Why I Laughed This Evening

Someone posted this on Facebook:

‎”Atheism is for everybody, but maybe everybody isn’t for atheism. Its the most unprejudicial, unbigoted, no-agenda school of thought you could hope to find. Some people just aren’t equipped for such an unorthodox way of life of dealing in truth and being nice to people for the sake of it.” – Darryn Roberts

To which I replied:

It’s a great quote, and perhaps it describes an ideal atheist, but it’s clearly not true in the real world.

Many atheists are prejudiced, as Alison said ironically, against people of faith, but also about other minority groups. There are bigoted comments made by self-described atheists about others. There is a clear agenda being promoted by some atheists (for example, anti-theist school of thought is very much prejudicial, bigoted and agenda’d).

Unfortunately, it’s more something to aim for rather than a description of reality :’(

To which came the reply:

David, you are a dumbass!

Which I can’t disagree with, but to be honest is more heat than light. So I replied with:

And there we see, right on cue, an example of people not “being nice to people for the sake of it.”

Now, perhaps that was harsh, but here came the reply:

David. Saying that the anti-theist agenda is prejudicial and bigoted just proves that you have the mentality of a gnat unable to grasp complex ideas. Religion is what invented bigotry by telling one group of people that they are better than another. Atheism is the opposite of that. We believe that all people are the same. Have you tried educating yourself? It might help.

So I replied with:

I didn’t say atheism was prejudicial (that means something different), I said atheists were prejudiced (therefore, atheism cannot be free of prejudice). In fact, this is hardly news, because prejudice is essential to our every day functioning and survival. For example, today I used the prejudice (pre-judgement, if you like) of not stepping out in front of a fast moving car, because I thought it might kill me. I’m also somewhat prejudiced against people with knives and guns, because I perceive those things as being a risk. I dare say that my ancestors ran away from things that looked like they might be big cats in the jungle.

Prejudice just means judging a situation or person before learning the details. By definition, an anti-theist position *is* prejudiced, because, without knowing every detail, it assumes that no matter the benefits which might be associated with any form of theism, the costs will outweigh them.

Bigotry means being obstinate and stubborn in one’s opinion’s and prejudices. Certainly, classic examples include forms of misogyny, homophobia, classism, racism (etc…), and many of these have been perpetuated by religious groups. This doesn’t mean such behaviour is restricted to religious groups: such bigoted behaviours have been observed in skeptical groups (to name but one non-theistic social group).

However, it’s going too far to suggest that bigotry was “invented” by religion. It’s thought to have arisen in tribal society as a way of clearly differentiating Us (who are moral people, trying to raise our families and struggling to get enough food to eat and drink and stave off illness) from Them (the tribes and villages around us, who are immoral people, trying to kill our families, steal our food and drink and who bring disease to our village). Whilst this is clearly an extreme simplification, it certainly fits with how we know social groups form and adopt an identity around certain social norms, mores and values.

Indeed, one might argue that telling someone they are a dumbass and suggesting they educate themselves is a form of tribal in group/out group behaviour, trying to reinforce a certain identity by minimising the value of the other, trying to show they’re an outsider because they question the core norms of the group!

I might add that as a gay man, former born-again Baptist fundamentalist and modern-philosophical-atheist – along with my academic training – I have seen all sides of this coin. I have seen the forms of both bigotry and kindness which exist in religious groups; I have seen the hatred shown towards non-heterosexuals in society; I have seen the rational and irrational positions taken by atheists, skeptics and rationalists. And I see that whilst some are better on some measures than others, none are immune to the delightful quirks brought by imperfect humans.

Atheism, as a social movement (as opposed to an ideal) is flawed, and has the same social flaws as other groups. It’s made up of imperfect people living in an imperfect world. However, it is one of those groups which are perhaps a bit more reflective than other groups, and is a bit more aware of its imperfection, and tries to correct the flaws. It doesn’t have an ultimate sacred standard of truth, so it typically uses empiricism and rationalism to identify truths and falsities. However, it’s made of people doing people things in people ways.

Now, to get back to this literature survey…

Which I followed up with

Erk, mistake on my part. I did say prejudicial, and I apologise for my error. I did in fact mean prejudiced (ie. possessing prejudices). My bad!

…because I’m nothing if not intellectually honest.

I have to say, this failure to be sufficient reflective to recognise one’s own group’s failures really does irk me!

---

Edit: and the reply comes…

David you really need to buy a dictionary. Not stepping in front of a speeding car is not prejuduce, it’s common sence self preservation. If that’s what you think prejudice is you are a dumbass. it means to pre-judge. To judge before finding proof or evidence. Also your commont about tribes being against each other on moral grounds is the start of the bigotry of the religion of one person thinking that they have the right to dictate anothers morality. I stand by my statement. YOU ARE A DUMBASS!! I laugh at you.

I feel laughed at.

All-in-One Prophylaximagic!

I had my six-monthly checkup with my immunology insultant consultant last week (no infections to report, trough IgG of 7.5 g L^-1 which is double what it was a year ago). I have common variable immunodeficiency, a genetic condition which means I don’t produce antibodies, so untreated I can get frequent and repeat infections.

We were reviewing my treatment plan, and discussing that I’ve now been on prophylactic antibiotics for six months. The antibiotic of choice at my hospital is azithromycin, a member of a family of antibiotics called macrolides which also includes erithromycin and clarithromycin.

Molecular structure of azithromycin. Note the large ring in the top left of the image. Thanks to Wikimedia

Molecularly, macrolides are characterised by having a ring of 14 or more (mainly carbon) atoms, making them quite large. As a comparison, benzylpenicillin has 16 carbon atoms in total and a molecular mass of 334.4, whilst azithromycin has 38 carbon atoms and a molecular mass of 749.0, more than twice the mass.

Pharmacologically, macrolides block protein synthesis in bacteria. All cells (and bacteria are just cells with a thick wall) depend on constant replacement of their proteins, so blocking their manufacture kills bacteria rapidly.

Macrolides also have a cunning trick of getting to the bacteria. Neutrophils, a type of white blood cell which is attracted to infections sites, transport as much of the macrolide molecules as possible in the cell. Once neutrophils find the infection, they release bomblets of anti-bacterial chemicals along with the antibiotic. The net effect is they get to the bacteria very quickly and if the chemical warfare from the neutrophils doesn’t kill them off, the macrolides soon do.

However, macrolides are not a one trick pony. In addition to being efficient killers, they also have other beneficial effects, in particular being potent anti-inflammatories. Unlike common anti-inflammatories like ibuprofen, which have a single mode of action, macrolides are multi-modal and suppress inflammation in multiple ways.

One trick they have is protecting the body from the damage caused by the neutrophil attack chemicals. Another trick, also associated with neutrophils, is that they may promote the migration of the chemical warfare specialists to the infection sites, meaning more of them get to the infection, and they get there faster.

They have also been implicated in suppressing expression of endothelin-1. ET1, as it’s known, is a powerful vasodilator which promotes blood flow in the area around an infection, and is what causes infected wounds to go characteristically red and inflamed. In addition, macrolides have been associated with reduction of other signalling chemicals, cytokines and interleukins, which promote inflammation.

These effects have been shown to be beneficial, particularly in a range of respiratory conditions. This includes asthma, particularly where the patient is sensitive to environmental irritants such as dust, and a condition called diffuse panbronchiolitis (DPB). DPB is characterised by extensive bacterial infection in the lungs, and constriction of the airways in response. Treatment with macrolides has increased survival rates from around 50% to better than 96%, with it’s effects exceeding that of an antibiotic alone.

Whilst macrolides become concentrated in normal cells, they aren’t transported into the space in the lungs where air exchange occurs, the bronchial tree. However, they have been shown to have benefit on the lung function tests of patients with bronchiectasis and cystic fibrosis, not by directly affecting the flora, but by decreasing inflammation and promoting the migration of neutrophils. In addition, macrolides may have benefits in atheroma (fatty arteries, which have a strong association with serious and fatal heart disease), arthritis and some forms of cancer.

For those of us who do have poor immune systems, just reducing the bacterial infections is great, but reducing the inflammatory response is a buy-one-get-one-free bonus. So, here’s to an amazing group of drugs that’s making my life more liveable.

Scientific Literacy: people aren’t very good at tests they haven’t revised for

One of the topics which comes up a lot in social studies of science – and which comes up regularly on the skeptical circuit – is the complaint that the public don’t understand science. There are numerous questionnaires which test the public’s knowledge and they get published about once every three months. One which I noticed earlier was this one, looking at relative levels of scientific knowledge between men and women. Another is this, also by Sheril Kirshanbaum. There are countless other examples of what is generally known as scientific literacy.

Many people take the view that the poor numbers of people who know these answers to the questions – in the examples cited, about the relative sizes of subatomic particles, orbital periods of planets, genetics and origins of the universe – shows that members of the public are not adequately educated about science. However, despite extensive efforts by educators, the relative rates of knowledge remain static between surveys.

For me the question really is what we’re measuring, and what the significance of that measurement is. When were people asked and in what social setting? The only time I’ve ever been invited to participate in social research is on the high street when shopping: how many people could cite scientific facts when worrying about getting a hot sausage roll from Gregg’s?

In addition, what relevance to every day lives does knowledge being assessed have? Whilst I knew the answers being sought to the questions above (and I’d love to discuss the question on genetic gender determinism further), I can’t say they form anything other than an interesting backdrop to the day-to-day decisions of my life. So what if it takes the Earth 365.25ish days to orbit the sun, does it affect the housework I’m procrastinating doing by writing this? The relative size of electrons have equally little import, and I’m becoming less and less concerned about how people think the universe was created (it was nearly 14 billion years ago expansion started, wait), provided they don’t think they have the right to force that onto other people. Granted there may be a positive correlation between people who believe in special creation and people who want to force that belief on me, but such people remain a small minority.

And why don’t we expect publics to know facts about philosophy and literature and religions? What is it that means people should definitely know that electrons are even smaller that small, but we don’t care if they know how and why Socrates died? Why does the rotation of our planet excite rage when knowledge of the contributions of Keats, Ives and Spinoza barely raise an interest?

Whilst many members of the public may fail these crude general knowledge tests, we also know that people don’t operate in a scientific vacuum. When they need to know something, they have the resources, either in themselves or in the people around them, to gain understanding. Classic examples are diabetes and cancer: non-specialists can gain a sophisticated understanding of the conditions and their treatment options when required, but might otherwise fail these tests. One of the advantages of the Internet is access to a vast library of human knowledge (which comes hand in hand with access to a vast library of human ignorance, of course).

Demanding that people have these pieces of knowledge may also lead us to underestimate the knowledge they do have. As a classic example, during the BSE crisis, failure to into account the knowledge of butchers about the preparation of meat meant that the first set of rules designed to prevent BSE entering the food chain failed to work, something which was only discovered by the policy makers 5 years after the regulations came into force. (I am assured by my master butcher brother-in-law that the first regulations were laughable, showing a compete ignorance about what happens in an abattoir.) People build complex knowledge structures of the world they live in. Sometimes, these knowledge structures are implicitly scientific but if you asked the people they wouldn’t say they had any scientific knowledge.

One of the groups I have an interest in, ambulance crews, have a vast body of knowledge about humans, their bodies and their responses to illness and injury, but not many of them would necessarily say they are applied scientists. If such a person is unable to answer questions on subatomic particles, should we discard the complex, subtle and deep knowledge they have gained over years of practice and declare them unscientific?

Even if we agree that pop science quizzes have some kind of intrinsic value (and that’s as much a question for the philosophers!), what implications does it have for society? The common assertion is that the scientifically illiterate cause harm because of poor quality decisions. For example, if someone doesn’t know how dilution works, they may mistakenly think that homeopathy works and fail to get vaccinated. I think it’s worth pointing out at this point that there’s a clear difference between science as a body of facts and science as a process. For example, a physicist and biologist probably have a good understanding of how science works, but probably don’t compare in terms of factual knowledge about each other’s fields.

Indeed, the evidence on science-as-knowledge doesn’t really support the position that ‘ignorant’ people make ‘bad’ decisions. In fact, the evidence suggests that the more science (both types) people know, the more ambivalent they are about science. Thus the people most likely to reject genetically modified foods and vaccination are also the people who would be most likely to pass the knowledge assessment. Indeed, anti-GM often have depths of knowledge which are comparable to those of practitioners in the field.

Indeed, I’m not even sure how a more scientifically literate world would differ from the world we see today. This is particularly true when we take into account evidence about motivated reasoning: people with pre-existing opinions are less likely to change their minds when confronted with evidence which strongly conflicts with their existing beliefs.

Now, I’m all for ensuring that science is made accessible to different publics, that publics have opportunities to engage with science if they wish and that our education system is as good as it can possibly be. Wrong information, particularly when it’s associated with exploitation, can and should be countered, if necessary by reference to appropriate enforcement bodies (the ongoing ASA campaigns, for example). However, we can’t use these measurements as indicators as evidence of anything other than what it measures. And the only conclusion that I can draw is that people who are given a science test without a chance to revise tend not to do very well.

But any undergraduate could have told you that though.

 

[Edit: Sheril pointed out that both of the posts I referenced were actually authored by her, so I corrected the text]

Should the army have been sent in?

I saw some suggestions the other day that military intervention was desirable in order to put down the riots. At the time I said that I thought this was a ridiculous idea, playing to some kind of authoritarian demagoguery and that the damage to society would irreparable. I still stand by that.

However, in researching my paper on communicating science in emergencies, I was examining the Short Guide to the Civil Contingencies Act 2004. I know, my lifestyle is probably a main cause of the riot, it’s so celeb.

Specifically, my eyes caught the section on emergency powers.

… the Act allows the making of temporary special legislation aimed at dealing with a serious emergency that fits within the definition. The Queen, as Head of State, will formally indicate that emergency powers are necessary as part of the Order in Council that makes the regulations themselves. For the first time a fallback option has been included to cover the possibility that emergency powers will be needed, where the Queen is, for whatever reason, unable to act. The Act therefore allows for a senior Minister or the Prime Minister to make the regulations in the unlikely event that Her Majesty is not able to do so.

The Act introduces a range of other new features, mostly designed to ensure emergency powers cannot be misused and can be used in a more targeted and proportionate manner. The centre piece of these is the “triple lock”, which ensures emergency powers will only be available if:

• an emergency that threatens serious damage to human welfare, the environment or security has occurred, is occurring or is about to occur;
• it is necessary to make provision urgently in order to resolve the emergency as existing powers are insufficient and it is not possible to bring forward a Bill in the usual way because of the need to act urgently; and
• emergency regulations must be proportionate to the aspect or effect of the emergency they are directed at.

In addition emergency regulations:

• cannot prohibit or enable the prohibition of participation in, or any activity in connection with, a strike or other industrial action;
• cannot instigate any form of military conscription;
• cannot alter any aspect of criminal procedures;
• cannot create any new offence other than breach of the regulations themselves;
• must be compatible with the Human Rights Act and EU law; and
• are open to challenge in the courts

(Civil Contingencies Secretariat, 2004. Civil Contingencies Act 2004 : a short guide ( revised ), p 5)

Now, I am not a lawyer (if you are, perhaps you could add your professional opinion below), but it seems to me that:

1. The riot situation did threaten damage to human welfare, the environment and securityand had occurred, was occurring and was likely to occur. In the absence of anything I could find immediately, I take environment to be construed not only as the natural environment, but also the built, urban environment which was threatened by the riots.The question is whether the damage was serious. Whilst a number of people died and a number of people were made homeless and had their businesses destroyed, acts which were clearly serious to the individuals involved, I’d question whether this is serious in this context. Serious in the context of civil contingencies has to mean that significant numbers of people and businesses were affected or threatened to be affected. I am not sure the riots, as horrible as they were, met this criteria.
2. It might have become necessary if the police had been unable to restrict and contain the riots. However, my reading of necessary in this case is that nothing else could or would have been likely to have the desired effect. If Kent needs evacuation after an incident because people who stay there will definitely die, then that’s a time when evacuation is a necessary precondition of success. In this case, I am not convinced that deploying the army was a necessary precondition for successfully quelling the public disorder.
3. I doubt very much that deploying the army could have been construed as being proportionate unless the state itself was in danger of collapse (ie. a revolution was being fomented).

In addition, I think that the deployment of the army would likely have altered criminal procedures (non-judicial killing?) and would likely have been incompatible with the HRA and EU law.

Even assuming that this had gone to parliament (so it became a legislative debate rather than emergency powers as announced by the Monarch), I would hope that our parliamentarians would have balked at the deployment of the army.

First, the army are equipped and trained for killing in war zones, not arresting during civil unrest. It’s worth remembering that the army’s reputation for managing even combat detainees, whilst better than the USA’s reputation, is not spotless.

Second, it would have created the situation in which Briton was set against Briton. This would definitely have inflamed the situation (the response to people who do not feel part of a community is not to create new divisions and disenfranchisement), and could well have resulted in it going out of control, all the way up to civil war.

Third, it would have been demagogic at best. I’m not sure what it would have been at worst. However, I for one would be deeply shamed to live in a society where the elected government (even if not actually the government that was elected) decided the solution to civil unrest was to face them down the barrel of a gun.

The worst part for me was that this was being seriously proposed by people who are very clearly on the left wing. If us liberal lefties immediately resort to violence as a ‘solution’, then where does that leave the Overton window? Of course evicting people and taking their money has become a realistic option, because, compared to shooting them, it’s positively moderate.

As the representative from Nottingham City Council said on the Channel 4 Riots Debate last night, “the way to tackle issues related to poverty is not to create more poverty.” Nor is it to threaten them with violence until they comply, or further disenfranchise an already disempowered social group. As I’ve said before, the solution is to create communities in which people feel included, have opportunities and have the power to collectively decide the way forward.

We also need to have a plan in place, which has been collectively negotiated by everyone in society, on how we respond to unrest in the future. Because if we don’t, then the extremist suggestions made might well be the catastrophic route we walk down, and that’s not a society I find attractive.

EDIT (following has been added):

A friend points out that this piece of legislation is not necessary, as a minister can authorise the deployment of the army under Military Aid to the Civil Authorities (MACA), as outlined in the Joint Doctrine Publication Operations in the UK: The Defence Contribution to Resilience, specifically, Military Aid to the Civil Power (MACP).

However, their use in exceptional circumstances (ie. not the routine deployment, such as fisheries protection, mountain rescue etc…) is subject to key restrictions:

1. Deployment of the military must be the last resort, other options (mutual aid, private sector etc…) are insufficient
2. The civil authorities do not have the capability to do what is required (and it’s too expensive or would take too long to develop)
3. The civil authorities have the capability by have urgent need to act and insufficient resources.

Clearly, the riots did not meet that standard.

In addition, specifically in relation to working with the police and in public order scenarios:

Force is never lawful unless the immediate object is the prevention of crime (including public order offences), the arrest of offenders, self-defence or the defence of others. (4A3.b(2))

Force must never be used to punish or to act as a deterrent for the future. (4A3.b(5))

Service personnel should be suitably equipped to deal with the situation. If the potential use of firearms is considered necessary, usually as a last resort in civil disturbances, a force so armed should be kept in reserve and out of sight of those involved in the disturbance. (4A3.b(6))

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) would not deploy untrained or improperly equipped personnel on public order duties. Any such deployment would have to be clearly proportionate to the threat. The need to preserve both the actual and the perceived political neutrality of the Armed Forces would be a primary concern. (4B3) [my emphasis]

It should, moreover, be assumed that any decline in the UK security environment would lead to changes in policing methods (for example, enhanced police training in public order duties) prior to the use of the armed forces being considered. (4B4)

In short, the required standards for use of MACP is unlikely to have been met during the current circumstances.

Quote of the week

“The problem [with the deficit model] is that people do not passively absorb everything that is beamed from their television set. Instead they interpret and contextualise. Public views are not formed from thin air. Equally they are not simply dictated by the media or ministerial pronouncements or by lay ‘perspectives’ or ‘cultures’. Judgements are made according to the information available from the media, education, friends and family and other sources and evaluated against previous experience and information. Experience is patterned by class, ethnicity, gender, nationality, region and age as well as by personal experience and evaluated by means of logical processes.”

Miller, D., 1999. Mediating Science: promotional strategies, media coverage, public belief and decision making. In E. Scanlon, E. Whitelegg, & S. Yates, eds. Communicating Science: Contexts and Channels. London: Routledge.

Broken Britain?

I am angry. The riots in our cities have done untold damage and harmed society, communities and individuals in ways that won’t be clear for sometime. It’s heartbreaking to see local shops torched, homes destroyed and property damaged. But what’s really got my ire is the responses to these actions by people I think of as friends, by people I used to respect. “Shoot them”, “national service”, “corporal punishment”, “send in the army”. I’ve seen all of these as suggestions from normally level-headed people, and I can’t think of less appropriate responses if I’m honest. It disgusts me, it sickens me to my core that such callous disregard for the values I though we subscribed to as a society are the immediate response to outbreaks of rioting.

The number of people who’ve pasted the “broken Britain” message on Facebook is ridiculous and repellant. Not only does it continue the entire Tory narrative and harken back to a (non-existent) golden age in which the poor didn’t clash with the rich (a simple reading of history will remind us of this, surely? Tollpuddle, anyone?), but I don’t even recognise the country they’re describing.

The main claim is that parents and society are “soft on discipline.”

Assuming this is remotely true (and I’m not convinced it is), I’d suggest two things: 1) do research to explore the role of discipline and 2) identify the social context of people who “didn’t get enough”.

The first thing they’ll find is that discipline doesn’t only happen at home, and that a range of people have disciplinary influence.

Then they’ll discover that there is good discipline and bad discipline. Bad discipline can be abusive, disproportionate, dissociated from the offence, prejudicial, counter-productive and fail to address underlying problems. Examples: people who hit their children randomly because it’s the only control they have in their life, people who don’t adapt discipline to what works with a child, people who hit their child for minor offences (I’d argue that deliberate use of physical punishment at all is abuse, but that’s a value thing, albeit one with a fair amount of evidence), people who punish (particularly) young children hours or days after the offence, people who make children from minority groups jump over bigger hurdles or limit their freedom more (eg. black kids being stop-and-searched), using negative reinforcement all the time whilst ignoring the good behaviour of the child and people (outside the home) who punish children for their behaviour without realising it’s the manifestation of domestic dysfunction.

Then they’ll discover that all of these things happen at all levels in society, rich and poor, black and white, immigrant or locally born, one or two parent families, upper class, middle class and working class. The difference is that rich white middle/upper class kids born in Britain tend to have more social capital. There are more resources to support them, more opportunities, more understanding of their situation and more attempts to resolve it using non-disruptive means. They’re more likely to have parents who have one job and are home in the evenings, they’re more likely to have the necessities of modern life: computers, game consoles, trainers, the latest LPs from popular beat combos. Even if mum and dad can’t afford these, it is more likely that the people around them – grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, neighbours – will be giving them as gifts. They will get emotional support from teachers and families when they have domestic crises, and are more likely to use youth clubs, sports clubs and after-school groups. They’re more likely to perceive the police as being protecting of their society and if they do commit offences, less likely to be caught, prosecuted or receive custodial sentences. Their home is likely to be warm, well-furnished with a garden, situated in a nice estate. They’re likely to have a range of clothes appropriate to a range of weather conditions. Their education is likely to be higher quality and they’re more likely to go to university and become a professional. Their parents have better job security and tend to have a more stable home life. They are more likely to have inspirational role models. Their health is more likely to be good and they’re more likely to have access to high quality food and drink.

Now, take black, immigrant, single parent family living in the poorest areas in our society. Each of those “disadvantages” decreases the chances of that being true for them. Mum is more likely to be working two or three jobs just to have enough money to provide enough food and basic clothing (and mums who are not at home are unable to supervise their children!). Kids are more likely to be stop-and-searched routinely, colouring their view of, and relationship with, the police. Their school is more likely to be in special measures, they’re less likely to have access to extracurricular activities and they’re less likely to go to university. The home is more likely to be a council flat than a semi-detached luxury pad. There’s less job security, more dependence on the welfare state. There’s likely to be more incidence of illness and addiction, the food is less likely to be considered “good quality”. Interventions in domestic are more likely to be dramatic and decrease home life stability, with less social support during those times.

Now, this background is socially constructed, shaped by the policies of government, social mores and norms, stereotypes and institutional policies. This means that actions of government results in direct impacts on disadvantaged groups: and they’re called disadvantaged because they have fewer resources to cushion the impact and to act as a buffer to protect them from hardships and they don’t have the contacts to minimise the impact on their group. So when the government decreases funding to councils, the least advantaged end up with no after school groups and nowhere to go whilst the more advantaged groups weren’t reliant on council projects to start with: they pay for their kids’ social activities.

Reductions in police levels on the streets result in fewer patrols in the poorest ares because the more advantaged in society are more likely to (have time to) engage with community policing teams and ensure their neighbourhoods don’t suffer. The net effect is that crime disproportionately affects poorer neighbourhoods, which results in increased suspicion of people who (appear to) come from those areas and results in them being more likely to be directly affected by violent and property crime and “antisocial” behaviours.

The government cuts welfare budgets and the people most dependent on them – the people most likely to have poor health, most likely to be injured at work (and least likely to get compensation), the people with the lowest levels of job security – suffer the most. And business policies which promote a move from manufacturing toward service industries result in entire communities looking for new jobs as factories shut down and works become uneconomic. People with specialist skills suddenly find their skills are no longer relevant in a job market where they might be able to look forward to unskilled call centre jobs at minimum wage which involves abuse both from customers and managers, not to forget that the number of unemployed exceeds the number of available jobs.

Worse, we blame the victims of these policies and social changes for their circumstances. The word “chav” is simply a way to dismiss people who are the least privileged, have the fewest opportunities to be in secure, paid employment, a good education and the luxuries of twenty-first century life, as being an underclass who have brought it upon themselves. These are not the people who closed factories, who ripped the hearts out of mining communities, who condemned entire neighbourhoods to unemployment.

Perhaps Britain is broken. However, it’s not broken because parents don’t discipline their children: that analysis is as facile as it is dismissive of any legitimate concerns that people might have about about their futures and communities. If Britain is broken, it’s because of the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots, the widening gap between the advantaged and the disadvantaged, the widening gap between the richest and poorest in society.

The answer to this is not to force everyone into national service (although I’d love to see a programme encouraging people to take an active role in community life). It’s not to blame parents for not disciplining their children. It’s not to blame the least well off for their circumstances.

The answer is to address inequalities, to revitalise communities with jobs and opportunities, to create a society in which to be British is to be proud of your neighbourhood and to be supported by the people living around you. It’s to invest in children, to invest in adults and to invest in narrowing the gap for the benefit of everyone.

None of this justifies or excuses the behaviour of people rioting. They are taking their anger out inappropriately, taking the opportunity to get the fripperies of modern life at no cost, and they are harming their neighbourhoods, communities and themselves. However, if we want a society in which people aren’t that angry in the first place, don’t see luxuries as essentials denied to them by the privileged, and in which actions taken build supportive, industrious and proud communities then we must address these underlying problems. We must examine our values, our relationships and our stereotypes to ensure that everyone is included in our modern, progressive society.

It’s a long, hard and expensive road, but it heads in the direction of a better Britain. That’s the Britain I want to be proud to live in.

We are not ‘gays’, we are people (who happen to be gay)

Dear all

I applaud when people draw attention to injustices: situations in Africa where homophobia has political and religious traction are deeply upsetting and I am all for protesting against governments and churches who make threats of violence against us.

However, it annoys me when people write about “gays”. First, purely gramatically, gay is an adjective, not a noun. This is a common annoyance: for example, “medal” is a noun and not a verb.

However, if grammar were my only objection it would be churlish to comment. I also contend that using gays as a noun reduces the identity of the group in discussion to one aspect of their lives. For example, I am a man who happens to be gay, or if you want, a gay man. I am not a gay. In fact, the only time I can think of where gay is used as a noun was in the deliberately ironic Little Britain “Only Gay in the Village” sketches, where the word gay was deliberately chosen because Daffyd’s entire identity was posited on his sexual preferences, with everything in his life orbiting that fact. He dressed in (hideous) PVC outfits because that was his perception of what gay men wore. He even wanted a gay career, and was oblivious to the fact that all of the guys in the village were busy having a bit of bum fun of an evening and dismissed their self-generated identities.

People are diminished when reduced to a single aspect: hospitals promote referring to “the patient in bed 8 with {disease name}” rather than reducing the patient to “the {disease name} in bed 8″. We refer to people with disabilities rather than the disabled or even disabled people because it puts their personhood first. Using a lazy label can dehumanise people so that we can consider them as the label first, and worry about their humanity later. Just ask someone with dyslexia whether they’d like to be permanently reduced to their learning difficulty! The irony is, in an article where someone is drawing attention to an injustice like punishing people merely for their sexual orientation, using “gays” continues to reduce the people, the individuals, with complex lives and heterogeneous characteristics, attitudes and lifestyles to a single label.

Worse, in my opinion, “gays” can actually be exclusive of other groups being oppressed. Women who identify as gay are usually called lesbians, although gay woman is also used, albeit rarely. Bisexuals, often as much a victim of these waves of hate because they’ve committed the same “sin” of consensual sex with another adult (who happens to have the same genitals), are not included in the word “gays” and nor are members of the trans community, whether male to female or female to male, and who are by default also considered to be in the same group. In traditional African cultures where homosexuality is still taboo and gay cultures and identities are emerging in response to oppression, many man who have sex with men (MWSWM) probably won’t self-identify as gay (a similar group exists in the UK of men who don’t identify as gay but who regularly have sexual contact with the same gender). Talking about “gays” being slaughtered ignores the women who are dying, and denies the identities of people who are bisexual, transgender or who don’t really have a label but like a bit of same-gender fun.

And it’s entirely legitimate to say “well, you need to prioritise: either we can fight the oppression or you can worry about labels”. Fair enough, if you think the objectives are mutually exclusive. I don’t. I think that challenging language which continues oppression of groups is as legitimate as challenging homophobic policies. Whilst increased coverage is to be welcomed, I’d prefer it if the people doing it had sufficient respect for the groups affected to respect their self-defined identities rather than demanding gratitude for it being covered at all.

I speak only for myself; nobody can speak for an entire community except by consent of that community, and I don’t have it. However, I am a human being. I have a genetic condition which affects my day to day life. I own a cat, a car and a house. I own an iPhone, have a medical tricorder from Star Trek on my shelf and I am a lefty liberal namby-pamby do-gooder who thinks that everyone deserves the same opportunities in life. I am an enthusiastic proponent of the efficacy of science as an explanatory method for the universe around me, and I am a computer programmer, web developer and project manager. I have an undergraduate degree in life sciences, and I am studying science and society for an MSc. I am white, male, 34 years old, 5’10″ tall and have a penchant for chocolate-based snacking products which has, doubtless, contributed to the bulging keg where my six-pack should be. I am a former born-again, baptised, evangelical Christian, and I would now describe myself as a pragmatic atheist. I also happen to have been hugging the same guy for the last ten years.

Does that mean I should be reduced to being “a gay”? No, of course it doesn’t. It diminishes me and my experiences when I am reduced to that, and it diminishes the people who are suffering in the fear of everyday life when their complex, multi-spectral identities are reduced to a single adjective used as a noun, and excludes half the people who are being oppressed anyway. Reducing me, them, us to a single aspect reduces us to being a stereotype worthy of pity. Instead, remember they are people, with interests, relationships, histories and lives in which being reduced to a single aspect is what is causing them to be threatened with violence.

Am I really being unreasonable if I challenge language which continues this reduction?

Generation Sex: Prescient Satire

For some reason, the lyrics to Generation Sex from The Divine Comedy keep springing to mind recently. I shall leave it as an exercise for the reader to work out why…

Generation Sex
Respects
The rights
Of girls
Who want to take their clothes off
As long as we can all watch that’s okay

And generation sex
Elects
The type
Of guys
You wouldn’t leave your kids with
And shouts “off with their heads” if they get laid

Lovers watch their backs
As hacks
In macs
Take snaps
Through telephoto lenses
Chase Mercedes Benzes through the night

A mourning nation weeps
And wails
But keeps
The sales
Of evil tabloids healthy
The poor protect the wealthy in this world

Generation sex
Injects
The sperm
Of worms
Into the eggs of field mice
So you can look real nice for the boys

And generation sex
Is me
And you
And we
Should really all know better

ASA Adjudicate on Flyer Complaint

In December 2010, a friend received a flyer through their door from a local church (which I covered previously). It told my friend that the truth could set them free, and gave examples of people being “healed” of severe food allergy, autism, death, “broken heart” and broken vertebra by prayer and baptism. I complained about it to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) on three grounds:

• First, I felt that the claims of miraculous healing were unlikely, and that the advertiser would not be able to substantiate the claims if asked.
• Second, the advertisement was irresponsible because it might result in people not seeking medical care.
• Third, it was promoting the idea that attendance at a meeting of the church would result in people being cured of medical conditions.

The ASA (somewhat predictably) declined jurisdiction with regards claims of miracles. This is slightly frustrating from my point of view because they’re making a claim which is easily demonstrated. Either the person had a condition, had the faith intervention and no medical intervention and then didn’t have the condition – in which case a miracle occurred – or one of the criteria is not met and a miracle did not occur.

However, the ASA did consider and adjudicate on the other two issues, and I am pleased to report they found against the advertiser on both counts, and the advertisement is not allowed to appear again.

As a society, we believe it is unacceptable to abuse people emotionally, physically, sexually or by neglect, but it is also wrong to exploit people’s spiritual beliefs. If we do not want to see people being exploited, challenging adverts like this one helps make such behaviour less socially acceptable, and helps to protect the most vulnerable.

This is a step in the right direction: whilst we still cannot apparently challenge falsehoods, we can ensure that religious groups cannot encourage people to act in a way which will have no demonstrable health benefits.

Science Communication and Public Engagement: What Can Twitter Tell Us?

Can I first of all say thanks to the staff of Nature who took the time to make these fantastic Storify blogs of Twitter reportage of the Science Communication Conference? They’re broken down into Day 1 and Day 2 which nicely shows the range of sessions which people attended (I must declare a personal interest: I am quite heavily quoted). In addition, the Public Attitudes to Science 2011 Storify is also a useful reflection on a particular session.

So why Twitter, and what can it do that, say, a formal report of a session cannot do?

First, it’s important to locate Twitter in the spectrum of communication. Although “written” (ie. encoded in symbols), I personally see Twitter as, predominantly (and slightly paradoxically), an informal oral communication medium, more akin to conversation than to prose. It’s informal, it’s normally “spur of the moment” (as opposed to planned) and it has its own linguistic norms, which tend to be less strict and more forgiving than is normally aloud in written text. I’d love to say this is all my thinking, but Zeynef Tufekci over at Technosociology has already written an excellent piece on Twitter as an oral culture which is well worth reading.

So, live Tweets, to me, represent the thinking of people as they are in the situation; there is no time to reflect, to consider meaning or to parse it into an alternate interpretation: a live Twitter feed can approximate being inside the mind of people present at an event, and you can bring a range of tools to bear on this record and use it to notice things which might not otherwise have been obvious.

One way of doing this is frequency analysis; looking at the number of times significant words (as opposed to words which merely provide structure to text, like “as, to, which, the” etc…) appear in the text. Frequency analysis gives you an idea of how big a particular concept was, and how that concept was being presented. A great, visual way of doing this is to create a Wordle; here are three which people have previously created:

Day 1 (from an analysis of the Nature Storify):

Day 2 (again from the Nature Storify):

Over all days analysis, from @clivebgs:

As you can see, words which are larger represent more frequent use within the Tweets; on Day 1, it’s safe to say that “SCC2011″ was used more than anything else. From Day 1 and the overall analyses, this word has been excluded, so creating a visual representation of frequency analysis is as much an art as a science. In addition, derivative words (eg. home/homes) are typically only shown as the word which had the greatest frequency.

Across all three images, the most common words are (ignoring SCC2011, broadly in descending order, but not able to quantify that!): science, engagement, people and public. All words we’d expect to see at the conference.

However, for me a couple of things jarred: both science and public are in the singular form. And this surprises me because science is not a single, monolithic entity and neither is “the public”. Indeed, both are sprawling, diverse concepts which can mean a multitude of things to different people.

Science can (in theory) be anything from physics to sociology, from biochemistry to neurolinguistics, and each of these have distinct characteristics which benefit from different approaches to communication. However, also interesting is the words not shown, words like “technology”, “engineering” and “mathematics”. Although STEM is common acronym, in reality the language is dominated by the natural sciences, with TEM (and medicine and social sciences) rarely having much of a look-in. I was pleased, incidentally, to see someone talking about communication of social sciences in one of the speed networking rounds I was in, but this is still definitely a minority sport.

The public are so segmented that representing them as a single entity is both foolish and counter-productive. In fact, publics are so segmented that identifying appropriate audiences in science communication is a key task: are we talking expert to expert (eg. journal articles, scientific conferences), expert to non-expert (eg. museums, schools, Cafe Scientifique), non-expert to expert (eg. consultation, public engagement) or non-expert to non-expert (eg. conversations in the pub, peer-support within the health sector). Even given four combinations of expert and non-expert, each of those groups will fall into sub-grops. ‘Climate sceptics’ are often expert, but a climate scientist would probably frame their messages differently than if they were talking to another climate scientist. This complexity, as well as the diversity of interest, attitudes and skills within each of those sub-groups, is why science communication courses often refer to publics rather than the singular public. I was surprised that the singular was used throughout the conference, as was the term ‘public engagement’.

Public engagement is interesting because it tends to be used as a catch-all term, anything in which scientists descend from the ivory tower and engage with hoi polloi. This could be anything merely informing publics of their research (is Wakefield an example of public engagement?) to engaging with publics to debate complex issues from different perspectives (nanotechnology or genetically modified organisms). However, true engagement is iterative and is more complex than any single event, as Simon Burall (@sburall) illustrated neatly in his Rookie Session at the conference.

Given that the theme of the conference was “Online Engagement”, I guess perhaps these are all assumptions which are expected to underpin everyone’s practice within the context of science communication. However, anecdotally, lots of people came to the conference having little or no experience of the world of science communication. It’s dangerous for natural science, technology, engineering, mathematics, medicine and social sciences if people go away thinking that the language used is the be-all and end-all of engaging with the public.

I, for one, want to see a society in which public engagement is a democratic right and responsibility and involves citizens and scientists to extent it is useful or interesting to them. Unless we ensure that attendees have a good understanding of publics, all the knowledge in the world about novel and engaging techniques is wasted. The public do seem to understand and want to engage with the sciences and allied disciplines; the question is whether we, as communication facilitators, can ensure that the scientists understand and want to engage with our diverse range of publics.

I’d love to know what other things you can see in the Wordles which surprise you, confirm expectations or concern you when they’re missing. Let me know in the comments!