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Agnotology

“Guns symbolize the power of a minority over the majority, and they’ve become the icons of a party that has become a cult seeking minority power through the stripping away of voting rights and persecution of women, immigrants, black people, queer people, trans people – all of whom have been targeted by mass shootings in recent years.” –Rebecca Solnit

Agnotology is another word I had to look up in the dictionary. It refers to the study of ignorance, and the ways in which ignorance can be the outcome of acts of interference with your learning. Ignorance, then, not just as the absence of knowledge, but the product of cultural or political processes designed to prevent you from knowing.

(Photographs today are from the museum at Fort Sumter, the site of the start of the American Civil War, and graves of the fallen in Charleston, South Carolina, mostly decked with confederate flags and visited by birds.) I approached the monument by boat a few years back.

AGNOTOLOGY, The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance, a 2008 classic text edited by Stanford profs Robert Proctor and Londa Schiebinger, both historians of science, is worth revisiting in the context of the 2nd Amendment debate.

According to Proctor the “cultural production of ignorance” has been instrumental for the tobacco and fossil fuel industries. It is now embraced by the gun lobby as well. (I am summarizing what I learned here.)

Think of things that can make you sick: tobacco, sugary foods, chemicals applied for agricultural use, poisoning ground water, to name just a few. The industries peddling these commodities are focused on certain propaganda. You can cast doubt on the scientific linkage between cigarettes and cancer, for example. You can shield producers and sellers from scrutiny. And you can shift the debate to issues of “personal responsibility.” Same for things that sicken the planet: you can cast doubt on the relationship between fossil fuel use and climate change, protect the oil industry from scrutiny, and shift responsibility to the consumer, rather than reveal structural policies that harm.

With regard to guns that kill: you can prevent research from being done (or revealed) that shows the true causes for gun violence, including objective measures of what freely available gun access implies. You can spare the industry any liability, and you can blame individual factors, like mental health, or loosening family structures, or grooming teachers, or sexual mores or video games – you name it, all with the goal to prevent policies that curb the unconstrained purchase of arms.

And last but not least, you can sell alternative “legal scholarship,” which eventually makes it upstream to the courts when interpreting 2nd Amendment origins and meanings.

Given the amount of misinformation, what DO we know about the history of gun laws? The first law prohibiting guns for certain people was enforced in Virginia in 1633. No guns for Native Americans. Other colonies followed suit. Enslavers, too, wasted no time (Source here):

As early as 1639, on the other hand, laws were requiring White men to be armed to be able to act as militias controlling the enslaved population.

Eventually the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution was written not to favor individual gun use but for the protection of these slave-controlling militias, so that no-one could disarm them and disadvantage the Southern, slave-holding states who needed their might.

Note the phrasing in the museum annotation (below images of slaves) above. “only a small percentage…” as if that makes it less egregious. The rest was sold into slavery in the Caribbean and Brazil, with North American interests in plantations fed there as well. And they brought sickness to the continent! How dare they?

Below the focus on the variability of slavery experiences almost suggest there were some conditions that weren’t as bad as others, and prosperity demanded it!

Fast forward to the 20th century. The NRA early on approved of legislation limiting access to certain weapons, like the National Firearm Act of 1934 and the Gun Control Act of 1968. Things changed, though, with the achievements of the Civil Rights Movement and the New Deal, expanding the powers of government and altering structural hierarchies of US society. Fierce backlash happened among those seeing their status threatened, and a push towards unfettered arming of men. In the 1990s we saw a growing militia (Christian white power) movement in response to Clinton’s gun laws. (Think Ruby Ridge, Idaho and Waco, Texas.) These extreme right wing forces subscribe to the “insurrection theory” of the 2nd Amendment, which says that the 2nd Amendment protects the unconditional right to bear arms for self-defense and to rebel against a tyrannical government. If and when a government turns oppressive, private citizens have a duty to take up arms against the government. The Proud Boys were just one division that put this into action, among other things, during the January 6th storming of the Capitol.

By 2007 the majority of justices on the Supreme Court had been appointed by presidents who were members of the NRA. In D.C. vs. Heller, Scalia argued that the 2nd Amendment protects an individual’s right to own guns (unconnected to a well-regulated militia), but vaguely implied that there were limits to the right, frustrating both gun control voices and the NRA folks who had never seen a limit they liked, as far as their own desires were concerned

If you can tolerate a style of writing that does not shy away from a somewhat excessive use of expletives, I highly recommend reading Elie Mystal’s Allow Me To Retort, an analysis of the Constitution in extremely accessible form, with insights into the 2nd Amendment in particular. It is a short, brilliant primer. Here is a review that captures everything I felt after finishing this book.

A radical change to the law is expected to be handed down by the Supreme Court this month, expanding 2nd Amendment rights. Here is is the Brennan Center for Justice‘s full analysis of what we will likely face. It is worth noting that once the door has been opened to prohibit the government from sensible regulations, as is expected here with regard to carrying guns, other regulative power might soon be taken away as well: environmental protection, public health requirements, work place safety, to name just a view.

It is no surprise, then, that the teaching of history as it unfolded, and of the conditions some try to maintain (most Americans want stricter gun laws), is anathema to those who want to turn the clock back, weapons in hand to meet a government that does not please them (after they meet their neighbors, who do not please them either given the neighbors’ quest for righting the injustices of a racially segregated society.) They do everything to obscure and obfuscate the knowledge that could empower true democratic policies and decision making and impact the sales of deadly military-style weapons and the ideological purposes they serve – agnotology in action. A Supreme Court undermining majority rule acts as the hand maid.

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Numbers, anyone?

Want to come for a walk? Amble through wet meadows and woods where even the air takes on a green sheen?

Hawthorne, elderberry and ash trees

Where the sun has halos in those 5 minutes it agrees to come out of the clouds, before the showers return?

I walked along the Columbia river on Sauvie Island, so high with all the precipitation that the trees on the shores were submerged.

I approached the Willamette slough, where the pelicans rested until a fledging eagle chased them, descending from the perch where s/he had hung out with the parents.

I spotted yellow – the gold finches,

the yellow warblers,

and the Western Tanagers, not shy at all and in remarkable numbers.

It made me think of numbers, and how they have to be seen in context.

In this week you likely saw the announcement of the horrific milestone that the US had now suffered, one million deaths. Perhaps you didn’t see the reports, that by some estimates 300.000 of this people would likely have survived if they had been vaccinated. The anti-vaxx movement, of course, is fueled by many influences, but one influence seems to be underemphasized.

Rufus Towhee

There is a classic statement by CP Snow, still relevant now.

“A good many times I have been present at gathering of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold, it was also negative. Yet I was asking something that is the scientific equivalent of: have you read a work of Shakespeare’s? I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question – such as, what do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, can you read? – not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language.”

Snow’s concern was not specifically with scientific illiteracy. Instead, the concern was that people find it genuinely acceptable, and in some circles a point of pride, to have no understanding of science or math. Many times, I have heard people say with defiance: I don’t do math.”

The problem here is not ignorance about differential equations. The problem is revealed when we look at examples in which extraordinarily simple mathematical concepts change enormously how you think about central issues.

Pink Hawthorne

As an example, why are people not taking Covid seriously? Let us imagine, that the one million who died had a social circle of 30 people each. That means 30 million Americans have had direct contact with a Covid death. But now consider that approximately 85 million people have been infected in the US. If each of those has a circle of 30, then the vast majority of the country does know someone (or many) directly who did ok, but does not know anyone directly who died. Is it any wonder then, that vast numbers of Americans buy crazy claims like this is just a strong version of the flu — because that is the pattern of their lived experience, which outweighs dry numbers any old time.

Two Daddy Longlegs making more Daddy Longlegs

Totally different example: In the Pacific NW the Northern spotted owl may well go extinct. The most recent threat is from competition with a different species of owl, the barred owl. In a desperate response, the government has been killing barred owls in specified regions to open territory for the Northern spotted. So far, it looks like killing 2400 barred owls across ten years allowed the Northern spotted owls in those territories to survive. In places where the barred owls were left alone, the Northern spotted experienced serious decline, increasing the danger of complete extinction. You may still find this preservation strategy unacceptable, but, when you ask about costs and benefits, you might take into account that the barred owl is extremely common and thriving. The Northern spotted owl could be wiped out. So would you be willing to sacrifice, let’s say, 2% of one species in order to gain, let’s say, a 20 or 30% increase in another? These are not the real numbers, and the research is not clear yet on what the absolute numbers are. But surely the question takes on a different coloration if you look at the number of owls in the denominator.

Vultures were out en masse

One more example with a very simple character: many jurisdictions have just gone through elections, and a prominent argument from the right is that we need to do more to combat the crime wave that is ongoing in our country. The evidence for this crime wave is visible to anyone who even glances at the headlines. The problem, however, is that this is a ridiculous way to gauge crime rates. Recent data confirm that crime rates in Oregon have actually gone down (however minimally), rather than up for the last interval tested (2020.)

If we are trying to persuade people to take Covid seriously, we need to be aware of their lived experience, and that understanding has to be shaped by simple calculations I have sketched here. We may disagree about owl protection policies, but in thinking it through we have to be alert to proportions, rather than raw numbers, and in thinking about crime rates, our votes and our tax $$ should be guided by real numbers, not scare stories. Since people proudly say “I don’t care about numbers,” they rely instead on short cuts that routinely give them answers miles off of what they’d get if they spent 2 minutes thinking about the numbers. It won’t end well.

My walk ended with the resident scrub jay, who always hangs out around the parking lot. So did a ranger from the park service or whatever official administrative body. Talk about numbers in context: they had found a single gypsy moth threat in 2020 on the island, none last year. Here she was spending a full day hanging dozens of traps for these pests on the trees, and that was just the beginning. If you can’t control the moths when you still have a chance with small populations, the trees are doomed. Wish the CDC acted the same…

Expect to see small green bags dotting the island. Likely too many to count.

I am taking next week off to have some down time. See you soon after that. You can count the days!

Music is by Bartok today – he included math, in particular expressions of the Fibonacci numbers, in many of his sonatas.

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Plant Blindness

Maybe it was the cold. Maybe the decline in pollinators. The number of wildflowers were sparse. It made finding every single one a particular joy, of course, hah, another iris! Maybe this 231 acres Cooper Mountain park, new to me, never had that many to begin with, or it was still too early in the season. When trails announce Larkspur Meadow, and all you find are a few puny specimens of the plant, it does make you wonder, though.

Made me think about a recent book. If you have time, read the The Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet. It is a fascinating anthology of conversations between and presentations by some twenty scientists and humanists (artists and poets included), presented during a conference at UCSC Santa Cruz a few years go. As conferences go, this was surely an imaginative one: the topics of how we can live and progress on a damaged planet were divided under two headings concerning he Anthropocene: Ghosts and Monsters.

Here is a link to Native Irises

Ghosts referred to issues around landscapes altered by the violent extraction and modification during human expansion. Monsters concerned interspecies and intraspecies social interactions. The goal for all theses scholars in anthropology, ecology, science studies, art, literature, and bioinformatics was to suggest critical and creative tools for collaborative survival in a more-than-human Anthropocene. A planet we share with other species, in other words, while making it inhabitable.

Dandelion and Wild Geranium

It is a book that has a wide range of topics, not to be read as a whole, but digested bit by bit, at least that worked for me with my aging brain. It will familiarize you with ants, lichen, rocks, electrons, flying foxes, salmon, chestnut trees, mud volcanoes, border zones, graves, radioactive waste, to name a few. We learn what has been harmed, what can be rescued, what needs adapting, and, importantly, how art can be of help in the process.

Lupine

It came to my mind on a walk on Sunday, a warm, sunny day so atypical for this dreadful April, where I found myself ambling through various biotopes: paths through old growth forests, along sunlit prairie, and in groves sheltering what remains of the oaks and freshly budding maple trees, both hung with veils of Spanish moss. Me and the rest of town – this is an easy 3.4 mile hike on Cooper Mountain near Beaverton and e v e r y o n e was out. Good for all of us – being in nature remains restorative, even when the damage is visible and seen, perhaps, by multitudes. Engaging with nature helps with (re)learning how to be in the world.

At least this was part of what Ursula Le Guin, a participant in the conference that led to the book, suggested: “To use the world well, to be able to stop wasting it and our time in it, we need to relearn our being in it.” She defined two possible approaches in ways I have cited before: “Science describes accurately from outside; poetry describes accurately from inside. Science explicates; poetry implicates. Both celebrate what they describe.” She explained: Skill in living, awareness of belonging to the world, delight in being part of the world, always tends to involve knowing our kinship as animals with animals.”

And here she put it in her inimitable poetic way:

THE STORY
It’s just part of a story, actually quite a lot of stories,
the part where the third son or the stepdaughter
sent on the impossible mission through the uncanny forest
comes across a fox with its paw caught in a trap
or little sparrows fallen from the nest
or some ants in trouble in a puddle of water.
He frees the fox, she puts the fledglings in the nest,
they get the ants safe to their ant-hill.
The little fox will come back later
and lead him to the castle where the princess is imprisoned,
the sparrow will fly before her to where the golden egg is hidden,
the ants will sort out every poppyseed for them
from the heap of sand before the fatal morning,
and I don’t think I can add much to this story.
All my life it’s been telling me
if I’ll only listen who the hero is
and how to live happily ever after.

–Ursula Le Guin

I’d like to add to the focus on animals an acknowledgement of plants. People nowadays, kids in particular, know fewer plants than ever before. It is a phenomenon called Plant Blindness, the inability to notice or recognize plants in our own environment. The term was coined by two botanists, James Wandersee and Elisabeth Schussler, who originally proposed that we are blind to plants because they lack visual attention cues. They don’t have a face; they don’t move in the way that animals do; and they aren’t threatening. They look more like each other than animals do – and the human brain is geared to detect differences over similarities. We also favor things more familiar, and animal behavior is closer to humans in that regard, establishing some bio behavioral kinship. Add to that our general separation from nature, and you end up with people unable to identify more than a few plants.

Larkspur

This ignorance, echoed and anchored in the demise of academic instruction in plant biology, is all the more worrying given the role plants play in societal developments: global warming, food security and the need for new pharmaceuticals that might help in the fight against diseases. Without young people being drawn into plant sciences we might not be able to fight new plant diseases or develop plant strains adapted to changing climate conditions or discover new medications, and so on. In Great Britain you can no longer enroll for a botany degree, for example. Across the US, university Herbaria are closing. Funding is affected: 10 years ago plants made up 57% of the federal endangered species list – they received less than 4% of the endangered species funding! (Here is a good overview article on the consequences.)

Wild Strawberries

If schools fail at instruction, take the kids to the park. An emotional connection outweighs dry instruction in any case. Teach them how plants can be – are – heroes when it comes to their healing properties or their role in environmental protection – there are plenty of guides and apps for the phone available in case you’re not so sure yourself about names and species. Snap a picture and have an identification within a minute.

Prairie Meadow. I believe the yellow flower is Monkey flower, but am not sure.

Turn it into a treasure hunt to spur the kids’ interest. Who can find more larkspur than irises? Who spots the first saxifrage? Who can tell a strawberry by their blossom?

Saxifrage

Tell fairy tales where plants play a significant role (Hans Christian Andersen scored here, as do many Native American tales), seek out botanical gardens that help with education.

Lilies

I have my doubts about living happily ever after at which LeGuin’s poem hinted – but I believe walks are the moments when we can live happily, encountering spring’s renewal, however sparse, in all its beauty, and learn in the process.

Wood Hyazinth

Oh, and the Camassia are about to be in bloom!

Music by Aaron Copland today.

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Against the Odds

I was in a foul mood yesterday, raging against the limitations that surgeries have imposed on my life. Just three years ago this week, I had exulted in a solo hike at Kasha-Katuwe National Monuments (Tent Rock) within the lands of the Cochiti Pueblo in New Mexico. (I had described the hike here.) The canyon trail is a one-way trek into a narrow, “slot” canyon with a steep (630-ft) climb to the mesa top with excellent views of the Sangre de Cristo, Jemez, Sandia mountains and the Rio Grande Valley. Now I am exhausted after a few miles on flat territory at sea level…

OK: shift in perspective – first of all I HAD these glorious experiences, as the photos remind me and I can still hike somewhere. Secondly, I am snug in a safe place and not in a war zone. And finally, you never know what the future holds, with the right mindset.

Case in point: a blind linguistics professor named Sheri Wells-Jensen and a crew of eleven other disabled people are on a mission to prove that disabled people have what it takes to go to space. And not only that, but that they may have an edge over non-disabled people. The linguist had argued in a 2018 article in Scientific American that in emergency situations on board a space shuttle differently-abled people might be assets, since they could navigate in darkness, pay attention to signals that typical astronauts would not necessarily pick up, and communicate (if deaf, with ASL, for example) when other modes of communication failed. Astronauts in wheelchairs could save the 2.5 hours a day that the others have to use strength equipment to avoid muscle loss, to do research or repairs, etc.

The whole idea is to look at the strengths drawn from what are considered limitations and apply them. People started to explore it seriously. George T. Whitesides, the former chief of staff of NASA under Obama, and Anna Voelker, the founder of SciAccess, a non-profit organization dedicated to accessibility of the STEM fields to disabled adults and children proposed to do a test run with a diverse group of disabled people in a parabolic flight, to see what problems would arise with zero gravity and how to solve them. The flight was quite successful. (You can hear all about it here.)

It is surely no coincidence that Wells-Jensen’s research focusses on cognition across the cosmos, a form of astro-lingustics that models potential alien languages. She realized that in many of the traditional approaches had the assumption baked in that something like human visual perception was at the base of scientific development. As a blind person she was trying to model possibilities of alien technology that could make do without that mode.

I brought this up as a reminder to myself that there are always ways to stretch ourselves, to redefine what we too easily accept as limitations. I have no intention to ever visit a space station, mind you, but want to apply the principle of exploring alternatives that are open to me and might enrich my life.

And speaking of exploring alternatives in the context of extraterrestrial research, here is a fun bit on what astro-biologists are up to these days. They are looking, here in the Pacific Northwest no less, for clues about alien modes of intelligence by researching octopus minds. Yup. No kidding. On the most basic level, we humans have a centralized brain that is the control center of all that is perceived or enacted. But not so the octopus. Their “intelligence” is distributed, with most of their neurons placed in their arms and their suckers, basically each thinking for themselves. So how does octopus behavior get coordinated, with so many different control enters at work? That is what they are trying to find out, with the mindset that it’s not about how intelligent they are; it’s about how they are intelligent. Jupiter’s icy moons that are thought to have oceans underneath that ice. And if, say, they had hydrothermal vents, theoretically, they could support complex life. Octopi on Europa?

I tell you, – well, I tell myself – life doesn’t stop to be interesting, just because you can’t hike in New Mexico any longer! I will be like this: blossoming under difficult circumstances. We should all be.

Here is some appropriate space music…

.

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Of Fish and Men

When humans were created, the Creator asked all the animals what they could do to help humans survive, as they didn’t know how to feed themselves. According to the legend, the salmon volunteered to help. Salmon was the first animal to stand up. It said, “I offer my body for sustenance for these new people,’ I’ll go to far-off places and I’ll bring back gifts to the people. My requests are that they allow me to return to the place that I was born, and also, as I do these things for the people, I’ll lose my voice. Their role is to speak up for me in the times that I can’t speak for myself.“

– Traditional story from the treaty tribes of the Columbia, related by Zach Penney, the fishery science department manager at the Columbia Inter-Tribal Fish Commission (CRITFC.)

I had driven to The Dalles to get a glimpse of the bald eagles that were supposedly congregating in high numbers around the dam. No such luck, wouldn’t you know it.

One lonely bird….
A second one if you use a magnifying glass….

Instead there were plenty of other interesting sights, from the snow-capped hills that looked like they were sprinkled with powdered sugar,

to numerous traditional fishing scaffolds perched over the Columbia river.

A perfect occasion, then, for a reminder of what we know about salmon fishing given its central role in the physical and spiritual lives of indigenous people who have pursued it in this region for at least 10.000 years. Salmon are iconic to Northwest indigenous culture and identity, but also the main source of protein across these millennia. The fates of salmon and the Northwest tribes are intertwined and received an immeasurable blow when the Dalles dam was constructed in 1957. The dam inundated the upstream Celilo Falls and Celilo village, the largest trading center for salmon since times immemorial. There was scant compensation for the loss, subpar housing built only for a few permanent residents of the village who were displaced, ignoring all those tribal members who lived on reservations but regularly came to Celilo to fish and trade. It took until 2005 to start building the promised structures and no serious reparations have been paid for the immense loss of livelihoods that depend on salmon fishing. (Ref.)

The runs consist of five species of salmon, Chinook (king), sockeye (red), coho (silver), chum (dog), and pink (humpback) and steelhead, a migratory form of trout. All of them, shown below, existed in abundance, not least because native fishing practices controlled for overfishing. (I got most of my material for today here and here. The second source includes a detailed and fascinating description of the life cycle of the salmon, much more complex than they taught you in 5th grade! More on the history of the tribes that have fished here for millennia can be found at the Museum at Warm Springs – well worth a visit for their photographic collection alone. It was just featured in OR Arts Watch.)

From John N. Cobb, “Pacific Salmon Fisheries.” (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office), 1921, Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution Libraries

The bad news first: salmon runs have been in further decline, harmed by dams, overfishing, and, by environmental degradations caused by farming run offs, construction and land fragmentation, local logging and mining and now the universal water-heating effects of climate change.

The good news next: organizations like CRITFC play a central role in trying to manage, restore and improve the situation, representing the four regional tribes, Nez Perce, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon, and the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation. With over 100 employees across multiple departments, they offer biological research, fisheries management, hydrology, and other science to support the protection and restoration of Columbia River Basin salmon, lamprey, and sturgeon. Equally importantly, they continue to ensure that tribal treaty rights are protected, with the help of their lawyers, policy analysts, and fisheries enforcement officers.

Fish ladders and hatcheries help support salmon, but the runs continue to struggle. Just a fraction of the fish successfully journey from ocean to spawning areas each year as revealed by tagging salmon and collecting DNA samples and other data by the fishery scientists. Hatcheries can increase the harvest, but they also have downsides. They are believed to have contributed to the more than 90% reduction in spawning densities of wild coho salmon in the lower Columbia River over the past 30 years. Why? When domesticated fish breed with wild salmon the genetic fitness of the offspring can be diminished. When hatchery fish are released, they compete for food in the wild and often eat the smaller wild fish. They bring diseases, caused by their hatchery crowding, into the wild fish populations. It is not a solution.

Historically the environmental knowledge of tribal members and their willingness to fight to protect the fish have been one of the few things to ward off complete disaster. The taboo to take spawning fish, waiting periods at the beginning of the upstream runs and limited fishing periods overall all ensured, for tens of thousands of years, that fish would return. And then the Europeans arrived.

The requirements for healthy salmon runs:

“A natural river meanders and sometimes floods, creating quiet side channels that salmon require. The fish also need their eggs, buried in gravel, not to be suffocated in dirt nor swept away. They need them to be nourished by oxygen-rich cool water flowing through the egg pockets. They need enough water in the stream — a dewatered streambed is a salmon graveyard. They need access downstream to the ocean and upstream to their spawning grounds. They need unpolluted water.”

All was affected by the newcomers. Land for farming, cleared down to the water, deprived the rivers of shade for cool water temperatures. Clear-cut riverbanks created silt that suffocated the spawning beds. Irrigating the crops emptied the streams. Dams without fish ladders, needed for flour – and woolen mills, irrigation and later electricity and even recreational purposes (lakes for powerboats…) interrupted up-stream fish travel.

As of 2020, in Washington State alone they counted 1,226 regulated dams (many do not cross streams but contain irrigation ponds, manure lagoons, and the like.)

Logging of old growth trees increased fires, destabilizing the riparian woods, again increasing silt. Loggers also built splash dams to facilitate the log floats down river – first backing up water then releasing it in a flash, disastrous for salmon fry. Mining booms created town constructions which in turn excavated river beds for gravel, sand, and limestone. Hydraulic mining required extensive ditch systems and dams. Detritus and chemicals washed into the creeks, destroying spawning beds. And all that even before extensive overfishing continued with no regard to the consequences.

In 1854 a treaty was signed at Medicine Creek which granted the tribes “The right of taking fish, at all usual and accustomed grounds and stations…” – words fully ignored. Many governmental restrictions were aimed at tribal fishermen, while licenses were granted to commercial fishermen and then sport fishermen, increasing the maximally allowed harvest even when it was already common knowledge that the runs were endangered.

“In 1935, the first year Washington kept records, the tribal catch was 2 percent of the catch whereas “the powerboat fleet hauled in 90 percent. According to state records, the entire Indian catch for Puget Sound from 1935 to 1950 accounted for less salmon than taken by the commercial fishing fleet in one typical year” (Ref.)

Eventually tribal representatives tried to fight for their rights in court, which upheld the treaties only to be ignored again by state governments. Tribal activists like Billy Frank Jr. and Bob Satiacum and their supporters staged now legendary fish-ins in the 1970s to protest limited fishing seasons, only to be arrested. This led to the United States Department of Justice filing a case against the state of Washington (US v. Washington, 384 Fed Supp). Judge George Boldt (1903-1984) issued a historic ruling (upheld in appeals) which affirmed the tribes’ original right to fish, which they had retained in the treaties, and which they had extended to settlers. It allocated 50 percent of the annual catch to treaty tribes, changing the ground game for fishing (and making a lot of non-tribal folks intensely angry.)

Restoration efforts are joined, though, by multiple constituencies.

Landowners including farmers, tribal governments, state agencies, conservation organizations, and individual volunteers from all walks of life are replanting riverine forestland, removing invasive species, placing woody debris, installing engineered snags, and reconnecting floodplains to their rivers. (Ref.)

We’ll see if the efforts can outrun the averse effect of population growth, stream bank development and loss of forest cover to fires. Removal of dams continues to be a key issue.

In the meantime here is a clip of traditional salmon fishing and the wise instruction of Brigette McConville, salmon trader and vice chair of the Warm Springs Tribal Council and a member of Warm Springs, Wasco and Northern Paiute tribes: “Whoever works with fish, it’s important to be happy. The old saying, ‘don’t cook when you’re mad,’ that’s true in every culture.”

Here is a poem by Luhui Whitebear, an enrolled member of the Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation and the Assistant Director of the Oregon State University Native American Longhouse Eena Haws.

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Polar Bears on the Move.

Admiration: today’s images of polar bears taking over an abandoned weather station have gone viral in the last few weeks. Wildlife photographer Dmitry Kokh traveled by boat to Kolyuchin Island, Chukotka, Russia, last year and photographed the giants (gentle they are not,) likely with drones. There was something that captured me on so many levels

– the beauty of the photographs themselves.

– the underlying disquietude that bears are driven ever further into human habitat due to melting ice from climate change.

– the spirited approach to photography that involves traveling along hazardous routes.

I went to his website and saw stern requests not to publish without permission. Sent him an email and had a positive response within 48 hours. Grateful! Спасибо!

Here is a short video of the bears moving about. I urge you to look also at Kokh’s grey heron images which he took in Russia during the 2020 pandemic lockdown. They are stunning.

Amusement: As with all things that deservedly go viral on the Internet, there is a spirited approach to creating memes that mark the occasion. In the case of the polar bear house invasion, you now find AirBnB ratings that pretend to have traveled to this remote spot in the Chukchi Sea.

Awe: and talking about spirited approaches – few are more mind-boggling than those of Joel Berger, a scientist at the Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology, Colorado State University. Berger’s goal is “problem solving to achieve actionable conservation.” In his own words:

“Science is but one of many avenues to achieve this.  Although policy change can be a goal, so can be altering attitudes, inspiring others, or solving mysteries.  My own work tends to be with species larger than a bread box, and thematically on issues concerning population ecology, thermal ecology, effects of people on species as landscapes change, migration, and climate stressors.  Understanding how we’ve altered food webs is also important. Much of my efforts continue to be in remote ecosystems, although there are clear advantages to work on biodiversity issues in the mountains and deserts of the Intermountain West.” 

Cold-adapted species have held a special place in his research, and here the polar bear theme re-emerges. The scientist, in his quest to understand the impact of stressors like climate degradation and extreme icing events on muskoxen, the largest Arctic mammal, actually donned a polar bear costume to approach the herds in the wild. The 7-year longitudinal study with observations in both the Western and Eastern Arctic revealed, as expected, not exactly good news. Here is a video of Berger in action as a polar bear.

If I were, say, 40 years younger, I’d apply to be a research assistant. Why? Just look at the locations where he is involved: Northern Rocky Mountains and deserts to the west, the Arctic in both Asia (Wrangel Island, Chukotka, Russia) and Alaska, and some areas within central or high elevation Asia – Mongolia, China (Tibet), and Bhutan. And the questions he and his teams are asking:

In the meantime, I’ll read scientific news on polar bears….

Instead of music today here are the sounds of the arctic, and an Inuit poem contemplating the everlasting ice and scientific research affecting the region. It is a video (28 minutes) best watched when in a meditative space.

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The Year of the Tiger

Two billion people across the world celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year tomorrow, 2/1/2022, the Year of the Tiger. Last week I went down to Lan Su, Portland’s Chinese Garden, on a cold, sunny day to marvel at the decorations as I do every year. If you expect me to write exclusively about tigers, though, you should know better by now!

It has to be about hippopotamuses as well. I could stretch to find a connection, hippos being fierce (like the Chinese Zodiac sign of the tiger,) or semi-aquatic, linking to the fact that 2022 is a Water year for the Chinese Zodiac.

But in truth, even the hippos are just a part of today’s topic: how science approaches the (re)introduction of species to places from which they have vanished, or never lived before.

I was alerted to the issues when hearing about the hippos who were left to fend for themselves when Drug Lord and all-around-evil-guy Pablo Escobar was killed by Columbian police in 1993. He had a private zoo next to his mansion that hosted 4 hippos which escaped into the wild when the estate was left to itself. Here we are now, 30 years later, with an estimated 80-100 hippos congregating along the neighboring Magdalena River. That number might swell to another 800-5000 hippos in the next 30 years, depending on who is doing the estimating (Ref.) Hippos have no natural predators in Columbia, nor are their numbers culled by droughts as they would be in their native countries in Africa. They happily procreate.

Well, not much longer. Since it is legally forbidden to kill them, after a public outcry when the first of these escaped beasts was shot, the Regional Autonomous Corporation of the Negro and Nare River Basins (CORNARE) is now culling the herd by sterilizing the animals. They deliver doses of a contraceptive vaccine to the hippos which works on both males and females, via dart guns. The reason for a comprehensive sterilization program lies with multiple threats to the environment if the hippo numbers increase unchecked. Their grazing for food is intense and prevents other herbivores to get to the nourishment they need (a single adult hippo consumes about 88 pounds (40 kg) of grass per day.) The amount of poop deposited in the river is a threat to some aquatic plant and fish populations. And hippos can be quite aggressive if too close to human contact, with inevitable violent encounters in shared space with the fishermen.

It is easy to visualize how a foreign species hurts the balance of an ecosystem. Or what re-introduced species do to environments that have changed so much over the millennia as to not be recognizable given the landscape fragmentation. But scientists have started to look not just for the negative aspects of rewilding or new (if unintended) introductions, but to catalogue the positive trends associated with animals in new places. It looks like they just might serve some ecological functions that were earlier offered by now extinct species. New folks picking up the slack!

Here are the principles that the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) established:

Take the hippos. Their daytime grazing habits are similar to those of now extinct giant llamas that lived in Columbia in the Pleistocene. Their defecations bring nutrients to rivers that extinct semi-aquatic creatures of yore provided. But the numbers need to be monitored and if necessary, constrained.

Northern Australia lost its giant marsupials. They are in some ways replaced by grazing water buffalos, the largest herbivores since the extinction, whose feeding habits reduce the frequency and severity of wildfires, mitigating the effects of climate change.

Feral hogs, whose rooting in soil increases tree growth and attracts bird flocks, are replacing ecological work done by extinct giant peccaries in North America. The original American horses, which died out about 12,000 years ago, are now replaced by feral mustangs and burros in the American West who engage in well-digging behavior like their forbears, protecting water resources.

These are just a few examples. More details can be found here.

And guess who is rewilded in China? Yup, South China tigers. They are taken from Chinese zoos, the only place where they exist now, and reintroduced to open terrain in wild life preserves in South Africa. Once they have learned to live outside of captivity they will be released back in China. May the Year of the Tiger see an improved coexistence of humans and nature!

Here is some traditional Chinese pipa music. Happy New Year to those who celebrate!

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Seeds and Such

A young German historian, Annika Brockschmidt, recently published a book about America’s Holy Warriors (so far available in German only as Amerikas Gotteskrieger,) detailing the evolution of Trumpism, the general turn to an authoritarian, evangelical, cult-like movement within the GOP and the resulting danger to democracy. It met with acclaim, moved up the ranks in bestseller lists, until last week a sudden shitstorm unfolded, led by Politico’s chief Europe correspondent and echoed by representatives from the right-wing German press. She had not visited America! She had not interviewed Republicans in person! She was just echoing propaganda from leftwing US sources! Independent of the fact that the pandemic made travel impossible, the criticism conveniently overlooked that the contents were not claims by an investigative journalist (although she sure has an incredible breadth of source information as well as journalistic experience) but source analyses by a trained historian. The book, by the way, is smart, concise and perfectly reflective of what we here in the U.S. are experiencing.

I am bringing this up partly because I have been wrestling with the fact that my current reviews of visual artists are confined to a virtual experience of their art, or reading about their art. I am forced to look at their work on-line, if that is even possible. I can describe none of the emotional reactions that come with a real-life encounter, in situ, or thoughts that are spontaneously elicited when you meet face to face with something extraordinary. Maybe that is why universally available poetry has taken over so much of the recent musings. Does that mean I cannot, for now, review visual art? No. Just like it was for Brockschmidt, I still have access to the ideas, the concepts and insights that drive visual artists to their creations and can describe how those affect me or what they imply for the likely standing of the work.

Today, then, I want to introduce the ideas of a gifted young Palestinian artist, Jumana Manna, a film maker and sculptor, who was born in the U.S., grew up in Israel, and now spends her time between Berlin and Jerusalem. She recently received one of Germany’s more coveted awards for up and coming young artists, the bi-annual Max Pechstein Prize. It is the latest in a string of accomplishments that include stints at the 2017 Venice Biennale, and solo shows in major European and American institutions.

Let me trace the evolution of Manna’s ideas that have clearly marked her thinking for much of her career. As always, I am impressed when someone is able to have a continuous body of work that pursues different aspects of a general question.

Or questions. Who gets to decide what gets preserved when power hierarchies determine access and interpretation in situations defined by conflict? Who gets to determine how memories are shaped and transmitted? Who gets to choose what artifacts or living organisms get preserved or extinguished? Who gets to fix a value hierarchy that often serves indirectly political purposes? Manna looks at these question in the domains of botanical and agricultural preservation and opens the door to new ways of thinking about everything from the way religious botanists shaped the description and preservation of a region’s flora, to the insidious side effects of the Green Revolution in Middle Eastern countries torn by war, to Israeli laws and punishments imposed on foragers for traditional Palestinian foods.

An early body of work, Post Herbarium, looked at the American missionary, botanist and surgeon George E. Post (1838–1909) who in the late 19th century traveled to the Levant to collect botanical specimens. He believed they would be a key to understanding Christian theology. A depiction of the inherent tension between biblical beliefs and assumed scientific rationality was focal to Manna’s installations that used information gathered at the Post Herbarium at the American University of Beirut, where the specimens collected in Syria, Palestine and Sinai are archived.

Next came the film Wild Relatives (2017). (The link to Manna’s website includes a short trailer. The whole thing can be watched on True Story, but needs subscription.) The film is a marvel. It follows the journey of seeds between Syria, Lebanon and Norway, seeds collected and crossbred by scientists at local seed banks, then lost due to war, recouped from the Global Seed Deposit in Svalbarg and eventually sent back there again. (I had introduced that Seed Bank in the blog in 2017, when melting permafrost frost threatened it with flooding. Here is a more recent description of their work. )

I cannot begin to describe how the dry and often horrifying facts are told in lyrical fashion and with a sensitivity to human suffering that makes you cling to the story while absorbing scientific detail. I can, however, describe what we learn from the film. The International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, known as ICARDA, a center that focuses on seed collection, cultivation and research, was moved from Lebanon (during that war) to Syria, back to Lebanon (during this war.) Scientists were lucky to escape Aleppo and much of their stock was lost. They requested their original seeds back from the Svalbard Seed Bank which had housed earlier deposits. Refugees from Syria are now working the fields in Lebanon to continue the local seed collection, cultivation and cross breeding with wild relatives of the species, and, once established, packages of these seeds are returned to Svalbard for further safe keeping. The film follows the journey and the humans involved in both Lebanon and Norway, their dreams and their nightmares shaped by both science and religion.

A detailed description of ICARDA’s work and struggle can be found here. What the film offers, though, is a question of the impact of Western agricultural practices and developments on the lives of small holding farmers in poor countries. What we know about the Green Revolution, the production of more food due to genetic manipulations that increased yields, is that it was a double edged sword. With increased food security (good), you also had increased use of pesticides, increased agricultural water consumption, increased areas of land needed for efficient farming, driving small holders out of the business (all bad.) Monocultures depleted the soil, and indigenous varieties of crops got extinct (really bad.)

The loss in biodiversity is real – and a problem. In the U.S. alone, 95 percent of cabbage, 91 percent of corn, 94 percent of pea, and 81 percent of tomato varieties were lost between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. More importantly, in countries that are more exposed to current assault from climate change, like Middle Eastern countries are regarding droughts, the industry-produced seeds have not adapted to the shift and thus deplete water resources ever more. Seed preservation in vaults, theoretically a good thing, stores genetic material from times past, just like you keep animals in a zoo. The genes, however, do not adapt if they are not exposed to changing environmental conditions, yet it is exactly those adaptations that are needed to feed a world that grows drier and hotter. And hungrier.

The film makes clear that on the one hand questions of scale – who has the means, economically and scientifically, to run preservation projects for humanity’s safe keeping – favor organized institutions. But those who have the means also make the choices about genetic varieties in breeding and are able to monopolize world markets. Small breeders and preservationists who have still access to wild varieties of plant species contribute an enormously valuable part in fighting declining agrobiodiveristy, but they are an endangered species themselves. What will be preserved, what will be developed all rests on who is in power to make decisions that affect much of the world.

Here are some additional considerations how the interaction of climate crisis, monopolized agricultural decision making and urbanization contributed to the revolution turned war in Syria.

Fast forward to 2022 for Manna’s most recent video installation. Here at the West Coast we can currently see her newest work, Foragers, at the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA.) The video installation was co-commissioned by BAMPFA, BAK Utrecht, and the Toronto Biennial of Art and filmed primarily in occupied Golan Heights, the Galilee and Jerusalem. (Full disclosure: I have not seen Foragers yet, but have been deeply moved by Manna’s essay on the issues exposed by the film – highly recommended reading, an insightful contemplation of many interrelated historical and political topics as well as an autobiographical testament: Where nature ends and settlements begin, translated into German by Fabian Wolff.) The text about the genesis of this work and her own personal experiences is a powerful reminder of what it means to live in occupied territories. Culture and tradition can be drawn into the struggle between opposing forces, and that extends even to what is allowed to be picked and eaten as per centuries-old customs.

In this specific case wild thyme and wild thistle, central to the Palestinian cuisine, known respectively as za’atar and ‘akkoub, were put on a protected species list by the Israelis, even though harvesting actually encourages the growth of these plants year after year. Individuals caught by the Nature Authority are put on trial with significant punishments, all the while many more of these plants are destroyed when the ground is prepared for the construction of new Israeli settlements. Here is a detailed description of the video installation.

If you remember, I have recently written about foraging here in the U.S. and its relationship to slavery and the impact of historical change on the African-American traditions. Traditions and knowledge were cut off with the hardships and legal (or customary) exclusion from nature following emancipation. Proprietary rights of White landowners were harshly enforced, once they had no gain from people’s survival through foraging, a survival that depended on supplementing the meager scraps of food they received on plantations. I have also discussed the effects of the Bonneville Power Act on the destruction of traditional food sources for Pacific Northwest tribes, by destroying fishing sites and generally endangering the salmon runs in order to regulate and increase water needed for aluminum production.

The interplay between nature, its products, competition for resources and power hierarchies are not an isolated phenomenon, but something found throughout history. An artist’s rendering of these complex and often rather dry topics (Seed propagation? Genetic engineering?) can open a space for us to think through the issues. Work done that reflects not just some distant past but the actual situation of growing food, lacking food, monopolizing food seems incredibly timely, given that we can expect food production to suffer in a world hit by pandemics, changing weather patterns and armed conflict. To do all this without wagging fingers, but with grace and inclusivity as Manna’s work does, is quite an achievement.

And I haven’t even talked about her work as a sculptor yet which happened in parallel to her video explorations.

Music today from a live performance in Amsterdam: Trio Joubran.

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Discovery

Discovery

I believe in the great discovery.
I believe in the man who will make the discovery.
I believe in the fear of the man who will make the
…. discovery.

I believe in his face going white,
his queasiness, his upper lip drenched in cold sweat.

I believe in the burning of his notes,
burning them into ashes,
burning them to the last scrap.

I believe in the scattering of numbers,
scattering them without regret.

I believe in the man’s haste,
in the precision of his movements,
in his free will.

I believe in the shattering of tablets,
the pouring out of liquids,
the extinguishing of rays.

I am convinced this will end well,
that it will not be too late,
that it will take place without witnesses.

I’m sure no one will find out what happened,
not the wife, not the wall,
not even the bird that might squeal in its song.

I believe in the refusal to take part.
I believe in the ruined career.
I believe in the wasted years of work.
I believe in the secret taken to the grave.

These words soar for me beyond all rules
without seeking support from actual examples.
My faith is strong, blind, and without foundation.

by Wistlawa Szymborska
from View With a Grain of Sand
Harcourt Brace 1993
translation: Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

I wonder if this poem seeded the idea of a book, a remarkable book that looks at the consequences – intended and unintended- of scientific discoveries. Benjamin Labatut’s When We Cease To Understand The World is a small volume describing mathematical and scientific research, ruminating about the psychological states of those engaged in the work, and weaving fact and fiction in ways that meander between horror story and lyric poetry.

The last time I felt like this when reading a novel grounded in history, was decades ago when I couldn’t put Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy down, never mind babies screaming for attention, house wanting to be cleaned, lectures needing to be written and exams to be graded. Both authors share the skill of sending readers on two parallel paths, leaving it to us to drop and pick up the strands where truth ends and imagination begins, where facts are overshadowed by psychological analysis or feelings discarded in the light of facts. Both also excel in alternations of intensity and subtlety, in itself a weird combination.

Barker succeeds in sustaining our attention to history, social structures, identity (before that became a political concept) across three complex volumes, never letting up tangential brilliant confabulation,. She thinly veils her portraits of historical people behind pseudonyms and graphically imparting on us the horrors of World War I and what they did to the soul of artists.

Labatut, in contrast, keeps it short – perhaps aware of contemporary attention spans. His subjects are famous scientists, although the pages are sprinkled with some names less familiar, and some characters are completely made up. He has a knack to impart scientific facts in ways that do not frighten even the math- or physics-phobic reader, partly because the narrative swings endlessly back to the human interest story at the heart of the tales – how do you accept the fact that your discovery brings suffering and ruin to the world? Do you continue to proceed?

Both authors do not shy away from delving into details of horrors, yet the texts themselves have a certain serenity as if we are watching our own history unfold from the safe location of a distant star. That in itself is, of course, a trick, since it indirectly suggests that our own responsibilities need not be considered when focused on those who wreaked the actual havoc, or do they? The wishful thinking of Szymborska’s lines (admitted to be without justification in fact,) should it not be headed by us, in the ways we should be willing to obstruct, to risk, to endanger our standing by unpopular but necessary actions?

Szymborska’s “I believe in the refusal to take part” is less wish than command. One that is faintly echoed in the last chapter of Labatut’s work which introduces us to a night gardener, a former mathematician who has given up on the world, too clear-eyed about the catastrophes awaiting us, in a society that uses the principles of quantum mechanics without ever truly understanding them. The very last parable of the book describes the final demise of lemon trees cut down by their own excess riches. It somehow all came together, and I felt humbled by it.

Szymborska, again, sarcastically:

“I am convinced this will end well,
that it will not be too late,”

How many more reminders do we need by brilliant writers that clinging to this belief simply won’t do?

On a more upbeat note, here is a fun compilation of unintended, positive consequences of scientific discoveries.

Music today by Bartok who was enchanted with mathematical principles and symmetry, particularly the Golden Mean. The ratio appears in this piece. Give it a chance, it grows on you.

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Science Denial

It was infectious. The laughter of a tiny Russian grandmother, loud, unabashed, unceasing, first made me smile, then laugh as well. I was standing next to her and her family, all of us marveling at the antics of an Orangutan who was trying on various blankets to protect himself from the rain, finally settling on a tartan throw. I so miss laughter. I so miss regular interaction with strangers, if only via glances or smiles or a kind word. That whole social scenario when you take the bus, or stand in line, flirt with the waiter or encounter people in museums.

In any case, I had made it to the zoo, now requiring on-line tickets for a particular time-slot to be reserved in advance, and I happened to be standing at the primate enclosure outside when the family with young kids and grandma in tow arrived. I relished the laughter. I also admired how the dad was reading and sometimes translating for the kids the signs that describe scientific information about the animals, their habitat, their characteristics and so on.

Here is a question: why do people unfailingly accept scientific knowledge presented to us by some experts, zoologists for example, learn about it with pleasure and expose our kids to it? Yet invariably reject other scientific information that happens to be in domains equally unfamiliar as the mating rituals of the rhinoceros, but could save our lives if we only listened? Virologists’ insights, for example?

This question looms particularly large when scientists are thrown into the middle of political conflict, unable to avoid their unfortunate position because their knowledge is required to make administrative decisions. How do scientists not loose the public trust, how do they avoid becoming targets of aggression because their claims collide with vested interests or different world views? Issues in which these conflicts have become quite visible concern everything from the danger of tobacco consumption, the safety of nuclear power, the long term predictions for the climate crisis if fossil fuel use is not reduced, and, of course, the approach to handling the current pandemic.

For every you and I who think scientific input should shape policies, there are two others out there (if not more) who do not believe scientists, or assume they have nefarious motives, or believe in a different “scientific” truth. Public opposition to science-based governing can come in one of two versions. There are those who are motivated by disinformation or plain old conspiracy theories, disseminated by crack pots or those who have a political ax to grind (or both…) There are, however, also those who offer justified opposition on the basis of legitimate value judgments. The trick is to know the difference and react, as a scientist, accordingly. (I am summarizing today a longish article by a group of scientists that is in press Ref.)

The tobacco- and fossil fuel industries aside, we have individuals in, for example, the U.S. Senate who are torpedoing household resolutions to protest against scientifically recommended mask or vaccination mandates by the administration. Do they have vested interests, signaling to their constituencies who have been blasted by misinformation from partisan media sources that they are on their side, or signaling to their (former) leader that they still toe the line? Are they correct in claiming that scientific proscriptions created policies that limit individual liberties and impair economic activities in unprecedented ways, without proof that public health required it?

Isn’t it also true (spoiler, science agrees it is) that social restrictions like lock-downs have also negatively impacted mental health at scale and have disproportionately impacted women, single parents, young people, minority groups, refugees and migrants, and poor people who cannot afford to buy basic personal protective equipment? (Not that said senators would care.)

“Frustration with, and opposition to, social restrictions are therefore potentially legitimate grievances that deserve to be heard in democratic public discourse.”

The problem is how to distinguish between science denial due to politically motivated misinformation, and legitimate disagreement with governmental policies. One way is to spot how people diverge from a scientific consensus. Here are some pointers of what is usually present for those motivated by ideology:

Fake experts: Using doubtful/questionable/discredited/fake experts.

Logical fallacies: patterns of reasoning that are invalid due to their logical structure.

Impossible expectations: The act of demanding undeniable proof beyond what is scientifically feasible.

Cherry-picking: Regarding and disregarding pieces of evidence such as to advance one’s point.

Conspiracy theories: Explaining evidence by means of an evil conspirator, while consecutively expanding the theory to defend against challenging evidence.

A FLICC of the tongue, and you have your misinformation….

Contrast this with people whose lived experiences might make them averse to accepting scientific insight. If the history of your people was one where scientists harmed you or lied to you (see experimentation on POCs,) why should you trust science? If “denial” of the severity of Covid outcomes helps you not to lose your mind, but remain optimistic, shouldn’t scientists take that into account? Denying the effectiveness of social distancing might be an adaptive strategy if isolation would increase your sense of loneliness and depression. Denial can also be a protective mechanism against fear. If you HAVE to use public transportation and work surrounded by sick people, denial of Covid facts might be the only move you have not to break down in fright for what might happen to you.

In short, before we condemn any and all people who question science and scientists’ motives, let’s look a bit closer and figure out how to help those who are not conspiracy theorists to overcome their hesitation to accept scientific knowledge. If it could just be as easy as outlining the dietary habits of the Rocky Mountain goats….

Accosting scientists is, of course, not new under this sun.

Music reminds us. Some clips from the Galileo project concert.

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