Sacred Bovines Sacred Bovines THE IRONIES OF MISPLACED ASSUMPTIONS IN BIOLOGY Douglas Allchin 1 1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2017 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Allchin, Douglas, 1956– author. Title: Sacred bovines : the ironies of misplaced assumptions in biology / Douglas Allchin. Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016050784 | ISBN 9780190490362 (Hardback) Subjects: LCSH: Biology—Research—Methodology. | Biology—Study and teaching. | Fallacies (Logic) | Errors, Scientific. Classification: LCC QH324.A45 2017 | DDC 570.72—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016050784 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America CONTENTS List of Figures  vii Prologue: The Ironies of Misplaced Assumptions  1 PART I The Way of Science 1 Monsters and Marvels  7 2 Ahead of the Curve  14 3 Marxism and Cell Biology  19 4 The Messy Story behind the Most Beautiful Experiment in Biology  26 5 The Dogma of “the” Scientific Method  31 PART II Darwin, Evolution, and Society 6 Was Darwin a Social Darwinist?  37 7 Social Un- Darwinism  43 8 A More Fitting Analogy  50 9 The Domesticated Gene  57 PART III Making Mistakes 10 A Comedy of Scientific Errors  67 11 Nobel Ideals and Noble Errors  72 12 Celebrating Darwin’s Errors  79 PART IV What Counts as Science 13 Science beyond Scientists  89 14 Skepticism and the Architecture of Trust  95 15 Science Con Artists  104 vi Contents PART V Naturalizing Cultural Values 16 Male, Female, and/ or — ?  117 17 Monsters and the Tyranny of Normality  125 18 To Be Human  132 19 Genes R Us  141 20 The Peppered Moths, A Study in Black and White  146 PART VI Myth- Conceptions 21 Alexander Fleming’s “Eureka” Moment  155 22 Round versus Wrinkled: Gregor Mendel as Icon  163 23 William Harvey and Capillaries  169 24 The Tragic Hero of Childbed Fever  175 PART VII Values and Biology Education 25 Respect for Life  183 26 Hands- Off Dissection?  186 27 Organisms, Modified, Genetically  192 28 Close to Nature  198 Epilogue: Challenging Sacred Bovines, Fostering Creativity  203 Afterword for Educators: Sacred Bovines in the Classroom  209 Acknowledgments  215 Notes  217 References  229 Image Credits  245 Index  247 LIST OF FIGURES 1.1 Petrus Gonsalus 6 1.2 Hairy Arrigo, Fool Pietro and Dwarf Amon 9 1.3 Ulisse Aldrovandi’s bogus dragon 12 2.1 The Keeling Curve 14 2.2 A young David Keeling 15 3.1 Alex Novikoff 20 3.2 Illustration from Climbing Our Family Tree 24 4.1 Matt Meselson and Frank Stahl 28 6.1 Charles Darwin with his son William 38 7.1 Herbert Spencer 47 8.1 The peacock’s tail 53 8.2 Pollination mutualism 55 9.1 Vampire bats 60 9.2 The domesticated gene 64 10.1 Joseph Priestley 68 10.2 Priestley’s error on the restoration of air by plants 70 11.1 Ten Nobel laureates who erred 73 12.1 The parallel roads of Glen Roy 82 12.2 A native of Tierra del Fuego 83 13.1 Science in the news 90 14.1 Trust 96 15.1 A science con artist 105 15.2 Some cases of manufactured doubt in science 111 16.1 Sex- changing clownfish 119 16.2 Hermaphroditic snails 119 16.3 Heterostyly 122 17.1 Conjoined twins Ritta and Christina 128 17.2 Joseph Merrick, known as the “Elephant Man” 129 18.1 Four tool- using animals 133 18.2 Chimpanzee teaching tool use 135 18.3 Cleaner wrasse 136 19.1 Identical twins as clones 142 20.1 The peppered moth, Biston betularia 146 20.2 Unfamiliar gray forms of the peppered moth 147 21.1 Alexander Fleming 156 21.2 Alternative histories of penicillin 158 21.3 Penicillin work group at Oxford University 160 viii List of Figures 22.1 Starch grains of wrinkled versus smooth pea seeds 164 23.1 William Harvey 170 23.2 Harvey’s demonstration of blood flow in the veins 171 24.1 Ignaz Semmelweis 175 25.1 Household pesticides 184 26.1 16th- century anatomical drawing and 20th-c entury reinterpretation 188 27.1 Domesticated dogs 194 27.2 Varieties hybridized in the domestication of modern wheat 195 28.1 Lichen 200 Prologue: The Ironies of Misplaced Assumptions What seems more obvious than male and female as natural categories? Or that because genes govern our heritable traits, all the way down to cellular processes, they thus define our identity? Or that Darwin’s principle of “survival of the fittest” aptly describes our fundamental selfishness in a competitive society? Or that biol- ogy typically advances by leaps of creative genius, epitomized by the rare achieve- ments of our scientific heroes? These notions are deeply rooted in our cultural psyche. Sometimes, they achieve an almost reverential status. We might call them “sacred cows.” But because they concern biology and the nature of science, one might also entertain slightly more scientific terminology. I have playfully dubbed them sacred bovines. In the essays that follow, I extend that lighthearted spirit and invite you to reconsider these and other apparent truisms in biology. I hope you find the excursion enriching, as well as entertaining. Our misplaced assumptions about biology are many. We may benefit by expos- ing them and learning how they shape our thinking and occasionally lead us astray. In addition, on a deeper level, we can examine all the errors as an ensemble. How did we come to misdirect our trust? How do our lapses reflect how we think, both individually and collectively? Musing on our errors offers the prospect of develop- ing ways to think more effectively. One great irony of evolution is how our brains, so well adapted in many respects, can indeed make mistakes. What we know—o r what we think we know— is not always reliable. Our minds can err. It is a very human quality, expressed in the familiar saying “To err is human.” We are particularly prone to jump to conclusions. We tend to grab the first idea we encounter and run with it. So we fail to consider other, possibly better alterna- tives. We rarely wonder whether the pattern we perceive is incomplete or might reflect an unrepresentative sample. We rely just on the information that is readily at hand. Psychologists call it availability bias.1 With more information, we frequently find that we were wrong. Worse, from some perspectives, we also tend to insulate ourselves from recogniz- ing, and thus fixing, these very mistakes. We use early impressions to filter later per- ceptions. We generate search images and models. Things that fit the pre-e stablished templates are more readily noticed. We embrace evidence that confirms an original