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Podcast of "A Skeptic Looks at ELEPHANTS!" AKA Pontification from a "Shill For the Criminal Elite"

6/29/2014

Hi-Ho skeptoids! The recording of a lecture that I gave I gave a couple weeks ago to a Seattle Skeptics Dinner is available. The major topic was elephants, and a blogged about this a few days ago, and included links to some of the sources and videos which were shown at the dinner.
But before the main presentation, I discussed a few other topics related to skepticism. Let me say first that, particularly in the beginning this talk, was really more of a conversation than a lecture. Here is a link to the recording, if you want to check it out.
So, while you're listening to the recording, I thought I'd clarify a couple of my statements and offer a couple of corrections.
at 1:50
Here is the link for "Friday night at the Meaningful Movies," in Seattle.
at 2:15
The film was called "How to Make Money Selling Drugs." Here is the trailer:

at 2:20
Here is a link for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.
at 6:00
Take 'im off the shelf, should have been "Talk 'im off the ledge."
Below is a link to part 1 a video of the "Best of Sam Harris," I admire the clarity and calm demeanor with which he delivers his arguments.

at 6:26
The Unpersuadables (The full title is The Unpersuadables: Adventures with the Enemies of Science) by Will Storr can be purchased from from Amazon at this link.

at 9:37
Boy, I really garbled this one. What I was trying to say is that in an unbiased test that you will get false positives or false negatives, simply because of statistical probability. An example is that if you flip a coin five times in a row, there is a statistical possibility that you will get five heads in a row. Actually, the exact probability, in a fair coin, of getting "heads" is 1 in 2X2X2X2X2 trials--or only once in 32 groups of 5 coin tosses--a pretty unlikely event. The way to obviate this is to increase the sample size. For example, if you toss a fair coin 6 times in a row the probability shrinks to once in 64 tosses. So, applying this to the highly-selected homeopathic studies, the higher the sample size, the less significant the data were. My statement that "for a percentage of the time you would expect your data to not support your hypothesis" was erroneous, very sloppy, logic. What I was trying to say is that "for a percentage of the time, you would expect your data to not support the UNDERLYING REALITY--just like the coin tosses. Sorry about that. I'll try and be more accurate next time. BTW, here is a link to the definition of type I and type II statistical errors if you want to learn more.
At 10:30
Here is the text of the quote from Will Storr's book:

Stories work against truth. They operate with the machinery of prejudice and distortion. Their purpose is not fact but propaganda. The scientific method is the tool that humans have developed to break the dominion of the narrative. It has been designed specifically to dissolve anecdote, to strip out emotion and leave only unpolluted data. It is a new kind of language, a modern sorcery, and it has gifted our species incredible powers. We can eradicate plagues, extend our lives by decades, build rockets and fly through space. But we can hardly be surprised if some feel an instinctive hostility towards it, for it is fundamentally inhuman.

At 16:20
Here is the short "preview" of an epigenetics lecture that I might give in the future:

At 21:50
The discussion was a little hard to hear, but what it was about was a comparison between Lamarckism and epigenetic change. If you're interested, here is a link that explains the differences.
At 23:58
The discussion was about the limits of scientific "proof." Actually, science doesn't really "prove" anything, it just leads to increasing liklihood of identifying truth. Here is a good video from Qualia that explains this concept clearly.

At 25:21
Here is a link to Phil Plait's arguments against the idea that the Apollo Program was a hoax.
At 25:35
This is where the actual talk about elephants began. For links related to this I refer you to my previous blog post. And, as I made clear in the audio, I don't know a dang thing about elephants. I am in no way am I an expert. So, feel free to disagree with everything I say.
In fact, feel free to disagree with anything I say EVER! What do I know? Do ya think?

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A Skeptic Looks at Elephants

6/25/2014

2 Comments

    Tuesday of last week I gave a talk to the Seattle Skeptics Meetup dinner (Sorry, the link only works for Meetup members) called "A Skeptic Looks at ELEPHANTS." This is a follow-up blog post containing some of the info and links from the talk.
    A couple months ago I blogged about the possibility of crows showing behavior resembling a funeral ritual. I discussed this with caveats about the dangers of analyzing of animals by applying human standards, known as anthropomorphism. But what of elephants? Do elephants have funerals? Do they have feelings? How intelligent or altruistic are they? Are there elephant artists? Should they be afforded the same ethic standards that we apply to humans? Or, is this all just anthropomorphising?
    First, let me say that I think elephants are one of the coolest critters in the world. It is hard to imagine that Mastodons wandered around in North America up until about 10,000 years ago and wooly mammoths did not become extinct until about 4,000 years ago. Contrast that with dinosaurs, which disappeared about 60 million years ago. In fact, human hunting is thought to be a major contributor to the demise of both species. Too bad. I think it would be neat to have elephant-like animals in my back yard (Well, maybe not.).
    But we still have elephants, the largest land animals in the world. I highlight elephants, because, it seems to me, to be one of the harder examples of animals to be dismissive of what appears to be human-like behavior. Here's an excellent article from Scientific American Magazine about elephants that I recommend.
    An interesting aside, when I was researching this topic, I learned of a new word (DYT Blog readers know how much I love words)--the opposite of anthropomorphism-- "theriomorphism," i.e. to ascribe animal characteristics to humans (Quit acting like an ape, ya knucklehead. She eats like a bird!).
    So, what of elephants? In what ways do they resemble humans?
    For one thing, they're very intelligent. Proportionate to body size, elephant brains are very large, and seem to be organized similar to humans. (Note: This proportion is a pretty crude, and sometimes misleading, indication of intelligence. More info here.) In terms of intelligence, elephants seem to be comparable to cetaceans (whales and dolphins), corvids (crows, ravens, magpies and jays), and non-human primates. Elephants have a strong sense of community, in a matriarchal system. They also have high levels of what appears to be emotional intelligence, with strong senses of empathy and altruism, possibly even across species. Here's a Wikipedia link on elephant cognition, which lists a wide variety of abilities, "...including those associated with grief, learning, allomothering, mimicry, play, altruism, use of tools, compassion, cooperation, self-awareness, memory, and language." Wow! Quite a list. I really had no idea, when I started researching this topic, that elephants had that many skills.
    Check out the video below, where, Kandula, an elephant at the National Zoo figured out how to use a cube to reach food that was suspended just out of reach overhead. This shows pretty good evidence of creative problem-solving and tool using skills, but elephants have a lot more indications of higher
cognition.

Here's an interesting experiment. A device was constructed that allowed elephants to receive a reward if two elephants operated a pulley device. (Watch the video below to see how exactly it was designed.)This measured not only problem-solving skills, but their ability to cooperate.

Something I didn't know before looking into this topic is that elephants can be parrots; i.e. they can be mimics, that, with a little help from their trunks, emulate human speech. Check out the video below.

Here's a link to another interesting video of a scientist studying elephant communication through ground vibrations.
Below are some videos showing examples of supposed elephant "art" that set my skeptic-sense tingling. Have you ever heard of elephant painting? How about an elephant orchestra? Below are three videos of so-called elephant "art." And, not to be outdone, one example of dolphin "art."

So, what do I make of all this? I really can't see a lot of evidence of creativity, which is the hallmark of art. What I do see are well-trained elephants. I was going to do a lot more digging on this topic, but Snopes has already done most of the grunt work for me. I will say though that I'm mightily impressed by the dexterity of their trunks! I think this is pretty much a harmless way to mine for tourist souvenir dollars, but I'm dubious that this indicates real creative, i.e. artistic, expression.
In contrast, I'm a little less doubtful of the possibility of elephant funerals. Apparently, elephants have been known to remain near a dead companion for a long time after they expired. Here is an account from the Wikipedia article cited above.

Elephant researcher Martin Meredith recalls an occurrence in his book about a typical elephant death ritual that was witnessed by Anthony Hall-Martin, a South African biologist who had studied elephants in Addo, South Africa, for over eight years. The entire family of a dead matriarch, including her young calf, were all gently touching her body with their trunks, trying to lift her. The elephant herd were all rumbling loudly. The calf was observed to be weeping and made sounds that sounded like a scream, but then the entire herd fell incredibly silent. They then began to throw leaves and dirt over the body and broke off tree branches to cover her. They spent the next two days quietly standing over her body. They sometimes had to leave to get water or food, but they would always return.

Apparently, reports like these are not at all uncommon. Check out the video below. Although the camera-placement, and enhanced spooky music suggest it is a bit staged, I think it conveys the idea that elephants are pretty curious about this dead body of their own kind.

Are elephants afraid of mice? Below is a video that kind of surprised me. The guys of Mythbuster's fame tested this and found this possibility "plausible." Check it out. What do you think?

    My take is that, this can be criticized on several different levels: 1) a test with a brown mouse might have been preferable, 2) The test may have been repeatable, but it looks like they only tested one or two elephants, and 3) It's not at all obvious that the elephants didn't shy away simply because they were startled by by rapid movements not at all specific to mice (elephants have poor eyesight.) But hey, they did do a control with they empty dung ball, and they did repeat the experiment, and they illustrated the idea that when you do an experiment, you don't always get the expected outcome. I also give them credit for stating that the legend of mouse-fearing elephants is "plausible" rather than "definitive." I find their result intriguing.
    I concluded my talk with a discussion of the ethics of keeping elephants in zoos and circuses. This is a tough call for me. I encourage the reader to give some thought about the ethics of keeping such large, intelligent, animals in a zoo enclosure, or transported from city to city to perform in circuses. Here's an article that lists the pros and cons of Zoos. Zoos have done a lot of work to try and preserve species through captive breeding programs. There are more tigers in captivity now than in the wild. In addition many zoos have worked to create a more humane environment for the animals, providing more space and trying to preserve family structures--very hard to do with elephants, given their complex family structure and large size. Zoos educate the public, particularly important in cities where nature is scarce. I think the experience of seeing and elephant or a polar bear in a zoo can go a long way toward creating an appreciation and public awareness for natural history, and may encourage the preservation of ecosystems and even mitigation of the global climate change crisis. In other words, one might invoke a "greater good argument." reminiscent of arguments justifying the use of animals in medical research for the greater good of benefiting human beings, in developing an understanding of, or even cures, for disease. Similarly, it may be defensible to keep charismatic zoo and circus animals for the benefits accrued in public entertainment and education. But, to re-state my position, this is a tough call for me, and I would hope that zoos would provide as ideal and humane an environment for the animals as possible.
    A few years ago this was a prominent local issue in the Seattle area when a baby elephant died in the local Woodland Park Zoo. I invite you to check out the local news coverage if you want details.
    So, that is the basic outline of my talk. I really feel like it would take a lot more than a one hour talk to do this subject justice. I haven't read this book,
"The Elephant's Secret Sense: The Hidden Life of the Wild Herds of Africa," by Caitlin O'Connell, but it seems quite highly regarded by reviewers at Amazon, if you want more info. Maybe I'll read that next.

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Choprawoo Evolves Into Choprastupid

6/16/2014

1 Comment

Deepak is at it again. A few weeks ago I blogged about a fave word coined by Orac, "Choprawoo." Well, a couple days ago I came across a challenge to James Randi's Million Dollar challenge issued by Deepak Chopra that is so obviously stupid that I can hardly believe it. I was going to blog about it at length, but before I got a chance, Jerry Coyne beat me to it. In fact, Jerry did such a nice job that I'm not going to even try to top his eloquence. Just go and read it yourself. Thanks, Dr. Coyne, for saving me the trouble. I'll say this much, Deepak is right in the video below, I thought the writing on his shirt translated as "Kick me, I'm a moron." I guess I was wrong.

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Frogs are Coming to PBS!

6/11/2014

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Just a heads up for my fellow frog fans. Nature is airing a documentary on frogs on June 25th. YAY! Here is a description from the website.

Sir David Attenborough takes us on a journey through the weird and wonderful world of frogs, shedding new light on these charismatic, colorful and frequently bizarre little animals through first-hand stories, the latest science, and cutting-edge technology. Frogs from around the world are used to demonstrate the wide variety of frog anatomy, appearance and behavior. Their amazing adaptations and survival techniques have made them the most successful of all amphibians.

Don't miss it!

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Podcast of "A Skeptic Looks at ELEPHANTS!" AKA Pontification from a "Shill For the Criminal Elite"

A Skeptic Looks at Elephants

Choprawoo Evolves Into Choprastupid

Frogs are Coming to PBS!

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