Commentary

Posted on Articles Evolution Literacy, Book Reviews, Commentary, Recommended Books

New Review of “Kin Recognition in Protists and Other Microbes”

By Guillermo Paz-y-Miño-C

Joachim “Jo” G. Frommen, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Bern, has written a review of our book “Kin Recognition in Protists and Other Microbes: Genetics, Evolution, Behavior and Health.” The article came out (as early view) in the Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology (JEUK-MIC). Before sharing details of Jo’s take on our work, here is an excerpt that captures his overall opinion:

“This a highly timely and interesting book. People not being too familiar with microbiology will find it a fascinating and inspiring introduction into kin recognition in non-animal systems, which thereby challenges our thinking of underlying cognitive processes such as learning. Students of evolutionary biology will find it highly useful to read, for example, about the advent of multicellularity and sociality, leading to major transitions in evolution. Researchers in microbiology will appreciate a comprehensive summary of the field, with some additional dives into methodological details. Teachers will take advantage of the more than 120 detailed figures showing experimental setups, results and schematic diagrams, as well as of the great appendix linking to recent media resources that can be downloaded and included in lectures… This is a great book, which I can highly recommend.”

Well, first, thanks to Jo for a sharp and generous assessment. Avelina Espinosa (my coauthor) and I were quite pleased to see that Jo grasped the book precisely in the way we wrote it, plus the intention with which we put it together. We spent much time conceptualizing the chapters, their order and content, the illustrations and terminology boxes, the recapitulations of previous sections prior to “diving” deeper into more complex themes, and the didactic summaries at the end of each major subject.

Jo further summarizes the book as follows:

“…Chapter one (Kin recognition: Synopsis and the advent of protists models) sets the stage for the following chapters by explaining the most important terms and concepts of the kin recognition literature. It further highlights the importance of kin recognition in animals and introduces protists as promising model organisms. Chapter two (The genetics of kin recognition: from many cells to single cells) explains the genetic mechanisms of kin recognition (e.g. green beard effects) using red fire ants (Solenopsis invicta) and social ameba (Dictyostelium discoideum) as examples. Chapter three (Can protists learn phenotypic cues to discriminate kin?) introduces learning as possible nongenetic kin recognition mechanisms. While this chapter is intentionally rather speculative, it is highly inspiring at the same time when thinking about definitions of terms like learning or memory. Chapter four (Entamoeba clone-recognition experiments: morphometrics, aggregative behavior, and cell-signaling characterization) introduces one of the authors’ own study systems, and how it might help us understanding clone recognition. Although the book focuses mainly on kin recognition in protists, the authors devote almost 100 pages of chapter five (The prokaryote´s tale) to show the impact of relatedness on the evolution, ecology and pathogenicity of prokaryotes. By doing so, they largely increase the breadth and information content of the book and open it to a wider audience…”

Indeed, Jo got it just right. We purposely dedicated a comprehensive chapter to kin discrimination/recognition in bacteria (most case studies) and Archaea (a few case studies). In fact, there is so much excellent research in prokaryotes that a book dedicated entirely to them should be compiled (not by us, but by somebody else).

Jo continues:

[click to enlarge]

“…Chapter six (Protists´ clonality, kinship and pathogenicity) illuminates the gregarious and social behaviors of pathogenic protists like Plasmodium or Trypanosoma. In chapter seven (Micro-biogeography: kinship and social/spatial structure) the authors focus on the local and global distributions of various protist species, with a special focus on Becking’s Everything is Everywhere hypothesis. Chapter eight (Multicellular aggregations: from single cells to many cells) highlights the importance of understanding the multifarious levels of protists’ social organization and cooperation, when aiming to understand the evolution of multicellularity more generally, which is considered as one of the Major Transitions in Evolution. The short ninth chapter (Conclusions and future directions) eventually provides a brief summary of the book and suggests promising future research avenues for the study of kin recognition in protists…”

Yes, we do suggest in the book some directions in which the field of kin discrimination/recognition could venture in the immediate and longer-term future, particularly now that unicellular organisms have been incorporated into research programs worldwide. We state, for example, that “…despite the academic progress made during the past two decades, the field of kin recognition in protists and other microbes is just getting started. For the immediate future, we predict a significant increase in studies on the genetics, evolution, behavior and health aspects of the cell-to-cell molecular mechanisms of communication, cooperation, facultative or permanent multicellular aggregations, as well as mathematical modeling on high-complexity organismal systems, and their interactions, for which microbes will generate the data central to the simulations.”

Jo makes a fair observation:

“…As a grain of salt, I would have loved to see some more terminological strictness at some occasions. The field of kin recognition is full of semantic debates, often leading to confusion whenever researchers from different backgrounds come together. The same is also true for the concept of learning. Defining clear terms before opening the discussion would have been helpful to the reader, even if not everybody may agree on the definition itself. The authors acknowledge this mess of concepts and try to avoid the debate by using very broad definitions, which I agree are inclusive, but may be too broad to be useful at the same time. However, these are very minor shortcomings that reflect current debates in the field and do not diminish the scientific and scholarly value of this great book, which I can highly recommend.”

Yes, as we noted in the book “…the field of kin recognition, has no consensus on definitions or proposed mechanisms, likely due to the vast diversity and complexity of life histories across organisms, and also because researchers use terminology depending on circumstances or preference…” We deliberately avoided the discussion of terms and the way they have been used by specialists in the field, a debate that goes back decades, and a topic that might require a separate review for comprehensive coverage. Terminology guides us and is central to scientific inquiry; but it can, occasionally, drag us back and prevent us from making progress, or even accepting the obvious, like “learning abilities” in microbes, which continue to be skeptically honored by scholars due to the customary deference for “high-cognition learning in humans” versus the “learning-like mechanisms” in other organisms. Research with microbes suggests that learning is ubiquitous in nature and that “unicells” sense stimuli coming from the environment, selectively react to chemosignals excreted by themselves or others, store information about such signals and retrieve it when needed (although, in our book we linked “potential learning” primarily to protists’ recognition/discrimination of close genetic relatives, kin).

In sum, Avelina and I thank Jo Frommen for his attentive and positive review of “Kin Recognition in Protists and Other Microbes: Genetics, Evolution, Behavior and Health.” ‒ EvoLiteracy © 2019

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook @gpazymino and GPC-Facebook 

Related Readings

Other Reviews of Kin Recognition in Protists and Other Microbes

Book Website

Link to Book at publisher Cambridge Scholars

Posted on Articles Evolution Literacy, Commentary, EvoLiteracy News, Scientific Literacy, Video

Nobel Prize in economics goes to climate and innovation – What?

“Despite these brilliant minds, conceptual modeling and empirical research subsequently published by thousands of economists enthused by Nordhaus’ and Romer’s legacies, the global environmental crisis has worsen. The planet’s warming, pollution of the land, air and oceans, and biodiversity loss are ubiquitous in origin. Yet, the markets or innovation technologies have failed to stop the ecocide, or even minimize it. Climate science has been called a hoax and regulations pro nature protection are being ignored or dismantled.”

By Guillermo Paz-y-Miño-C

This year’s Nobel Prize in economics has been awarded to American professors William D. Nordhaus (Yale University) and Paul M. Romer (New York University Stern School of Business) for the integration of “climate change” and “technological innovations” into long-run macroeconomic analyses, respectively.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which has granted the “Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences” —the official name— since 1969, highlights that Nordhaus and Romer developed the methods to understand a problem of global relevance: how the economy interacts with nature (exemplified by climate change) and with human knowledge (the ideas and innovations generated to solve problems).

It has long been known to scholars that nature imposes limitations on the economy. At the same time, innovation or “ideas” determine how societies undertake challenges. In the 1990s, Nordhaus introduced the factor “climate” into economic projections. He came up with “DICE,” a Dynamic Integrated Model of Climate and the Economy (watch VIDEO) in which three subcomponents interacted: traditional economic growth theory (markets that produce goods using capital and labor, with natural resources as energy inputs), the carbon cycle (particularly carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere derived from burning fossil fuels), and climate (the damage to nature resulting from the accumulation of greenhouse gases).

Separately, and during the 1980s, Romer had observed that technological development correlated with economic prosperity. He asked simple, yet fundamental questions: Where did ideas for new technologies come from? What kind of a product was an idea? Romer proposed that ideas by inventors, engineers or scientists emerged “endogenously” in the marketplace via “rivalry and excludability.” For example, access to inventions like a computer software, a secret soft drink recipe or a coded satellite TV-broadcast could be restricted by encryption (the software or satellite signal) or patent laws (the ownership of the soda formula). For Romer, rivalry and excludability of ideas were central to growth because the latter depended on innovation.

Neither Nordhaus nor Romer offered definitive answers to the challenges of extracting resources from nature with low environmental impact or generating the right amount of knowledge —innovation technologies— to manage such resources to generate sustained and sustainable long-term affluence. In fact, the Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences noted that the recognition to the researchers was for addressing difficult questions about the economy and providing the conceptual and numerical tools to studying and modeling them.

Nonetheless, based on Nordhaus’ work, corrective measures were suggested to carbon and greenhouse-gases emissions, including carbon taxes on countries. A tactic also rooted in a 1920s notion —in England— that polluters should pay for the damage they caused to society by their polluting practices. A more modern assumption derived from Nordhaus’ research has been that if carbon emissions are limited by law and a high price is set to carbon pollution (by global emissions trading systems), then, minimization of pollution is possible.

Romer’s modeling, on the other hand, later showed that different from the economic growth driven by the accumulation of physical capital (the traditional view), prosperity motivated primarily by the accumulation of ideas did not inevitably experience decreasing returns. He alerted that although unregulated markets will produce technological change, they will tend to underprovide research and development (R&D) and the very goods that R&D could create. To secure global long-run growth, Romer suggested that governments ought to intervene via regulations (patents) and subsidies and incentives to innovation (research). The laws should limit —in time and space— the monopoly rights to goods and balance them with encouragement to creativity.

Despite these brilliant minds, conceptual modeling and empirical research subsequently published by thousands of economists enthused by Nordhaus’ and Romer’s legacies (1980s onwards), the global environmental crisis has worsen (see IPCC October 7, 2018, report). The planet’s warming, pollution of the land, air and oceans, and biodiversity loss are ubiquitous in origin. Yet, the markets or innovation technologies have failed to stop the ecocide, or even minimize it. Climate science has been called a hoax and regulations pro nature protection are being ignored or dismantled in various countries (see reports on the United States A and B).

One would expect that a Nobel Prize granted to our scientists might reignite public commitment to honor academic work and support it; or realize that wealth and prosperity will vanish without competitive research. But there is a campaign out there to delegitimize science, and it is growing strong in respect to climate. — EvoLiteracy © 2018.

This op-piece appeared in The Standard Times (South Coast Today), see HERE.

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook @gpazymino and GPC-Facebook 

Related Articles

Nobel Prize for the economics of innovation and climate change stirs controversy – Science Magazine October 8, 2018

Economists who changed thinking on climate change win Nobel Prize – Nature Magazine October 8, 2018

Key climate panel, citing impending crisis, urges crash effort to reduce emissions – Science Magazine October 8, 2018

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on 1.5ºC: Responding to climate change is far more like a marathon than a sprint – Real Climate October 7, 2018

Posted on Articles Evolution Literacy, Blog Master Posting, Commentary, Scientific Literacy, Video

When it comes to weedkiller and cancer, the answer is complex

“Why did New Scientist, ‘the world’s most-read weekly popular science and technology magazine,’ as described on its website, decide to departure from covering ‘international news from a rational, analytical standpoint rooted in the scientific method’ and inject extra doubt into the glyphosate debate? I am referring to the directional ‘probably not’ when swiftly-answering its own query ‘does weedkiller cause cancer?'”

By Guillermo Paz-y-Miño-C

“Does weedkiller cause cancer? Probably not.” These engagement-bite question and answer, as they are known in social media circles when postings lure followers to quick-comment about a topic, were used by New Scientist on Facebook right after a jury in San Francisco concluded that the giant agrochemical and biotech Monsanto must pay $289 million in damages to Dewayne Johnson, who has cancer of the immune system (lymphoma), a condition he and his attorneys claim was caused by exposure to glyphosate-based herbicides commercialized by Monsanto from 1974 to 2000.

The jury’s decision went viral. A 46-year-old school groundskeeper was dying, a world known corporation was being blamed for it, and the state of California offered the perfect stage for litigation. The German Pharmaceutical group Bayer, which back in June, 2018, formalized its engulfing of Monsanto for $60-plus billion, went into frantic damage control, and for a reason. About four thousand other plaintiffs await their day in court. Hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in potential damage awards could be in dispute, more so if Monsanto-Bayer fail in their appeal to the California decision.

But, why did New Scientist, “the world’s most-read weekly popular science and technology magazine,” as described on its website, decide to departure from covering “international news from a rational, analytical standpoint rooted in the scientific method” and inject extra doubt into the glyphosate debate? I am referring to the directional “probably not” when swiftly-answering its own query “does weedkiller cause cancer?”

As the reader might imagine, the New Scientist’s position caused turmoil among academics and science educators, whose mentors and themselves have relied, since 1956, on the London-based enterprise to get their weekly news. For researchers, New Scientist is a classic, like The New York Times or BBC are for journalists.

The concerns in many of the five hundred comments that New Scientist’s Facebook followers wrote were: why did New Scientist appear to align with Monsanto-Bayer, rather than simply apply the scientific method to communicate the facts about glyphosate to the public? Based on the available research, why did New Scientist take the path of “probably not,” rather than an objective “there are some studies suggesting an association between glyphosate and cancer, and others arriving at inconclusive results”? Moreover, why did New Scientist explicitly state in the heading to its post that “there is no evidence that the weedkiller glyphosate causes cancer”? The latter is false; it implies that the studies that have found such indication should be arbitrarily ignored. And that is not how science works.

Some commentators on the New Scientist post added links to the scientific literature and prestigious journals in which associations between glyphosate exposure and cancer had been reported in laboratory animals and limitedly in humans. Others defended Monsanto-Bayer and listed the publications by researchers affiliated with the multi-company Glyphosate Task Force. But the vast majority questioned, not Monsanto-Bayer, but New Scientist for relying on its outreach platform to seed generalized distrust on any probable link between glyphosate and cancer.

The New Scientist’s captions appeared as large texts on a micro-video with images of Mr. Johnson, containers with Round-up (one of the herbicide’s market names), crop fields being labored, activists “impersonating death” and opposing the weedkiller, small airplanes spraying glyphosate, quotes that the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) “considers glyphosate probably carcinogenic” to laboratory animals when exposed in high doses (in direct contradiction to the very New Scientist headings), but that other “studies in humans have found no evidence of a link,” and that “other agencies have concluded there is no increased risk of cancer” due to contact with glyphosate. Yet, the take-home message in the clip was: glyphosate does not or “probably does not” cause cancer (see also companion article “There is no evidence that the weedkiller glyphosate causes cancer…”).

From a rational, analytical standpoint, rigorous scientists would hardly take the “probably not” path. Here is why. It is not a scientific answer. When investigators find evidence, even if limited but of statistical rigor in a controlled study, they state categorically that such evidence exists under the parameters of the research. When no evidence is found, or the numerical sustain is weak, the studies are never declared “probably not” (a “leading-the-mind” hint), but rather inconclusive; and that is Science 101.

Skepticism is what drives science and researchers. As for the question “does weedkiller cause cancer?” Well, there is increasing evidence that it does in laboratory animals and, apparently, in humans, as well as there are historical, inconclusive or unsubstantiated findings (see review articles from 2016, 2017). But then, there is the legal fight between citizens, their attorneys, and a multi-billion corporate colossal. The answer is complex, but it is not “probably not.” — EvoLiteracy © 2018.

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook @gpazymino and GPC-Facebook 

Posted on Articles Evolution Literacy, Commentary, Education, EvoLiteracy News, Excerpts from scientific articles, Research Articles, Scientific Literacy

“Complementary medicine” is not helping cancer patients

“…Belief is powerful, it disrupts, distorts, delays or stops the comprehension and acceptance of scientific evidence. Scientists call this phenomenon the ‘3Ds+S’ cognitive effects of illusory thinking. Now, the best tonic against its infectious sequels was discovered long ago; it consisted, still does, on proper healthcare education for all. And, in contrast to misleading and unwarranted ‘paramedicine,’ the side effects of widespread science education will always be cheaper, plus save, for sure, some lives…”

By Guillermo Paz-y-Miño-C

Cancer hides or thrives in our bodies. Someone we know, close or distant, is destined to die because of it. And although therapies continue to improve thanks to scientific advances, diverse cancers persist and it might take decades, if ever, to fully manage them.

In the United States, breast, prostate, lung and colorectal cancer are the most prevalent, and chemotherapy, radiotherapy, surgery, and/or hormone therapy the usual treatments. Yet, more than half of the patients with cancer opt for “complementary medicine” to improve, as they believe, their quality of life and survival.

But, do herbs and botanicals, vitamin and mineral supplements, probiotics, traditional medicines, homeopathy, naturopathy, acupuncture, chiropractic or osteopathic manipulation, massage, prayer, reflexology, energy medicine, or special diets have an actual impact on prolonging cancer patients’ lives? The short answer seems to be no.

Physicians from the Yale School of Medicine have just published the study “Complementary Medicine, Refusal of Conventional Cancer Therapy, and Survival Among Patients with Curable Cancers” in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). From a data set of 1.9 million individuals, gathered between 2004 and 2013 and stored in the National Cancer Database, the researchers extracted a representative sample of cancer patients whom opted for complementary medicine (CM) versus those exposed to conventional cancer treatment (CCT).

The study was straightforward. It aimed at identifying and comparing survival rates between CM and CCT groups.

Patients exposed to complementary medicine had a greater risk of death than those under conventional cancer treatment. In fact, only 82 percent of the CM patients versus 87 percent of the CCT patients survived during a 5-year monitoring lapse since they were first diagnosed with the condition. The trend was noticeable in women suffering breast cancer, with only 85 percent of the CM patients versus 90 percent of the conventionally-treated patients surviving since diagnosis (also during a 5-year follow up).

According to Skyler Johnson, Henry Park and Cary Gross, authors of the study and fellows at the Department of Therapeutic Radiology, as well as the Cancer Outcomes, Public Policy, and Effectiveness Research Center at Yale, the general risk of death associated with complementary medicine was primarily linked to the patients’ refusal to receive: surgery (7 versus 0.1 percent refusal between the CM versus CCT groups, respectively), chemotherapy (34 versus 3 percent), radiotherapy (53 versus 2 percent), and/or hormone therapy (34 versus 3 percent).

Quite interestingly, patients in the complementary medicine group were more likely to be young, women, have breast or colorectal cancer, belong to high socio-economic cohorts, have private medical insurance, high-school education, and reside in the Intermountain West or Pacific West of the United States (where alternative-medicine schools are common, protected by state legislation).

In essence, the Yale study concluded that if patients went for unconventional cures to fight cancer, rather than scientific medicine, they had higher risk to die and do it earlier. Complementary medicine did not help.

As David Gorski, member of the Department of Surgery at Wayne State University School of Medicine and the Department of Oncology at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute (both in Michigan), already alerted back in 2014 when compiling a comprehensive review for the journal Nature “the vast majority of ‘integrative’ [complementary oncology] treatments [were] supported by little, if any, scientific evidence.” He pointed out, with concern and irony, “therein lies a key problem with integrative oncology. The less ‘alternative’ the intervention, the more it resembles conventional oncology; the more ‘alternative’ the intervention, the more it resembles the quackery from which integrative oncologists rightly distance themselves.”

Why do patients opt for unscientific methods to battle cancer? There are multiple reasons, and only one of them has to do with “hope,” trust on a possibility (the “alternative cure”) beyond the “conventional scientific wisdom,” one that might work and, if not, at least, it won’t hurt. There is always a friend or a relative that recommend “holistic cures” to somebody they love. But the Yale study demonstrates that such paths can indeed be harmful: remember that they were associated with higher risk of dying and doing it earlier among patients choosing “complementary practices.”

Belief is powerful, as research on people’s attitudes toward science suggests, it disrupts, distorts, delays or stops the comprehension and acceptance of scientific evidence. Scientists call this phenomenon the “3Ds+S” cognitive effects of illusory thinking. Now, the best tonic against its infectious sequels was discovered long ago; it consisted, still does, on proper healthcare education for all. And, in contrast to misleading and unwarranted “paramedicine,” the side effects of widespread science education will always be cheaper, plus save, for sure, some lives. — EvoLiteracy © 2018.

This op-piece appeared in The Standard Times (South Coast Today), see HERE.

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook @gpazymino and GPC-Facebook 

Posted on Articles Evolution Literacy, Commentary, Editorials The Standard Times, Research Articles

Smarter Than Average? Majority of Americans Think So

“Just believing in self- or collective-greatness will not materialize into competitive performance… For us, it will be impractical and blindfolding to insist on national self-flattering. But, if there is anything we do better than anybody else is to blindfold ourselves.”

By Guillermo Paz-y-Miño-C.

Overconfident? Self enhanced? Smarter than average? Yes.

Such widespread public opinions about relative intelligence were first reported in the United States in 1965. Yet, as a team of researchers puts it in a replication study just published in the academic journal Public Library of Science (PLoS), “American’s self-flattering beliefs about intelligence are alive and well several decades after their discovery.”

When asked to assess the statement “I am more intelligent than the average person,” via phone or online polling, 65 percent of responders either agreed or strongly agreed with the premise.

The pollsters, Patrick Heck, Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris, affiliated with the Autism & Developmental Medicine Institute in Pennsylvania, the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois-Champaign, and the Institute for Advance Study in Toulouse-France, respectively, interviewed 2,800 adults in the 50 states of the country, and analyzed their responses as per sex, age, race/ethnicity, and educational attainment.

More men (about 70 percent) than women (about 60 percent) considered themselves smarter than average, a trend comparable to the adults younger than 44 years of age (also 70 percent were confident in their intellect) versus those older than 44 years (60 percent). In terms of race/ethnicity, about 65 percent of both “whites” and “non-whites” agreed with the notion “I am more intelligent than average,” with the peculiar feature that up to 71 percent of “non-whites,” who responded to the survey online (rather than by phone and were likely skillful computer users), mostly or strongly concurred with the statement.

Interestingly, responders with college or post-graduate degrees underestimated themselves, with 70+ percent thinking they were above average intelligence; note that the pollsters expected 80+ percent of the highly educated to think that way according to their usual cohort performance in IQ-tests. Those with “no college” or “some college” education, by contrast, surpassed the expected 47 percent confidence score on self-brain-ranking, with 55-62 percent of them believing (themselves) to be smarter than the mean.

“…both the naturally talented as much as the taught-to-reason-average-individual can perform better in ‘the real world’ if provided with educational tools to excel…”

Overconfidence is not necessarily bad. It can actually boost performance, encourage bold, creative thinking and help persist on innovative projects even though they might have been initially dismissed by others (for an evolutionary take see Nature). The “smarter than average effect,” as it is known among psychology scholars, is apparently ubiquitous across cultures (particularly in the West; but see an alternative perspective here), although the trends in the United States are not directly applicable elsewhere.

There is no doubt that education brings self confidence to people, but there is also innate differential talent among individuals, which can be developed even further with proper mentoring and schooling. Take youth math ability, for example, the most reliable predictor of later-in-life career success (go to scientific article): all significant aspects of modern societal development, which are bound to science and technology, depend on quantitative, rational thinking to solving problems and innovating progress. And both the naturally talented as much as the taught-to-reason-average-individual can perform better in “the real world” if provided with educational tools to excel. Thus, “above average performance” — in respect to the past — can be continuously built in anyone and, by doing so, raise the bar for all.

Paradoxically, at some point, perhaps at a crucial one in history (now!), just believing in self- or collective-greatness (as celebrities often claim “as long as you believe, anything is possible,” which is always followed by tens of thousands of “likes” and “shares” in social media) will not materialize into competitive performance; at least not when so many countries out there are committed to, via meaningful actions in elementary-, high-school- or higher-education, lead the future.

For us, it will be impractical and blindfolding to insist on national self-flattering. But, if there is anything we do better than anybody else is to blindfold ourselves. — EvoLiteracy © 2018.

This op-piece appeared in The Standard Times (South Coast Today), see HERE.

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook @gpazymino and GPC-Facebook 

Posted on Articles Evolution Literacy, Commentary, Recommended Books

Taming a Fox in the USSR

“More than a ‘tit for tat’ encounter between Lee and Lyudmila, I see the production of this volume as an act of academic altruism, an exemplar of the evolution of goodness and cooperation between humans, in which the story of Vulpes vulpes, Dmitri and Lyudmila has been rescued from the glacial night and eternalized in a book for the large, youthful crowds. How to Tame a Fox resembles the launching of Sputnik and Vostok, but rather than commissioning Laika or Yuri Gagarin to pioneering our presence in space, it seems to have sent the red foxes, Dmitri and Lyudmila in a journey to the stars, where they belong.”

by Guillermo Paz-y-Miño-C

Almost two decades ago, a graduate student in a lab in which both of us were associates, she as a second-year trainee and I as a postdoc, gave me an end-of-the-year card with a wolf sketched on the cover and a note inside: Don’t Let Them Tame You. I loved it. Darkness in the sky, a snowy cliff and a grayish Canis howling at the moon were softly printed on pale paper.

Over the years, I have realized that her intention was to warn me, at least symbolically, about the nasty working environment I had just joined, and which required ferocity to survive. We both did it, no taming in trade. — But the card’s message at that time simply got me thinking of Darwin’s The Origin of Species (1859), in which he discussed “Variation Under Domestication” (Chapter I) and the many examples of humans’ successes in taming —over centuries and millennia— all sorts of animals and plants. In fact, Darwin’s central inference that Nature played the role of a “beast master” in shaping not only behavior but entire species’ anatomies and functions came directly from the evidence of domestication. He later dedicated a whole book, The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (1868), to expand on the ideas first presented in The Origin.

“…If anything, the book’s wedge is Taming a Fox in a Dystopian USSR…”

Photo credit The Institute of Cytology and Genetics, Novosibirsk (with permission – LAD).

When biologist Lee A. Dugatkin approached me in January 2017, via Facebook, to ask me to share one of his posts announcing the upcoming How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog), I volunteered to —instead— write a review of the book for EvoLiteracy. Before long, I received an electronic copy of the proofs, read them enthusiastically non-stop, and came up with a 600-word commentary. I gave the book three stars, but never posted the narrative. I found the story light and told Avelina Espinosa (my research collaborator and co-author in papers and books) that How to Tame a Fox will become a best seller and do well in the popular science market: my review will make no difference. Besides, I said, this book is hard to assess without turning too critical. Starting from the title, nobody tames a fox and builds a dog, but rather selects for a tamed fox, the actual product. To me, the heading was equivalent to stating “how to tame a Grévy’s zebra and build a horse;” or tame a white-lipped peccary and build a pig; or a lynx and build a cat. All misleading premises; all involving relatively close taxa: canids (foxes and dogs), equids (zebras and horses), tayassuids and suids (peccaries and pigs) or felids (lynxes and cats). Although, it is true that the foxes were tamed –for the most part– in the dog’s image, no fox was ever turned into “The perfect dog” (Prologue). This early analogy fogged reality and remained latent, subliminal in the chapters.

“…The book narrates the work, struggles and joys of Russian scientists Dmitri Belyaev and Lyudmila Trut, whom in the early 1950s started one of the most ambitious experiments in domestication: the turning of a wild red fox (Vulpes vulpes) into a pet-lookalike…”

Along its pages, How to Tame a Fox resembles the ornate prose of the Victorian Era (Dugatkin’s style, also evident in Mr. Jefferson and the Giant Moose, 2009). The book narrates the work, struggles and joys of Russian scientists Dmitri Belyaev (1917-1985) and Lyudmila Trut, whom in the early 1950s started (i.e. Belyaev) one of the most ambitious experiments in domestication: the turning of a wild red fox (Vulpes vulpes) into a pet-lookalike. The igniting motivation was commercial (for the fox fur industry) as much as inspired by scientific curiosity (an attempt to fast-domesticate a wild animal by means of intense selective breeding), although the outcomes remained little known outside the Soviet Union during the Cold War (but see American Scientist 1999, BioEssays 2009). Sixty years later, Lee has teamed up with Lyudmila to host the late Dmitri’s journey together with his companion foxes. An arrangement of convenience, I suppose, to achieve harmony between writing and factuality in telling the story.

Back in April 2017, I put aside my commentary on How to Tame a Fox, continued working on my own writing, and waited for the public’s reaction to the book (not that it would change my views). While in Prague, in July-August 2017, I asked Miklós Müller, a knowledgeable critic of the villainous Trofim Lysenko‘s work in the former Soviet Union (see Volumes I and II) and his influence on distorting science for ideological reasons in the USSR and Eastern Europe during the 1940s-50s (times that coincided with the starting of the first Belyaev fox investigations, toward the late 50s), if he —Miklós— was aware of the foxes book. Indeed, we both had read a blurb in The New York Times drafted by Marlene Zuk in May 2017: How Do You Make a Fox Your Friend? Fast-Forward Evolution. — Miklós and I had a passionate conversation about Lysenko; we put the foxes on hold, and then were interrupted by the beginning of a scientific talk about unicellular eukaryotes (protists), the purpose of our overlapping presence in the Czech Republic (for related article see A visit to Prague and Kutná Hora).

“…the red fox trials are analogous to the long-term evolution experiments in Escherichia coli, in which, in only a few years… new geno-phenotypes emerged relatively quickly under persistent directional selection…”

Excerpts of How to Tame a Fox have been reproduced in numerous venues (e.g. American Scientist, Evolution Institute, for endorsements go here). However, there are two academic reviews of relevance that I recommend. A generous one by Dan Blumstein, published in The Quarterly Review of Biology, and a more critical by Adam Miklosi, which came out in Current Biology. Adam states “…this experiment [i.e. the foxes’ breeding for tameness] should have been referred to as an animal model of domestication in which foxes were selected for ‘tame’ behaviour. So just to be clear, nobody has domesticated these foxes. These are not domesticated animals, they are the result of a scientific experiment — no more, no less…” So far, so good, Adam is right. But he also highlights that “…scientists working in this field [animal domestication] agree that domestication is an evolutionary process taking place on a 1000–10000 (or longer) year time scale and it involves complex interaction between people and a specific set of animal species (e.g. dogs, pigs, bees etc)…” Here Adam misses the point. The Belyaev and Trut experiments demonstrate that, under controlled conditions of directional —and relentless— selection with a clear intention in mind (to tame the foxes), the “domestication-like-outcome” (i.e. significantly reduced aggression in the foxes toward humans or each other) was comparable to what has been accomplished over thousands or tens of thousands of years with dogs, pigs or bees. Of course not in all possible traits correlated with domestication, like some features of dog cognition that seem to have evolved in parallel with tameness, but at least in one specific dimension: reduced aggression and, therefore, increased amicable behaviors toward humans and conspecifics. In this respect, the red fox trials are analogous to the long-term evolution experiments with Escherichia coli (late 1980s – present), in which, in only a few years and thousands of generations (nothing unusual for bacterial populations that replicate every couple of hours), new geno-phenotypes emerged relatively quickly under persistent directional selection [(i.e. the emergence of aerobic metabolism based on an organic-acid nutrient called citrate, rather than on ordinary sugars, which E. coli “prefers;” but again, nobody domesticated or tamed the bacteria to build another microbe; the cells were selected to tolerate citrate and their descendants expressed geno-phenotypes that allowed them to feed on the citric acid –for an encyclopedic summary see E. coli LTEE)].

“… How to Tame a Fox does little to challenge the reader and engage him/her into inferring time or space connections via literary devices, even though the vast historical setting and wealth of the Russian literature were accessible to the authors; after all, Lyudmila was a contributor…”

My discontent with the book was not the buoyancy of the science, its redundant passages, the sticky narrative or emphasis on people (Lee, as narrator of historicity, Dmitri and Lyudmila as heroic characters struggling to doing science in a “communist regime”) rather than on the foxes, which are elements cleverly assembled into the text to precisely appeal to a broad readership prone to loving cute pets and being empathic with non-human animals; a multitude shallowly aware of the advent of the Soviet Union and the Cold War, and predominantly uninformed about the monumental cultural ancestry of the Russian people. How to Tame a Fox feeds on the stereotypic views the West has about life in the USSR; it swiftly examines the geopolitical past with Western values of the present, a no-no approach among academic historians. [(And this observation is not, by default, an endorsement of Stalin’s brutality, which still roams the mental architecture of Moscow’s modern politicians, nor a denial that the USSR imploded due to self-inflicted wounds plus its unsustainable clashes with the gluttonous capitalists, whom today form West-and-East alliances of their own to extort the world)]. If anything, the book’s wedge is Taming a Fox in a Dystopian USSR. As Miklós Müller justified it when we spoke in Prague: well, it is because an American author wrote the book.

How to Tame a Fox does little to challenge the reader and engage him/her into inferring time or space connections via literary devices, even though the vast historical setting and wealth of the Russian literature were accessible to the authors; after all, Lyudmila was a contributor. This only required creativity. — By contrast, the book secures an intellectual safe space; the discomfort is in others (Dmitri, Lyudmila, the foxes, the Soviets, the communists, the totalitarians, the thugs, the cronies, them), the comfort is in the self (the flawless bookworm). Yet, it is fun to explore its passages and envision its events in a video-clip fashion. And more than once I pictured the foxes jumping and playing adorably with their caregivers, unaware that their ancestors had been tamed —selectively— by scientists. Sometimes, I even envisioned their DNA changing as the experiments progressed: I felt The Commotion in the Genes as referred to in Chapter 10.

Early this year, the American Association for the Advancement of Science awarded How to Tame a Fox one of the 2018 AAAS/Subaru Children’s Science Book Prizes, in the category Young Adult Science Book. The work is currently —as I predicted a year ago— a best seller, and it is being translated into other languages (Arabic, Chinese, German, Italian and Korean –not Russian, yet). But the fortune of this tale might travel farther than that, and it is not wild to imagine a Hollywood animation about gentle versus vicious foxes; good battling evil in the cold, endless winters of Siberia; with oppressors wearing ushanka hats and mismatching Cossack attires; with Lysenko- and Stalin-like characters plotting malice against scientists and the creatures of the snow. A mirage of the imprinted allegories about the past.

“Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs.” — Leo Tolstoy

More than a “tit for tat” encounter between Lee and Lyudmila, I see the production of this volume as an act of academic altruism, an exemplar of the evolution of goodness and cooperation between humans, in which the story of Vulpes vulpes, Dmitri and Lyudmila has been rescued from the glacial night and eternalized in a book for the large, youthful crowds. How to Tame a Fox resembles the launching of Sputnik and Vostok, but rather than commissioning Laika or Yuri Gagarin to pioneering our presence in space, it seems to have sent the red foxes, Dmitri and Lyudmila in a journey to the stars, where they belong.

I do recommend this enchanting book to all audiences, just don’t let it tame you.

— EvoLiteracy © 2018.

You can contact Guillermo Paz-y-Miño-C via email at guillermo.pazyminoc@gmail.com — Follow us on Twitter @gpazymino and Facebook.