Sarkar Lab

Mini-Symposium: Research at the Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge

We are organising a mini-symposium about research at the Balcones Canyonlands NWR on the University of Texas--Austin campus for Friday, 25 January 2008, from 2.30 -6.00 p.m. at the Atrium (FAC 419). There will be 15-minute talks followed by general discussion. All researchers are invited to present their projects and we will try to accommodate as many talks as possible. Even if you do not wish to present a talk, please try to attend.

The audience will include several students who are considering doing research or otherwise volunteering at the Refuge. At the end we will retire to the Scholz Beer Garden.

If you wish to present some work, please send me a title as soon as possible (even if it is tentative). In any case, I would like to hear from everyone who plans to come. It will be a great occasion for those working at the Refuge to interact with each other. With luck, it will spur more research across disciplines and universities.

Annual Formal Epistemology Workshops

We are in the process of organizing our fifth annual formal epistemology workshop (the first, second, third, and fourth workshops were all great successes). The purpose of these workshops is to bring together individuals, both faculty and graduate students, using mathematical methods in epistemology in small focused meetings.

Topics treated will include but are not limited to: Ampliative inference (including inductive logic); Game theory and decision theory; Formal learning theory; Formal theories of coherence: Foundations of probability and statistics; Formal approaches to paradoxes of belief and/or action; Belief revision; Causal discovery.

Besides papers with respondents, each workshop will typically include short introductory tutorials (three or four topically related presentations) on formal methods. These tutorials will be oriented particularly to graduate students.

The fifth workshop is scheduled for May 14–18, 2008 and will be held at UW–Madison. We are now accepting submissions for FEW 2008. Please send submissions by email to Peter Vranas. Submissions are due — in the form of full papers — by Friday, February 15 2008; notifications of acceptance either as definite presenters or as alternates will be sent out by Friday, March 14, 2008.

Those interested in participating, either by presenting papers, responding, or providing tutorials, or in helping with organization, should contact one of the local organizers listed below.

We can contribute $500 in travel funds for every graduate student who presents or comments on a paper.

Peter Vranas
Malcolm Forster
UW–Madison

Flock of Dodos

No, I don't mean Randy Olson's self-indulgent documentary. Funny though it was, it gave too much credibility to the creationists.

Rather, I'm strongly recommending a short little book by Barrett Brown and Jon P. Alston, Flock of Dodos: Behind Modern Creationism, Intelligent Design & the Easter Bunny (Cambridge House, New York). Brown is apparently an Austinite though I don't think I've ever met him. Alston is a UT alumnus, showing that there is some hope for our students.

Flock of Dodos is the funniest book on ID I've read in a long time. (Well, Brown writes for National Lampoon, Cracked, Jest, etc.--so what do you expect?) Alston, by comparison, seems to be a rather sedate sociologist from A&M. Brown and Alston take on both New Earth creationism (now represented ny the aptly-named Ham) and its ID counterpart. The sections on Dembski, Behe, and Meyer are particularly brilliant. (Dembski finds himself cast in the possibly familiar role of the Uptown Girl in Billy Joel's stunningly irritating song by the same name [pp. 88 -90].)

Our local creationists, Koons and Budziszewski, get the Full Monty for their worship of Dembski (pp. 86 -88). It's unfortunate--and embarrassing--that the homophobic Budziszewski keeps on getting identified as a member of the Philosophy department at UT. He does have a courtesy (zero-time) appointment here (perhaps we're being courteous to Gawd) but in my ten years here I've seen him only once, when he was lying before the Texas State Board of Education in 2003.

There's much more. Read this book.

Integrating the 40 Acres

I just finished reading Dwonna Goldstone's (2006) Integrating the Forty Acres: The 50-Year Struggle for Racial Equality at the University of Texas (University of Georgia Press) which is essentially a reworking of her 2001 dissertation at UT. (I'm surprised that UT Press did not pick it up.) Though it reads too much just like a dissertation, and there is unfortunately very little deep social analysis of why racism took the peculiar forms it took on this campus (and this city), the book should be required reading for all our students (and, if it were possible, faculty and staff).

We find out some amazing facts:

• We find the extent to which Theophilus Painter, famous for producing the first physical maps of genes (on the giant salivary gland chromosomes of larvae of the fruit-fly, Drosophila melanogaster) in the 1930s, was a committed segregationist who resisted the admission of African-American students to UT. (Painter remains one of the most famous biologists ever to have worked here. His biographical memoir by UT alumnus and former student Bentley Glass [Biographical Memoirs, National Academy of Sciences, Vo. 59, 1990] conveniently ignores the issue of segregation and only mentions that Painter was "a conservative in the best sense.")
• In 1950, the university finally allowed W. Astor Kirk (an African-American) to attend graduate school classes in political science "but seated him at the back of the classroom with a metal ring around his desk so that 'his blackness wouldn't rub off on the white students" (p. 26; emphasis added). Ever since I encountered this story I have been trying to find what peculiar "scientific" theory the UT administrators held. One hunch: Intelligent Design.
• Both Frank Erwin and Harry Ransom--after whom monumental campus buildings are named--emerge from Goldstone's story as stauch segregationists (and likely racists).
• The University of Oklahoma integrated its football team before UT, in 1958, and its African-American recruit, Prentiss Gautt, helped rout UT in the 1959 Sugar Bowl. This is particularly good to know as the UT football teak heads to almost certain defeat against their traditional rivals this coming Saturday. Goldstone also claims: "Perhaps to make his black players more appealing to white alumni, current head coach Mack Brown does not allow black players to braid their hairs into cornrows or wear dreadlocks (p. 134)." This, though, does not seem quite credible.

Well, I won't spoil the book for you. It's certainly worth reading.

"Evolutionary Informatics"--The New Face of Creationism

We're back to Baylor again. (Where else?) Engineering faculty member, Robert Marks, now has a new neo-Creationist laboratory called the Evolutionary Informatics Lab. So far, the contents of the laboratory's web-site are pretty pitiful. They include two joint papers with Dembski which are, as usual, "under review" (we're not told where) rather than published after peer review.

According to World Magazine, though, Baylor is not particularly happy about its new laboratory and neo-Creationist bloggers claim that the laboratory has been shut down because Baylor seems to be insisting that it not be officially identified with Marks' nonsense.

Bird-Witched

I had somehow missed Marjorie Valentine' Adams 2005 memoirs, Bird-Witched: How Birds Can Change a Life (Austin: University of Texas Press), when it first came out even though the Foreword is by a good acquaintance, Chuck Sexton, the biologist at the Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge where we do our field work.

It is a marvelous book, replete with anecdotes about Texas birding--and birding here is just about as good as anywhere north of the tropics. Anyone interested in birding, or in nature conservation in general, should take a look at it. I also have to thank her family for giving us access to her famous documentary film, "What Good is a Warbler?"co-directed with her late husband, Red Adams who, unforutnately, passed away while the book was in production. The film deserves even more recognition than it has received--which is a lot.

Perhaps the most interesting parts of the book are the chapters on our endangered Golden-cheeked Warbler (Dendroica chrysoparia) and the efforts to develop the Balcones Canyonlands Preserve and the Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge. Finding the details of the bird's winter habitat in Mesoamerica is a wonderful story of luck and perserverance. Being trapped there when the Chiapas revolt broke out just adds to the fun.

The book goes into some detail about the conservation plans for this bird and seven other endangered species in the Balcones Canyonlands which led the formation of the Preserve and the Refuge. It really drives home the old point that trreating habitat well, and protecting species while they are still relatively abundant, is a lot less expensive proposition than allowing it to fall under the purview of the Endangered Species Act. Unfortunately, preventive conservation continues to be hard to sell to the US Congress and State Legislatures and the Democrats are little better than the Republicans.

Texas SBOE and Evolution

A Dallas Morning News article this morning, "Education Board Opposes Intelligent Design Curricula," by Terrence Stutz reports that with only one exception the eleven members of the Texas State Board of Eduction oppose the teaching of Intelligent Design in our schools. This is true even though seven of the eleven SBOE members are clearly associated with the Relgious Far Right.

But, as usual, all this is just too good to be true. At least in Texas.

Are you ready to talk history to ecologists?

From Matt Chew, Center for Biology and Society, Arizona State University, apparently intended for members of the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology, but obviously also relevant to the rest of us who are interested in the history of ecology:

"Are you ready to talk history to ecologists?

At the 2007 meeting of the Ecological Society of America (ESA) -- a week after the ISH meeting in Exeter -- historian Frank Egerton was awarded a distinguished service citation for his work in the history of ecology.  To my astonishment, Dr. Egerton was unaware of ISHPSSB, a situation I have
begun to remedy.

But the time seems ripe for bringing the history of ecology to ecologists. My poster presentation at the ESA meeting, "Invasion Biology's Forgotten Forerunners" was unique among several hundred entries, very popular with attendees, and resulted in an invitation from a major university press to submit a book proposal.  In addition, Dr. Egerton suggested that I organize a history session for the August 2008 ESA meeting in Milwaukee (see http://www.esa.org/milwaukee).

The ESA is a huge organization, just shy of 10,000 members.  Their meetings are organized well, and well in advance.  The deadline for submitting organized oral session proposals for the 2008 meeting is only a month away. Talks are expected to be 15 minutes long, with 5 minutes for questions. If we organize a "symposium" we get 20 minutes for talks, but there are a limited number available so it's more competitive.

Next year is an 'off year' for ISHPSSB.  There were many talks about ecology at Exeter, any of which could be reworked or improved on for ESA in 2008. If you are interested in participating in a 'history of ecology' session at ESA in August 2008, please contact me by 1 September 2007 with at least the germ of an idea, and I will let all respondents know within a day or two of that whether it looks like we have enough interest to move forward with a proposal.

Thanks"
--
Matt Chew
Arizona State University
Center for Biology and Society
PO Box 873301
Tempe, AZ 85287-3301

Dr. Don McLeroy, Chair, Texas State Board of Education

Texas Governor, Rick Perry, who supports teaching Intelligent Design in high school science classes (as I discuss in my book, Doubting Darwin?), recently appointed Don McLeroy from Bryan as Chair of the Texas State Board of Education. Now, we knew from the 2003 textbook hearings that McLeroy is a die hard supporter of pushing ID in the curriculum and we're expecting a fight on our hands as the state science standards get rewritten the Fall. We're certainly expecting a call to teach evolution--and only evolution--"critically," but we also may expect a push for creationism. Forrest Wilder from The Texas Observer (our state's best political magazine) has found a 2005 talk that McLeroy gave at his church on Intelligent Design--look at the entry. It puts creationism in the tent of ID. Here is the absolute gem from McLeroy's talk:

Why is ‘intelligent design’ the big tent? Because we’re all lined up against the fact that naturalism, that nature is all there is. Whether you’re a progressive creationist, recent creationist, young earth, old earth, it’s all in the tent of ‘intelligent design.’

Bryan should be applauded for one explicit intellectual innovation: now creationism is a form of ID and not the other way around. I find this quite plausible. Nevertheless, it will make it more difficult, especially in the courts, for ID proponents to maintain an appropriate distance from the other creationists as they attack the curriculum in Texas.

Dr. McLeroy is apparently a dentist. My advice is: avoid Bryan if you have tooth trouble. Anyone so incompetent in biological matters is not to be trusted in medicine.

The full transcript--and recording--or McLeroy's talk can be found through a page maintained by the Texas Freedom Network. Thanks are due to Ryan Valentine for alerting me to this hilarious development.