Month: July 2020

Please DO NOT Get Your COVID-19 Information from Social Media!

So far, I have written three articles about how horrible social media is as a source of scientific information (see here, here, and here). Facebook might be a great way to find out what your friends are eating, but it is one of the worst places you can go to learn about science, especially the COVID-19 pandemic. That’s because lots of people (left, right, and center) have decided to politicize the pandemic, and the unscrupulous among them have transformed science from its true nature (a very imperfect mode of inquiry) into a weapon. Unfortunately, many people don’t recognize weaponized science, and as a result, they tend to share things that fit their political views, regardless of whether or not they are accurate.

Consider, for example, the statement shown above. I have seen it on my Facebook feed at least a dozen times. While the statement is factually accurate, it supports a false narrative. Yes, there have been roughly 4 million cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. so far, and there were estimated to be 60 million cases of H1N1 during the 2009 pandemic. So the H1N1 pandemic of 2009 was “worse” than the COVID-19 pandemic today. Therefore, all the precautions we are taking against COVID-19 (shutting down schools, wearing masks, etc.) are just a result of politicians trying to use the current pandemic to their advantage. Of course, that’s simply not true. The reason we are taking precautions against COVID-19 is that it is significantly more deadly than H1N1. Out of the estimated 60 million cases of H1N1 in 2009, there were only about 12,500 deaths. Out of the roughly 4 million cases of COVID-19, there have been almost 150,000 deaths. Since 15 times fewer cases have produced more than 10 times as many deaths, it is easy to understand why we are taking more precautions against this virus!

Just to give you one more example, yesterday I saw this statement on my Facebook feed:

The COVID-19 death rate without a vaccine is lower than the flu death rate with a vaccine.

As far as I can tell, there is no way you can massage the data to make that statement even factually correct. For the 2018-2019 flu season, there were estimated to be more than 35.5 million cases and 34,200 deaths. Once again, for the current COVID-19 pandemic, there have been roughly 9 times fewer cases, but about 5 times as many deaths.

Now please understand that I am certain the number of COVID-19 deaths are being overreported. But they aren’t being overreported to the point where you can conceivably compare this current pandemic with the H1N1 pandemic of 2009 or the seasonal flu. In the same way, I know that politicians are using this pandemic to their advantage, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t real and isn’t serious.

So when it comes to getting information about the pandemic, choose your sources wisely, and do not include social media on the list!

A Very Promising Possibility for COVID-19 Treatment

A person using an inhaler, which is the way the drug in the study is delivered (click for credit)

There are several drug treatments that are currently being investigated for COVID-19. However, of all the studies I have seen so far, this one looks the most promising. In the study, UK-based Synairgen chose 101 hospital patients and randomly assigned them to get a placebo or a chemical called “interferon beta,” a protein that has antiviral properties and is naturally produced by the human body. Both the placebo and the protein were administered through inhalers so that they ended up in the lungs. Over the roughly two-month study, patients getting the protein were 79% less likely to develop severe symptoms that required a ventilator. Also, while three of the patients who received the placebo died, none of those who received the protein died.

The study seems well designed. For example, patient ages were very similar. The placebo group’s average age was 56.5 years, while the protein group’s average age was 57.8 years. The difference is very small, but note that it favors the placebo group. In other words, since the patients getting the placebo were younger, they were automatically a bit less at risk than the protein group. In addition, the average amount of time the patients exhibited COVID-19 symptoms before getting the treatment was very similar, 9.8 days for the placebo group and 9.6 days for the protein group.

I do, however, see two potential problems. First, the number of patients in the study is small. As a result, they made a lot of other interesting observations, but they couldn’t determine whether those observations were the result of the protein or random chance. For example, the patients who received the protein were roughly twice as likely to recover within the two-month period than the ones who did not receive the protein. However, because the number of patients is so small, mathematics tells us it is possible that this result is caused by chance and not by a difference between the placebo and the protein.

The other problem, of course, is that this study was performed and reported by the pharmaceutical company that wants to produce and sell the drug. Initially, of course, this makes sense. Studies cost money, so the company that wants to make and sell the drug should spend the money to do the studies. However, before the drug can be approved for general use, there will need to be a larger study with independent analysis. I eagerly await that kind of study.

Science in the Atomic Age is Now Available!

The pandemic delayed it, but Science in the Atomic Age has finally been finished and is available for purchase! The course is targeted at 7th/8th grade, depending on the student’s math level and experience with science. In general, students who are two years from starting algebra and have covered at least a couple of years’ worth of elementary science should take this course. Most publicly-schooled students would take a course like this in 8th grade, but homeschooled students at this age are generally a grade level ahead of their publicly-schooled counterparts. While it can be viewed as a continuation of my Science Through History series, students who have covered elementary science in some other way can use it as well.

The course is arranged so that students get a general introduction to science. It does this by exploring science through the levels of organization found in creation. First, it covers the atom. Students learn not only how scientists currently view the atom, but also how scientists arrived at that view. Throughout the discussion, I emphasize the way scientists dealt with the unknown. When Bohr proposed his model, which was based on quantum theory, he freely admitted that it was crazy, but he thought it had some merit because it could explain experimental results that no other model could explain. I share one of his iconic quotes with the students:1

Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.

I try to emphasize that Bohr couldn’t explain how his model was consistent with the science that was known at the time. However, he was forced to think it had merit because it was so successful at explaining and predicting the results of experiments.

Continue reading “Science in the Atomic Age is Now Available!”

Can a COVID-19 Virus Communicate with Other COVID-19 Viruses?

I am writing this post because a reader asked me a question that I thought was very interesting and relates to a broader concept in biology. Before I answer her question, however, I want to make an important point about the virus that causes COVID-19 and how we should react to it. A few weeks ago, I gave the commencement address to a group of homeschoolers. Before I started my official remarks, I said this:

I am not going to say much about this virus, but I will say this: As a scientist, let me assure you that no one really knows what we should be doing. There are a lot of experts saying a lot of different things, and you should listen to all of them. Then, you should decide what works best for you and your family, and you should start doing it. But once you decide what you and your family should be doing, please please please show grace to those who choose to do something different. Since the experts can’t agree on a proper course of action, there is no reason to expect your neighbor to agree with your course of action.

I think that is the best way to approach this pandemic. The experts still can’t agree on exactly what to do because we just don’t know enough about this virus to make definitive choices. As a result of this ignorance, we must all muddle through this as best we can and realize that none of us has all the correct answers.

Now let me share my reader’s question:

Recently I came across a discussion online about quorum sensing in viruses. The initial topic had been the difference between groups meeting indoors verses outdoors, as many churches are now doing. I had never heard of quorum sensing before, so I did a little research, but I wondered if you would consider addressing this sometime. It sounds pretty fascinating to think viruses and such can actually monitor their environment.

Continue reading “Can a COVID-19 Virus Communicate with Other COVID-19 Viruses?”

C.S. Lewis Never Said That

Perhaps it’s the academic in me, but I am always bothered when I see a quote attributed to someone who never said or wrote it. The situation becomes even more frustrating when it is someone whose work I know well. I was scrolling through my Facebook feed this morning and saw the following:

You do not have a soul.
You are a soul.
You have a body.
-C.S. Lewis

While I appreciate the thought, it was not something C.S. Lewis ever wrote, and I can’t find any record of anyone saying that he heard Lewis say that. In fact, the phrase was written several years before Lewis was born.

It can be found in a magazine called The British Friend, which was an important publication among Quakers in the United Kingdom. The author is discussing the way a Quaker should mourn the death of a loved one. To emphasize that the body is a temporary vessel but the soul is eternal, he states:1

“Never tell a child,” said George Macdonald, “you have a soul. Teach him, you are a soul; you have a body.” As we learn to think of things always in this order, that the body is but the temporary clothing of the soul, our views of death and the unbefittingness of customary mourning will approximate to those of Friends of earlier generations.

Since the author attributes this quote to George Macdonald, a minister Lewis respected and admired, you might say that perhaps C.S. Lewis said this in a lecture, quoting George Macdonald. That could be true, but I seriously doubt the Oxford Don would do that without giving proper attribution!

REFERENCE

1. W. H. F. A., “Be Not Entangled Again in a Yoke of Bondage,” The British Friend July 5, 1892, p. 157.
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Yes, the Coronavirus Bill Was Introduced in 2019. No, It’s Not Because the Pandemic Was Planned.

***PLEASE NOTE: This is not a political post, and all political comments will be deleted without mercy.***

A good friend of mine asked me about something he had seen on Facebook. It wasn’t this particular post, but the message was the same. The image on the left comes from the post I linked. As it shows, the Coronavirus bill that became law on March 27, 2020 (called the CARES ACT) was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on January 24, 2019. That’s long before we knew about the COVID-19 pandemic. How in the world could this bill be introduced in the House before anyone knew about the virus? As the Facebook post says:

Attention: The conspiracy theorists were right in calling this a “plandemic” and the proof can be found at www.congress.gov. Look up H.R. 748- CARES Act (the Bill that was passed for Coronavirus relief).

To someone uninitiated in the vagaries of legislation in the United States, the fact that the bill was introduced almost a year before anyone heard about the novel Coronavirus does seem to confirm that the entire pandemic was planned. However, like most conspiracy theories, a bit of education is all it takes to understand the real reason behind this odd timeline.

The U.S. Constitution says that all spending bills must originate in the U.S. House of Representatives. Thus, to be Constitutional, any spending bill (including the CARES act) must originate in the House. After it passes the House, it moves on to the Senate for consideration. During that process, the Senate can amend the bill, changing things it doesn’t like. However, once the Senate passes an amended bill, it must go back to the House, and it cannot be sent to the President for his signature until the House concurs with the Senate’s version of the bill.

Because Congress wanted the CARES act to move quickly, it essentially skipped the first step. It did so by taking a bill that had already passed the House and been sent to the Senate. That bill was HR 748, which was originally entitled, “Middle Class Health Benefits Tax Repeal Act of 2019.” Its intent was to repeal a tax that the Affordable Care Act placed on “Cadillac” health insurance plans. It passed the House but was never voted on by the Senate. As a result, it just “sat” in the Senate until March of 2020.

At that point, the pandemic was upon us, and the Senate decided it needed to pass a relief bill fast. It took HR 748, stripped the bill of its content, changed the title, and “amended” it by writing an entirely new bill. The details of the bill were crafted with input from the House leadership so that once it passed the Senate, the House would quickly concur with the “amendment” so that it could be signed by the President, who had also been consulted to ensure that he would sign it right away.

So the strange timeline of the CARES act is the result of a “loophole” that the Senate uses in order to speed up the passage of a spending bill, not because the pandemic had been planned ahead of time. You might wonder if using such a “loophole” is really Constitutional. I personally don’t have enough expertise to figure that one out. I have read legal opinions on both sides of the issue, and they just left me with a headache. However, I can tell you that this is not the first time the Senate has used it. In fact, the Affordable Care Act, which was originally called the “Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009,” was passed in the same way.

Another Peer-Reviewed Paper Favoring Intelligent Design

A figure from the paper being discussed, showing how a protein complex (left) can be converted to a graph (middle) to analyze how its parts relate to one another.

The more we learn about the universe, the more we see that it is a product of design. Indeed, for quite some time now, many scientists have recognized that the universe is finely-tuned for life. There are many parameters that govern how things happen in the universe, and they all have the characteristics of being just what they need to be for life to flourish. An electron, for example, is precisely as negative as the proton is positive, despite the fact that they are very, very different particles. If the charges were off by as little as one billionth of one percent, the resulting electrical imbalance in molecules would make even very small objects too unstable to form.1 The most obvious explanation for such fine-tuning is that the universe has been designed for life.

Now, of course, if you don’t want to believe that the universe is a product of design, you can offer any number of desperate alternatives. Perhaps we are just very fortunate. After all, if the universe weren’t designed for life, we wouldn’t be here to study it, so the very fact that we can discover these relationships tells us that the universe just happened to evolve into one that appears to be finely-tuned for life. You could also suggest that there are a ridiculously large number of universes out there. Most of them don’t have life, because they don’t have the proper parameters. However, if there are many, many universes, there’s a high likelihood that at least one will have all the right parameters, making it appear to be finely-tuned for life. You could also argue that there are actually a lot of combinations of parameters that might work for life; we just don’t know them. In that case, the universe’s apparent fine-tuning is an illusion.

While I think the scientific data clearly demonstrate that the universe is designed, I have always said that the most obvious case for design can be put forth by biology. Even the simplest life form on this planet is more complex and well-engineered than anything made by human technology, and most of the biological world makes our best inventions look positively crude by comparison. Well a reader (Victor Ferreira da Silva) sent me a paper in the secular, peer-reviewed literature that claims to have confirmed this fact.

Continue reading “Another Peer-Reviewed Paper Favoring Intelligent Design”

Climate Change Activist Issues an Apology, Which Forbes Censors

Author Michael Shellenberger (click for credit)
Author Michael Shellenberger’s career has been one of climate activism. He was named one of Time magazine’s Heroes of the Environment back in 2008. He and co-author Ted Nordhaus wrote the ground-breaking book Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility, which won the 2008 Green Book Award. He now runs Environmental Progress, which has two goals: to lift all humans out of poverty, and to save the natural environment.

Recently, he penned a letter that was originally published at the Forbes website. However, it was quickly taken down, because it didn’t conform to the narrative that Forbes is trying to impose. This isn’t the first time Forbes has published a reasonable article that was then removed for violating its orthodoxy, and it probably won’t be the last. After all, as more people learn the science behind global climate change, aka global warming, more articles challenging Forbes’ dogma will surface. Some of them will probably make it past the censors, but when their heresy is later exposed, they will be put on Forbes’ Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

Fortunately for all of us, Shellenberger’s organization has defied the Inquisition and has published the article that the censors at Forbes removed. I encourage you to read the entire article, but in brief, Shellenberger offers an apology on behalf of those who have been trying to frighten you regarding global climate change, aka global warming. Why is he apologizing? Because he knows enough science to realize that

Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem.

Unfortunately, as his letter says, he stayed silent about the science because he believes that cutting carbon-dioxide emissions is a good thing. Thus, he worked alongside the fear-mongers without speaking out against their anti-science rhetoric. Now, however, he thinks that the assault against science has gotten out of control, and he was forced speak out.

I encourage you to read his entire apology. Not only will you learn some good science, you will see how an honorable person admits that he acted wrongly.