No, they didn't! (Evolution and purpose)

 I've been dismayed over and over again at the way evolution is routinely misrepresented by people who ought to know better.

So I decided to keep a log of instances where I see it.

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29th March 2023 Here's the New Scientist, which really ought to know better. The headline is OK: "Our attempts to kill cockroaches forced them to evolve new sex moves" It's just on the edge of acceptable, but, you know, even the New Scientist needs clickbait.

But it's the subheader that just gets evolution wrong. "Some male cockroaches have adapted their mating strategy to succeed with females that have developed a distaste for the sugar used in both poisonous baits and gifts from males"  This just didn't happen. No male cockroach had a think and decided to change his mating technique. What happened was that the ones that happened (via the random variation of evolution) to have a more varied mating game survived better than those that didn't.

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10th Sept 2021 from the BBC. This might not be an actual contender. I have not found more details than are available on this page about this year's IG Nobel prizes. But the way it is phrased is just plain wrong. 

"Peace Prize: Ethan Beseris and colleagues, for testing the hypothesis that humans evolved beards to protect themselves from punches to the face." Bushy beards may have spread, pardon the pun, because men who had them survived being punched better than those who didn't. But the beards did not strategically evolve themselves However, humans, of course, are capable of agency, so it might be that some deliberately chose to cultivate their beards as a defence mechanism. Hard to say how humans might have made their beards bushier than they naturally were, though, so it sounds a bit suspect to me. And in any case, why didn't women evolve bushy beards - presumably they got punched in the face just as much.

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First up: the Guardian's science correspondent Natalie Grover. 27th Aug 2021 "Female hummingbirds look like males to avoid attacks, study suggests". No, there is no intention in evolution. Female hummingbirds who look like males turned out to have an evolutionary advantage - more of them survived because they were attacked less.

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No #2: Simon Barnes in Tortoise 26th Aug 2021 "Much as you love to mow the lawn, let the grass grow". He states: "the growing bit – the place at which the cells divide and growth can take place, technically the meristem – is not at the tip, as it is in most plants. It’s near the bottom.

"That may not sound all that exciting, but it’s central to the way life on land operates. It means you can eat grass without killing it. You can munch away at it, but it keeps coming back for more. This strategy evolved as a defence against grazing animals: the plants get eaten but they go on growing."

The key bit is "This strategy evolved as a defence against grazing animals". No, grass does not have strategies; it cannot think its way to a defence. Grass whose meristem was closer to the bottom happened to survive better when munched than that with its meristem near the tip, so bottom meristemmed grass spread and top meristemmed grass didn't. Grass does not have intentions.

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Much as you love to mow the lawn, let the grass grow

Much as you love to mow the lawn, let the grass grow

Much as you love to mow the lawn, let the grass grow

Dave

Dave, my brother-in-law, has just died after living with Parkinson's for several decades. What follows below is not the whole story of Dave by any means, just the bits I remember best. (We're remembering him by suggesting donations to Parkinson's UK.)

I’ve known him for more than fifty years. It was a bit of a surprise when I worked that out; I hadn’t realised that I was so old. I was about 18 when he married my sister, the first occasion I’d ever been to in proper formal dress. My parents insisted on that sort of thing.

He was doing a PhD which our dad teased him about; our dad teased everyone about everything. Dave took it in good spirit; I wish I’d learned from him. But then he didn’t have to live with the old bugger.*

Once Dave had finished his PhD, he got a job at Portsmouth Poly as it was back then – I told you it was a long time ago – teaching maths and stats. Dave did everything with enthusiasm. I’ve worked with a few statisticians in my time. I’ve never known anyone get as enthusiastic about stats as him. He was equally enthusiastic as a teacher, and I am sure there are many hundreds of students who have reason to be grateful to him. He developed a lot of research projects in his time as well, and moved into the field of statistical modelling of chemical reactions. If you have any idea what than means, please let me know. Actually there is somebody in the family who does, his son, Ben, who inherited Dave’s way with numbers. Ben saw the light, however, and moved into an entirely different field when it came to making a living.

The Parkinson's was with him for several decades. It was a few years before it was properly diagnosed and he was able to get the appropriate treatment. He lived with it for many, many years. He had a life and he lived it well. He continued for many years to cycle into college. He went on working, researching, teaching, contributing and enjoying his food. He dabbled in many things. Well, when I say dabbled, he put a lot into it – a railway line in the garden, astronomy – proper astronomy with a telescope on wheels, sailing, a human mix of joy in nature with scientific precision. And the curiosity of the researcher never went away. After retirement and with his Parkinson's well advanced, he got interested in a problem somebody told him about to do with yachts, keels and sailing positions. There must be a mathematical model for this, he thought, and began to examine the problem with a computer programme. I never heard whether he solved it, but for him I don’t think solving it was ever the main motive. He just liked messing around with things and with numbers and seeing what they would do together.

He was always good for a chat, liberally sprinkled with dad jokes. We didn’t agree about everything. He supported Chelsea. I mean….

He also continued with his life the way he always had done, not letting the Parkinson's get in the way of that. There were meals out and holidays, even cruises. I would get pictures from time to time which I might have thought were designed to make me jealous if there was an ounce of malice in either Dave or Julia. Nearly every picture we have of him involves a sun hat. He would cook; and when I say cook, I mean cook, not just opening tins, but starting from scratch. I remember him, with a considerable tremble, cooking butternut squash soup, then sashaying across the kitchen with a pan full of boiling soup, everyone else diving for cover, and Dave filling the bowls from the pan without spilling a drop.

One of the treatments offered in later years was brain implants, which involved the head being screwed into a vice and then holes drilled in the skull to insert electrodes. The patient has to stay awake during the operation so that at the crucial time they can tell the surgeon what they feel when the electrodes are wiggled around. The patient is required to keep talking to the surgical team throughout so that they can tell he’s still OK. This was a situation tailor made for Dave, an opportunity to tell Dad jokes for four hours without anyone begging him to stop.** The operation worked, though not as well as it might have done. Moving on from it involved kicking rolled up socks around the house. I have no idea why, but Dave took to it with some gusto.

I was last able to see Dave a good couple of years ago. He was communicating then very slowly with an alphabet sheet, but with his mind fully sharp, and able to absorb and engage.

Covid changed the world for everybody, but particularly for people with any kind of disability or chronic condition. And their carers. With Dave worsening, Julia had to look after him largely unsupported, and with her own bodily issues, for many months. She had to do all the cooking and housework, see to his medication, pick him up when he fell, communicate with him with painful slowness whenever necessary. It was a very dispiriting and undeserved end period for a life lived with such verve. The final decline was mercifully brief, and a shock to all of us. We’d known for a long time that it was coming, but after living with Parkinson's and a gradually worsening body for thirty years, Dave seemed indestructible. He wasn’t, but our memories of him will be.

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*My sister reminds me, quite rightly, that Dad was actually liked by a lot of people, and that Dave and he got on very well. My relationship with him was not typical.

**A Dave joke

An American tourist eats at an Italian restaurant one day.  He tells the waiter, “I want a steak. Done just right. Not too well done. Not too rare. Just, tchk, in the groove.”

The waiter goes into the kitchen and says to the chef, “There’s a bigga Americana tourista. He wantsa a steak. Done notta too well, notta too rare, just, tchk, inna da groove.”

The chef says, “OK, He can havea da steak, notta too well done, notta too rare, just, tchk, inna da groove.”

The steak is delivered. The tourist wants vegetables. “Not too mushy, not too crunchy. Just, tchk, in the groove.”

The waiter goes into the kitchen and says to the chef, “Tha bigga Americana tourista wantsa vegetables. Notta too mushy, notta too crunchy, just, tchk, inna da groove.”

The chef says, “OK, He can havea da vegetables. Notta too mushy, notta too crunchy, just, tchk, inna da groove.”

The vegetables are delivered. The tourist asks for roast potatoes. “Not too soft, not too hard. Just, tchk, in the groove.”

The waiter goes into the kitchen and says to the chef, “Tha bigga Americana tourista wantsa roast potatoes. Notta too soft, notta too hard, just, tchk, inna da groove.”

The chef says, “OK, He can havea da roast potatoes. Notta too soft, notta too hard, just, tchk, inna da groove.”

The roast potatoes are delivered to the table. The tourist says, “OK, I’d like some gravy. Not too thick, not too thin. Just, tchk, in the groove.”

The waiter goes into the kitchen and says to the chef, “Tha bigga Americana tourista wantsa gravy. Notta too thick, notta too thin, just, tchk, inna da groove.”

The chef finally loses patience. “You tella da big American tourist. He canna kissa my ass. Not onna da left cheek, not onna da right cheek, just, tchk, inna da groove.”

You don’t know ME

Today is ME Awareness Day. Many people have heard of ME, but the chances are that, unless you have ME, or are a carer for a person with ME (PWME), you do not really know it for the brutal debilitating effect it has. It wastes people’s bodies, fogs their minds and it can crush their spirits.

You might not really know ME because it is very difficult to diagnose. Often people with other fatigue conditions may be lumped in as ME patients. The key criterion for ME, in my opinion (other opinions are available) is Post Exertional Malaise (PEM). In other words you have only a certain limited amount of energy. If you go beyond that, you suffer PEM, which is not just taking a bit longer to recover, it is a crash that can last for weeks or more.

You might not really know ME because you do not understand what it actually does. Making it synonymous with “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome” is one of the worst misnomers ever. It is not just feeling a bit tired, it is not just feeling exhausted. Think of the worst flu you’ve ever had. Now think about feeling like that all the time. Think of constant stomach pain. Think of constant migraine. Think of headaches coming and going. Think of there never being an end in sight. Not everyone has these symptoms all the time; they are variable. But you never know when one is going to strike.

Another reason you might not really know ME is that you don’t see it. If people with ME are not stuck in bed (where you can’t see them) with their face fifty shades of ill, they might be sitting outside. And you don’t know that they can only walk ten yards. The illness is invisible, and PWME pay the same penalty as all the other people with invisible disabilities: people don’t believe they’re ill.

And you don’t really know ME if you think it is curable. It is not. Sometimes people get remission, which is fantastic for them. But many people never do, and all the cures that are touted as being 100% effective, well, they aren’t. Sometimes people get better after a “cure”. All the evidence suggests that it was random, or that they were one of those who had something other than ME in the first place. It also enables people to say that some cures have no side effects so it can’t hurt to try them. Wrong. One case among many: two sessions of acupuncture resulted in two weeks of deep illness. (And please don’t even think of saying, ah, that’s all the bad stuff coming out.)

The lack of robust scientific evidence for much of what happens in the ME world is a big problem, because it enables people to make all sorts of claims that cannot be challenged. If people claim something they really need to say what the evidence for it is rather than saying there is no evidence against it.

You really don’t know ME if you still think that the obvious things which work for other people work for people with ME. Just exercise your way out of it: recipe for disaster. What you think intuitively must work does not. It takes a good deal of attention to your own thinking process to accept that what seems like common sense to you just doesn’t work for people with ME. When they hit that wall that you cannot see, they crash, and there is no genuine way in which they can exercise their way past it.

Another reason you really don’t know ME is that nobody really knows ME (apart from those who have it). Scientific knowledge of ME is still in its very early stages. It is a complex and difficult condition to research. There is nowadays a great deal of work going on but it is like a giant jigsaw in which people are occasionally placing random pieces which don’t yet connect up in any meaningful way. There are many lines of research which look “promising”. No promise has yet borne fruit. It may well be that in ten years time, we will understand what causes ME and we will have cures for it. I have a hope, a desperate hope, that that is so. That will depend on scientists continuing to find more and more pieces of the jigsaw until patterns start to emerge, But we are only at the beginning of that process now. Going into detail about this is very difficult to do in a rational way. The research strands that are taking place are so disparate and disconnected at this stage that the simple way to summarise them is a list, a very long list. I will not do that here, but refer you for further information to Science for ME, which has a massive archive. 

Another reason that you don’t know ME may be that some people have a vested interest in not telling you the truth. This is contentious, and I will be clear here that I am giving you my opinion and that other opinions are available. But many very much better versed people than me share my opinion. Some people would have you believe that ME is a psychological condition and can be cured by strategies such as cognitive behavioural therapy and graded exercise. A subset of those people equate ME with false beliefs, and posit that people can be cured by changing their beliefs. This stems partly from what is called the biopsychosocial model of illness which originally attempted to combine biological, psychological and social environmental explanations of illness so that a holistic portrait of the subject could be constructed. It is not a very good model and, once it entered mainstream thinking, it suffered perversion from commercially vested interests. In other words it was used to emphasise the “psycho” bit so that the focus was put on the subject’s beliefs and thought patterns at the expense of both biological and environmental factors. This was too useful to insurance companies looking for ways to reduce their claims bills to be ignored. And to people like Iain Duncan Smith, looking to punish ill people for being ill.

ME is a perfect playground for the biopsychosocial model because so much about the illness cannot be proved. The most prominent example of this approach is the PACE trial of 2005-2010, a five million pound examination of the effectiveness of treatments such as CBT and graded exercise for PWME. The architects of the PACE trial were highly experienced, skilled academics and scientists with international reputations, or, as I prefer to call them, snake oil salesmen (they were mostly men). PACE’s purported results – that CBT and GE were effective - are still robustly defended by its champions. But their methods and their findings have been dismantled with varying degrees of elegance and destructiveness by statisticians, clinicians and other academics and practitioners from all over the world. The most comprehensive demolition has been by David Tuller: see his Virology blog. An account of the PACE trial and the controversies surrounding it can be found at Mepedia. I won’t go into detail here, but just to give a flavour of the quality of the trial and its amendments, it was possible to emerge from the trial in a worse condition than you went in, and still be deemed “cured” (not just “improved” but actually “cured”).

Why would people defend a trial with such obvious flaws? I cannot see inside the minds of those who do, but I suggest a combination of arrogance, defence of reputation, commercial interest in particular outcomes and professional closing of ranks.

(Note: I do not believe that CBT is useless. It can be an effective tool for managing the condition and getting the best one can out of life within the limits ME imposes. But it is not, and never will be, a cure. As long as powerful people tout it as a cure, it is very difficult to advocate its use for what it can be used for.)

More than that, so many professionals disbelieve it that they regularly investigate parents of children who have it for child abuse or neglect. I can only state in the strongest terms that that should not be.

In a nutshell, it is a condition that, whatever you see on the outside, ruins life for those who suffer from it. It causes pain and extreme lethargy. It is also limiting because of an extreme lack of energy combined with the possibility of post exertional malaise. There is not yet a clear scientific explanation, not even a reliable method of diagnosis, but there is much research going on. A condition misunderstood and disbelieved by ordinary healthy members of the public and, shamefully, by many clinicians and researchers. A condition that takes away people’s ability to live their lives, to follow their hobbies or their desires. A condition that leads to millions being missing from the everyday lives of their friends and peers, and missing in fact from their own lives. #millionsmissing

What should we do with the Palace of Westminster?

First published on Liberal Democrat Voice.

The Houses of Parliament currently function as the location in which Parliament expresses and exercises its sovereignty. It seems obvious that they no longer fit that function well: archaic logistics, terrible accessibility, lack of office and meeting space, and chambers designed perfectly for the cheap game show otherwise known as PMQs, but not for deliberation or wise governance.

Soon the buildings are to have a very expensive makeover during which time MPs and Lords will have to decamp. Perhaps we should make the decampment permanent. Build a site suitable to house the legislative body of a modern democracy.

Some argue that such a building should be outside London. That is a separate debate. But whether it is in London or not, it then leaves open the question of what we should do with the Palace of Westminster. My suggestion is that we should bear the cost of the refurbishment, and then turn them into the home of an Institute for Democracy.

One of the many lessons of Brexit, whichever way it goes, is that we desperately need a way of re-engaging the mass of citizens with the democratic process. People in every region and in every section of society feel, and are, disenfranchised. We can, and should, argue all we like for reform of the voting system and other formal and administrative tinkering, but it will take more than that to re-enfranchise many ordinary citizens.

An Institute for Democracy can have many functions and many forms. One of the possible forms is the holding of regular citizens’ assemblies, in which people from all over the country are randomly selected for invitation to an assembly which may last for several days, in which they learn about, discuss and debate one of the many issues about the way we are governed. Attendance at the assembly might be treated like jury duty, with the assemblees paid for their expenses and their time, and employers and others required to allow them to attend. The chambers of the two Houses can be retained for the purpose of holding plenary meetings of the assemblies.

This would be, in my mind, the main activity of the Institute, but I can envisage many others. It can hold seminars, conduct research, act as a library and a repository for material and data about democracy. It will still be a tourist attraction, and can also attract income from sponsors, sales and hosting events.

Given the catastrophic effect Brexit has had and is still having on our democratic processes, the Institute needs to be set up and to start to do its work well before the Palace is refurbished. It could start immediately, and hold assemblies in all of the different regions in whatever remains of the UK. I would hope that it would continue to do that, one of the biggest problems about the social and economic shape of
our country being the enormous weight attached to London and the south east. The Palace would form a magnificent centre piece for the Institute, but never its only home.

I suggest that this should become Liberal Democrat policy.

Glyndimandias

Seen near Glynde

Glyndimandias

I met a traveller from a Sussex land,
Who said—“Two vast and pointless trunks of stone
Stand by the road. . . . Near them, on the earth
Half sunk a ticket kiosk lies, whose shattered frown,
And wrinkled schedule, and lack of mirth,
Tell that its attendant well those coupons read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand Supreme that mocked them, and the Artwave that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Glyndymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Ticket Prices, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of those colossal Posts, boundless and bare
The lone and level downs stretch far away.

With apologies to Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Why I am a Liberal Democrat

The LibDems recently ran an essay competition on the theme "What  it means to be a Liberal Democrat today". Results of the competition are not out yet, and I have no idea when they will be. Here is my effort, for what it is worth.

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I am a Liberal Democrat because I have a sense of justice. Justice means everybody getting a fair chance without the playing field being tilted against them throughout their lives. Justice does not mean everyone being treated the same all the time. Equality before the law is a sine qua non, but equality before the law requires different treatment, e.g. those who cannot afford representation should get legal aid. Those who can should not. My sense of justice is Biblical as much as it is political, though I accept it will not be for everybody. The Old Testament justice of Amos “Let justice roll on like a river and righteousness like an ever flowing stream”. Justice is so much more than equality before the law: it demands that we treat everybody as we would wish to be treated ourselves. Thus the two most important fibres in my being, the political and the religious, are intertwined.

Liberal democracy involves a lifetime of effort levelling the playing field. We come into a world with a tilted playing field. We make the effort to level it. But the effort does not end once the field is level because in our world the most influential currency is money, and money is magnetic. Wherever it is, it attracts more. If we leave the playing field alone, it will gradually tilt again as those with money use their power to accumulate more. So we need to work constantly to keep the playing field level. It is not just about fairness, it is also about effectiveness. Wealth used for the benefit of all benefits the wealthy too (some of the wealthy realise this). Wealth redistributed to those who have no work keeps them fit and alert and best able to contribute when work does come their way. Wealth redistributed towards those who will never be able to work means we care for those less fortunate than ourselves. Hence my implacable opposition to the poisonous policies and practices of the current Department for Work and Pensions.

The second most influential currency is information, which is crucial for the exercise of power. Information is light which we shine into the murk of both states and corporations to find out how they are affecting us. Without information we are not free, so being a Liberal Democrat means a concern for the freedom of information everywhere and in every form. People must be free to communicate with each other everywhere and about anything, provided it does not harm other people. But people in power hide information as obsessively as they hide money. So liberalism involves a permanent struggle to uncover information and set it free.

I don’t aim for a small state. I aim for an effective state. Size and effectiveness are not necessarily correlated. I want a state that is strong when I need it to be and otherwise leaves me alone. At the same time I want a society that encourages other people to be all that they can be, but to leave me alone if I am not affecting them. Regulation is a necessity; without it markets and social relations would not be peaceably ordered. Too much regulation is problematic, but so is too little – as we discovered in 2008. I want a smart state, one that is strong enough to counter balance prevailing global forces, and at the same time nimble enough to deal with rapidly changing circumstances. The Home Office’s leaden footed response to legal highs is a perfect example of how not to respond to change.

So the state needs to be smart, which entails that the people need to be smart. We need an active concerned and involved citizenry to keep the state tuned to our needs rather than to the needs of those in power. Liberalism also involves realism. I am realistic enough to know that we will never have an entirely active and involved citizenry. The forces of individualist consumerism are too strong for that. But we need a certain minimum, and everybody should at least have the chance, which means we need an education system in which people learn how to be smart. The system we have at the moment teaches one thing and one thing only – how to be measured. It is a tribute to the indomitability of the human spirit and to the professionalism and creativity of our teachers that most of our pupils leave the system with their character intact.

Ultimately, liberalism, like any political philosophy, is about character. Liberalism includes generosity of spirit. I do not envy those who are richer than me, provided they have earned it, which is by no means always the case. I do not scorn those who are poorer than me, because they did not bring it on themselves. They just live in the wrong part of the playing field, the one that I am constantly working to level up. Liberalism involves being always conscious of the rest of the world, not just the bits of the UK that go beyond my comfortable environment, but the entire world. Being internationalist means we won’t forget that our comfort depends on the discomfort of many others.


Liberalism is not an easy creed. It involves a tolerance for complication, an appetite for the convoluted practice of listening to every point of view and working to accommodate all of them. By and large political philosophies are based on either fear or hope. The politics of fear is easy. You point and shout. Liberalism is founded on the politics of hope, which is hard, hard work. We do not have the Daily Mail to expound our beliefs. We have Focuses. Which have to be delivered. So we pound the pavements. Activism gets you fitter. Not only have you got the message out, but you’ve taken your health into your own hands as well.

Moussaka

A friend recently posted a Facebook update, as she often does, about what she was cooking. It was moussaka and it included potatoes. I replied firmly that a moussaka cannot have potatoes in it. She replied with the BBC recipe from which she got it. I was not prepared to take the BBC as authoritative (on more or less any topic these days), so I held my ground and we had a bit of an exchange about it. Various other people weighed in, including one who made the point that recipes do develop over time. Which I knew to be true. And, to be honest, it has always been a slight surprise to me that what I regard as authentic moussaka has rice with it. Not chips, although they serve that now in most Greek resort centres. Ugh.

Anyway, I decided to research it, and rapidly discovered, to my surprise, that moussaka is a relatively modern invention. And an actual invention. I found several sources for this, but the best in my view is this feature in The Atlantic. It revolves around Nicholas Tselementes, a Greek chef of the early twentieth century, who had considerable international experience. He thought that Greek cooking had become too Turkish during the long period of Turkish occupation, and he set out to de-Ottomanise it. The moussaka that we know today was part of his response. He took out a lot of the spiciness, and incorporated a certain amount of French influence (though not garlic, which he apparently despised). His cookbook, published in the 1920s, contained recipes from many places, and those he considered to be the important Greek ones. He has a whole chapter on moussaka, and includes a number of variants, including moussaka cooked with courgettes or artichokes or..... potatoes (the horror, the horror).

So I sit corrected on the topic of potatoes in moussaka. And as was said in the Facebook conversation, cooking does develop, in this case quite deliberately. I know that: I'm English. Our national dish (apart from curry and pizza - enough said) is fish and chips. Chips from America; battered fish brought here by Jewish refugees in the eighteenth or nineteenth century. And the moussaka that we know today is a multicultural, though primarily European, melange. So I will accept that moussaka can be made with potatoes.

The next issue is the rice, which to me always felt a bit Middle Eastern, rather than Balkan. Again, I'm wrong in terms of cultivation and usage. Rice has been cultivated in Greece since at least classical times. Definitely pre-Ottoman.

Despite my discoveries I will stick to my idea of what a proper moussaka is, for primarily personal reasons. When I thought about it after discovering Tselementes, I realised that for me moussaka is not a recipe but an experience. In my secondary years and at university I studied classics. I learned Greek. I enjoyed Greek stuff. I enjoyed particularly the discovery of the Kebab Cellar in Cambridge (sadly no longer there). And I enjoyed going to Greece, allegedly to study the monuments. Moussaka for me is about being warm and carefree, and to get that feeling it can't have potatoes in it.

It has to have a Greek salad with it. (Greek salad is any veg you like, as long as it has olives and feta cheese in it.)

It also has to have retsina with it.

Baklava afterwards is OK, but I'm not too bothered about that - I'm usually too full and too drunk by then.

And for preference to be preceded by taramasalata and pitta bread. Not hummus. (Taramasalata seems to be Greek in origin by most accounts, but the tarama... bit derives from Turkish...)