Stopping the Race: Ann Palkovich

9:45 AM

Dr. Palkovich, an Associate Professor of Anthropology at one of my alma matters, George Mason University, presented information from her field of biological anthropology and used it to critique how the idea of "race" is used in our society.

Biological Anthropology, as opposed to the more familar Cultural Anthropology, is a science of human variation. Why are people different from each other? How can measure that difference and how do those differences actually play out in the real world with respect to popular notions of the same?

To me, what was surprising is learning that there is no scientific consensus on race. Most of what we correlate with race (skin tones, physical features and the like) really match-up as easily, cleanly and clearly with perceived ethnicities as we might think. Going into this lecture, I understood from my own education, that a good deal of our ideas about race don't really hold up under scientific scrutiny. Walking out of the lecture (well actually she walked out to make room for the next speaker) is that actually its just about all of our ideas regarding race falls apart.

You can trace ancestry though an individual -- there are certain markers and characteristics that are generally common to small groups of people from different geographical regions on the planet -- but you are never going to find the broad collection of "traits" we commonly associate with white people, or black people or asian peoples. They simply don't exist "in the wild." There's more variation within populations than within "races."

The reason many of these notions of race continue is for cultural reasons. In the West this is tied to strong ideas that took root during the Eugenics movement of the early part of the 20th century. Again, surprisingly, Dr. Palkovich pointed out that it wasn't scientific circles that entrenched the eugenics notions in the popular mindset. By 1913, biological anthropology had rejected the "perfection" ideas at the heart of the Eugenics movement. Social and political groups were much more fertile grounds, where the harshest ideas of Eugenics grew, blooming into such monstrosities as the Nazi movement.

Ghostly Science: David Richards

10:15 AM

David Richards, a Skeptical Investigator from my home town of Los Angeles, proposed a thesis that media in general, and movies -- horror movies -- in particular, have increased the usage of the "supernatural" as the primary antagonist in their stories. He felt this movement reinforced the lack of critical thinking among general American audiences.

He used the novel The Haunting of Hill House as a jumping off point for his discussion, pointing out that there have been 4 movies made from this one book, two versions in the early 1960s and two in the late 1990s. The original films, the the book they were based on, doesn't make the supernatural the point of the story at all -- both were really about the evils humans did to each other. The two most recent films changed this significantly, having the evil be tied directly to ghosts, spirits etc.

David then tried to quantify the use of the supernatural in movies from the the first films of the 1920s up to the present day. He picked 10 early films and 10 recent films, assigned a value of 0-2 based on the "amount" of supernatural in those movies, then compared and average between two populations.

I had a lot of problems with his presentation. Emotionally, I'm somewhat inclined to believe there's more "supernatural" in the movies today than there was 40 years ago. Intellectually though, I'm far less sure. Because much of David's presentation ruled out other factors and media (social change, television, internet) the correlation he comes up with is very vacant. Further, I didn't like his rating method and his choice of films -- it was all terribly ad hoc and somewhat cherry picked.

I did engage him in a brief discussion after his session. He's a nice guy and he did recognize the severe limitations of his paper. Discussion flowed into our own ideas regarding the future of theaters, DVDs, VOD and cable.

We didn't agree there, either.

The Sexy Skeptic: Larisa Beckwith

11:00 AM

I missed part of Larisa's talk due to my own conversations with David (see above.) Basically though Larisa related her own experiences and research as a Clinical Psychologist and Public Health worker to illustrate the extent that pseudo-science notions have dangerously permeated our culture.

I came in on a vivid example she drew out of childhood autism. Many, many parents are refusing to vaccinate their children because of erroneous fears of mercury induced autism -- some are even extending this "no vaccination" policy to their pets. Given the recent outbreaks of polio in Africa based on Islamic anti-vaccination pronouncements there, it's pretty easy to see where this is going.

From research that she conducted, one of the worrying responses was that her surveyed population felt that "scientists have power that makes them dangerous." (I really want to get a copy of her research.) She moved that a social marketing theory based campaign (eg. "This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs." PSAs) needs to be undertaken to positively market science, skepticism and critical thought.

I'll finish the rest of this day another day.