, and he certainly won’t save me if you spew more viral particles around in the grocery store to infect me. Stay home. Go into your little closet and pray alone. Please.

We already know that a significant number of COVID-19 cases in South Korea can be traced directly to the Shincheonji cult, and their stealthy habits of congregating to infect each other, and then infiltrating other churches to recruit new members.

South Korea has been remarkably effective and efficient in controlling the disease, it’s sad that their efforts were being undermined by religious fanatics (Daegu, by the way, is where my daughter-in-law is from. Lovely city.)

What’s even sadder, though, are the gormless missionaries who are taking advantage of the idiot president of Brazil’s policies to actively seek out remote indigenous people and kill them with disease. In a time of pandemic, we’re all told to stay-in-place to inhibit transmission of the virus, which makes sense, but these clueless twits are doing the opposite, and charging off to assault uncontacted native tribes with the Lord’s Plague, and also the Lord’s useless Holy Book.

Just like Trump, Bolsonaro has appointed many such fundamentalists to important positions in his government. These appointments include placing evangelical former missionary Ricardo Lopes Dias at the head of the National Indigenous Foundation (FUNAI), Brazil’s governmental agency charged with overseeing the interests of Indigenous populations. In an attempt to quell controversy over his appointment, Dias has said, “I don’t see this as a mission or an opportunity to find new converts.” And yet American missionaries smell an opportunity.

Representatives of the missionary organization Ethnos360, until recently known as New Tribes Mission, “arrived in the Deni Indigenous Territory in Acre state in late February” and acquired a helicopter for the purpose of making contact with uncontacted tribes, according to reporting by Sue Branford for Yes! Magazine. Headed by Larry M. Brown and a member of the Forum of Bible Agencies International (along with better known organizations like the Jesus Film Project and Wycliffe Global Alliance), Ethnos360 focuses on converting “unreached groups.” It also happens to be precisely the organization with which Dias was an active missionary from 1997-2007.

They’re doing more than flouting common sense and reason, they are breaking the law while Bolsonaro looks the other way.

To be sure, Ethnos360’s drive to reach uncontacted peoples contravenes standing FUNAI policy. It’s also certainly a violation of international law, and it arguably falls afoul of the 1988 Brazilian Constitution itself. Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that Dias will move against his former organization. And as for Bolsonaro, he once casually remarked, with truly stunning bigotry, “It’s a shame that the Brazilian cavalry wasn’t as efficient as the Americans, who exterminated their Indians.” He may well allow uncontacted groups to be wiped out by missionary zealots.

Sometimes I think the real plague isn’t a physical virus or bacterium, it’s the mind virus of religion that leads people to do real harm with a smug smile on their face and a hymn in their hearts.

Didier Raoult, pretentious git

The source of the claim that hydroxyquinone can treat the coronavirus, Didier Raoult, is a successful biomedical careerist in France, and a bit of a humbug. There are good reasons to be suspicious of the quality of his work.

Not surprisingly, Raoult’s rapid rise raised as many eyebrows as huzzahs. While his fans applaud the 3,000 scientific articles Raoult has co-signed, his critics argue that these staggering numbers do not add up. Do the math, they remark, and it turns out the Marseillais researcher publishes more papers in a month than most productive researchers publish in a career. Raoult’s method, according to one critic, is to task a young researcher at IHU with an experiment, then co-sign the piece before it is submitted to publication. “Raoult is thus able to reach this absolutely insane number of publications every year,” according to one anonymous source quoted by the site Mediapart. More disturbingly, the critic added, “it is simply impossible for Raoult to verify all of these papers.”

Yep. That’s the hallmark of a hack. But I want to focus on something in my bailiwick. He has written a book, Beyond Darwin, which is in French so I’m sorry (or perhaps relieved) to say I haven’t read, but I did read a translated interview with Raoult about it, via Google Translate (any infelicities in the translation should not be blamed on Raoult).

He belongs to a school of all-too-common evolutionary cranks who have a vague impression of what Charles Darwin said in the 19th century, know nothing at all about modern evolutionary biology, and imagine that the two are synonymous, so that they can deliver a double-whammy of ego gratification: evolutionary biologists are stupid, and he is brilliant, having discovered all the flaws in Darwinism all on his own.

For a long time, we thought that we were descended from a common ancestor: the Sapiens. In May 2010, a dramatic development: the results of an analysis of DNA taken from the bones of Neanderthals revealed that 1 to 4% of our genes come from Neanderthal. Whether we like it or not, we are related to this bastard, and not only to Sapiens “the intello”. The two met and mixed. The genealogical tree of the human species is anti-Darwinian because our ancestor is at the same time Sapiens, Neanderthal, a bacterium and a virus!

There are two gross errors in that accusation. The first is the idea that we think speciation has to be abrupt and instantaneous. Nope. No one argues that, so this is not a novel insight on his part. Speciation is often a mingling of braided streams that gradually separate, so the history of Homo neandertalensis and Homo sapiens is fairly typical of two closely related species. Calling that anti-Darwinian is kind of weird, because yeah, modern evolutionary biology is often non-Darwinian or even anti-Darwinian in the sense that we know a heck of a lot more about genes and genetics and the details of evolutionary history than Charles Darwin did. You don’t get a medal for bravery in defying 19th century beliefs in the 21st century, where undergraduate biology majors know things Darwin didn’t.

The second error is his over-emphasis on horizontal gene transfer. Of course some small amount of DNA from outside our direct lineage is occasionally inserted into our germ line via viral infection. Again, no one knowledgeable about evolution is going to be stunned by this revelation. The edifice of evolutionary theory is not perturbed in the slightest by the inclusion of yet another mechanism for mutation. What next? Gamma ray mutation means our genetic makeup has been modified by rays from outer space, therefore we’re all part alien? I probably shouldn’t give him ideas.

I occasionally run into cranks who insist there is no structure to our evolutionary history, that we’re all a melange of bits and pieces cobbled together into patchwork chimeras. Daoult isn’t the most extreme example of this nonsense, but he does have it bad.

The Darwinian tree does not exist. It is a fantasy. The idea of ​​a common core with divergent species like branches is nonsense. A tree of life, why not, but then planted upside down, roots in the air! If the species had definitively separated millions of years ago, there would in fact be no more living species on the planet. Each would have degenerated in its corner for not having been able to sufficiently renew its genetic heritage.

Except that we do have tools to measure the structure of a clade, and the evidence for it exists. I have no idea where this idea that we’d go extinct if we didn’t have other species to interbreed with comes from. I also don’t understand what “renew its genetic heritage” means.

In the Darwinian vision of evolution, everything was created once and for all, and if new species appear, it is only by gradual adaptation of existing species. In fact, nature does not just evolve, it continues to invent species.

This would be a surprising interpretation to the author of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. How does nature “invent species”, if not by branching cladogenesis? Do these newly invented species lack ancestors? Do they just spontaneously pop into existence without predecessors?

We discovered that a bacterium called Wolbachia had succeeded, by infecting a worm, in integrating 80% of its chromosome. She had, in fact, made a new species of worm! A brutal and massive evolution which has nothing to do with the slow and vertical evolution described by Darwin. If a woman carrying the herpes HV6 is pregnant, the virus having integrated into her chromosome, her son will have the virus in her genes. The boy’s grandfather will therefore be partly a virus!

This is not a particularly useful way of looking at our evolution. About 8% of our genome is made up of endogenous retroviral sequences, accumulated over many millions of years. These don’t significantly contribute to our physiology or morphology; they have accumulated precisely because they have so little impact on our overall biology that they escape natural selection for humans. So no, these things don’t fit any reasonable definition of “grandfather”.

He wouldn’t be an anti-Darwinian if he didn’t exercise a little hyperbole to show off his resentment of Darwin.

Darwinism ceased to be a scientific theory when Darwin was made a god. By introducing the concept of evolution after Lamarck, Darwin came to upset the frozen conception of creationists, who thought that the world had been stable since its creation. But, from then on, it became the object of a double myth. The myth of the diabolical for creationists, those who think that everything was created in a week, and the myth of scientists, who make “the origin of species” the new Gospel.

If you believe in the Judeo-Christian God, Darwin even makes it easier to understand him. With what we discover about biology, we come back rather to the gods of Antiquity. The men of Antiquity were perhaps animated by a just presentiment when, in mythological tales, they depicted hybrid beings, chimeras: Satyrs, Centaurs and Minotaur. Now imagine an evolutionary story written by a Buddhist scientist. It would be a question of cycle, even recycling, and mosaic beings, which we find in Nietzsche.

Hoo boy. There’s a common creationist trope, that Darwin is our god. It doesn’t work. We’re awfully critical of Darwin, and we rejoice when we discover new violations of his supposedly sacred dogma. Darwin is respected because of his careful, disciplined methodology and his appreciation of the evidence, and because he did have a brilliant insight that changed how scientists thought about history. It’s only kooks who simultaneously think Darwin is unjustly seated on a heavenly throne, and that they have had the grand, revolutionary insight that will allow them to displace him.

I won’t even get into his crap about old gods and chimeras, or his appallingly quaint rant about Apollonian and Dionysian dichotomies. Everything about this guy screams opportunistic kook with an exaggerated ego. At least it’s nice that he has found a friend in Donald Trump. They have much in common.

If you think I’m rude and dismissive, read this:

Now consider this. Raoult’s past papers show falsified data, which even resulted in his ban by ASM for one year, to which Raoult responded with threats of lawsuit. He is a patriarchal control freak and a misogynous bully who violently punishes all disagreement and uses threats against whistleblowers and victims to achieve compliance. He is pathologically resistant to criticism and believes to be infallible and omniscient: Raoult denied anthropogenic climate change in 2013 and before that, the microbiologist even denied evolution in his 2011 book “Beyond Darwin“. Raoult’s new study on chloroquine as the cure for COVID19 is obviously flawed, at best.

Should we really trust his claims and put our all lives in his hands?

Yet somehow he hangs onto his prestigious position with hundreds of underlings and publishes approximately a paper a day. This kind of abuse of the system ought to get him fired. It won’t.

Vertebrate paleontology just won’t be the same

Science has lost two great ones: Jenny Clack and Robert L. Carroll. Clack was an expert on the evolution of tetrapods, as was Carroll, who also studied reptile evolution. Normally, I’d be sitting my office right now and would be able to lift my eyes to my bookshelf and see Gaining Ground: The Origin and Evolution of Tetrapods and Patterns and Processes of Vertebrate Evolution, and re-reading them would be the best way to honor these influential scientists, but I’m stuck at home like many of us, so I’ll have to wait until I can fetch them.

Nothin’ but bad news today

Bernie Sanders is dropping out of the race.

Meanwhile, Paul Broun is running for the senate.

This country is so fucked.

I am impressed with their thorough analysis of butts & poop

I really thought it had to be a joke, a paper describing an automated method for analyzing various aspect of defecation. But it’s real, and published in Nature, no less. It’s well summarized in Vice, and Dr Jenny Morber put up a substantial Twitter thread about it. The level of detail and thought put into the paper on something I would rather not think about is amazing.

My one disappointment is that I failed at a prediction. When I first heard about it, I thought to myself that this has to be coming out of a German lab. But no! It’s from Stanford, the lead author has a Korean name, and the long list of authors looks like a genuinely international team. I guess the whole world can come together in their common interest in poop.

I resisted the temptation to include a figure from the paper, because they all make me slightly uncomfortable. Don’t worry, there are lots at the links I gave.

Even better than hydroxychloroquine!

I can cure the common cold. You may not believe it, but it’s true, and I have followed an established scientific protocol, the same as this study.

Two weeks ago, French doctors published a provocative observation in a microbiology journal. In the absence of a known treatment for COVID-19, the doctors had taken to experimentation with a potent drug known as hydroxychloroquine. For decades, the drug has been used to treat malaria—which is caused by a parasite, not a virus. In six patients with COVID-19, the doctors combined hydroxychloroquine with azithromycin (known to many as “Z-Pak,” an antibiotic that kills bacteria, not viruses) and reported that after six days of this regimen, all six people tested negative for the virus.

My protocol is easy. If you come down with the sniffles and watery eyes and stuffy nose of a cold, you just let spiders run around on your face, wait a few days, and your symptoms will fade away. You may argue that my n is very small and that I lack a control, but look — I’m just following the French model.

Unfortunately, I lack the endorsement of Dr Oz (so far — I expect he’ll jump on my bandwagon any day now, it’s what he does). I also haven’t hidden away any complications.

The report was not a randomized clinical trial—one in which many people are followed to see how their health fares, not simply whether a virus is detectable. And Oz’s “100 percent” interpretation involves conspicuous omissions. According to the study itself, three other patients who received hydroxychloroquine were too sick to be tested for the virus by day six (they were intubated in the ICU). Another had a bad reaction to the drug and stopped taking it. Another was not tested because, by day six, he had died.

I rather expect that a few people might have a bad reaction to my spider protocol, too, but at least I can say that no one has died of my treatment. I wouldn’t expect them to, since spiders are far more benign than hydroxychloroquine.

Even in people without the disease, hydroxychloroquine’s potentially harmful effects range from vomiting and headaches to instances of psychosis, loss of vision, and even sudden cardiac death. The drug is to be used with caution in people with heart conditions and liver dysfunction—both of which the coronavirus can itself cause.

Who knows? Maybe my spider protocol will also cure another viral disease, COVID-19. I’ve been handling spiders for a couple of years now, and note that I don’t have the disease. It could be a preventative. Extrapolating from these observations, maybe I have a true panacea scampering over my hands and nesting in my beard. What have you got to lose? Try it.

I’m just asking for $10 million to expand my colony (we’re going to need a lot of spiders) and that we take a couple of biomedical research labs offline to dedicate themselves to carrying out clinical trials of my cure. That’s all.

Hey! I just noticed that I don’t have cancer, or psoriasis, or guinea worm, or ebola. Spiders must cure everything! I’m gonna have to ask for more money. A dedicated research building? A few hundred assistants?

What have you got to lose?

Credit where credit is due

A billionaire is giving away a significant fraction of his money to coronavirus relief. Jack Dorsey has said he’s donating $1 billion to the cause. This is a good start — he says it’s over 25% of his net worth — with a couple of reservations: he has only said he’s going to do this, and rich people have a reputation for not following through; distributing that much money is a huge, difficult task and Dorsey is not an expert on funding biomedical institutions; and damn, he shouldn’t have that much money in the first place.

He also still has a couple of billion dollars more in his pocket. He’s not going to be hurting.