Common Sense

It don't make much sense that common sense
don't make no sense no more.

— John Prine

My keyring holds two identical looking keys. 

One unlocks the front door; the other, the back.

Murphy's Law governs my keyring.

No matter which door I'm hoping to unlock, I always choose the wrong key.

That defies common sense.

But common sense is passé, anyway.

Today, we're "structurally stupid."

Or are we?

When I use my housekey, I do so in the firm belief that it will open the lock.

Even though it never does the first time, I believe it will.

I presuppose that turning the key will unlock the door.

Why do I believe so?

Experience. 

Know-how.

Trial and error.

The very same trial and error that underpins science.

I have an inductive means for making judgements about cause and effect in the real world.

Those means aren't perfect, but they're good enough to get me into the house.

They go by the name “common sense.”

No, we're not structurally stupid.

Some of us just prefer to be assholes.

Intel Inside

Aristotle, the father of biology, believed purpose distinguished living things from lifeless matter and that purpose drove the evolution of species.

Rather oddly, he also believed that purpose came from "inside" every creature—that purpose was in fact the cause of the creature.

Aristotle's theory pretty much ruled Westerners' ideas about evolution for 2,400 years, when suddenly Darwin exploded onto the scene in 1859, claiming evolution was random and purposeless.

Now, 163 years after the publication of Darwin's On the Origins of the Species, a new study reveals Aristotle was right all along: there is purpose behind mutations, but it comes both from "inside" and "outside" the creature.

The study shows human genes mutate not randomly, but in response to outside pressures.

The University of Haifa researchers responsible for the study have produced evidence showing that the rate of mutation of the genes that protect us against malaria is faster among Africans than among Europeans.

Because malaria grips Africa more so than Europe, the researchers concluded the genes mutated not by accident, but to help Africans survive the disease.

Darwin's insistence that mutations were random looks wrong.

"The results show the mutation is not generated at random, but instead originates preferentially in the gene and in the population where it is of adaptive significance," one researcher told Science X.

"We hypothesize that evolution is influenced by two sources of information: external information that is natural selection, and internal information that is accumulated in the genome through the generations and impacts the origination of mutations."

Since Darwin's book, scientists have assumed that mutations occur by accident and that natural selection—survival of the fittest—favors beneficial accidents, leading to evolutionary adaptations.

But the new findings suggest otherwise.

"The results suggest that complex information accumulated in the genome through the generations impacts mutation, and therefore mutation-specific origination rates can respond in the long-term to specific environmental pressures," the researcher said. 

"Mutations may be generated nonrandomly in evolution after all."

The study opens doors to reimagining evolution and to curing diseases caused by mutations such as cancer. While lending no credence to creationism, it also makes old Aristotle look pretty smart.

The study appears in Genome Research.

Big Shots

That any considerable degree of protection against influenza was conferred by the vaccine seems unlikely.

— Jordan & Sharp

In November 1918, as the Spanish flu swept through American towns and cities, epidemiologists raced to confirm that the Pfeiffer bacillus vaccine—the state of the art at the time—really worked.

Most doctors had their doubts.

Lacking standards for what constituted a valid clinical trial, physicians couldn't say whether the Pfeiffer bacillus vaccine did any good.

Most trials in 1918 were ridden with faults, doctors knew. 

Selection bias in both experimental and control groups was common. So were sloppy vaccine mixing, patient observation, and data collection.

Determined to test the Pfeiffer bacillus vaccine rigorously, two University of Chicago scientists, E.O. Jordan and W. B. Sharp, took the unprecedented step of injecting the vaccine into more than 5,000 inmates of two Illinois mental hospitals.

Jordan and Sharp chose the hospitals because, relative to outside populations, the inmates had been spared exposure to the Spanish flu, and because none of the inmates had participated in a previous vaccine trial.

Based on their willingness to be jabbed, the hospital inmates—including many young children—were divided into experimental and control groups and given three shots in the course of three weeks. 

Half the shots contained the vaccine; half contained water.

To supplement the trial, Jordan and Sharp also inoculated over 500 residents—all children—at a school for the blind and a school for the deaf, under the same precise conditions.

Trial-participants at the hospitals and schools were then observed for six months, to see how many would come down with the Spanish flu.

Just about all did, prompting Jordan and Sharp to conclude that, despite enthusiastic claims by its proponents, the Pfeiffer bacillus vaccine was a bust.

Without an effective vaccine against the Spanish flu, medical and public health professionals across the US turned to other measures to combat the disease. 

Quarantines, school closures, bans on public gatherings, and mandatory mask-wearing became common in the winter and spring of 1919. 

By Easter, with 675,000 Americans dead, the disease had run its course.

No one knew why.

"Herd immunity" was suggested, although Jordan and Sharp were doubtful.

It was not until 1942 that epidemiologists Thomas Francis and Jonas Salk discovered a vaccine against the Spanish flu. 

They found that by injecting people with a half-dead virus, they could create immunity.

Like Jordan and Sharp, they tested their vaccine on psychiatric patients, inoculating 8,000 inmates at Michigan mental hospitals. 

Unlike Jordan and Sharp's, Francis and Salk's vaccine worked, increasing immunity 85%.

Thank goodness we don't have to wait two decades for an effective Covid-19 vaccine to appear. It's here. 

I received my first dose yesterday.

Too bad big shots don't get it.

Magic Mushrooms

Our parents read us stories like Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz and are suddenly saying, "Why are you taking drugs?" Well, hello!

— Grace Slick

Pharmacologists at Johns Hopkins have discovered psilocybin cures depression.

They treated 24 people with a history of depression by giving them two doses of psilocybin, the psychoactive component in magic mushrooms, two weeks apart.

Each treatment lasted five hours, during which the subject laid on a couch wearing eye shades and headphones that played music.

Of the 24 people, 12 were no longer depressed after a month and four showed a 70% reduction in symptoms.

Psychiatrist Alan Davis said “the magnitude of the effect we saw was about four times larger than what clinical trials have shown for traditional antidepressants on the market.”

He added that, since most other treatments for depression take weeks or months to work and may have undesirable effects, the findings "could be a game changer."

UPDATE, MARCH 18, 2021: Oregon announced the formation of a Psilocybin Advisory Board this week, according to The New York Times. The board will oversee the therapeutic use of psychedelic mushrooms in licensed facilities.

One Man's Meat

Cows are delighted.

University of Tokyo researchers have grown beef in a lab, reports Nature.

While only a tiny morsel, the steak-like object paves the way to large-scale, lab-grown beef production.

Scientists' past efforts to grow beef in a lab have produced only a mince no discerning consumer would eat.

But the Tokyo University team has matched the real thing, growing cow cells in long strands that resemble muscle fibers.

When the researchers stimulated the cultured cells with electricity, the strands contracted, the way real muscles do.

“We have developed steak," lead researcher Shoji Takeuchi says.

Takeuchi's team plans next to introduce fat and blood into the morsel, "to make the meat more realistic."

No one has tried eating the product, because the University of Tokyo's bioethics committee has yet to approve that step.

The Peril of Positive Thinking

Disease is an impudent opinion.

— Phineas Quimby 

Superspreader-in-chief Donald Trump can't take all the heat for the 4.5 million coronavirus cases in the US. He shares the blame with Phineas Quimby.

Quimby was a New England watch-repairman who in the Gilded Age spread the gospel of "New Thought" (also known as "Christian Science").

Told by a country doctor he had incurable TB, Quimby decided "doctors sow the seed of disease, which they nurse 'til it grows to a belief." Determined to heal himself, Quimby set out to study animal magnetism, concluding from his readings that the mind is all-powerful and alone can cure any ill. It can also make you rich.

Quimby's New Thought is still with us; today, we call it "Positive Thinking."

And Trump is Positive Thinking's poobah. 

Like many a wealthy American, he grew up imbibing this swill at the dinner table (Positive Thinking was rich Republicans' rejoinder to FDR's New Deal). He also imbibed Positive Thinking at church: the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale, author of the best-selling The Power of Positive Thinking, was the Trump family's pastor. Peale even officiated at Trump's first wedding.

Despite warnings by scientists, Trump continues to call the virus' effects "fake news," flouting facts most intelligent people accept.

He's deep in the grip of Phineas Quimby.