Well, that was just brilliant.

I actually predicted the basic plot of the episode fairly well. This is what I posted elsewhere a few days ago:

And a Desmond episode is surely the most likely place for the return of Daniel Faraday. I reckon Widmore was asking Jin about electromagnetic pockets because he knows that by exposing Desmond to it, it will displace his consciousness and send him to the parallel-universe, where he can find Faraday and they can fix things using physics. This will be why the island isn’t finished with Des. I’d love it if they do something weird to Des, like zap him with an electromagnetic thingymajig, and then he wakes up in 2004 on the Oceanic 815 flight that he met Jack on in the season premiere.

And I was pretty much right. Charles zapped Desmond with some sort of electromagnetic coil, and he instantly found himself at LAX waiting for his luggage. He encountered Claire briefly. It was then revealed that he works for Charles Widmore in the parallel universe (which means that Charles survived the bomb on the island), and Charles gives him the job of looking after Charlie Pace, who is due to perform a concert with Charles’ son later that day. The son is, of course, Daniel Faraday, who I have bene waiting for since the end of last season.

It turns out that Charlie saw the image of a blonde girl who he instantly knew he loved, as he was passing into a coma on flight 815 before Jack saved him. Presumably that was Claire, and presumably when one is dying, their consciousness switches between realities. This puts Charlotte’s death into a new perspective, given her knowledge of ‘the well’ where Locke found the Frozen Donkey Wheel, and more recently Juliet’s death. Juliet seemed to be having a memory of meeting someone and going for coffee with them – perhaps Sawyer – as she was dying.

So anyway, Charlie is set on dying to get that feeling of absolute love back, and crashes Desmond’s car. Then, as Charlie drowns underwater, Desmond has a flashback of the moment he saw Charlie die in front of him at the Looking Glass in Season 3, and recalls the name Penny on his hand.

Desmond talks to Eloise, she seems to know a lot more than she says, which of course makes sense given that she was instrumental in the bomb being set off in 1977. She also tells him to stop looking for whatever it is he’s looking for (Penny), as he’s “not ready yet”.

Daniel Widmore (who is of course Faraday) chats to Desmond and reveals that despite being a musician, he was able to come up with physics equations that he couldn’t have possibly known, after seeing a girl that he knew he loved – presumably Charlotte. He explained that this must be because in another life, he set off a nuclear bomb which caused all this to happen. He tells Desmond that penny is his half-sister, and tells Des where he can find her.

Desmond finds Penny, and they arrange a date.

Desmond wakes up on the island, after only being unconscious for a few seconds, and is suddenly very cooperative and willing to help in whatever way he can. However, Widmore’s team is accosted by Sayid, who then leads Desmond away. Desmond does so willingly. The final scene shows Desmond, back in the parallel universe, asking Minkowski (his driver, and also the communication’s technician on the Kahana in season 4) for the oceanic 815 flight manifest, so that he can “show them something”.

It’s not clear if this is Desmond’s parallel self continuing after Desmond has woken up or not. Penny saw Desmond pass out, at which point he woke up on the island, so perhaps that final scene is what happens the next time Desmond is zapped back to the altverse.

An absolutely fantastic episode. I loved Ab Aeterno, but because Desmond and Daniel are my two favourite characters, that has to be my favourite for the season, and possibly one of my all-time favourites.

That is all.

So, this episode was a Jin/Sun episode.

In the sideways-timeline, it turns out that Jin and Sun aren’t married, but are conducitng a secret affair. Jin’s money was confiscated at customs, and Keamy and Omar came to pick it up, with Mikhail Bakunin acting as translator, with two functioning eyes. In the end, we found out that the money was in fact a fee for Jin’s assassination, because Sun’s father had found out about the affair. But, of course, Sayid saved the day, although Sun was injured, and revealed that she is pregnant. That’s basically all that happened in the flash-sideways, although it’s very interesting to see Mikhail back, and working with Keamy who potentially has links to Widmore in the sideways-universe.

The original timeline was, as ever, far more exciting. Sun was confronted by Smokie, and hurt her head while running away, losing her ability to speak English in the process. This is a vaguely plausible injury I suppose. Jin was captured by Widmore’s team, who wanted him to point out where the electromagnetic anomalies on the island are. Smokie and Sayid went to get him back, and Smokie returned alone.

For much of the last ten minutes, everything was building up to the revelation of what ‘The Package’ is. When Widmore told Jin that the package is a ‘who’ rather than a ‘what’, three names came into my head. Desmond, sideways-Jin, and out of sheer depseration, sideways-Faraday.

In the end it was Sayid who first found out, having swam to the submarine. Ony of my three guesses was right, and perhaps it was the most ‘boring’ of the three – but excellent news either way. Desmond’s back! If only it is somehow the sideways-Desmond – that would be incredible.

Well, that was one of the best 45 minutes of television I have ever seen. It might not stand up to repeated viewings in the way that other episodes do – only time will tell – but my first viewing left me in absolute awe. Nestor Carbonell was absolutely outstanding.

So – Richard, originally known as Ricardo, lived in Tenerife in 1867 with his wife, Isabella. She became ill, and in an effort to save her, Richard accidentally killed the doctor. The day before he was due to be hanged for his crimes, he begged a Priest for forgiveness but was told that he could not be forgiven unless he did a long penance, and he would not have time for that because of his forthcoming execution. However, on the day of his execution, he was bought by a Mr. Witfield, on behalf of Magnus Hanso. Straight away this throws up some pretty juicy links. Firstly, Witfield seems too similar to Widmore to be a coincidence, doesn’t it? Secondly, Alvar Hanso is the name of the person who founded the Hanso Foundation, which funded the DHARMA Initiative in the 1970s.

Anyway, Richard was a slave on the Black Rock. The ship hit a storm, and went flying into the island, destroying the Statue on its way. Richard and the other slaves saw the statue and thought it was the Devil, guarding the island. Interestingly, when Jacob and the Man In Black were chatting at the start of The Incident, the season 5 finale, there was a ship in the background but certainly no storm.

The captain of the Black Rock killed all the slaves except Richard, but before he was able to kill Richard, him and the rest of his crew were wiped out by the Monster. A while later, Richard’s dead wife, Isabella, appeared to Richard, telling him that they were in Hell and that the Devil is after them. She left, and was promptly killed by the Monster. My initial thoughts were that she was a manifestation of the Monster, much like Eko, Alex, Locke, and possibly (although I sort of hope not) Christian Shephard. Then, even later, the Man In Black himself turned up, freed Richard and said it was good to see him out of his chains (the same line that The Artist Formerly Known As John Locke said in episode 1 of this season). He then explained that he is indeed in Hell, and that the Devil has Isabella. He told Richard that he had to kill the Devil to save his wife. he gave Richard a knife, possibly the same knife that Dogen gave Sayid in episode 6, and told him to go to the statue and kill the man inside. His instructions were very much like Dogen’s – that he should not let the man talk to him, and that if he did it would be too late.

Richard did as he was told, and arrived at the Statue, only to be attacked by Jacob. He told Jacob what had happened, and Jacob managed to persuade him that he’s not dead, and is not in Hell, by attempting to drown him multiple times to prove to Richard that he is alive and wants to stay that way. Jacob then explained that Malevolence, Evil or Darkness can be thought of like red wine in a bottle, and that the cork that stops it from escaping is the Island. He told Richard that as long as he is on the Island, Darkness cannot escape. He then explained that the Man In Black believes that it is in mankind’s nature to be corruptible, and to sin. Jacob said that he likes to bring people to this island, much like he did with the Black Rock, to prove to the Man In Black that he is wrong. However, he said that he doe snot interfere – he lets the people he brings to the island make their own choices, and also explains that everyone he has brought to the island so far is dead. Jacob then offers Richard a job as his messenger – someone who can interfere on Jacob’s behalf. In exchange, he offers Richard immortality.

Richard accepts the job, and returns to the Man In Black. He gives him a white rock – part of the inside-joke that Locke told Sawyer about in episode 4. The Man In Black then told Richard that if he ever changes his mind, he can, and he will get his wife back.

In the present-day, Richard leaves the Illana/Lapidus/Sun/Jack/Hurley/Ben/Miles group. Hurley has a strange Spanish conversation, presumably with a dead person. Richard returns to the place where he last spoke to the Man In Black, and digs up his wife’s necklace, which he had buried there after rejecting the Man In Black’s offer. He shouted that he had changed his mind. However, Hurley then turned up, and relayed a conversation between Richard and Isabella. At first Isabella was appearing just to Hurley, but when Richard closed his eyes, it appeared that he could hear and feel her. She told him that she had to stop the Man In Black from leaving, or everyone would go to Hell. Locke watched from a distance.

The final scene shows what presumably happened soon after Richard chose Jacob over the Man In Black. Jacob asked the Man In Black why he had tried to kill him; the Man In Black replied that he wants to leave the Island. Jacob said that he would never leave as long as he is alive; and so the Man In Black said that this is why he wants to kill him, and he will keep trying, and will also kill any successor that Jacob finds. After Jacob leaves, the Man In Black smashes the symbolic wine bottle.

A lot to take in. Many questions answered, some still unanswered. We know a lot about who Richard is, and suddenly he’s a very human character, instead of this bizarre, ageless, distant figure that we’ve known since season 3. We know a little bit more about Jacob and the Man In Black; of their ongoing struggle; and of their differing philosophies. It does seem as though the Man In Black is a prisoner, and Jacob is the guard. It reminded me of The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit from season 2 of Doctor Who. However, we still don’t know why the Man In Black can appear as smoke; why Hurley can see dead people; where Illana fits into it all; or how Jacob can leave the Island but the Man In Black can’t. Also, previously the Smoke Monster only took the form of dead people whose bodies were on the island – if he appeared as Isabella, that rule is suddenly invalid and anything can happen. It does rather suggest that he is Christian Shephard after all, although Christian appeared to John Locke by the Frozen Donkey Wheel in ancient times, which could only be explained by some bizarre time travelling – although that is highly possible with Lost!

This final season is really getting exciting, and with only nine episodes to go, I’m expecting it to continue at this pace. Next week is ‘The Package’. Lots of Widmore action, please. And where’s Desmond? And can we please have Faraday back in at least some way?

Song

I’ve been a fan of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp for quite a while now – Sweeney Todd is one of my all-time favourite films  – so I was very much looking forward to this, and I wasn’t disappointed. I haven’t seen the 1951 Disney animated film since I was a child, and I don’t remember much of it, but this new film stirs a lot of memories, and I’m sure that people who have actually reads the books (sadly I have not) will experience that even more.

Mia Wasikowska is very good as Alice – she portrays her as an outwardly solemn but inwardly curious and imaginative 19-year old, and does so very convincingly. The decision to set the film a decade or so after Alice’s first trip to Wonderland was definitely a good move, as an older Alice fits into Tim Burton’s dark and bizarre world far better than a small child would. Johnny Depp, as expected, is utterly brilliant as the Mad Hatter, simultaneously completely insane and also very human. He’s sometimes criticised for only playing bizarre characters, and perhaps those criticisms are well-founded with roles such as Edward Scissorhands, Willy Wonka and Captain Jack Sparrow, but this is possibly his best portrayal of that kind of character. Helena Bonham Carter plays the Red Queen very well with some excellent CGI, reminiscent of Queenie in Blackadder The Second in a way that must surely be intentional. The mostly British supporting cast, including Alan Rickman, Michael Sheen, Stephen Fry and Barbara Windsor are all excellent, and their voices fit their anthropomorphic characters perfectly. Matt Lucas as Tweedledee and Tweedledum is another perfect choice – far better than the Oompa Loompas in Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, which I never particularly warmed to.

The special effects are excellent – I’ve never seen talking animals look so convincing before. I’m sure that the experience was much improved by being in 3D, although the effect isn’t quite as breathtaking as in Avatar.

This film won’t go down in history as one of the all-time greats, but it is an excellent film nonetheless and one that I strongly recommend you see as soon as possible. Don’t be late for this very important date!

Song

Belief in homeopathy is a perfect example of people struggling to understand statistics, and the importance of a large sample size. This is possibly because small sample sizes – or in other words, anecdotal cases – bring with them a greater level of human interest than large sample sizes. As Stalin once said, “One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic”. Being told that homeopathy doesn’t work seems like nonsense if you know someone who took a homeopathic remedy after being told that their cancer was incurable, and then weeks later they went into remission. That seems like pretty good proof.

But it’s not. It’s really not.

If I flip a coin 1,000 times, I’d expect it to land on heads roughly 50% of the time. It might not be exactly 500, but it will be close. If I flip it 100 times, again, I’d expect around 50% to land on heads, but again it might not be exactly 50. And the percentage will probably be further away from 50% than it was with 1,000 coin tosses. If I flip it 10 times, it’s quite feasible that I could flip 10 consecutive heads. If I flip a coin just once, it will either land on heads 100% of the time or 0% of the time.

Apply this principle to miraculous recoveries from illness. For every person who defies odds of 1-in-1 million to recover, there were 999,999 who died, as expected. But because those 999,999 were fully expecting to succumb to their illness, their stories, while very sad, are unremarkable. The one person who recovered, on the other hand, will be proclaimed as a living miracle. If they happened to have tried a homeopathic remedy, that remedy will be proclaimed as a miracle cure.

People who claim to have been cured of cancer by homeopathic remedies are few and far between. Occasionally one crops up in the usual storm of sensationalism (link). Most claims of homeopathy working, however, deal with more mundane problems. Headaches, backaches, sore throats and colds. Problems that aren’t really that serious. Problems that conventional medicine may well have failed to treat. Such problems tend to be very sensitive to the placebo effect. The placebo effect is in fact quite a powerful phenomenon – essentially, it is when the patient’s symptoms improve purely because they believe they are going to. Quite a lot is understood of the pathways involved in the placebo effect, and entire books are dedicated to the subject (e.g. Dylan Evans – Placebo). When homeopathy works, it is working simply as a result of the placebo effect.

A meta-analysis published in Lancet in 2005 (link) looked at the various studies into the efficacy of homeopathy, and found that, as expected, it simply does not work at any level above placebo. It really doesn’t. That is the simple and straight forward truth.

There have been some papers that claim to have found that homeopathy does work. One such paper was published in Paediatrics in 2006 by Jennifer Jacobs and colleagues (link). It concludes that homeopathic remedies successfully treat acute diarrhoea in children in Nicaragua. A victory for homeopathy?

Not quite. The next issue of Paediatrics contained a fairly damning review by Sampson and London, which concluded:

“In summary: 1) The study used an unreliable and unproved diagnostic and therapeutic scheme; 2) There was no control for product adulteration; 3)Treatment selection was arbitrary; 4) The data were placed into odd groupings without explanation, and contained errors and unexplained inconsistencies; 5) The results were not clinically significant and were probably not statistically significant; 6) There was no public health significance; 7) Selection of references was incomplete and biased to support the claims of the article, and references were quoted inaccurately; and 8 ) Editorializations were inappropriate.”

Since then, Jacobs and her team have conducted trials in various countries, with varying results. The publications have been limited to low-impact journals such as The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, which in 2007 published a study into the efficacy of homeopathic remedies In Nepal (link). Unsurprisingly, the study found that homeopathic remedies do indeed work, but the publication is barely worth the paper it was printed on. Not only does it suffer from the same problems that the Nicaragua study suffered from, but it was funded by a company from Boiron. I’ll let you Google them.

So, with the scientific literature very quickly summarised with the inescapable conclusion that homeopathy doesn’t work, I’m now going to write about two more things: Firstly, why it’s fairly obvious that it doesn’t work; And secondly, why this finding isn’t simply “what doctors want to find”.

Homeopathy is a form of alternative medicine that was first proposed by Samuel Hahnemann in 1796. The principle is that a condition can be cured by a small amount of the thing that causes it. Scientifically, this isn’t actually a completely crazy idea. Many vaccines are based on small, inactive or subtly different forms of the antigen that causes the disease. The vaccine for smallpox was cowpox, for example. However, homeopathy takes this idea and runs with it to incredible conclusions. Firstly, they don’t actually use the thing that’s causing the illness – so the cure for ‘cancer’ wouldn’t be a diluted bit of tumour. They look at the symptoms. They then take something that would cause that symptom, and dilute it. For example, if you’re suffering from insomnia, they will give you a very diluted solution of caffeine, because caffeine keeps you awake.

And by very diluted, I mean very diluted. Not the kind of diluted that shampoo is when you fill the nearly-empty bottle with water. This is dilution of astronomical proportions (I hope that the very small number of regular readers are picking up on these little references).

At some of the strongest dilutions (which means the remedy is more potent, incidentally), you would require a sample of homeopathic solution larger than the entire universe to be statistically likely to have just one molecule of the active ingredient present. In other words, it really is just water. It’s not a diluted form of the thing causing the illness – it’s just water. And this is where the real pseudoscience comes into it. Water has memory, homeopathists claim. It remembers what was once in it, and as a result of that, it works. It only remembers the active ingredient (caffeine or whatever) of course, and not all the other things that had previously been in it. This is all due to a fairly complex shaking ritual. I really don’t want to go into the detail of that, because life is too short, but James Randi explains it all very well (link).

If what homeopathists are claiming is true, they should be falling over each other trying to prove it, because if they do, they will have fundamentally changed our understanding of physics. Forget what the Large Hadron Collider is doing: if homeopathy works, we can forget a lot of what we think we know about physics.

Finally, is it possible that the only reason why people ridicule homeopathy so much is that doctors and pharmaceutical companies want to carry on making money out of conventional medicine? Of course it’s not. Conventional medicine is, quite simply, medicine that works. I apologise in advance to anyone who knows anything about this, because you can probably guess what example I’m about to give. Thousands of years ago, people used to chew on willow bark to treat headaches. More recently, it was found that willow bark contains salicylic acid. A derivative of this is acetylsalicylic acid, which is more commonly known as aspirin. If alternative medicines can be shown to work, conventional medicine will gobble them up in a heart-beat and make them part of normal treatment. If homeopathy can be shown to work, the major pharmaceutical companies will rub their hands in glee at the prospect of making billions of pounds out of water. Doctors, scientists and pharmaceutical companies have nothing to gain whatsoever by disproving homeopathy. It simply does not work.

And another argument that is often heard is that even if homeopathy doesn’t work, it doesn’t do any harm for people to believe it does. It comforts them. It gives them hope. Well, that may be true. But what if those people choose homeopathy at the expense of proper medicine? In those instances, homeopathy doesn’t bring them hope – it’s assisted suicide.

And the harm doesn’t stop there. Clinical trials of homeopathy often take places in poorer countries such as Honduras and Nicaragua, and more recently have even started to be used to treat HIV/AIDS (link). Testing remedies that do not work, on children with HIV/AIDS in underdeveloped countries, is completely unethical and absolutely appalling.

In conclusion, there is absolutely no satisfactory evidence that homeopathic remedies have any efficacy whatsoever other than the placebo effect, and there is a wealth of evidence to the contrary. This is hardly surprising, given the scientific implausibility of homeopathy. Furthermore it is my opinion that not only does homeopathy do no good whatsoever, but it actually causes great harm.

But then maybe I’m just a homeophobe.

Song

In 1948, B. F. Skinner published a paper suggesting that pigeons display a form of superstition (link). He showed that if pigeons are left in a chamber and given food at random intervals, they will make false inferences that their behaviour is causing the food to be delivered. For example, a pigeon may turn around clockwise just before food is delivered, and qill subsequently repeat that action the next time it wants food, wrongly believing that its actions caused the food to be delivered. Humans act in exactly the same way. Not only has this been shown experimentally (Wagner and Morris, 1987; Ono, 1987), but anecdotally we can all think of times when we have falsely believed that our behaviour has caused independent events to occur. For example, we might think of someone seconds before they phone, and infer some sort of psychic ability; or we might have a special ritual before a football match. Bizarrely, often when our superstitious rituals don’t work, we will think that we did them incorrectly, rather than realise that they’re completely independent and have no influence whatsoever on future events. This is the first important feature of the way we think, which I will return to later.

In 1965, Kornhuber and Deecke (link) showed that before voluntary hand movements, there is a characteristic electrical signal in the brain, which they called a readiness potential or Bereitschaftspotential. Libet showed in 1985 that that readiness potential takes place before the subject is aware of what they are about to do. This has been replicated by others, including Soon et al. who in 2008 showed that a forthcoming action can be detected in the brain up to 10 seconds before it enters the subject’s awareness. In other words, the timeline of a decision is this: The decision is made, the decision reaches our conscious awareness, the action takes place.

So, combining the last two paragraphs: If humans are able to form false beliefs about causation so easily, it is not difficult to believe that by knowing what we are about to do before we do it, that could be misinterpreted as some form as control, or volition. Every time a decision reaches our consciousness before it its end result, we will believe that our consciousness has in fact produced that decision. In is important to note that many actions do not reach our consciousness until after their end result, or sometimes not at all. Reflex reactions like moving our hand away from a hot surface, or even something complicated like playing the piano can take place without any real conscious awareness. In my research degree last year, I investigated the possibility that even movements that we consider to be ‘conscious movements’ start to take place before we are aware of them.

So is free will and indeed consciousness itself just an illusion? I can’t put this argument into better words than my supervisor, Roger Carpenter, did in his book, Neurophysiology, so instead I will simply post a link to it (link).

But even if free will is an illusion, and what we call our ‘consciousness’ is just a spectator, does it really matter? We are our brain, and just because our decision-making incorporates randomisation, that does not mean that the decisions it reaches are arbitrary. Our brain contains our memories, experiences and desires, and therefore even if all our decisions are simply a product of a stimulus-response mechanism, it is still essentially free will.

I’d like to return to this subject and write about it in more depth at a later date. As I said earlier, I did some work on this subject last year. I’m hoping to get it published at some stage, so I can’t go into too much detail about it, but hopefully one day I will be able to post a link to it!

For references,
References and further reading:
Carpenter, R. H. S. (2003). Neurophysiology. London, Arnolds: 435-438 (and http://babylon.acad.cai.cam.ac.uk/people/rhsc/consc.html)
Carpenter, R. H. S. (2006). The LATER Model. Available on the World Wide Web: http://www.cudos.ac.uk/later.html (last accessed on 22 June 2009)
Haggard, P., Eimer, M. (1999). On the relation between brain potentials and the awareness of voluntary movements. Experimental Brain Research 126: 128-133.
Haggard, P., Clark, S., Kalogeras, J. (2002). Voluntary action and conscious awareness. Nature Neuroscience 5: 382-385.
Kornhuber, H. H., Deecke, K. (1965). Hirnpotentialänderungen bei Willkürbewegungen und passiven Bewegungen des Menschen: Bereitschaftspotential und reafferente Potentiale. Pflügers Archiv für Gesamte Physiologie 284: 1-17.
Libet, B. (1985). Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of conscious will in voluntary action. Behavioural and Brain Sciences 8: 529–566.
Ono, K. (1987). Superstitious behaviour in humans. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behaviour 47: 261–271.
Skinner, B. F. (1992). Superstition in the pigeon. Journal of Experimental Psychology 121: 273-274.
Soon, C. S., Brass, M., Heinze, H. J., Haynes, J. D. (2008). Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain. Nature Neuroscience 11: 543-545.
Wagner, G. A., Morris, E. K. (1987). “Superstitious” behavior in children. Physiological Record 37: 471-488

http://statisticallysignificantscience.wordpress.com/

Lots of interesting science stuff there – the case of Phineas Gage is a classic which sadly far too few people know about.

Nowadays, there are very few mainstream scientists who regard Genesis as an accurate description of the origins of life on Earth. Not only is there a huge wealth of evidence that the earth is considerably more than 10,000 years old, but Darwin’s Theory of Evolution provides a beautifully simple model, describing how random mutations and natural selection have produced the vast diversity of life that inhabits our planet. However, evolution does not explain how life begun.

The first thing to note is that there is still some debate over the precise meaning of ‘life’. There is no unanimous agreement over whether or not viruses can be described as ‘living’, for example. However, viruses certainly require other living organisms to reproduce.

One theory is that life spontaneously generated from non-living matter (abiogenesis). Aristotle claimed that, for example, aphids spontaneously arise from dew. However, Francesco Redi showed in seventeenth century that maggots do not appear in meat when flies are prevented from laying eggs. Two centuries later, Louis Pasteur showed that bacteria and fungi do not spontaneously generate in nutrient-rich, sterile environments. This is evidence that life does not spontaneously generate from non-living matter. However, although now life generates from other life, there must have been a point in time when life did indeed spontaneously generate from non-living matter, and it probably had to be happening quite regularly. Darwin speculated that a life spontaneously generated in a “warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity, etc. present, so that a protein compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes“. The reason why we do not observe this happening now is because the necessary ingredients would never be able to exist in the necessary conditions, because they would be instantly devoured or absorbed by nearby organisms. Think of planting a small flower. This is easy to do in a small plot of soil, and the flower will thrive. But plant it in a forest, and it is likely that the flower will die, because its light is blocked by the trees above it. Essentially, existing life stops new life from spontaneously generating.

Furthermore, Alexander Oparin suggested in the early twentieth century that atmospheric oxygen prevents the synthesis of crucial organic compounds. Our atmosphere currently contains around 21% oxygen, and oxygen is of course essential to all aerobic organisms. This is an example of the great beauty of evolution: life cannot spontaneously generate in an atmosphere containing oxygen, yet through random mutations and natural selection, some of the properties of oxygen which make it lethal to simple organisms can be exploited by more complex organisms, giving rise structures as complex as the human brain. The earth containing the earliest life forms has been termed an RNA world, with organisms based on RNA instead of DNA and capable of self-replication. It is unknown when this may have happened, but the oceans and atmosphere of the Earth did not develop until around 4.1 billion years ago.

It is estimated that the Earth is around 4.55 billion years old. The oldest evidence of life is 3.5 billion years old, and comes from fossilized stromalites. These are formed by cyanobacteria, a photosynthetic bacteria. This means that photosynthetic bacteria must have evolved no later than 3.5 billion years ago. This means that between 4.1 billion years ago and 3.5 billion years ago, life must have spontaneously generated from various chemicals, and evolved into photosynthetic bacteria. That gives the evolution around 0.6 billion years.

A further complication is that in the period of time between 4.1 billion and 3.8 billion years ago, the Late Heavy Bombardment occurred: a period of time in which the entire Solar System was bombarded with very large asteroids. Evidence for this is provided by craters on the Moon. This bombardment is likely to have obliterated any life that had managed to generate on Earth, which reduces the time between spontaneous generation and evolution to photosynthetic bacteria to a maximum of 0.3 billion years.

In contrast, the universe is around 13.7 billion years old (or 12 billion years old according to Katie Melua – link). At least one cycle of star birth and death is required for the synthesis of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen, all of which are essential to life. This would take several billion years. However, it is very likely that the universe has been theoretically capable of supporting life for upwards of 10 billion years, and that by the time photosynthetic bacteria were present on Earth, life could have existed elsewhere in the universe for over 6.5 billion years. The rather tempting question is obvious: if humans were able to evolve on Earth within 4.55 billion years of its formation, what kind of life could have evolved elsewhere in the universe in over double that time?

There is currently no evidence of any life outside Earth. There are around 400 billion stars in the Milky Way, our galaxy, and there are around 170 billion galaxies in the universe (the size of galaxies ranges from as little as 10 million stars to as many as 1 trillion). If there is nothing particularly special about our Solar System, then any number of the other 70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 solar systems could contain life. Even if our Solar System is exceptional, perhaps as rare as 1-in-a-billion, there are still 70,000,000,000,000 others like it. These are numbers of homeopathic proportions, which make the possibility of life – intelligent life – on other planets seem not just likely, but almost certain. But yet we have no evidence whatsoever of any extraterrestrial life. The contradiction between the high likelihood of alien life, and the complete lack of evidence for any is known as the Fermi paradox.

There are all sorts of theoretical explanations for this paradox. Perhaps intelligent life always ends up destroying itself before it is able to communicate with other planets; perhaps the Earth is in fact unique and no other planets can support life; perhaps once life becomes intelligent enough to communicate with other planets, it reaches a point in philosophical enlightenment where it decides it doesn’t want to; perhaps the evidence is there, but we can’t see it; perhaps no planet has the resources to support interstellar travel; perhaps interstellar travel is technologically impossible; perhaps Earth is being observed by others who do not wish to interfere; or perhaps they are already amongst us. All we can do is speculate.

So, if life can develop on other planets, can it travel between planets? This concept is known as exogenesis or panspermia.

We know that material can be transferred between planets – we regularly receive meteorites from Mars. It is unlikely that life would be able to survive travel across space: radiation, cosmic rays and stellar winds are all very damaging to life. Although DNA can survive for a few million years in extremely harsh conditions, as found in Antarctic glaciers, this is probably not sufficient time for interstellar movement.

One intriguing theory proposed by Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, is that of Directed Panspermia (link). The theory is that planets that may be able to support life may have been chosen by intelligent life on another planet, who then sent life on spaceships containing organisms to these planets. Crick’s conclusion is that Directed Panspermia cannot be completely dismissed, although it is very difficult to estimate its likelihood as many of the necessary parameters are completely unknown.

Of course, even if exogenesis is possible and has happened, life still had to start by abiogenesis somewhere. Occam’s Razor would probably prefer the theory that abiogenesis took place on Earth, and perhaps takes place on other planets, with no transferrals between planets, but again, it is very difficult to estimate the relative probabilities when so many of the variables are unknown.

Finally, if Directed Panspermia is possible, then regardless of whether or not it has happened before or was responsible for the start of life on Earth, one intriguing question is whether or not it will happen in the future. It seems likely that when we finally run out of resources on Earth, we will either have to harness the resources of outside our planet, or become extinct. It could be that in the distant future, we may feel that our only hope of survival is to move to a different planet.

If that ever happens, it’s just possible that it may not be for the first time.

Song (three parts)

The first thing to say is that it is we will probably never be able to understand what an animal is thinking. As Wittgenstein said:

“If a lion could talk, we would not understand him”

However, while we are unlikely to ever know exactly what an animal is thinking, we are able to at least set some parameters, and dispel a few myths. When describing animal behaviour, there is a huge temptation to anthropomorphise, i.e. the assign them with human traits. This is purely for our benefit. It may of course benefit the animal. For example, many people form extremely close bonds with their dogs, believing them to be man’s best friend. This is an example of anthropomorphism, because there is no real reason to believe that the dog views its owner as its best friend. It is likely that its interactions with its owner are learnt through a combination of Pavlovian and operant conditioning.

My knowledge of animal psychology is fairly limited. However, in researching my arguments in the killer whale discussion, I learnt about a few important animal studies that I would like to share here. Many arose as a result of newspaper articles being cited as evidence of various human behaviours being present in animals, and in all cases the newspaper articles were gross misrepresentations of the actual study.

The first example is a story from The Telegraph, which also appeared in other newspapers (link). “Dogs can be jealous, say scientists”. Straight away the headline is a distortion of the truth. The article goes on to say that “Dogs are prone to complex emotions such as jealousy and pride, according to scientific research that sheds new light on their relationship with humans”. In fact, the paper in question is very careful not to say that. The original article, by Friederike Range et al., was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2009 (link). This article does not contain the words ‘envy’, ‘jealousy’ or ‘pride’ at all. Instead, it says that their results “suggest that species other than primates show at least a primitive version of inequity aversion, which may be a precursor of a more sophisticated sensitivity to efforts and payoffs of joint interactions.”.

‘Jealousy’ and ‘inequity aversion’ may seem like the same thing, but that is because humans are capable of feeling jealousy. It does not logically follow that if a dog shows aversion to inequity, it is experiencing jealousy, even though that word may be convenient for us to use. The study provides evidence for some very interesting canine traits, but it does not provide evidence that dogs “can be jealous”.

The second article concerns dolphins, noted as being one of the most intelligent creatures in the animal kingdom. The Times, along with other newspapers, ran the story that “Scientists say dolphins should be treated as ‘non-human persons’” (link). Again, a very attractive headline that straightaway qualifies itself by saying that it comes from the mouths of scientists. Sadly, the reality is that it doesn’t.

The study that the article refers, by Lori Marino and Diana Reiss, was published in 2001 (link). Again, it’s a very interesting study. It concerns mirror-self-recognition, a phenomenon that had previously only been observed in humans and great apes. The experimental procedure used is called the ‘mark test’. A non-toxic, non-perfumed red dye is applied to various parts of the animal, such that the animal can only see it in the mirror. If the animal has never seen a mirror before, it will do nothing. However, many animals are capable of learning how to use mirrors. Even parrots are capable of using mirrors to help to guide their behaviour. Chimpanzees that have learnt how to use mirrors will touch the affected part of their body in the mark test, suggesting mirror self-recognition. Because dolphins can’t touch their body in the way that chimps can, Marino and Reiss observed the amount of time that the dolphins spent near the mirror, and found that when they were marked, they spent more time by the mirror. As they conclude, this is evidence that dolphins are capable of mirror self-recognition, which is a very interesting and important finding. Some of their conclusions may be slightly enthusiastic: for example, they conclude that the fact that dolphins show no social interaction when they look in the mirror separates them from monkeys and other non-self-recognising species, which initially respond to the mirror with social behaviour (Suarez and Gallup, 1986). This seems a bit over-simplistic, as it implies that dolphins rely solely on vision to direct their behaviour which we know is not true.

However, my intention is not to try to discredit the paper – I am happy to accept its conclusions, and I would be very interested to discuss it with people who know more about the subject than I do! What I do intend to do is to point out the differences between what the paper says and what the media coverage of it claims it says.

At no point in the paper do Marino and Reiss claim that dolphins should be treated as ‘non-human persons’. This rather media-friendly sound bite came from Thomas White, professor of ethics at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles. Marino, Reiss and White all presented their findings at the American Association for the Advancement of Science last month (link). Of course I wholeheartedly agree that dolphin hunts in Japan should be stopped, and it’s excellent news for this very worthy cause that The Cove won an Oscar this year. However, the idea that dolphins should be treated as “non-human persons” is not a scientific conclusion. Indeed, the Marino and Reiss paper ends with:

“The question of whether dolphins are capable of more complex forms of self-awareness, such as introspection and mental state attribution, remains unanswered. The present findings should motivate further investigation of other indicators of self-awareness.”

My final example of poor media coverage, before I attempt to do a slightly better job myself, is that of elephants mourning their dead. This phenomenon has been part of folklore for many years, with many anecdotal examples of elephants appearing to attend funerals, mourn their dead, and visit the graves of their relatives. A video of this behaviour can be seen here (link). Again, the first thing to do is to step away from the anthropomorphism. It’s wrong to automatically assume that elephants behave that way for the same reasons that humans might. As ever, the best way to gather evidence about this behaviour is throughout scientific investigation.

A 2005 study by McComb et al (link) explores this behaviour. They found that elephants investigate ivory in preference to other organic material, including an elephant skull. Once again, this is a very interesting finding, and throws up all sorts of questions, such as how and why this behaviour evolved. As the McComb study concludes, elephants’ interest in ivory makes it very likely that they will often visit the bones of relatives who die within their home range. What it does not indicate is that these visits are part of some sort of ritual, or that the elephants are in any way mourning, grieving, or remembering their dead. To assume that they are is simply anthropomorphism.

So, I’ve spent a lot of time talking about what evidence doesn’t exist despite what the media tells us – so what evidence does exist? Well, entire books are dedicated to this, but I’ll give a quick run-down of some of my favourite theories and studies.

In a very famous study in 1975, Seligman (link) showed that rats show a phenomenon known as ‘learned helplessness’, which is used as a model for unipolar depression. Rats were given an electric shock which they either could or couldn’t escape from by jumping. Later, they were given electric shocks that they could sometimes escape from by pressing a bar. The rats which had previously been able to escape were able to escape by pressing the bar, but the rats which had previously been unable to escape became passive, exhibiting symptoms of depression such as loss of appetite. So, while I would be very hesitant to describe rats as being sad or melancholy, they can certainly be depressed in a physiological sense.

This isn’t particularly surprising, especially when theories such as the James-Lange Theory are considered. The James-Lange Theory, in summary, is that we do not run because we are afraid; we are afraid because we run. In other words, our physiological responses are much faster than our psychological responses, so if there is a causal relationship between them, it must be our physiology that affects our psychology. There are several problems with the James-Lange Theory: some physiological changes are slower than psychological changes; cutting the vagus nerve does not affect emotions in rats; different emotions can be felt despite identical physiological changes; and injecting adrenaline does not induce emotional changes. However, these problems are largely eliminated by Schachter and Singer’s 1962 two factor theory of emotion, which states that emotion is a result of the appraisal of both our physiological and our cognitive states. This was demonstrated by injecting subjects with adrenaline or a placebo, and manipulating their cognitive state using an actor.

And therein lies the crucial distinction between humans and other animals: cognition. Humans and animals are equally capable of experiencing physiological changes in response to stimuli, but our cognitive abilities are markedly different.

Possibly my favourite ever paper (and you know you’re a real nerd when you start a sentence with those words) is a 2002 paper by Hauser, Chomsky and Fitch (link). They evaluate a huge range of anatomical, archaeological, physiological and psychological evidence to arrive at some theories concerning the development of language. While some animals such as parrots are capable of speech, and many animals are capable of communication, none of them appear to have the ability of recursion. Recursion is the ability to generate an infinite number of possibilities from a finite number of components, which is essential what language is. Mathematics also requires recursion, and it can be shown that chimpanzees probably do not have this ability, because while they can be taught to count, it takes a very long time, and there is no evidence that they ever realise that integer list is based on the successor function.

There have been apes that have been taught sign language, including Koko the gorilla and Nim Chimpsky the chimpanzee. However, while this is quite extraordinary, such abilities could be explained as simply being due to imitation and conditioning.

To conclude, our knowledge of animal intelligence is still very limited. There are some things that we know they can do, some that we know they can’t, many that we have no idea about, and are possibly some that we ourselves are incapable of and are therefore completely oblivious to. But I return to the Wittgenstein quote, “If a lion could talk, we would not understand him”. We’re sometimes so determined to anthropomorphise and to define animals in human terms that we forget that it’s the differences between us that makes life so magnificent. Diversity is one of the great beauties of evolution. Our attitudes towards animals are sometimes shameful, and we often try to redress the balance by reminding ourselves that “We’re animals as well”, and to criticise ourselves for holding the arrogant view that we are superior to other animals. The key realisation is that we are superior to animals when it comes to human traits, by definition. Of course we’re better at language and philosophy and blogging than animals are – accepting that isn’t an arrogant view. It isn’t even arrogant to say that we’re cleverer than other animals, because the parameters of ‘intelligence’ are defined in human terms. We should celebrate our vast diversity, while continuing to further our understanding of the world, and those that we share it with.

I’ve jumped around the subject quite a lot, and I’m still getting used to this blogging thing, so your comments and criticisms are warmly invited.

Song