bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Lost in the Woods
Authors: Lupia Arthur
Published: November 2020

Chapter 5 offered a logic that clarifies the kinds of information that can increase knowledge and competence. In the coming chapters, I explain how educators can more effectively communicate this kind of information to others. From this point forward in part I, I focus on the time after an educator has identified information that can increase desired knowledge and competences. An educator in this situation faces an important challenge: Just because information can increase knowledge and competence does not mean that it will do so. For information to have these effects, prospective learners must think about the information in certain ways. For example, if a piece of information is to increase another person’s competence, that person must pay attention to the information. If the prospective learner ignores the information or processes it in ways that an educator did not anticipate, then the information may not have the educator’s desired effect. In chapters 6 to 8, I use insights from research on information processing to describe two necessary conditions for persuading an audience to think about information in ways that increase knowledge and competence. These conditions are gaining an audience’s attention and having sufficient source credibility. I focus on these conditions not only because of their logical necessity, but also because they are two factors over which educators often have some degree of control. “Not so fast!” This is a reaction that I sometimes get when suggesting that we base educational strategies on basic facts about attention and credibility, rather than continuing to rely on often-faulty intuitions about how others learn. Indeed, I have met many educators who initially argue that: “Being an expert in (say, deliberative democracy) makes me persuasive. Citizens and policymakers should respect me and be interested in what I have to say.” This is an attractive notion. It is also an illusion in many cases. Learning is a process that has knowable biological and psychological properties. A fundamental implication of these properties is that people ignore almost all of the information to which they could attend and people forget about almost all of the information to which they pay attention.
Building Source Credibility
Authors: Lupia Arthur
Published: November 2020

If a person pays attention to a piece of information, they form a judgment about it. In many cases, the judgment is that they do not need to pay more attention to it. In some cases, however, the judgment is that they want to think more about the new information and attempt to integrate its content into what they already believe. What judgments prospective learners form about information affects when and how an educator can increase others’ knowledge and competence. Many civic educators struggle with the fact that information in politicized environments is often judged differently than information offered in other environments. Words and images in politicized environments are scrutinized, interpreted, and attacked in ways that rarely, if ever, occur in other educational settings. Educators who are used to communicating in nonpolitical environments, and who then wade into a politicized environment, often find these dynamics surprising. Actually, “surprising” is a gentle way to put it. Many educators learn that educational strategies that work well in classrooms or at professional conferences are disastrous when attempted in more emotionally charged and politicized environments. Many educators who venture into more politicized contexts find that their information is ignored. Others find their words misinterpreted and twisted. Many have difficulty explaining why their attempts to convey their expertise to others in these important environments were not more constructively received. In this chapter, I examine how communication dynamics change as learning environments become more politicized. To help educators better manage these dynamics, I highlight two factors that affect source credibility in political contexts. These factors are perceived common interests and perceived relative knowledge. Each factor has significant effects on how prospective learners interpret words and images. Educators who understand these dynamics can better identify information that prospective learners are—and are not—likely to believe. Such knowledge can help educa¬tors increase knowledge and competence more effectively—and reduce unwanted surprises. . . . The chapter’s main lessons are as follows: When prospective learners can interpret information in multiple ways, their perceptions of an educator’s motives and expertise can affect whether or not they pay attention to the information and what inferences they draw from it. . . .
Costs and Benefits
Authors: Lupia Arthur
Published: November 2020

Education is seldom “free” for anyone who participates in it. It requires people to give time, effort, or money in exchange for the possibility of increased knowledge and competence. Educators devote resources to presentations, syllabi, textbooks, websites, videos, and other presentations. Every one of these products takes time and effort to prepare. Students also face costs. Education can require a student to sacrifice alternative opportunities, such as spending time with loved ones and engaging in recreational activities. Are these costs worth paying? When costs are a concern, educators gain incentives to provide information that produces positive net benefits. Once we contemplate net benefits and to whom they accrue, the concept of paying too much for an educational outcome becomes a significant concern. If prospective learners believe that an educator is going to ask them to learn information that is of no value to them, they are likely to view the situation as one that imposes time and energy costs in exchange for no tangible benefit. When made such offers, prospective learners tend to opt out. So providing too much (or the wrong) information can be costly, and by reducing others’ willingness to participate, it can cause otherwise promising educational endeavors to fail. In situations when providing information is a way to increase a beneficial competence, another related question arises: Who should pay? Answering this question can be difficult. To see how, suppose that we have identified information that is necessary for a particular audience to increase a valuable competence. Suppose, however, that most of the benefits of this increased competence accrue to someone other than the members of that audience. Such situations are not uncommon in politics. In politics, one group’s actions often affect others. For example, suppose that childless voters in a local school board election will cast the decisive votes on a matter that affects the quality of life for other people’s children. Suppose that it is costly for the childless voters to learn what they need to know in order to make the best choice for the children. Suppose, moreover, that our competence criterion places great weight on the children’s well-being.
All in Good Measure
Authors: Lupia Arthur
Published: November 2020

This chapter is about how to word recall questions effectively. An example of why this topic matters occurred just days before the opening of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. At that time, a New York Times headline proclaimed that “1 of 5 in New Survey Express Some Doubt About the Holocaust.” The Times article’s lead paragraph described the finding in greater detail (emphasis added): . . . A poll released yesterday [sic] found that 22 percent of adults and 20 percent of high school students who were surveyed said they thought it was possible that Nazi Germany’s extermination of six million Jews never happened. In addition to the 22 percent of adult respondents to the survey by the Roper Organization who said it seemed possible that the Holocaust never happened, 12 percent more said they did not know if it was possible or impossible, according to the survey’s sponsor, the American Jewish Committee. . . . Reactions to this finding were swift. Benjamin Mead, president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, called the findings “a Jewish tragedy.” Elie Wiesel, a Nobel Laureate and concentration camp survivor, conveyed shock and disappointment: “What have we done? We have been working for years and years … I am shocked. I am shocked that 22 percent … oh, my God.” Similar headlines appeared across the country. In the months that followed these reports, many struggled to explain the finding. Some blamed education, as a Denver Post editorial described: . . . It’s hardly surprising that some Americans have swallowed the myth that the Holocaust never happened… . [E] ither these Americans have suffered a tragic lapse of memory, or they have failed to grasp even the rudiments of modern history… . Such widespread ignorance could lull future generations into dropping their guard against the continuing menace of ethnic intolerance, with potentially devastating consequences… . To this end, the public schools must obviously do a better job of teaching 20th century history, even if it means giving shorter shrift to the Civil War or the Revolution. . . .
Predicting the Chemistry Inside a Cell
Authors: McFarland Ben
Published: November 2020

The process of scientific discovery is something like a walk near Freswick Castle. I assume you’ve never been there. (Neither have I, but a friend has.) Freswick Castle stands at the end of Scotland’s northeast end, at the mouth of the Burn of Freswick in the district of Caithness. As of this writing, it is unlisted in Google Maps, and I had to manually scan the coast to find it. Outside the castle is a simple, unlabeled structure that doubles as a biochemical parable. The castle itself is narrow and three stories tall, with orange shingles and gray stone, set on an arc of narrow beach between hills to the north and cliffs to the south. The building is approximately the cruciform shape of a shrunken cathedral, with the rightward wing moved to the top of the structure so it resembles a lowercase f. If you wander the grounds near Freswick Castle, you will discover a stone wall in the wind-blown waves of yellow- green grass, worn but still standing firm like Hadrian’s Wall. From above, it is a period preceding the castle’s f. Let’s approach this as a scientist, with measurement. From the castle side, this structure resembles the circular stump of a roofless tower, eight feet tall and twice that wide. The stones are ancient sand, compacted and weathered, stained different shades of red from iron deposited millions of years ago, but the mortar is new. But inspection is not enough—we should go in. Walk around to the other side, and an opening appears, as shown in Figure 2.1. The structure is not a closed circle, but it is a spiral wall open to the sea, and to you. Inside, a small stone bench invites you to sit. A window slit next to the bench is an eye to the outside. Surrounded by a jigsaw of rocks, you can hear the echo of waves all around and watch the blue-gray sky above. If the spiral’s opening is a mouth, then you are Jonah in the whale. You are both inside and outside at once.
The Continuing Process of Restoration, 1948–Present
Authors: Leopold Estella B.
Published: November 2020

The process of restoration of the Shack lands did not end with Dad’s passing. Quite the contrary. It was picked up by several of his children and by some key neighbors and Wisconsin-based foundations, and ultimately by the Leopold Foundation staff, which continued by expanding the prairies. In this regard, some special recognition is due my sister Nina and her second husband, Charles Bradley, for their initial work developing new prairie areas in Sauk County. Their methods in building a prairie were novel additions to the work/technology that Aldo Leopold and John Curtis had started at the UW Arboretum in Madison. During the years 1940–1948, Dad continued to purchase more acres, so that by 1948 our holdings were about 350 acres in Fairfield Township, Sauk County. These acres were all contiguous with the original Shack lands. Nearby, Mother and Dad’s friends the Thomas Coleman family had over the years enjoyed the log cabin they had built on their land high above Lake Chapman overlooking the great marsh and floodplain. Reed Coleman, the younger son of Tom Coleman, with conservation in mind, in time wanted to expand the land holdings his father had purchased on the south side of the river road across from Lake Chapman. Reed and his colleague and friend Howard Mead laid a plan for the L. R. Head Foundation to gradually purchase nearby parcels of land as they became available from retiring farmers. The Head Foundation was able to compile a huge protected reserve surrounding the 350 or so acres that Dad had bought. It was a creative effort to protect the land of the region from being degraded by home developers and the like. Over the years from 1950 to the 1970s the Head Foundation succeeded in building what is now called the Aldo Leopold Memorial Reserve. This expansive project served indeed to stave off local development. Reed said that his effort was inspired by witnessing the subdividing of the old Gilbert farm along the river into slices of land for summer homes, and he did not want this to happen around either the Shack or the original Coleman land area.
Epilogue: Family and Familiarity
Authors: Leopold Estella B.
Published: November 2020

“As many as possible should share in the ownership of the land and thus be bound to it by economic interest, by the investment of love and work, by family loyalty, by memory and by tradition.” This statement by Wendell Berry in his Art of the Commonplace says it all, in my view. Each of those elements can be so important in attending to one’s land. The fact that the Shack land purchase during the Depression came at a reasonable price was indeed a fortunate happenstance, as it gave us a new opportunity. These eighty acres of failed Wisconsin farmland at the Leopold Shack that became Dad’s experiment carried us all, a family of seven, into a communal work project. Wendell Berry’s comment that “ancient wisdom . . . tells us that good work is our salvation and our joy” was indeed our experience. Aldo Leopold was an astute observer of nature and did not miss much. He traditionally carried a sharp pencil and a tiny notebook in his vest pocket where he noted pertinent developments and events that he wanted to register in the Shack journal or think about—things he was seeing that might be part of a new idea about the land. Some of what he saw would rub off on us, when he would turn to us and ask probing questions to explain it. One instance I particularly remember. We were standing by the river, when he pointed and said, “Baby, look at that island. Why do you suppose that the big cottonwoods are on the upstream end of that island and the little ones are growing at the bottom end?” I struggled with the issue until I remembered that the river was moving sand all the time to the downstream end of the island. That meant that the upstream end was older and the lower end was younger. Ha! That’s the answer. In fact, theoretically one could date the upper and lower ends of the island using cottonwoods. A nice thought. Dad was a great storyteller. That made him a good teacher.
Corporate Starchitects and Unique Icons
Authors: Sklair Leslie
Published: November 2020

Although some find it unpleasant and others find it flippant, the term ‘starchitect’ is theoretically useful for the sociology of architecture. It connects the world of the architect with the world of celebrity, and it con­nects architecture as an esoteric aesthetic practice with architecture as an industry in the public eye. Over the last few years, the term has become well established in the mass media and in trade publications, and it is also, slowly, starting to be taken seriously by scholars in and around architecture (e.g., McNeill 2009, Ponzini and Nastasi 2011; Knox 2012; Gravari-Barbas and Renard-Delautre 2015). The quest for fame, of course, is not new. Leon Battista Alberti, universal man, prodigious self-promoter of the early renaissance, and still an architectural notable, wrote an allegorical play on fame in the 1440s, recently reprinted (Alberti 1987). Neither Frank Lloyd Wright (1869–1959) nor Le Corbusier (1887–1965, Corb) shunned public­ity; both were what we would now call celebrities. Their rivalry is well documented, mostly in arguments around different conceptions of modernism—they never met. Noting that Wright called the Villa Savoye, one of Corb’s most celebrated buildings, ‘a box on stilts’, the cultural historian Nicholas Cox Weber, in his life of Corb, comments: ‘Today, it is an icon of twentieth-century design and has spawned countless imitations all over the world’ (2008: 288; see also Etlin 1994). Wright and Corb died around the time capitalist globalization was beginning to establish itself as a truly global system, and their own lives contained significant measures of socially produced iconicity. Although these terms were not used about them during their lifetimes, they can be considered proto-global and proto-iconic architects, by which I mean that the terms ‘global’ and ‘iconic’ are fruitfully employed today about them and their surviving architectural works. So, before considering the starchitects of our time, it is instructive first of all to delve briefly into the careers of these two most iconic architects of the first half of the 20th century. Wright and Corb both enjoy institutional legacies and continue to have plenty of enthusiasts.
Archival Websites in the Humanities and Sciences
Authors: Gross Alan G. , Harmon Joseph E.
Published: November 2020

A South African by birth, white, of German ancestry, fluent in Afrikaans, Helena Pohlandt-McCormick spent six months in her native country in 1993 and a full year in 1994 studying the Soweto uprising. During that time, she assiduously examined the relevant archives but was unable to find any of the posters she knew the marching students carried: . . . From the transcripts and correspondence of the Cillié Commission I knew that the Commission had received, from the police, many posters and banners that had been confiscated during various student marches in 1976. None of them would have fit into a traditional archive document box and, though mentioned on the list of evidence associated with the Cillié Commission, they were initially not to be found. I continued to request that archivists search the repositories—without success. Until, one day, perhaps exasperated by my persistence or wanting to finally prove to me that there was nothing to be found in the space associated with K345, the archival designator of my Soweto materials, one of the archivists relented and asked me to accompany her into the vaults in order to help her search for these artifacts of the uprising! To be sure, there were no posters to be found in the shelf space that housed the roughly nine hundred boxes of evidence associated with the Cillié Commission. But then, as my disappointed eyes swept the simultaneously ominous and tantalizing interior of the vault, I saw a piece of board protruding over the topmost edge of the shelf. There, almost 9 feet into the air, in the shadowy space on top of the document shelves, lay a pile of posters and banners. . . . We can understand Pohlandt-McCormick’s mounting sense of excitement. It is not just the discovery itself; it is the sense of being in touch with the past—literally in touch. It is the knowledge that no photograph can do justice to any 3D object, whether it is a collection of posters, a cache of cold fusion memorabilia, or Enrico Fermi’s Nobel medal.
Nuclear Power An Optimistic Beginning, A Clouded Future
Authors: McElroy Michael B.
Published: November 2020

Nuclear power was widely regarded as the Holy Grail for energy supply when first introduced into the US electricity market in the late 1950s and early 1960s— power so cheap that utilities could scarcely afford the cost of the meters needed to monitor its consumption and charge for its use. The first civilian reactor, with a capacity to produce 60 MW of electricity (MWe), went into service in Shippingport, Pennsylvania, in late 1957. By the end of 1974, 55 reactors were in operation in the United States with a combined capacity of about 32 GWe. The largest individual power plant had a capacity of 1.25 GWe: the capacity of reactors constructed since 1970 averaged more than 1 GWe. The industry then went into a state of suspended animation. A series of highly publi¬cized accidents was responsible for this precipitous change in the fortunes of the industry. Only 13 reactors were ordered in the United States after 1975, and all of these orders were subsequently cancelled. Public support for nuclear power effectively disappeared in the United States following events that unfolded at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania on March 28, 1979. It suffered a further setback, not only in the United States but also worldwide, in the wake of the disaster that struck at the Chernobyl nuclear facility in the Ukraine on April 26, 1986. The most recent confidence- sapping development occurred in Japan, at the Fukushima- Daiichi nuclear complex. Floodwaters raised by a tsunami triggered by a major offshore earthquake resulted in a series of self- reinforcing problems in March 2011, culminating in a highly publicized release of radioactivity to the environment that forced the evacuation of more than 300,000 people from the surrounding communities If not a death blow, this most recent accident certainly clouded prospects for the future of nuclear power, not only in Japan but also in many other parts of the world. Notably, Germany elected to close down its nuclear facilities, leading to increased dependence on coal to meet its demand for electricity, seriously complicating its objective to markedly reduce the nation’s overall emissions of CO2.
Power from the Sun Abundant But Expensive
Authors: McElroy Michael B.
Published: November 2020

As discussed in the preceding chapter, wind resources available from nonforested, nonurban, land-based environments in the United States are more than sufficient to meet present and projected future US demand for electricity. Wind resources are comparably abundant elsewhere. As indicated in Table 10.2, a combination of onshore and offshore wind could accommodate prospective demand for electricity for all of the countries classified as top- 10 emitters of CO2. Solar energy reaching the Earth’s surface averages about 200 W m– 2 (Fig. 4.1). If this power source could be converted to electricity with an efficiency of 20%, as little as 0.1% of the land area of the United States (3% of the area of Arizona) could supply the bulk of US demand for electricity. As discussed later in this chapter, the potential source of power from the sun is significant even for sun- deprived countries such as Germany. Wind and solar energy provide potentially complementary sources of electricity in the sense that when the supply from one is low, there is a good chance that it may be offset by a higher contribution from the other. Winds blow strongest typically at night and in winter. The potential supply of energy from the sun, in contrast, is highest during the day and in summer. The source from the sun is better matched thus than wind to respond to the seasonal pattern of demand for electricity, at least for the United States (as indicated in Fig. 10.5).There are two approaches available to convert energy from the sun to electricity. The first involves using photovoltaic (PV) cells, devices in which absorption of radiation results directly in production of electricity. The second is less direct. It requires solar energy to be captured and deployed first to produce heat, with the heat used subsequently to generate steam, the steam applied then to drive a turbine. The sequence in this case is similar to that used to generate electricity in conventional coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear- powered systems. The difference is that the energy source is light from the sun rather than a carbon- based fossil fuel or fissionable uranium.
Marxism and Cell Biology
Authors: Allchin Douglas
Published: November 2020

Few biologists today have likely heard of cell biologist Alex Novikoff (1913–1987) (Figure 3.1). But the fruits of his science are well known. He helped discover the cell organelle called the lysosome. In 1955 he visualized what Christian de Duve had characterized only by chemical means. He documented the first known enzyme of the Golgi body, another cell organelle. He developed ways to stain lysosomes and peroxisomes (also cell organelles) that were critical to identifying them and studying them with the electron microscope. Novikoff also was targeted by the anti-Communist movement in the mid-twentieth century. In 1953 he was dismissed from the University of Vermont for declining to answer questions before a congressional committee. In 1974 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. His FBI file then contained 822 pages. Novikoff ’s fascinating case raises important issues about how science and political ideology relate. In 1982 the American Society for Cell Biology honored Novikoff with its prestigious E. B. Wilson Award for his foundational contributions to the emerging field. Yet much earlier, in the late 1930s, he was indeed a member of the Communist Party. For him, it expressed a quest for social justice and an appreciation of Karl Marx’s scientific posture toward society. While he researched experimental embryology as a PhD student at Columbia University, he also helped write and distribute the Communist newsletter at Brooklyn College, where he taught. When the college tried to disrupt the teachers’ union, Novikoff was secretly listed as a suspected Communist. When World War II began, Novikoff wanted to serve the nation. He applied for a medical commission in the military. He was twice denied, however, owing to doubts about his loyalty. He later consulted for the army on two biological films—until it found his vague Communist record. (One wonders: Did someone imagine that he could link enzymes and carbohydrate metabolism to the violent overthrow of the US government?) Later, Novikoff lost his faculty position—not for any political activity but for invoking the Fifth Amendment in anti-Communist hearings, and despite recommendations from fellow faculty describing his “tireless” research efforts.
A Comedy of Scientific Errors
Authors: Allchin Douglas
Published: November 2020

William Shakespeare may well have foreshadowed the modern television sitcom. His comic misadventures were expertly crafted. In A Comedy of Errors, for example, twins with twin servants, each pair separated at birth, converge unbeknownst to each other in the same town. Mistaken identity leads to miscommunication. More mistaken identity follows, with more misdelivered messages and yet more misinterpretations. Hilarious consequences ensue. It is a stock comedic formula in modern entertainment: A character first makes an unintentional error. Then ironically, as he tries to correct it, things only get laughably worse. Science, we imagine, is safeguarded against such embarrassing episodes. In the lore of scientists, echoed among teachers, science is “self-correcting.” Replication, in particular, ensures that errors are exposed for what they are. Research promptly returns to its fruitful trajectory. Serious stuff, science. But just such a case of compounded error occurred in late eighteenth-century science. Joseph Priestley (Figure 10.1) discovered that plants can restore the “goodness” of air that had been fouled by animals or combustion. But others could not replicate his results. Not even Priestley himself. After further work, Priestley attributed the observed restorative effect to a different causal factor—only to find later that the new conclusion itself was mistaken! For us now, the story seems amus­ing, but nonetheless instructive. The case invites us to reconsider the sacred bovine that science is self-correcting, and especially that replication is central to exposing errors. Indeed, this reassessment leads us deeper into reflecting on our romantic idealizations of science, an enduring legacy of Priestley’s Enlightenment period, centuries ago. The story begins in the early 1770s, in Leeds, England. Joseph Priestley—minister, avid experimentalist, and self-taught chemist—had been investigating various kinds of air. At this time, he was examining various ways of making air noxious: by the putrefaction of dead mice or cabbage, by burning charcoal in it, by mice breathing it, or by candles burning out in it (all processes that exhaust the oxygen, in today’s terms).
Science beyond Scientists
Authors: Allchin Douglas
Published: November 2020

A message of alarm arrives from your cousins: What do you know about the science of “fracking”? Fracking is a way to extract oil and gas. It could potentially generate lots of welcome income in their impoverished rural community—while supplying energy domestically. But possibly dangerous chemicals are injected into the earth and collect in waste ponds. Some residents are worrying about contaminated groundwater. It’s potentially quite frightening. But also confusing. Your cousins seek your perspective. Such a scenario seems to epitomize what “scientific literacy” is all about: being able to interpret scientific claims that inform personal and social decision-making (Figure 13.1). How would a typical citizen or consumer approach this case? Probably search online. Wikipedia. Google. Quick, informative, apparently authoritative answers. Maybe worth investing a half hour of effort, at most. Delving into the Internet, one can easily find many specialized websites describing how fracking works (energytomorrow.org; fracfocus.org; hydraulic­fracturing.com). They are apparently quite frank about safety issues, which they seem to address fully, including with an impressive quote from a former head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Yet from a more informed perspective, one may find that the genuine facts are also mixed with a lot of questionable claims and spurious “evidence.” A lot is left out. The incompleteness betrays bias. The take- home lesson? What the average citizen or consumer likely interprets as sound science, may not be. Ultimately, good science diverges from what counts as good science in the public realm. Here, the challenge is being able to distinguish trustworthy science from junk and industry propaganda. Ironically, knowledge of scientific concepts—the primary stuff one learns in school science classes—is of marginal value. One might thus doubt a pervasive principle (the sacred bovine on this occasion) that in fostering scientific literacy, one should focus primarily on the “raw” science itself, while remaining aloof to the cultural politics of science. Functional scientific literacy includes understanding the media contexts through which science is conveyed—and sometimes misconveyed.
Science Con Artists
Authors: Allchin Douglas
Published: November 2020

Deception abounds in nature. Some species are first-rate con artists. Anglerfish with appendages that mimic squiggling morsels to lure unsuspecting prey. Carnivorous pitcher plants that emit the aroma of rotting flesh and attract flies to their doom. Orchids that resemble female wasps, decoys for male wasp pollinators. Cuttlefish whose color and pattern change with the background as a disguise against predators. Deceptive patterns, smells, or sounds in organisms wonderfully reflect the adaptive response to opportunity. So, too, in human culture? Humans can take advantage of cultural conditions and deceive others to promote their own interests. So if science receives cultural authority, it should surprise no one that those seeking power or profit might try to mimic it. Indeed, the more authority we give to science, the greater the likelihood of science impostors—and the more sophisticated their deceptive tactics. Cultural anthropologist Chris Toumey likens the process to a magician’s illusions. Imitators “conjure” science, he says, “from cheap symbols and ersatz images.” It is an apt and vivid label. We could just as easily call them science con artists (Figure 15.1). Liars. Cheats. Predictable opportunists who seek our confidence using a semblance of science. Many proponents of science endeavor to inform citizens and consumers so that they do not succumb to such wiles. The typical posture, too easily adopted I think, is that simple knowledge of the scientific method or of how to evaluate scientific evidence will suffice. By learning about what defines science and what pseudoscience, one supposedly is empowered to debunk the charades. Yet one may well question this sacred bovine. A sampling of recent historical cases may indicate how prevalent science con artists are in modern society. They are far more significant than commonly assumed. Science and what counts as science publicly can diverge sharply (essay 13). Specific skills may help one sort experts from nonexperts (essay 14). But con artists use various psychological stratagems to gain trust by bypassing questions of expertise.
The Peppered Moths, A Study in Black and White
Authors: Allchin Douglas
Published: November 2020

Organisms seem exquisitely adapted—like the peppered moths (Biston betularia), camouflaged to avoid predation (Figure 20.1). The story behind their cryptic coloration and pattern is easy to appreciate when looking at both black and mottled white moths set against contrasting backgrounds: one black, one mottled white, like the moths themselves. What half-witted bird would not prey on the obvious moth? This would clearly change the genetic make-up of a population. This popular pair of photos explains natural selection in an instant. The images are so widely reproduced, in biology textbooks and elsewhere, that everyone seems to know the case of the peppered moth. The case gained renown through Bernard Kettlewell. In the 1950s he investigated the survival rates of the moths in the contrasting forests of Birmingham and Dorset (ostensibly portrayed in Figure 20.1). But Kettlewell’s landmark publication, The Evolution of Melanism, also included another image (Figure 20.2). On the top right, it displays the two familiar forms of the moth: typica, the once-common “peppered” form (no. 2), and carbonaria, the nearly black form that proliferated later (no. 1). Arrayed on the left, however, are five other specimens of the same species, each exhibiting an intermediate darkness. Together, they constitute a third form, known as insularia. That is, a series of relatively unknown light and dark forms fills the gap between the two well-known extremes. Do the insularia moths matter? How might simplifying the wide range of forms to just two shape an image of natural selection? Or of nature, generally? In what ways does the difference between the simple story and a more complex reality ultimately affect our thinking? Perhaps we should challenge the implicit assumption (yet another sacred bovine) that nature, and science too, can effectively be reduced to black and white. One easily finds specimens of insularia in museum collections, Kettlewell noted. And he included them in his field studies. Having recruited observers from around Britain, Kettlewell catalogued the relative frequencies of all three forms in various locations. The incidence of insularia was sometimes 40% or more.
Organisms, Modified, Genetically
Authors: Allchin Douglas
Published: November 2020

GMOs. Genetically modified organisms. They conjure the specter of “Frankenfoods.” Monstrous creations reflecting human hubris. Violations of nature. And their very unnaturalness alone seems reason to reject the whole technology. But one may challenge this sacred bovine: the common image that GMOs cross some new threshold, dramatically changing how humans relate to nature. Or even that such a view can properly inform how we assess the value or risks of GMOs. Rather, biologically, GMOs are modest variants. As I will elaborate, “conventional” corn is probably more deeply shaped by human intervention than any addition of, say, a single Bt gene for a pesticide-resistant protein. Many crops promoted as “natural” alternatives are themselves dramatically modified genetically, like the cats and dogs we enjoy as pets. And this perspective—the context of GMOs—should inform views on policy. Without resolving the question of ultimate risks, we should at least recognize and dismiss as irrelevant the claim that GMOs are “unnatural.” While criticisms of GMOs vary, one recurrent theme is the assertion—or the implicit assumption—that they are inherently unnatural. For example, one high school student commented in a class discussion on genetically modified salmon, “Even though it definitely has many economic benefits, I think that shaping the way in which other organisms grow and live is not something that we as humans should be taking into our own hands.” As rendered recently for young readers, a cartoon princess of the Guardian Princess Alliance scolds a grower of GMOs: “These fruits and vegetables are not natural.” Many seem to believe that for humans to alter something living is to thereby taint it. Organisms should remain “pure.” Nature seems to exhibit its own self-justified purpose, not to be disrupted. What does this mean for all the other ways that humans modify organisms from their “natural” state? For example, we adorn our skin with tattoos and pierce various body parts. In certain cultures, at certain times, we have bound feet and elongated skulls.
Who’s Afraid of Supervenient Laws?
Authors: Mcintyre Lee
Published: November 2020

OVER THE LAST FEW decades there has been much debate in the philosophy of science over the attractiveness–and potential costs–of supervenience. As philosophers well know, supervenience burst onto the scene as the “Davidson debate” in the philosophy of mind began to raise some provocative questions over whether it was desirable to think of mental events as in some way irreducible to physical events, while still being firmly rooted in material dependence. After some initial misunderstanding over the question of whether supervenience was committing us to a sort of ontological break between the mental and the physical, it was finally settled that the autonomy one was after need not be metaphysical; an epistemological break would do just fine. After this the merits of supervenience could be clearly considered, for it allowed one to have it “both ways” in the dispute over mental states: mental explanations could be epistemically autonomous from physical ones (and thus probably not reducible to them), even while one preserved the notion of the ontological dependence of the mental on the physical (thus avoiding any embarrassing entanglements in supernatural or other spiritually based accounts of causal influence). Davidson himself, of course, never really bought into the non-reductive materialist craze that he started, preferring to champion his own idiosyncratic view of anomalous monism, which allowed the mental to continue to exist as irreducible, even while he gave it no causal or explanatory work to do. Since then Jaegwon Kim—the person who has done most to shed light on Davidson’s view and demonstrate how the concept of supervenience could recast it as a more legitimate contender among the many proposals on the merits of non-reductive materialism—has appeared to repudiate his own earlier views about explanation and now wholeheartedly endorses a type of physicalist-based account that is even more conservative than Davidson’s. In his recent work, Kim has argued not only for the elimination of any mentally based causal descriptions (or laws) of human behavior, but also seems to call into question the very idea that in pursuing scientific explanation we need to pay much attention to secondary-level descriptions.
Reaction Mechanisms
Authors: Pagni Richard M.
Published: November 2020

AFTER I HAD BEEN in graduate school for several months, I decided to work in a group that studied photochemical reactions, those that are initiated by ultraviolet or visible light. My research advisor was interested in discovering new reactions and deducing experimentally how they occurred—the reaction mechanism. I remember my first group meeting where the topic of discussion was the ring-opening of cyclobutenes (compounds with four carbon atoms in a ring opening up to form compounds with no rings). I still recall people describing the potential ways in which the ring-openings occurred as domino and antidomino (today called conrotatory and disrotatory). Thermally induced reactions, that is, those initiated by heat, occurred one way and photochemically induced reactions, the other. Even though these reactions had been studied thoroughly, the reaction mechanisms were considered incomplete because nobody could explain the dichotomy between the thermally- and photochemically induced reactions. Why these reactions occurred in the manner they did was unknown. When quantum mechanical explanations were later proposed to explain the ring-opening reactions, the reaction mechanisms might be said to be complete, although the related question of the cause of the reactions—in other words, why they happen at all—still had to be addressed. Reaction mechanisms consist in more than merely knowing the pathways by which reactants are converted into products. Until all related questions are answered satisfactorily, a mechanism may be considered incomplete. The evolution of modern chemistry from its origin in the late eighteenth century to its present day power and sophistication is remarkable (Brock 1992, Greenberg 2000, Bensaude-Vincent and Simon 2008, Chalmers 2011). Space limitations preclude more than a very brief summer of this history; references are included for the interested reader. Oxidation was weaned from its alchemical origins and the first elements and gases synthesized during the early decades of modern chemistry (Smartt Bell 2005, Thorpe 2007, Holmes 2008, Jay 2009). Additional elements were then discovered and their properties measured and compared (Scerri 2007). Methodology, laboratory technique, and apparatus were developed to carry out these new tasks, primarily in the nineteenth century (Faraday 1960, Buckingham 2004).
Causality in Chemistry: Regularities and Agencies
Authors: Harré Rom
Published: November 2020

THE MEANING OF CAUSAL statements and claims has been and continues to be a topic of great interest to philosophers. Before we turn to the role of causal concepts in chemical discourse a survey of the main lines of the philosophical debates on the meaning of causal language will provide the necessary groundwork for this study. It will be useful to maintain the following distinction: The word “causation” will be used as the name for the relation between causes and effects; the word “causality” will be used for the corresponding concept and its many synonyms as they appear in causal discourses. Since antiquity causal discourses have mostly been taken to be species of explanatory discourses. The analysis of explanatory discourses begins, for our purposes, with Aristotle’s writings on the subject (Aristotle 1984). For him, an explanation requires four components: a material aitia, what stuff is involved; a formal aitia, what structures are to be taken into account; an efficient aitia, what brings about the change to be explained; and a final aitia, to what end does the thing to be explained tend. Subsequent philosophical discussion of the nature of causation has led to two main proposals According to one popular view “causation” refers to the production or generation of effects by material and human agents, often allied to the Aristotelian view of efficient causes and in recent writing to the revival of the notion of “causal power” (Kistler and Gnassanou 2007). The alternative builds on the principle that “causation” refers to an observed regular concomitance between similar pairs of events leading to an expectation of the occurrence of the second event on the occasion of the occurrence of the first, as Hume argued. The philosophy of chemistry has inherited this problem “space.” Should we follow the lead of Aristotle or take our analytical tools from Hume? Or should we look for some kind of hybrid? Recent attempts by followers of the Aristotelian plan to revive the concept of causal power have included conceptual studies of what this concept and others allied in use mean (Cartwright 1987) and analyses of the logical form of attributions of causal powers (Cheng 1997; Hiddleston 2005).
Chemists Who Work in Academia
Authors: Brown Jeannette E.
Published: November 2020

Etta Gravely (Fig. 3.1) is a retired professor of chemistry and former head of the Department of Chemistry at North Carolina A&T State University at Greensboro (North Carolina A&T). Etta was born on August 30, 1939, in Alamance County, NC. Now the town of Green Level, it was then a rural community near Burlington. Most of the people there farmed, raising tobacco. Everyone had private gardens and Etta’s grandmother canned their food. The area where she went to school is still very rural; the school building is now the town hall. Etta’s mother was Kate Lee McBroom and her father Rufus Leith. Her mother, a homemaker, did general house cleaning for families. Her father had a high school degree, had served in the army during World War II, and worked as an orderly in a hospital. Etta is the only child of her mother, but her father had a son named Frederick Leith. Her brother went to Graham Central high school and upon graduation went into the army and subsequently died. Etta did not go to kindergarten because there was none. She started school in the first grade in a four-room school that had classes for grades one and two, three and four, five and six, and seven and eight. The principal was Mrs. Mary Holne, and there were three other teachers, each teaching two grades. Since Etta loved to read and liked to do school work, she skipped fourth grade and went on to fifth grade: fourth and third grade were taught in the same room, and when she completed her third- grade work she would do fourth-grade work. Her teachers probably had bachelor’s or master’s degrees in their subjects. Both Etta’s school and community were segregated; she went to school in 1945, before the Brown vs. Board of Education act, which was Supreme Court decision. When Etta graduated from the country school, she was bused to Pleasant Grove High School—for African American students, five miles from the high school for white students. The school taught grades one through twelve; the curriculum was the usual reading, writing, and arithmetic.