Christmas is a time for eating, and with a two-week break from the lab, I can relax and do a lot more cooking and baking than I normally do. And I can’t prepare anything without offering a silent prayer of thanks for the chemist Louis-Camille Maillard, who was mucking around early last century trying to work out protein synthesis and ended up elucidating the chemical reaction that makes food taste wonderful after being heated.

Don’t ask me for the details, I’m just a biologist.

Last time I wrote about the relaxed vibe in the laboratory when the boss is away. Well, he’s still away, and the sedative effects of an impending Christmas are well and truly entrenched in our institute. The Christmas party was last night, and even though it’s past 11 now, the building is still eerily quiet – and pale-faced post-docs keep staggering in. I have no doubt that lunch breaks will mysteriously extend to hours as last-minute shopping is discharged. Despite the blue sky and brilliant sunshine, snow clouds skirt the horizon, and nobody seems too fussed about experiments (though of course they are still taking place – if you’re reading, boss).

It doesn’t matter how egalitarian a lab head is, how un-pushy, how understanding, how sympathetic. It doesn’t matter that he would never dare cast aspersions when you come in late or leave early. Never mind that you hardly see him at all when he’s around, and that the amount of email correspondence remains just as steady now that he’s away. And forget that you are entirely self-motivated as a scientist and nobody could possibly put as much pressure on you as you do on yourself.

But when a lab head is away, there is an undeniable festive feel in the air.

He’ll be abroad all week, and the vibe here is positively languid. Time for another cup of tea?

What sort of a person designs a lab protocol so that liquid chemicals are reported in moles?

The recipe *could* have just told me how many milliliters of beta-mercaptoethanol I needed to add to my buffer. But, oh no, that would be too easy. So much more satisfying to tell me how many moles I need – thus requiring me to look up the chemical’s formula weight and density and do all sorts of obscene calculations in which none of the units seem to cancel out properly after a long day in the lab without proper snacks and caffeine.

It’s not as if I’ll ever need to perform this experiment on the Moon.

/rant

As you were.

For those of you who may have been wondering why Bill hasn’t been ranting as often as he usually does, he actually had a very good excuse: he was busy passing on his genes.

Welcome to the world, little Eve.

It can seem like we have been talking about Darwin all year, probably because we have. The occasion is the double anniversary of the bicentennial of his birth, and the publication 150 years ago today of The Origin of Species.

Evolution, and more specifically the Origin itself, is one of the most successful franchises in the history of science. Despite their importance, the Principia, the general theory of relativity and quantum electrodynamics have never found their way into the popular psyche in the same way. Relativity probably comes closest, but while many people know that e=mc², a far smaller proportion know what it means or why it matters, let alone how to derive it.

In contrast, almost everyone knows that evolution means humans arose from an ape species. Indeed, humanity still is an ape species, albeit one with a highly developed sense of entitlement. Darwin is associated with dinosaurs, ape men, fossils, and to his great benefit, the peerless David Attenborough. You could scarcely wish for a better champion than such an eloquent and accomplished natural historian. Nevertheless despite the elevated position of evolution inspired books in the Pop Science bestseller lists, public understanding of natural selection is patchy.

It is difficult to study evolutionary biology, especially in the US, without being acutely aware that many people find it offensive. The reasons for this are many and varied. Some object to the repudiation of their creation myths. More generally, some people feel queasy with the lack of morals in the Origin, though why it should be there, in a scientific text, escapes me. They find their experience of love demeaned by the idea that it is a trick played on us by our genes, to get reproduced. The vision of us as “gigantic lumbering robots” in the service of our genes (probably the most unfortunate metaphor Richard Dawkins ever devised) is a turn off. Tied together with that sense of entitlement I mentioned earlier, this can lead people to feel deeply uncomfortable, even insulted. After all, we’re not just animals, are we?

Yes we are. I only take issue with ‘just’. Some of my best friends are animals.

Others, often on the opposite side of the political spectrum, are disturbed by the idea that evolution could support features of society which are politically unattractive: for example, by suggesting a selective rationale for behaviour like rape. This is understandably disquieting, to say the least. When considering such statements, it may be useful to take Dobzhansky’s famous quote that ‘nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution’, and remind ourselves that it does not necessarily follow that all explanations which cite evolution will make sense.

Here’s a classic example. Consider the following quote,

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change.”

which is widespread on the internet and usually attributed to Darwin, except he never said it. Have a look for it in his published work and correspondence. It is instead a platitude invented comparatively recently by management consultants. Obviously they discovered people took it so much more seriously as a catchy justification for widespread redundancy, when they were told Darwin said it. As a statement of natural selection, it’s not even accurate.

If it’s annoying for Darwin’s good name to be pressed into service by a bunch of lackwit chancers who get a hard on at the thought of downsizing, how much more so are books like ‘The Political Gene’ which try to blame him for everything from the holocaust to school shootings in the US (apparently shooters often cite ‘natural selection’ when explaining their actions although their short lifespan and limited reproductive success suggest they have not thought this through). The book, quoted at length in the Sunday Times magazine, is long on polemic about Bad Things, but short on understanding of natural selection itself. The newspaper should be ashamed of placing the article under the science part of its website.

In the Origin’s carefully laid out arguments and examples Darwin provided biology with nothing less than its grand unifying theory. In so doing, he has become both a scientific icon and a target for those seeking, for whatever reason, to discredit his ideas or push their own. I will be raising a glass to his great work tonight. But it would be a mistake to fixate too much on his book. The most amazing thing about Darwin is not just that he was right. He was so much more right than he knew. Darwin’s greatest achievement is the staggering breadth of scientific work, from epidemiology to cosmology, which is unimaginable without him.

I’ve got a row of shiny new slides to inspect down the confocal microscope – various tests of assorted theories, eager to see the light of day. Glass microscope slides are so aesthetically pleasing, before they become sullied by the ravages of high-magnification oil: those perfectly tooled edges, that high polish, the reassuring weight of them – the weight of history, as the design has not changed for hundreds of years, though the technology to inspect them has morphed unrecognizably since the days of Van Leeuwenhoek and his ‘animalcules’. They glint under the lab lights, promising the answer to secrets that no other man or women yet knows.

Just a last sip of coffee and I’m on my way.

The unfolding story of Alan Johnson’s Nutt sacking deserves a little more attention.

In the first place, you should go and check out Hansard to see just how pathetic our elected representatives are when it comes to understanding what science and evidence are. Particular gems include the Tory backbencher merrily parping Churchill’s quote that scientists should be “on tap and not on top”, and the confusion of Johnson himself when asked to explain why he had sacked the independent adviser for being too independent. He apparently ‘does not agree’ with Nutt on the harm cannabis use represents. Johnson doesn’t explain how his few months as Home Secretary have apparently gifted him with insights into the effects of drug use, which have eluded internationally respected authorities who have devoted their lives to the study of this important issue in society. His response to Chris Huhne is as foolish as it is insulting, describing the Lib Dem’s question as ‘piety and pomposity in equal measure’.

Sorry Home Secretary, but I don’t think that Mr Huhne is the pompous one here. And when it comes to piety, I reckon politicians crawling up the backside of the Daily Mail shouldn’t er… throw stones. You know what I mean.

At this point I should pause to say I hold no particularly strong opinions on drugs. I could even make a rational case for the government’s policy based on other factors including the wider cost of illegal drug use to society. But by sacking Nutt, Johnson showed his utter lack of respect for science, and in his response to criticism displayed a defensive anti-intellectualism which would fit right in to the US House of Representatives*.

(By the way, all you Tories out there shouldn’t take this as support for DC and his mates. They’re cravenly supporting the government, knowing where their support lies on this issue)

In response, the great and the good (or something like that) of British science have got together to draft a set of guidelines for future scientific advisers which would, crucially, give advisory committees their own press office for the first time, the better to fight the battle in the column inches. The Science minister Lord Drayson has broadly supported it. Drayson has also defended Nutt in a fashion which is to his credit, and which has drawn predictable scorn from the thought police on the other side (by the way, if you follow that link, check out the priceless typo about Alan Johnson’s ‘irresponsibilities’).

The thing about science, and evidence, is that it cleaves to no party and no ideology. Anthropogenic climate change is, or is not, real regardless of how you vote. A ballot for the Green party does not say anything about the veracity of the science or the evidence. Likewise a vote for the ‘tough on drugs’ Labour and Tory parties will not make drug use any more or less dangerous. It is evidence that matters, carefully collected and interpreted by experts. Experts who may come to different conclusions, but based on the same evidence.

So is adding more spin to the mix the right answer? Sure, giving scientists their own press office might sound like a good idea, but it could easily end up as a means of spinning whatever an advisory committee is saying, to ensure it supports government policy. Based on the evidence before me, I find it hard to imagine any other outcome.

*yes, that bad. Imagine.

What a difference a weekend makes.

On Friday I was rushing around the lab like a force of nature, multitasking six different experiments and subsisting solely on adrenalin and caffeine. This morning, I seem to have lost momentum. Coffee, croissant, email checking…now what was it I was doing again?

It’s this sort of realization that always pulls me up short: there isn’t an experiment in the world that matters more than real life. This doesn’t mean I’m not passionately devoted to my research, mind. It’s an acknowledgment that lab work is only a part of my reality. I find this strangely reassuring.

What kind of idiot is Alan Johnson? Is he simply an ignorant idiot, unaware of his folly, or is he a manipulative self-serving sort of idiot? Perhaps he is a self righteous idiot, an innumerate idiot, or the sort of person entirely lacking in the ability to understand evidence. Or maybe he is all of the above. Or then again, maybe he is a subspecies of Homo not so sapiens which even I, with my generous imagination where political vacuity is concerned, have never dared think of.

The problem: Johnson, as Home Secretary, has sacked (ie ‘demanded the resignation of…’) Professor David Nutt, who was until recently the head of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) which is an ‘independent expert’ body which does what it says on the tin, other than the bit about being independent. It also recommends where drugs should be placed on the ratings system, Class A, B and so on, which determines much of the way in which society and the legal profession deals with the drugs and their users.

Professor Nutt’s sin, in the eyes of Johnson (and his predecessor Jacqui Smith), was to have disagreed with government policy. He could hardly avoid doing this, as the government had casually ignored the advice of the ACMD regarding the classification of cannabis and ecstasy. This was unusual. The ACMD has been around since 1971 and in that time its advice has almost always been taken up by government.

This leaves Nutt in a difficult position. Either he must cleave to government policy, in the face of the evidence which he and his colleagues have collected to the contrary, or he must stand by his evidence and state that it does not support government policy. To his credit he chose the latter. Other members of the ACMD are in a similar position, and two have already resigned.

Much of the discussion about Nutt’s conduct revolves around an article he wrote for the Journal of Psychopharmacology, in which he compared the perception of risk associated with drug use, with that associated with horse riding.

Except he didn’t call it horse riding, he called it “equasy” or Equine Addiction Syndrome. This was unfortunate, because it comes across as the kind of light hearted whimsy you expect from a, well, from a blog rather than from a respected government adviser. The point he is making however is quite valid: all sorts of activities carry a risk of permanent damage or death. Not just horse riding, what about climbing? Or boxing? Why is it that we have such an unbalanced attitude to risk that some activities are viewed as beyond the pale while others carrying similar risks are normal, even healthy?

And yes, they are similar risks. The estimate of the risk of acute harm to person from ecstasy use which he quotes is 1/10000. The equivalent risk for equasy is 1/350. I’ve taken them from Nutt’s paper, and I somewhat suspicious of what they mean. For instance, I can’t tell what ‘acute harm to person’ refers to exactly. But it is clear that ecstasy is not quite what one would imagine from its media profile.

Of course, at least part of the answer comes down to the nature of illegal drug use, which being illegal is unregulated. The illegal drug user is merely the end of a long line taking in everything from people trafficking to casual murder by the organised crime syndicates which run the game. The sort of moron who snorts cocaine at a swanky dinner party in between discussing fair trade batik fabrics rarely considers the chain of suffering which has led to the selfish tickling of their limbic system.

Politicians don’t understand science, and they don’t much like it. Why? Well because a politician’s business is getting into power, and then, once having done so, holding onto it while pushing some faint relict of the ideals which once drove them. But it is the holding on to power which dominates. Unfortunately, science can get in the way of this, when it suggests something which might be unpopular with the electorate, or worse, the press.

I’m not denying that Nutt’s views are politically problematic. Some have tried to excuse Johnson on the grounds that the drug classifications send ‘a sign’ to the public. Because drug classifications are linked to everything from public perception of risk to jail terms, they matter. Downgrading looks like being ‘soft on drugs’. But I cannot think that lying to the public about these issues helps. And make no mistake, it is a patronising lie. For the evidence, just look at the advice of the ACMD.

In place of this Nutt has suggested a more nuanced classification system, which has a lot to recommend it, but might be hard to sell to the media. I can locate within myself one iota of sympathy for Alan Johnson: whichever choice he made, he was going to face trouble. To have accepted Nutt’s recommendations would only lead to a world of political pain for the government.

Because next to the media, Alan Johnson looks like Richard Bloody Feynman. Some time ago I read a front page article about an ecstasy death in the Mail, the Express, or some other sewer of moral panic. I can’t find the link, because the web archives of these august journals only go back a few years. But I wish I could find the journalist who wrote it, because they deserve an award for the single most stupid thing I have seen written on the front page of a national newspaper (and there is stiff competition). I am necessarily paraphrasing from memory, but the point was that “despite this tragic death showing the dangers of illegal drug use, millions of people will take ecstasy this weekend.”

Did you get that? Millions of people.

If the journalist was right, the upshot would be that ecstasy has a pretty good safety profile.

Just to close, I would like to take some quotes from Johnson’s letter to the Guardian, published today, in which he defends himself. I am dissecting it to gain some insight into the way politicians see science.

“[Nutt’s] role as my principal adviser was to (unsurprisingly) present advice. It is the job of the government to decide policy.”

There’s something interesting in there, the use of the word ‘present’. If you want to present something, you need powerpoint. If you want to advise, you need expertise. The focus on presentation suggests that the real role of the ACMD is as presentational window dressing – policy based evidence.

“He was asked to go because he cannot be both a government adviser and a campaigner against government policy.”

‘Campaigner?’ Nutt has not tried to hide his irritation with the way evidence has been ignored, but he’s not manning the barricades yet. This suggests that if a scientist finds evidence in conflict with government policy, he or she must resign. Can you think of a more suffocating stricture for scientific debate? Which scientist in their right mind will bother trying to advise a gang of know-nothings who are only in it for the canapés?

And then, on equasy…

“…it is of course a political rather than a scientific point. There are not many kids in my constituency in danger of falling off a horse – there are thousands at risk of being sucked into a world of hopeless despair through drug addiction.”

Now this is where Johnson finally shreds what remaining respect I might have nurtured for him. The only political point being made here is by Johnson. He has no interest whatsoever about the findings of the ACMD. He knows everything he needs to already. He ignores the evidence, explained by Nutt in a non-technical fashion. He is either innumerate, self delusional, or addicted to the comforting sensation of sand around his head. He is, beyond dispute, an idiot.