Author: Alex

Categories
education

ESLI

This week, I come bearing a link: The Earth Science Literacy Initiative

I hadn’t actually heard of this before. My mom got a copy of their flier when she was on a tour, and then handed it off to me. It is one densely packed little folded piece of paper. One thing I did notice right away, though – Dr. Budd’s involved! He’s in the Geology department at CU, and was my teacher for general geology and for intro to field.

Really, I feel like I’m randomly running in to Dr. Budd a lot these days. I also randomly met him at the AAPG conference that was in Denver over the summer and we chatted a little, mostly just saying hello. I’m glad to see that he’s so out there and involved in promoting public education, though. I already respected Dr. Budd and thought he was an excellent teacher, but this bumps him up even further in my esteem.

It looks like the PDF on the site is basically a copy of the flier, so I definitely recommend taking a look at it. The PDF sure has it all… not just lot of information focused on Earth sciences, but a blurb right up front about the scientific method. Best quote:

The power of the scientific process is seen in its relentless march toward better explanations of how the laws of the universe operate.

Well said indeed.

The other thing that really struck me about how they’re laying this out is that they break the basis for the study of geology (and other earth sciences) down in to nine simple “Big Ideas.” Now, each of these ideas have a bunch of sub-points that elaborate and illustrate, but the big ideas in and of themselves are, I think, a very sound framework for the things everyone should know and understand about our field of science. Things that I would, given the opportunity, write on Ray Comfort or Ken Ham’s arms in permanent ink. For all the good that would do. But anyway, the idea seems to be to promote the big ideas and the supporting concepts to give a much clearer framework for what earth science education standards should be, particularly for K-12 in both schools and text books.

Big Idea 1: Earth scientists use repeatable observations and testable ideas to understand and explain our planet.

Big Idea 2: The Earth is 4.6 billion years old.

Big Idea 3: Earth is a complex system of interacting rock, water, air, and life.

Big Idea 4: Earth is continuously changing.

Big Idea 5: Earth is the water planet.

Big Idea 6: Life evolves on a dynamic Earth and continuously modifies Earth.

Big Idea 7: Humans depend on Earth for resources.

Big Idea 8: Natural hazards pose risks to humans.

Big Idea 9: Humans significantly alter the Earth.

The site even notes that we should be worrying about how scientifically illiterate the population is. There’s been a lot said about the battles in biology in regards to trying desperately to keep religion out of the science class room. And those are big, important battles. But I think it’s sometimes easy to forget that earth sciences are in the cross-hairs of the dogmatic opponents of science, considering one of our most important concepts is that our dynamic planet is quite old. I’m very glad to see steps being taken to promote earth science before it gets in to the dire straits biology is in. (Though we may already be there, and we’re just not seeing it reported. It’s a worrying thought.)

Getting a unified document about earth science literacy is a very good first step. I suppose that promoting it is the next step. And then…?

Categories
backyard geology volcano

Backyard Geology: Capulin Volcano

Four days in a row of hiking (since even though we came back on Sunday, we did another hike on Monday) have just about destroyed me. I’m limping around like an old lady today. Lots of very, very cool stuff was seen on the field trip. Yes, I took many pictures. No, I haven’t uploaded them yet. I’m working on it, though. And there’s lots of very amazing geology stuff to write about. I may never catch up, considering that school has apparently slowed me to a one-post-a-week crawl.

For the three day trip, we spent most of our time in the Raton Volcanic Field down in New Mexico, though on Sunday we did head back in to Colorado for the Spanish Peaks. (Which are a whole other cool thing to write about.) The Raton Volcanic Field (RVF from here on out) was and still is caused by the rifting near the Rio Grande River, where there’s hot, plastic mantle (asthenosphere) welling up to within 30 kilometers of the surface, which on a continent is a Very Big Deal. Normally, the asthenosphere minds its own business and stays at a depth of 100-200 km. At the Rio Grande Rift, it’s poking its steaming head above the Moho, which means there’s a lot of very hot rock where it really has no business being, and that makes for a lot of volcanic activity.

The RVF actually isn’t in the Rift Valley itself; it stands on the margins. The area is very topographically interesting; generally you have a lot of rolling plains there, but there are also stair-step like mesas and very prominent hills poking up from the landscape. Each of these prominent, conical hills is an extinct volcano. The mesas are caused by basalt lava flows that came from the volcano. So the basic process of the RVF is that a volcano pops up in a valley (where the crust has thinned a bit due to the rifting to the west), puts out a lava flow or two, there’s more rifting and a new valley created, and then the process repeats.

Now, most of the volcanoes in the RVF (with such prominent exceptions as Sierra Grande, which is a shield volcano) are cinder cones. Many of them are now covered with vegetation of some type, but I did see some prominent and presumably younger (since they still had their very distinctive shape) cinder cones that were completely naked. Naked cinder cones tend to erode down very quickly, since they’re basically made of layers of ash and other pyroclastic debris that aren’t well consolidated. As far as volcanoes go, cinder cones are fairly well understood. There are a lot of active cinder cones today, and one in Mexico even started its formation a little more than 60 years ago: Paricutin.

Capulin Volcano is one of the RVF cinder cones. It’s relatively young, between 58 and 62 thousand years old, and it is rather well vegetated. The vegetation layer has helped preserve the volcano’s shape, so it’s very distinct and pretty. The volcano itself is a national monument, and there are several extremely nice trails. One goes around the volcano’s rim, another goes down in to it, so you can look at the blocked-off vent that spewed all the ash and debris, and a third goes out on to the lava flow at the volcano’s feet. As is common, Capulin did put out a basaltic lava flow, but not from its central vent as we’ve come to expect from the normal images of composite and shield volcanoes. Since cinder cones are structurally weak due to their composition, most develop a vent at their base and that’s where the lava comes out.

Other than the simple OH MY GOSH COOL of begin able to walk on and down in to a volcano, there’s some very nifty geological stuff to be seen. At several of the road cuts on the volcano, you can see the layers of ash that make up the cone. They come in a lot of different colors and are fairly distinct. You can also see volcanic “bombs” all over the place. These are chunks of magma that got spewed into the air and solidified in distinct chunks. As you look over the lava flow at Capulin’s feet, there are several visible tumuli, which are dome-like features where hot lava welled up through the cooler, thin crust on the lava flow surface. Also, in the fields that cover most of the lava flow now, you can still see the ghost of pressure ridges, which are ripples preserved in the flow. These are also caused by the movement of hot lava under the cooler surface, causing deformation.

All this cool volcano stuff, and it’s only a four hour drive or so from Denver! I do have some pictures of Capulin that will hopefully be posted soon, but they’re not going to do the volcano much justice. Soon after we left, it started raining and then rained extremely hard for the next eight hours. So as you can imagine, while we were at Capulin it was extremely overcast. (And also shockingly cold.)

Categories
links

Sinkholes and Giant Rats

Okay, they’re not actually related. Just a couple of nifty links for today – I got something of a late start this morning because the cat that I’m cat-sitting had a pee accident. The result was a lot of frantic squirting of Nature’s Miracle and me getting out of the house close to an hour late.

I do have another backyard geology post to write up, possibly two since I’ve now been to both Sugar Loaf Mountain (the Colorado iteration of it at least) and several outcrops of the Iron Dike. I’m hoping to get that done tomorrow. Also, this weekend is the first of our two long field trips for my class this semester. We’ll be down in New Mexico to look at the volcanic fields that sit on the eastern side of the Rio Grande Rift. (Yes indeed, the United States actually IS slowly pulling apart at Texas, and it has nothing to do with politics.) I’m making it my business to take my camera with plenty of batteries, so barring a complete senior moment, there will be pictures!

Cool link #1: Giant rat found in ‘lost volcano’
A BBC camera crew finds a new species of rat in a crater left by an extinct volcano in Papua New Guinea. I hope that I get to see the BBC special at some point, since the area looks very interesting. The crater itself is about 4 kilometers wide and 1 kilometer deep. This sounds pretty big at first blush, but it’s really not. The crater was formed by the Mount Bosavi cone collapsing at some point in its history, so the crater is much bigger than it would have been during the volcano’s active life. To also give you some perspective, a really big volcanic crater – a caldera – would be something like the Yellowstone Caldera, which is 72 kilometers across at its widest.

Cool Link #2: Florida Sinkhole Database
We don’t get much in the way of sinkholes in Colorado, since we don’t have the immense quantities of near surface limestone that Florida and a lot of areas in the southeastern United States have. I find Karst topography, which is what you get when limestone erodes below the surface and eventually causes collapses, very interesting because it’s something that I just don’t get to see very often.

Categories
backyard geology igneous stuff pet rock

Backyard Geology: The Green Mountain Kimberlite

Unfortunately, I can’t provide very good directions to this one, and there’s a good reason for it. We drove up to Green Mountain (near Boulder, Colorado), got on one of the trails, and then at a random time just sort of bombed off into the underbrush. It involved going down and back up an extremely steep stream valley where there wasn’t even the hint of a track. Steep, like I’m clinging to trees to keep myself from tumbling down the slope steep. It was a very, very, very rough hike for someone with bad knees and an often embarrassing lack of balance. It’s only about a mile and a half, but it feels much, much longer.

About the best I can do right now is give you the lat/lon of the outcrop: 39º59.431’N, 105º18.09’W. These coordinates should have about a 20 foot accuracy if you believe the claims of the GPS unit’s manufacturers.

That said, the hike is very, very worth it. Big important note, though: the kimberlite is in park land. I honestly have no idea what trouble if any there could have been for us going off trail the way we did, but I know for certain that you’re not supposed to bring in a rock hammer and whack samples off the outcrop.

The kimberlite itself is very interesting. It intrudes through the Boulder Creek granodiorite, which is a holocrystalline intrusive rock with large crystals of quartz, feldspar, and mafic minerals. If you run across Boulder Creek outcrops, they have a distinctive “salt and pepper” appearance. In comparison, the kimberlite is a porphyritic extrusive rock where the ground mass is extremely dark. The samples we found contained large garnets, ilminites, and olivines. The weathered surface of the kimberlite is gray rather than black, with the chemically altered phenocrysts much more obvious by color difference.

The outcrop is mid to upper slope and stands out fairly well from the landscape. There are no trees growing in it. The outcrop itself is about 100 feet in diameter, though on the down slope it elongates into a teardrop-like shape due to the erosion of the slope.

So, a tough hike, but very cool rocks.

Kimberlite is actually one of my favorite igneous rocks, mostly because it’s very cool to look at in thin section. Much of the fine-grained ground mass in kimberlite isn’t actually silicate minerals – it’s calcite. This makes it incredibly colorful when looked at with crossed polars.

The story behind kimberlites is also very cool. They are effectively volcanic dikes, but rather unusual ones. Kimberlitic magma is produced when there’s a critical mass of volatiles in an area of the mantle, normally carbon dioxide and water. (The large amount of carbon dioxide present is the reason kimberlites contain so much calcite.) The volatiles lower the melting point of the surrounding mantle material, and with the sudden pressure on a body of volatile-filled magma, the results are explosive. The magma exits the mantle upward and comes exploding out of the crust, in some cases at the speed of sound. This incredibly explosive, violent eruption of magma under high pressure is what gives kimberlites their characteristic carrot or funnel-like shape.

Also, since the eruption of a kimberlite is so violent, they often carry significant chunks of everything they went through to get to the surface. This includes pieces of mantle peridotite – most of what we know about the mantle composition came from samples brought up in kimberlites. In certain areas, this also means that the kimberlite brings up pieces of old continental crust – most importantly, pieces of the remaining cratons from the Archean. And these craton bits are where diamonds come from. Kimberlites can be small (like the one on Green Mountain) or enormous, like the ones that are mined for diamonds in Africa.

And the best part? Technically speaking, we could get another one erupting out of the ground at any time. There’s no way of knowing. There’s just something cool about that thought, though I wouldn’t want to be standing on top of one when it made its appearance.

Categories
backyard geology

Backyard Geology: Recent Volcanism in Colorado (part I)

Well, school has started; expect to see a lot of backyard geology posts for the next month, since I’m in an igneous and metamorphic field geology class. We’ll be going to some very cool places!

Sites first, then a bit of background:

Valmont Dike is a very striking feature in Boulder. The best place to see it is at Valmont Road, where it splits into Butte Mill Road and Valmont Drive east of the city. Unfortunately, you can’t actually get up near the dike; it’s completely fenced off. This is due to two current issues: there’s an old mining mill there and the soil may be contaminated, and there’s a Native American tribe claiming the dike as a holy site. There is a little gravel shoulder where you can pull off and at least get a good look at the dike. Be careful since there is a waste management facility in that area as well so there may be big trucks coming on to Valmont Drive.

The dike is very impressive looking, though. The igneous intrusion itself is about 30-40 feet wide and sticks up about 200 feet from ground level. It’s basically a vertical block of alkali basalt. (Though apparently it’s not as homogeneous as it appears; we just can’t get up to look at it and see how the mineral composition changes.) One either side and to its front, there’s a “wrapping” of Pierre shale. You can see from the shoulder that the bedding in the shale is almost entirely undisturbed; it’s got the normal 10 degrees east dip that all of the sedimentary rocks in the area have. So basically the dike cut through the shale without really disturbing it. You can also see that the shale against the dike is much paler than the rest. This is most likely some contact metamorphism where the shale was “baked” a bit by the hot magma that made the dike.

If you drive along Valmont Road, you can see the dike at various points for about the next mile and a half. There’s also another bit of the dike farther west, but it’s fenced off as well and not nearly as cool looking.

There’s a sill that’s very easy to find on Flagstaff Mountain. To get there, take Baseline up past Chautauqua Park and continue along up the mountain. Past the Flagstaff House restaurant, up a couple more switchbacks there’s a little gravel parking lot. As you park, the sill will be pretty much straight ahead of you, to the south.

The Flagstaff Sill is very easy to pick out, though not quite as awe-inspiring as the Valmont Dike. Most of the rocks in the area are from the Fountain Formation, various red-colored sandstones, conglomerates, and mudstones. The sill stands out as a salt-and-pepper granodiorite. You can follow it fairly easily along the ground. You’ll also notice that the sill seems to be broken up in a particular way, in vertical chunks. If you look from a distance, you can actually tell that this is the remnants of columnar jointing in the igneous rock.

Now, the background:

On its face, volcanism in Colorado seems to be a strange prospect. We’re not at an active plate boundary like the dramatically named “Ring of Fire.” We haven’t been even in geological history. Now, sometimes volcanoes are caused by “hot spots” in the mantle, but there’s not any evidence that we’ve been sitting on one. However, if you look at a geological map of Colorado, you’ll see a lot of ancient lava flows. These all date from the late Cretaceous to early Paleocene, which is when the Laramide Orogeny was occurring.

In general, an orogeny is an uplift event, where mountains are built. The Laramide Orogeny was actually caused by subduction on the western coast, where present-day California is. Normally oceanic crust subducts at a fairly steep angle and the zone of volcanic activity associated with it stays pretty close to the coast. (Think about where volcanoes are currently located in Washington state and Alaska.) In this particular case for some reason the angle of the subducted crust was incredibly shallow. So the oceanic crust that was getting pushed under the North American continental plate extended as far east as Colorado.

The way this caused volcanism isn’t intuitive. If you’re like me, you imagined that it’s from all the rocks rubbing together and melting or something like that. Actually, it’s far more interesting. The oceanic crust moves through the mantle, and since that crust is actually relatively cold at that point, it locally cools the mantle. However, the surrounding heat and pressure causes water and other volatile compounds to be effectively “steamed out” of the crust. That water lowers the melting point of the mantle above the subducted crust, and so the mantle partially melts in to magma.

This magma had to go somewhere. In some cases, it came out as lava flows. The two things I’m going to mention here, though, are dikes and sills.

Dikes and sills are both small, sub-surface intrusions of magma into already existing rock. The magma didn’t break to the surface in these cases; it’s just an underground blob or line. Often dikes or sills will feed into a larger body of magma, like the magma chamber of a volcano. They don’t have to, however.

The big difference between a dike and a sill is how they intrude into the rock. A dike cuts through beds of rock. So if you imagine a horizontal shale unit with lots of thin little beds in it, the dike cuts vertically through that. A sill cuts between beds or layers of of rock. You can basically imagine it like sticking a sheet of paper between the pages of a book.

Interestingly enough, the Valmont Dike and Flagstaff Sill actually have fairly different compositions. The dike has a lot of iron, a relatively large amount of sodium and potassium, and is less than 50% silicate. That makes it an alkali basalt, which is the sort of basalt you tend to get in mid-continental volcanism. The sill has about 20% more silicate and a lot less iron. It’s not quite a granite, but it’s an intermediate between diorite and granite.

Both sill and dike have been dated using potassium/argon radiometric dating to be about 64 million years old. They definitely come from the same event – the Laramide Orogeny – and from melts that occurred at about the same time. One cause for the different composition may be that the dike came from a basaltic magma that went directly to the surface, so its composition is basically that of the melt. The sill may have been caused by a more basaltic magma pooling and melting the silica-rich continental crust above it. This mixing and dilution of the basaltic magma with what would basically be rhyolitic magma would account for the change in composition. And for all we know, sub-surface there might be a gradual change in composition to the sill. We don’t know how far down it extends or really anything about it other than what we can see at the surface. To find out more, we’d probably have to do seismic and magnetic studies.

Expect more about volcanic activity in Colorado soon!

Categories
volcano

As always, humans are less patient than geology.

Clash Over Rebirth of Mt. St. Helens

Basically, there are getting to be louder and louder disagreements over the Forest Service management of the study area at Mt. St. Helens. It’s been almost thirty years since the eruption. No doubt most people are ready to move on, but not those pesky scientists.

I really do sympathize with the viewpoint of the people who want to get rid of the study area. From their viewpoint, it’s a bunch of land that’s just sitting there, doing nothing, acting as a financial drain since it’s not producing much in the way of revenue for the state. People can’t really use the land for recreation, and it can’t be made profitable by handing it over to lumber companies like some of the other land.

People also have a very difficult time grasping what sort of time is truly necessary to observe the recovery near the mountain. Geological surface processes are normally very slow, and that’s only part of it. While a lot of plants and animals have much shorter lifespans than us, when we’re dealing with trees and the natural growth of a forest, that’s really not the case.

I think people who aren’t as interested in the detail as scientists can also look at something like this and think that it doesn’t matter. But the devil is so often in the details when we’re talking science, and being able to observe things as they happen is so much more valuable than just extrapolating from what little we do know, be it three years or thirty.

Also, this really struck me:

Ms. Dick said she was “disgusted” by studies of, for example, the way deep-rooted plants were able to recover from the blast, a finding she called “intuitively obvious.”

It’s all well and good when you can claim something is ‘intuitively obvious.’ But how many things do we think are intuitively obvious that science has proven aren’t. I remember even in my first physics class, how much time I spent fighting against my own intuition because the physical world simply doesn’t act the way we think it ought to. For me, the mind-blower was the idea that if the sun suddenly disappeared, all of the planets would go shooting off in a straight line rather than spiraling outward. The mathematics and vectors eventually made sense of it, but the point is that my monkey brain thought the answer was ‘intuitively obvious’ at first.

Also: People think so-called Intelligent Design is “intuitively obvious.” Because, hey, if something’s complex, it has to be designed, right? We know that’s a load of bull puckey. It always makes me a little crazy that people complain about scientists studying things that seem obvious. The real point is that scientists have realized that the obvious is not always true, and that you cannot assume that your intuition and preconceived notions are correct – you have to test them and make certain that they are.

It sounds like the study area will continue, which I think is a very good thing. While a volcano blowing up and making a mess isn’t exactly unusual, Mt. St. Helens is a superb and unique site if for no other reason than how accessible it by scientists. The actual eruption was closely observed, and we’ve been documenting and observing the site since basically minute one. So the study area isn’t just a site… it’s a site with thirty years of incredibly detailed history, which makes it all the more valuable.

Categories
links

Friday Link-O-Rama!

Water triggers earthquakes – An interesting look at the influence of water on fault deformation and volcano formation at a plate boundary. This of course immediately put me in mind of other situations in which fluids influence fault activity in my own backyard, Such as in Trinidad, Colorado recently, as well as the famous Rocky Mountain Arsenal disposal well-induced earthquakes.

Scientists to study rebirth of an island after volcanic eruption – Looking at how an ecosystem recovers after having been catastrophically wiped out by a volcanic eruption.

Mayoral Candidate Anna Falling Wants Creationism Exhibit – Because Oklahoma can’t let its neighbor Texas have all the wacky fun.

Project pushes innovation to save coast – Since the Mississippi has been channelized, there’s been a major problem with sediment build up in the channels and a connected major problem with sediment starvation for the coast. If only freeing the river were an option, but since it’s not, they’re looking at their options.

Planet Smash-Up Sends Vaporized Rock, Hot Lava Flying – Sounds like a Bruckheimer film, doesn’t it?

Mars Orbiter Shows Angled View of Martian Crater – Very, very cool picture.

The Creation “Museum” – PZ Myers takes a fantastic journey into the darkest recesses of utter nonsense. It was actually a zerg on the so-called museum by the Secular Student Alliance. Links to many more (very amusing) accounts here.

Categories
awesome technology volcano

Spiderbots!

From the Department of That Is Some Awesome Technology You’ve Got There: Scientists invent ’spiderbots’ that talk amongst themselves inside active volcano.

I think this is some pretty exciting stuff, and I’m glad to see that NASA is working on it. Basically, they’re developing robots to form a self-healing network for sensing seismic data. The fact that they’re developing these little bots to use in volcanoes means that we’re going to get some incredibly hardy technology out of it. This latest permutation of the bots communicates with satellites.

It sounds like a very good set-up for eventually going extraterrestrial with them. Just imagine being able to put a bunch of these little guys down on Venus, or one of the very seismically active moons of Jupiter. Since the little guys are autonomous for setting up and routing the data they collect, they’ll be able to respond very quickly if one of the other robots gets damaged or disabled, so there would be very little interruption to gathering data. Which would be important, since the sort of event most likely to damage a little robot like these ones would be the very sort of events they’re supposed to monitor – earthquakes and eruptions.

Of course, beyond the geeky squealing I’m having over exploring other planets in our solar system, just having this sort of monitoring in place in our own volcanoes will do a lot to advance geological science. We still can’t really predict volcanic eruptions with real accuracy. Right now the best you can do is look at things like the amount of toxic gas a volcano is putting out and monitoring earthquake swarms that indicate magma is moving. Which gives you an answer of “soon,” but in geology, “soon” is a very fuzzy concept that’s not fine-tuned for short human timescales. So my hope is that maybe with much more precise, detailed, and constant monitoring of this sort, we could eventually come to a better understanding of the internal workings of volcanoes, and thus the warning signs when an eruption is imminent in the human meaning of the word.

Also, I admit that I just love it whenever I read about self-healing networks. I actually started out my working life as a technician for AT&T, at a time when self-healing fiber optic and sonet rings were getting their real start in the network. I still think that sort of technology is incredibly cool.

Categories
feminism skepticism TAM

Women at TAM (SGU interview)

There’s a lively discussion going on at Skepchick regarding women in skepticism. More precisely, women in skepticism as things went at TAM, which was discussed in this week’s Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe via interview. Here is the SGU forum thread about that episode, which contains a lot of discussion about the interview.

I did attend TAM this year, and do happen to be female. There were basically two issues brought up in the interview: subtle sexism, and Bill Prady’s speech.

I’ll get Bill Prady out of the way first. He gave the keynote speech, and in it he mentioned that guys should try an experiment: if a woman comes up to them in a bar and asks what their sign is, half the time they should tell her she has pretty eyes, and half the time they should tell her why astrology is crap, and they should see which yields better results. There were some women at TAM that found the comment a bit offensive. I personally thought it was a hilarious observation, because I felt he was saying that women, whether we believe in astrology or not, would rather receive a compliment than a condescending lecture. I think that’s spot on; we’re not morons, we don’t like being lectured, and it’s not appropriate in the social context. I obviously took the comment differently from how other people did, and that’s quite okay.

Generally, I was a bit put off by the clips from The Big Bang Theory just because I’m tired to death of women always being the believers in these shows. I didn’t necessarily feel that the female character was portrayed as stupid, just as non-skeptical. And that, I could do without. But whatever. I don’t watch the show anyway.

That’s out of the way, now.

The more interesting – and much more important – point of the interview was if there’s a sort of subtle sexism existing in the skeptic community, and if so, what can we do about it.

Honestly, I couldn’t tell you one way or another. I haven’t noticed anything generally myself, and I’ve never been made to feel uncomfortable at TAM or other skeptical events. Part of this is because the Denver contingent of skeptics is fabulous. Part of this may also be because I’m a chubby, nerdy girl that refuses to wear anything fancier than jeans and a t-shirt, so it’s very possible that I get dismissed out of hand by the predatory assholes. I’m quite okay with that.

I did definitely notice that TAM was very short on the people of color (POC from here on out) and women speakers department. Dr. Novella did explain that however as partially just being that the POC/female speakers who were invited (other than Jennifer Ouellette and Harriet Hall) couldn’t attend due to scheduling conflicts. That’s very reasonable and something that can definitely happen with conventions. Also, there could be the effect that there are more white dude speakers to choose from right now than there are POC/women, for many reasons. (Some of said reasons being quite bad and worrisome.)

Women made up around 30% of the attendees of TAM this year, which is a fantastic amount of growth in attendance. I think that’s very cool. It shows that more women are getting interested in the movement, which I think is a good thing.

So, was there sexism? I don’t know. I don’t think people were being sexist; I certainly didn’t meet anyone who was. But individuals being sexist jerks isn’t the same as a general situation being influenced by subtle or ingrained sexism, which was really the point, I think.

What the question comes down to is simply this: are women being excluded somehow, for whatever reason? Skepticism started out male dominated, and is still fairly male dominated, though women are making inroads. So, are we fighting [hard enough] to be inclusive? Are their factors at work that will still leave women feeling like this is an unwelcoming sausage fest? I think that’s the sort of sexism that was being discussed in the podcast. And I think those are questions that should definitely be aired and considered, whatever the answer turns out to be. In general, society is still quite sexist in many ways, and that may still have it’s subtle influences on skeptical society. If so, then we should know the how and why. If not, then we should make sure we’re not prematurely patting ourselves on the back.

I think that’s definitely a good thing to investigate and a good discussion to have, particularly since many of the men of the skeptical movement have stated that they want to see women more involved. (Or have less proactively bemoaned the fact that women “just aren’t interested in science/skepticism” without examining why.)

One thing that’s really struck me in the discussion is how hostile some people are being about it. There’s a distinct flavor of “I’m a skeptic, I’m enlightened, how dare you say I’m sexist” coming from some people. First of, no one has accused anyone else of being sexist. But second off, that umbrage is indicative of something else I think skeptics need to take a good hard look at. There’s a level of arrogance that can come with labeling oneself as a skeptic. You get to be cooler than those silly believers who buy nonsense. I think that arrogance is showing up here as well, in a rather ugly way. People consider themselves to be enlightened individuals, and are going on the attack because they think it’s been suggested that they may not be.

I think the people who are getting nasty need to take a long look at themselves. If you’re an enlightened skeptic, the way to prove that is not to attack someone that disagrees with you, or has an opinion you don’t like. It’s to be the “better man” and rationally discuss.

“How dare you call me a sexist, you reverse-discriminating feminazi!!!!”

versus:

“I disagree. This is why.”

Categories
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Source Material Theater: HR 3200

In the fight against BS, I don’t think there’s any tool in the skeptical arsenal more important than source material. I’ve often seen scientific papers cited (or quote-mined, as the case may be) by someone pushing pseudoscience. It lends an air of credibility to their claims. When that happens, the most important thing to do is to follow up. Check citations, and you often find that the papers have nothing to do with the pseudoscientific claim, or prove the exact opposite. I think the pseudoscientists (and other purveyors of BS) often count on the unwillingness of their victims to follow up and check the sources themselves.

Fun tip: When someone makes a claim to you in a verbal argument, don’t be shy about asking them what their source is. Oft times, they won’t have one, or will promise to get back to you and beat a hasty retreat. I do this often, and it always gives me a mean little thrill. There have only been a few occasions when someone’s “gotten back to me,” and it’s always turned out to be misread scientific research or bizarre religious or conspiracy theory websites.

A good example of the importance of source material is brought to us by the current health care reform mess.

DISCLAIMER: I am not going to try to convince you one way or another on the general issue. I personally think healthcare reform is necessary, but I also think we can all benefit from a well-reasoned debate. That involves, you know, facts. And stuff.

On my personal blog, I often post letters that I’ve written to my senators or other politicians. When I posted the letters I wrote to my senators about health care reform, on of my friends claimed that if the current bill (HR 3200) passes, senior citizens will be required to consult with a doctor every five years and be told about euthanasia and encouraged to use it.

My immediate response was a resounding, “Bzuh?” Considering that euthanasia is illegal in every state but Oregon, little alarm bells went off in my head. I thought it was best to check up on it, since it just seemed so utterly bizarre.

Now, this claim is making the rounds in a lot of places. This was a couple of weeks ago, however, so I had to do some creative googling to find exactly where this claim was coming from. I eventually found a blog post that cited section 1233 of the bill, which is about “Advance Care Planning Consultation.”

In all its brain-eating glory, here’s the important part of that section:

‘(hhh)(1) Subject to paragraphs (3) and (4), the term ‘advance care planning consultation’ means a consultation between the individual and a practitioner described in paragraph (2) regarding advance care planning, if, subject to paragraph (3), the individual involved has not had such a consultation within the last 5 years. Such consultation shall include the following:

‘(A) An explanation by the practitioner of advance care planning, including key questions and considerations, important steps, and suggested people to talk to.

‘(B) An explanation by the practitioner of advance directives, including living wills and durable powers of attorney, and their uses.

‘(C) An explanation by the practitioner of the role and responsibilities of a health care proxy.

‘(D) The provision by the practitioner of a list of national and State-specific resources to assist consumers and their families with advance care planning, including the national toll-free hotline, the advance care planning clearinghouses, and State legal service organizations (including those funded through the Older Americans Act of 1965).
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‘(E) An explanation by the practitioner of the continuum of end-of-life services and supports available, including palliative care and hospice, and benefits for such services and supports that are available under this title.

‘(F)(i) Subject to clause (ii), an explanation of orders regarding life sustaining treatment or similar orders, which shall include–
‘(I) the reasons why the development of such an order is beneficial to the individual and the individual’s family and the reasons why such an order should be updated periodically as the health of the individual changes;
‘(II) the information needed for an individual or legal surrogate to make informed decisions regarding the completion of such an order; and
‘(III) the identification of resources that an individual may use to determine the requirements of the State in which such individual resides so that the treatment wishes of that individual will be carried out if the individual is unable to communicate those wishes, including requirements regarding the designation of a surrogate decisionmaker (also known as a health care proxy).
‘(ii) The Secretary shall limit the requirement for explanations under clause (i) to consultations furnished in a State–
‘(I) in which all legal barriers have been addressed for enabling orders for life sustaining treatment to constitute a set of medical orders respected across all care settings; and
‘(II) that has in effect a program for orders for life sustaining treatment described in clause (iii).
‘(iii) A program for orders for life sustaining treatment for a States described in this clause is a program that–
‘(I) ensures such orders are standardized and uniquely identifiable throughout the State;
‘(II) distributes or makes accessible such orders to physicians and other health professionals that (acting within the scope of the professional’s authority under State law) may sign orders for life sustaining treatment;
‘(III) provides training for health care professionals across the continuum of care about the goals and use of orders for life sustaining treatment; and
‘(IV) is guided by a coalition of stakeholders includes representatives from emergency medical services, emergency department physicians or nurses, state long-term care association, state medical association, state surveyors, agency responsible for senior services, state department of health, state hospital association, home health association, state bar association, and state hospice association.

It’s rough to read. But the basic gist is that the government will pay for a consultation every five years, where people can discuss with a medical professional what kind of legal options they have for things like living wills, medical power of attorney, and hospice care. It doesn’t say that people can only talk about those things then, only that the government will only pay for it every five years. And most importantly, the end of life care options are governed by state laws, which means the only place you could possibly hear about euthanasia as an option is Oregon.

To get on my soap box for a moment, I think that this is fantastic. At the beginning of the year, my grandmother suffered a stroke that ultimately took her life. It was a rough time for our family. But because she’d gotten a living will done and taken care of all of the things the aforementioned consultation would provide for, we knew what she wanted and how we had to deal with things. We were able to make sure she was treated the way she would want to be, and it also took a lot of pressure off of my uncles and my dad, who were already dealing with the emotional issue of losing their mother.

So basically, once you look at the source of the claim, the claim falls apart. There’s nothing in the bill that says we’re going to force elderly Americans to consult with their doctors about euthanasia. There’s nothing that even says that they have to consult with a doctor about living wills. Rather, reading through it shows that it’s an offered service, a bonus if you will, so that people can at least chat about these things with their doctors every five years on the government dime.

If something sets of your mental warning bells, the first place to check is the supposed source of the claim, and often that will be enough to frame the claim for what it is. Now, sometimes it’s tricky to find the source, or the source itself turns out to be laughable and ludicrous. There are even times when the source is such that you can’t understand it because of language or educational barriers. But I’d say nine times out of ten, reading the source material is more than worth the effort of tracking it down and slogging through.

I sincerely wish that more people would check sources first before passing on strange claims. In this particular case, there are so many more important and worthwhile debates we could be having about this issue. We don’t need fear-mongering noise that has no basis in reality to drown that discussion out.

Perhaps, however, we can use this as a fine example of the importance of skepticism in everyday life.

Related:
Factcheck.org: False Euthanasia Claims
Respectful Insolence: The Latest “Obama=Hitler” Shenanigans