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The Richard Dawkins Rap

He's smarter than you, he's got a science degree.

Will Bill Bryson's new litter campaign work?

It’s easy. Too many people are dropping litter in the street. You tell them to stop. That ought to work.

Well, not quite. And that's why Bryson's new campaign has been so carefully designed. If you get a litter drive even slightly wrong it could have quite the opposite effect to the one intended.

It could lead people to drop more litter. Why? Because people like to do what everyone else is doing.

Here’s an example furnished by the social psychologist Dr Robert Cialdini. In the Arizona Petrified National Forest there used to be a sign reading “Our heritage is being vandalised by the theft of 14 tons of wood every year”. And the reaction of tourists was “We’d better get ours while there is still some left”.

The sign was making things worse.

The truth was that only 3 per cent of visitors had been vandalising the forest. When the sign was changed to make these thieves appear isolated and aberrant rather than normal, it began working.

In their recent book Yes! Dr Noah Goldstein and Steve Martin tell how TV home shopping channels increase sales by telling you that their operators may be busy and you should keep trying. Far from putting people off, it makes people think that everyone is buying and so should they.

So the danger with an anti-litter campaign is that unconsciously it normalises littering and accidentally encourages people to litter. The language and measures being used must be scrutinised carefully to make sure they don’t normalise littering.

This is why the new campaign’s emphasis on legal enforcement is so important, as is making it easier to complain. These are ways those who litter can be picked out and made to seem abnormal. 

It is also the reason why Bill Bryson is right to emphasise the need to clean up litter very quickly. He says litter breeds litter and this is exactly what you would expect. It’s a visual clue that littering is usual.

Proposals to charge extra for takeaway meals and to reintroduce deposits might have a more complicated effect.

As I've mentioned before, in his new book Predictably Irrational, Professor Dan Ariely writes that a nursery that fined parents for collecting their offspring late saw the number of late parents rise. A social norm (you must collect on time) had been replaced by a market transaction (arrive late, pay a fee).

New charges might therefore increase the littering as people regard their wayward disposal as a market choice. On the other hand, as Bryson says, bottles with a deposit won’t stay on the ground for long.

We've seen litter campaigns before. I think this one stands a better chance.

Dictated by their DNA

Here's what's wrong with Robert Mugabe. His AVPR1a is too long.

Brace yourself for a new wave of scientific work linking genes with behaviour. Nature brings a cracking example with research suggesting that the behaviour of the world's most reprehensible despots is derived from their genetic code.

Richard Ebstein and his colleagues at Hebrew University think they have identified a 'Ruthlessness Gene'.

The researchers are not certain of the precise way the gene AVPR1a works. However they believe its length may may change the extent to which a subject feels rewarded by the act of giving.

It was a bit of a stretch, I thought, for them to link the kind of child who refuses to share their hula-hoops at lunch to the most infamous figures of the 20th Century. But fascinating stuff, nonetheless.

Unintelligent views on intelligent design

Andrew Sullivan takes up my post on Governor Huckabee and adds a video where the candidate defends himself on evolution.

He does just fine for the first minute and a half or so, eliding his support for the theory of intelligent design and his belief in God.

Even then he's a bit confused. He says he doesn't know how we were created ("I wasn't there") just that God created us. In fact, intelligent design says the opposite. It says we do know how we were created, but not by who. But let that pass.

For around the two minute mark he goes further. He slips into "for goodness sake let's not have this guy's finger on the trigger" territory. Here's what he says:

But you know, if anyone wants to believe that they are the descendents of a primate they are certainly welcome to do it. I don't know how far they will march that back.

Erm, well I certainly want to believe that I am the descendant of a primate. My mother and father for instance.

Does Huckabee's view on evolution matter? Hell, yes!

The momentum enjoyed by Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama in Iowa leads some to speculate that these two may face each other in the general election.

Andrew Sullivan, for one, would welcome such a contest:

Huckabee is a conservative whose character appeals to liberals; Obama is a liberal whose temperament appeals to conservatives. Both represent a deep desire to get past the hideous, nasty polarization of the last few years. Obama doesn't despise conservatives the way Clinton does. Huckabee doesn't repell Democrats the way Giuliani and Romney do.

Well, I find it hard to share this enthusiasm.

Let's leave Obama to one side and consider Huckabee. My big problem? That Huckabee doesn't believe in evolution.

Huckabee contends that it doesn't matter, because he is not intending to insist that schools stop teaching evolution. But that really isn't the point.

The reason that his support for intelligent design matters is that it is ridiculous. Who  wants a President of the United States who doesn't accept the basic principles of science, taking refuge instead in a load of mumbo jumbo?

The religious beliefs of a President are a matter of conscience, but intelligent design is not a religious idea. It is, deliberately, put as an alternative scientific theory. But it is, sadly, nonsense.

It is clearly vital that he or she be someone who accepts and understands scientific methods. By rejecting evolution in favour of intelligent design Huckabee illustrates that he does not reach scientific conclusions based on evidence.

This is a serious downside in a President, whatever his other qualities. 

A man with faith in humanity

Raymond Tallis is on the side of the angels. Yesterday, in The Times he attacked the rise of neurodeterminism in the law courts (the notion that "my brain made me do it"). I've just come across the text of a speech he gave defending human freedom from the forces of the counter-Enlightenment. Left vs Right, I reckon, is no longer the main dividing line in politics: the divide is between those who have faith in freedom and the human capacity for progress, and those who don't (a ragtag army of religious fanatics, eco-fundamentalists and pessimists). The pessimists seem to have the upper hand in academia.

From a huge variety of backgrounds, academics and popular writers tell the same monotonous story: we do not know what we are doing, we do not know why we are doing it, and disaster is waiting to happen. Civilisations, which are based upon the notion of humans as rational agents, are in fact pathological: rationality is an illusion, or unnatural and unbearable, and rational planning will lead to unforeseen consequences. All civilisation – usually referred to as ‘a veneer’ and a thin one at that – is headed for destruction.

Professor Tallis makes the interesting point that scientific endeavour, once the crowning glory of Enlightenment thinking, is being used to undermine Enlightenment values. It is well worth reading.

Robbie Millen

New research shows why Obama needs Al Gore

Ben Smith, who writes an entertaining blog about the race for the Democratic nomination, has been speculating about Al Gore's endorsement.

He suggests that this time out it will matter. In 2004, famously, Gore endorsed Howard Dean just before Dean went down in flames.

This raises an interesting question. Endorsements are much prized. But why would they work?

Let's take Gore. He is widely known to dislike Hillary Clinton. If he endorsed Obama it would obviously be for his own purposes and to settle old scores. Anything he said about Obama wouldn't really be about Obama at all. So why would it make a difference?

Over on Influence at Work, where my favourite group of social psychologists ply their trade, Noah Goldstein cites some new research:

Participants were asked to imagine themselves in the role of senior editor for a book publisher. In this role, they had a specific job of dealing with an experienced and successful author. They were asked to read excerpts from a negotiation for a sizeable book advance. One group read excerpts touting the author’s accomplishments spoken by the agent’s author, whereas a second group read identical comments made by the author himself.

The data verified our hypothesis: participants rated the author more favourably on nearly every dimension — especially likeability — when the author’s agent sang his praises as compared to when the author tooted his own horn.

In other words the public doesn't discount as much as it should for the fact that the endorsement is self-serving. However self-serving a Gore endorsement might be, those watching it wouldn't care about that as much as they ought. They will still take it seriously.

Redheads set for extinction

Dodos are long gone. Pandas are under threat. Now, another species is set to join the endangered species list:

The future doesn't look bright for people with ginger hair. According to genetic scientists redheads are becoming rarer and could be extinct in 100 years.

The current National Geographic magazine reports that less than 2 per cent of the world's population has natural red hair - created by a mutation in northern Europe thousand of years ago...

Some experts warn redheads could be gone as early 2060, but others say the gene can be dormant in the reproductive system for generations before returning.

Damn. I've always known my favourite redhead, Paul "Scholesy" Scholes, was going to be irreplaceable.

Murad Ahmed

An insight into Asperger's

I wouldn't be much of a guide to what's out there if I didn't make sure you read an extraordinary piece from The New Yorker.

Tim Page, Pulitzer Prize winning classical music critic for the Washington Post, suffers from Asperger's syndrome. And he offers an incredible, rare insight into that world.

Here's a sample:

From early childhood, my memory was so acute and my wit so bleak that I was described as a genius — by my parents, by our neighbours, and even, on occasion, by the same teachers who gave me failing marks. I wrapped myself in this mantle, of course, as a poetic justification for behavior that might otherwise have been judged unhinged, and I did my best to believe in it.

But the explanation made no sense. A genius at what? Were other “geniuses” so oblivious that they couldn’t easily tell right from left and idly wet their pants into adolescence? What accounted for my rages and frustrations, for the imperious contempt I showed to people who were in a position to do me harm?

Although I delighted in younger children, whom I could instruct and gently dominate, and I was thrilled when I ran across an adult willing to discuss my pet subjects, I could establish no connection with most of my classmates. My pervasive childhood memory is an excruciating awareness of my own strangeness.

It's worth reading, I promise you.

Driven to distraction, but not to death

From the Marginal Revolution blog I learn of an interesting new study. Here are the first two paragraphs of the press release:

It's conventional wisdom that talking on cell phones while driving is risky business, but two University of California, Berkeley, graduate student economists report that a spike in cell phone use in recent years and on weekday evenings is not matched by an increase in fatal or non-fatal car crashes from 2002-2005.

Their findings, published on the Web site of the American Enterprise Institute-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies, run counter to the conclusions of more than 125 other studies, 70 percent of Americans in a 2003 Gallup Poll who said drivers on cell phones cause accidents, and the reasoning behind complete or partial bans on using cell phones in at least 14 states. The issue is on the agenda in several foreign countries as well.

The paper itself can be found here.

The authors of the research sound shocked by their findings. And anyone who has used a mobile phone while driving, however briefly, will be surprised too. Holding your phone and calling is very distracting.

So why the finding?

Two simple words - risk compensation. A study of the direct effect of phone use on driving does not take into account what drivers do when not using their phones. They may, for instance drive faster and more dangerously.

Could we be living in The Matrix?

Bizarre, but intriguing story in New York Times:

Until I talked to Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University, it never occurred to me that our universe might be somebody else’s hobby. I hadn’t imagined that the omniscient, omnipotent creator of the heavens and earth could be an advanced version of a guy who spends his weekends building model railroads or overseeing video-game worlds like The Sims.

But now it seems quite possible. In fact, if you accept a pretty reasonable assumption of Dr. Bostrom’s, it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else’s computer simulation.

This simulation would be similar to the one in “The Matrix,” in which most humans don’t realize that their lives and their world are just illusions created in their brains while their bodies are suspended in vats of liquid. But in Dr. Bostrom’s notion of reality, you wouldn’t even have a body made of flesh. Your brain would exist only as a network of computer circuits.

Read more here.

Start your own conspiracy theory!

The New Scientist provides the following cut-out-and-keep guide to starting your own conspiracy theory:

Pick your adversary: A sense of anomie (dislocation from society and authority) fuels beliefs in conspiracy theories, so pick a big bad organisation of some sort - government or big business is ideal

For added spice, identify a shadowy, secretive society with implied links to your adversary: the more shadowy, the better

Choose your event: You’ll need a big, contemporary newsworthy event around which to weave your theory

If it’s a sudden, shocking visual occurrence of international import it is more likely to become a “flashbulb memory” for the masses. Your key conspiracy audience, most able to create such vivid “indelible” memories will be between the ages of 20 and 35

Develop your story: Construct your theory from carefully selected information that weaves together into a compelling story

If something doesn’t fit, reinterpret it in line with your theory

Create uncertainty: Question existing evidence or find new evidence that contradicts the “official” account

Prepare your defence: If someone highlights a gap or inconsistency in your evidence, don’t be afraid to tweak your story, but keep the core conspiracy in place

You can allow the finer details of the theory to mutate, but always keep in mind the maxim - “they did it, I just have to find the proof that they did it”

Broaden the circle of conspirators to include those who question your position: “They’re denying the truth - they must be involved too!”

The rise and fall of prefrontal lobotomies

Found this intriguing, if unsettling, post on the Neurophilosophy blog: A brief guide to the rise and fall of prefrontal lobotomies. The blogger draws no conclusions, leaving me to wonder whether I should either be grateful for the plethora of new drug treatments or to be deeply suspicious of ever letting psychiatrists loose on our brains.

Robbie Millen

The man who fed the world

Exciting news – last week Norman Borlaug won the Congressional Gold Medal.

And that's exciting why?

Well, only five people in history have ever won that award as well as the Nobel Peace Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. They are Martin Luther King Jr, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Elie Wiesel and now Norman Borlaug.

So what has he done to deserve a place in history’s elite group? Well, he's only saved the lives of a billion people.

Borlaug is an agricultural scientist who started the “Green Revolution” that created higher yields of wheat. This meant that much of the developing world no longer starved to death.

Even now at the age of 92, he's still a warrior for his ideas, writing this article in The Wall Street Journal this weekend. But you should read this piece by Matthew Parris on Borlaug’s towering achievements. Just to put it in perspective:

Borlaug’s work saved the Indian sub-continent from mass starvation. In his 90 years on this planet its human population has grown from about one billion to more than six billion. Without the hybrid wheats it was Borlaug’s life’s mission to develop and promote among the world’s poorest farmers, few believe that this population could have been sustained.

It’s as simple as that.

Murad Ahmed

How much would you get for an arm and a leg?

My body is worth $3,475. Well, if I was dead and in America.

ScienceBloggers have been having fun discussing the (admittedly unscientific) Cadaver Calculator, which works out the value of your body parts to medical researchers. Take the test and see how much you can posthumously make for your family. If only there was a free market in dead bodies in Britain.

Robbie Millen 

The self-defeating mind of a terrorist

Why does terrorism fail? Due to an evolutionary brain glitch, that's why.

Bruce Schneier, the security analyst, provides readers of Wired and his own blog with a constant stream of fascinating facts about terrorism. His latest post makes use of correspondent inference theory to explain the problem that terrorists face.

He explains the theory thus:

People tend to infer the motives - and also the disposition - of someone who performs an action based on the effects of his actions, and not on external or situational factors. If you see someone violently hitting someone else, you assume it's because he wanted to - and is a violent person - and not because he's play-acting. And - more importantly for this column - if you read about a terrorist, you assume that terrorism is his ultimate goal.

He concludes:

The theory posited here is that terrorist groups that target civilians are unable to coerce policy change because terrorism has an extremely high correspondence. Countries believe that their civilian populations are attacked not because the terrorist group is protesting unfavourable external conditions such as territorial occupation or poverty. Rather, target countries infer the short-term consequences of terrorism - the deaths of innocent civilians, mass fear, loss of confidence in the government to offer protection, economic contraction, and the inevitable erosion of civil liberties - (are) the objects of the terrorist groups.

The whole (reasonably short) post is worth reading, including a link to a paper asssessing the low political success rate of terrorists.

Human nature is politically incorrect

This article, intriguingly titled:

Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature

lives up to its billing. For example, the authors contend:

Until very recently, it was a mystery to evolutionary psychology why men prefer women with large breasts, since the size of a woman's breasts has no relationship to her ability to lactate. But Harvard anthropologist Frank Marlowe contends that larger, and hence heavier, breasts sag more conspicuously with age than do smaller breasts. Thus they make it easier for men to judge a woman's age (and her reproductive value) by sight — suggesting why men find women with large breasts more attractive

Eek.

My British Muslim eyes boggled at this theory on why most suicide bombers are Muslim. Read the thesis - while ignoring the contention that the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka committed more suicide attacks in the 80s and 90s than Hamas and Hezbollah, and forgetting that many Muslims (like myself) intepret the Koranic passage on polygyny to mean that it is not acceptable. It is so staggeringly un-PC, yet original, that I submit it for your attention while hiding behind my chair.

Suicide missions are not always religiously motivated, but according to Oxford University sociologist Diego Gambetta, editor of Making Sense of Suicide Missions, when religion is involved, the attackers are always Muslim. Why? The surprising answer is that Muslim suicide bombing has nothing to do with Islam or the Quran (except for two lines). It has a lot to do with sex, or, in this case, the absence of sex.

What distinguishes Islam from other major religions is that it tolerates polygyny. By allowing some men to monopolize all women and altogether excluding many men from reproductive opportunities, polygyny creates shortages of available women. If 50 percent of men have two wives each, then the other 50 percent don't get any wives at all.

So polygyny increases competitive pressure on men, especially young men of low status. It therefore increases the likelihood that young men resort to violent means to gain access to mates. By doing so, they have little to lose and much to gain compared with men who already have wives. Across all societies, polygyny makes men violent, increasing crimes such as murder and rape, even after controlling for such obvious factors as economic development, economic inequality, population density, the level of democracy, and political factors in the region...

The other key ingredient is the promise of 72 virgins waiting in heaven for any martyr in Islam. The prospect of exclusive access to virgins may not be so appealing to anyone who has even one mate on earth, which strict monogamy virtually guarantees. However, the prospect is quite appealing to anyone who faces the bleak reality on earth of being a complete reproductive loser.

Talk about sexual frustration, eh?

Murad Ahmed

A fiasco that is destroying physics

A new Civitas report bemoans the way that the curriculum is being stripped of content in state schools.

Anyone who doubts their conclusion should read this extraordinary, passionate open letter from physics teacher Wellington Grey:

The thing that attracts pupils to physics is its precision. Here, at last, is a discipline that gives real answers that apply to the physical world. But that precision is now gone. Calculations — the very soul of physics — are absent from the new GCSE. Physics is a subject unpolluted by a torrent of malleable words, but now everything must be described in words.

In this course, pupils debate topics like global warming and nuclear power. Debate drives science, but pupils do not learn meaningful information about the topics they debate. Scientific argument is based on quantifiable evidence.

The person with the better evidence, not the better rhetoric or talking points, wins. But my pupils now discuss the benefits and drawbacks of nuclear power plants, without any real understanding of how they work or what radiation is.

It is, he says:

A fiasco that is destroying physics.

The full text contains some brilliant examples.

Our faces study - the full results

Here are the full results from our study into politicians faces (Read the full story here). They make grim reading for Gordon Brown, but it's not that great for David Cameron either.

The politicans we chose for the study were Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, David Cameron, John Reid and David Miliband. As spoilers, we've included a couple of celebrities such as the new 007 Daniel Craig, and "TV personality" Graham Norton.

In the study, there's a head-to-head, where a "voter" is shown the morphed face of a politician (or celebrity) alongside another morphed face. Then they were simply asked: which face would you vote for to run your country?

The study was taken by 800 voters. Here's a full breakdown of the results:

Seats	Vote	Win	Lose
64.82	55.86	Blair	Brown
56.51	53.12	Blair	Cameron
61.31	54.71	Cameron	Brown
71.93	58.21	Craig	Brown
57.03	53.29	Miliband	Brown
60.37	54.40	Norton	Brown
62.85	55.21	Reid	Brown
65.59	56.12	Craig	Cameron
54.54	52.47	Miliband	Cameron
57.80	53.55	Norton	Cameron
55.23	52.70	Reid	Cameron
54.37	52.42	Miliband	Reid
56.60	53.15	Craig	Norton

Seats = Percentage of seats a candidate would win in a general election
Vote = Percentage of the popular vote a candidate would win

So what do you think about the results?

Murad Ahmed

Whatever you think about yourself is wrong

May I recommend a new blog to you? The Situationist.

It's packed full of the results of social research and experiments. Like this:

People generally consider themselves smarter, luckier, better-looking and more important than they really are. They regard themselves as exceptional and believe that they will avoid the divorces, premature deaths or weight gains that befall everyone else.

Self-serving biases permeate people's perceptions. They claim credit for good deeds and successes but shift blame to others for their failures. A Toronto motorist captured this tendency on an insurance form: "A pedestrian hit me and went under my car."

"Most of us have a good reputation with ourselves," says David Myers, a professor at Hope College in Holland, Mich., who wrote the textbook Social Psychology.

That explains John Prescott, then.

Get a second life

I've just read about an extreme example of serial bullying. First, the victim was chucked around by her tormentors. Then it escalated. The poor woman's house was burnt down. Even worse, the bullies started shooting guns at her. I couldn't help but laugh.

This was an example of bullying (or "griefing") in the virtual world of Second Life. I hadn't realised it but cyberspace bullying is a terrible thing. Luckily there is a heroic band of Nottingham University academics who are willing to investigate this scourge and then travel to Switzerland on a freebie to give their findings.

Nottingham University's website tells us:

Experts initially carried out an observational study during three different time periods over one week.  Then they rented a plot of land in Second Life, set up their own office and ran four cyber based focus groups. Avatar, Cray Cramer, the Second Life face of The University of Nottingham, approached residents and around 50 responded. The residents were asked about their experiences and responses to bullying. The sessions were monitored in the real world of The University of Nottingham by Dr Chesney and Occupational Psychologist, Dr Iain Coyne. The discussions were filmed by one of their PhD researchers and the text was emailed back to the real world.

So a bunch of academics enter a make-believe world and talk to a bunch of make-believe characters about make-believe acts of bullying and then they plan to relate it back to the real world. It's not very rigorous is it? How, for instance, do they know if the make-believe characters are telling the (make believe or otherwise) truth? Bloody hell! Can you imagine Karl Popper doing this? And can anyone give me a reason why this project isn't just nonsense on virtual stilts?

Robbie Millen

The future's Gothic

Is your child withdrawn? Looking pale? Overdoing the mascara? Dressed all in black and sporting knee-high platform boots?

Time to celebrate!

Goths are likely to grow up to be doctors, lawyers or architects, a study by Sussex University says.

They are refined and sensitive, keen on poetry and books, not big on drugs or anti-social behaviour. They are also likely to carry on being goths into their adult life.

They have an ability to express their feelings and are believers in romance rather than one-night stands, it says. In fact, the only things dark about them are their clothing and their sarcastic sense of humour.

Brilliant. When I have kids I’m going to smother them in white make-up and rock them gently to sleep listening to The Cure.

Murad Ahmed

Which face would you vote for to run the country?

Comment Central has called in the men in white coats.

The Times, along with psychologists from the University of Stirling, is running a groundbreaking study into our voting habits. And if you didn't mind, I'd like you to take part.

In the study you'll see a number of different faces alongside each other, just like the faces below, and the question you will be asked answer is simple: which face would you prefer to run your country (whichever country that might be)?

Click here to take part, and follow the instructions given throughout the questionnaire. During the experiement watch out for the top line which will change colour after a while to ask you a slightly different question.

The results will appear soon on Comment Central and in The Times. They promise to tell us a lot about what we look for in a politician, and why we vote for them in the first place. Exciting stuff.

And if that tickles your fancy, you can take part in other similar studies here.

UPDATE: Some readers have written to say they are unable to get into the study following the initial questionnaire. Apologies for this. You should be able to get in if you use the Internet Explorer browser instead of Mozilla Firefox, and turn off some of your security measures that may be blocking the application that runs the experiment. In the meantime, we're working to resolve these problems.

The stories behind climate change

Readers who enjoyed Camilla Cavendish's piece in The Times this morning might also be interested in some of the articles which helped her in the preparation of hers.

These include: the terms of reference of the Stern review on the economics of climate change and the submissions to the review, the scientific findings from last year's Exeter conference including likely impacts on South East Asia, a pithy piece on the precautionary principle with thoughts on the risks of terrorism and climate change, Frances Cairncross' remarks earlier this week about adaptation and mitigation, and Professor Eric Wolff on ice cores (you will need to register, but it's free).

More than just bad for your eyes?

Earlier this week came suggestions of a link between autism and the age of the father. Now commentator Gregg Easterbrook suggests another possible culprit - television. In a recent book, Easterbrook blamed television for a rise in unhappiness, so he clearly doesn't like it much. Still, it's worth taking a look at his theory.