Smithsonian.com

Would you take this pill? (courtesy of flickr use steveb_ohio)

In the United States, there are “drugs” and there are “dietary supplements.” Each are chemicals intended to improve your health, but they are held to very different standards of regulation: Before drugs can be sold, a company must prove to the Food and Drug Administration that their product is safe and effective. Dietary supplements, meanwhile, do not need approval from the FDA before they are marketed; companies do not need to prove that these substances are safe or effective before they are sold. If a supplement proves harmful, though, the FDA can ban the substance, like it did with ephedra in 2006.

The Zicam warning issued last week by the FDA reveals a little-known third class of chemicals marketed for your health—homeopathic drugs. These are technically drugs, but they do not have to go through the long approval process; they receive automatic approval from the FDA as long as the Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia Convention of the United States adds the substance to their list. No long trials, no science needed.

On its face, this shouldn’t be too much of a problem, because homeopathic drugs shouldn’t have any active ingredients in them. Yes, you read that correctly. See, homeopathy is a type of alternative medicine in which a compound is put through a series of dilutions until little, if any, of the compound remains. It has been proposed that homeopathic drugs work by “water memory,” which is a load of bunk. But at least if the “drug” doesn’t have any pharmacologically active substances left in it, then it shouldn’t have any side effects, either. The biggest risk by taking them should be that of not having taken something that would actually work.

But Zicam, which fell under the homeopathic drug label, wasn’t diluted to the point where it was indistinguishable from water. It contains biologically active levels of zinc. And it’s that zinc that is suspected to be behind reports of a decrease or loss of smell in Zicam users. The FDA has now asked Zicam’s maker to “submit a new drug application to demonstrate safety and efficacy.”

Herbal supplements and homeopathic drugs are just a couple of examples of the perils and popularity of alternative medicine. People who do not smoke, do eat organic food and drink only bottled water have no problem consuming substances that are completely unregulated, even in place of pharmaceuticals with strong trial evidence to back up their claims. Where is the sense in trying out random chemicals from unknown sources just because someone told you that it might make you feel better or lose weight or sleep more soundly?

We all want the magic cure, but it isn’t going to come from a homeopath or the herbal supplement industry or any other of the purveyors of woo. But what’s really sad is to see people, children sometimes, that modern medicine could help but who are sidetracked by this quackery.

(Hat tip: Science-Based Medicine)

XKCD tells it how it is.

In 2005, when then-president of Harvard (and current Obama advisor) Larry Summers posited that biological differences might be one reason why women have not been as successful as men in math and science careers, he was only the latest man to make that suggestion. Back in 1887, George Romanes declared that mental abilities were secondary sex characteristics related to brain size (i.e., girls were stupid because their brains were too tiny).

I wasn’t the only person who thought that Summers was nuts in 2005, even if his theory had such a long tradition.

A new study in this week’s PNAS adds to the evidence that girls’ brains are just fine. Psychologist Janet Hyde and oncologist Janet Mertz of the University of Wisconsin set out to answer three questions: Do gender differences in mathematics performance exist in the general population? Do gender differences exist among the highly mathematically talented? And do females exist who possess profound mathematical talent?

The answer to the first question is “no.” There are no longer any differences in math performance between girls and boys in the United States and several other nations.

For the second question, the answer is “sometimes.” There is a gender gap between males and females in the top percentiles of math performance, but it is not found in some ethnic groups and nations. The presence of a gap, they write, “correlates with several measure of gender inequality. Thus, it is largely an artifact of changeable sociocultural factors, not immutable, innate biological differences between the sexes.”

As for the third question, all the researchers had to do was go out and find some of the top-performing female mathematicians. And they didn’t have to look very hard.

The conclusion: girls can do math just as well as boys.

The timing of this study is interesting, because I’m currently reading Women in Mathematics, a 1974 book by Lynn M. Osen, and a gift from my mom, a math teacher. Women have been mathematicians as long as men, and it’s really only women’s circumstances throughout history (mostly uneducated, often unseen) that prevented all but a few from pursuing the field:

In almost any age, it has taken a passionate determination, as well as a certain insouciance, for a female to circumvent the crippling prohibitions against education for women, particularly in a field that is considered to be a male province. In mathematics, the wonder is not that so few have attained proficiency in the field, but that so many have overcome the obstacles to doing so. We can only speculate about the multitude who were dissuaded from the attempt—the Mary Somervilles who never had a fortunate accident to discover their talent, the Agnesis who lacked a mathematically trained parent to nurture their genius, of the Mme du Châtelets who were seduced completely by a frivolous salon life.

But perhaps the larger tragedy is that, even today, we can find remnants of the elitist (or sexist) tradition that has so often surrounded mathematics in the past. It should be acknowledged that during the present century, there have been many women who have achieved remarkably successful careers in fields drawing heavily on mathematics, but to use these women as exemplars of what is possible for any woman who “really tries” is one of the crueler sports of our day. That so many of the resolute do survive speaks to their capabilities and circumstances, as well as the caprice of luck and nature. Far too many fail even to see the reasons they were dissuaded from the effort.

Girls can do math. Can we now move on to making sure that career opportunities are the same for each? That’s a tangible, fixable, problem.

1. Plant a garden.
2. Plant a tree.
3. Plant native plants.
4. Plant a meadow instead of a lawn.
5. Compost.
6. Mulch.
7. Water in the morning.
8. Use drip irrigation.
9. Use a water timer.
10. Use grey water.
11. Don’t use pesticides.
12. Use an electric mower.
13. Use a push mower.
14. Keep your car’s tires inflated.
15. Tune up your engine.
16. Clean out your car.
17. Drive less.
18. Drive the speed limit.
19. Carpool.
20. Take the subway.
21. Take the bus.
22. Ride a bike.
23. Walk.

More Earth Day tips for your home, your laundry, your kitchen and your computer — after the jump.

(More…)

UPDATE: According to a report from the Dallas Morning News, the Texas Board of Education rejected  restoring the “strengths and weaknesses” proposal by a 7-7 split vote. A final vote will come on Friday, but the vote is expected to remain deadlocked.

My freshman year of high school, when the teacher reached the section about evolution, he began by telling us that though there may be alternative explanations, they were not science and would not be discussed in class. He would be happy, however, to speak with any students about them after class. The evolution chapter then proceeded like any other lesson, with lectures and labs and an exam at the end.

It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized that my experience may have been somewhat rare, particularly for conservative Indiana. I once met an elementary school teacher who feared being asked questions about evolution and wouldn’t answer them, telling her students to ask their parents instead. One friend’s high school skipped over the topic completely. But by this point in my life, I wasn’t surprised by these stories, having seen efforts to undermine the teaching of evolution in Georgia, Kansas and Pennsylvania (and since then Louisiana). Avoiding the topic seems somewhat mild compared with efforts to foist creationism or its cousin, intelligent design, on students.

The battle has now moved to Texas, where this week the state’s Board of Education is considering requiring teachers to instruct high school students on the “strengths and weaknesses” of scientific theories, particularly evolution. Weaknesses, though, is simply code for “evolution is wrong.” Those who pull out that argument do not argue for science; they want creationism or intelligent design taught in its place, though they have learned to be circumspect about their goals. You can see from this liveblog of the board’s meeting this week, by a Houston Chronicle reporter, that several of the people who spoke out on the first day for the “strengths and weaknesses” language had a religious agenda. And they have half of the board on their side, including the board chairman, who believes the earth is only 6,000 years old.

You would think that a board of education would have education (i.e., teaching children things that are not false) be their first priority, but it appears that the Texas board, or at least part of it, does not. Of course, the really scary bit of all of this is that where Texas goes in textbooks, so does much of the country. Because it’s such a big market, textbook publishers try to make their books fit Texas’s standards. If Texas requires weaknesses to be included, those false arguments could end up in your child’s schoolroom, even if you live thousands of miles away.

So, Texans, speak up. Teach your children about the wonder of evolution. Tell the board to leave out that silly “strengths and weaknesses” line. If you live elsewhere, keep a lookout for efforts like these.

Some resources:
National Center for Science Education
Evolution Resources from the National Academies
Science, Evolution and Creationism (free PDF download)

Everyone is welcome at the Smithsonian Institution, though we locals may grumble when our museums start to fill up with tourists in the spring. But I’m not sure which of these I would find more annoying on a trip through the National Museum of Natural History: 40 hyperactive first graders or the Advanced Creation Studies class from Liberty University, which the Washington Post wrote about in yesterday’s paper.

I know that there are a lot of creationists in this country. But creationism is religion, and the museums are about science. Many creationists seem a bit surprised when the Smithsonian Institution (and this magazine—you should see the letters we get!) does not treat “creation science” (or its brother, intelligent design) in the same way as it does evolution. Smithsonian Institution spokesman Randall Kremer:

“Evolution is the unifying principle for all the biology, past and present, in our halls,” Kremer said. “That is the foundation of the research we conduct at the museum.”

The Liberty University professor mentioned in the Post article brings his creation studies students to the museum each year to expose them to the other side (i.e., evolution) and to strengthen their belief in creationism. But the students still seemed somewhat surprised that religion played no part in the museum’s displays of how animals came to be:

[I]n the hall of mammals, which reopened in 2003 after a $23 million renovation, evolution assumes center stage, and the Liberty students grew a bit more subdued. They openly admired the well-lighted, meticulously designed dioramas. But they lamented that the texts and videos give no credit at all to a higher power for the wondrous animal variety on display.

The visit didn’t change any minds, according to the article, which I find a bit sad. Evolution is an incredibly fascinating area of science, and it opens the door to all of biology.

The article reminded me of another visit to the “other side,” when a secular group from Indiana University visited the Creation Museum. But do they seem to be having more fun than the students in the Post story?

SAIU trip to the Creation Museum from Secular Alliance on Vimeo.