Special Editorial
by the Executive Director
Shawn Carlson, Ph.D.
MacArthur Fellow
Founder and Executive Director,
Society for Amateur Scientists
Creator, LABRats
Forrest
M. Mims III has reported in a Special Feature in
The Citizen Scientist ("Meeting
Dr. Doom," 31 March 2006) on a lecture he recently
heard at a meeting of the Texas Academy of Science.
The Academy chose to honor one Professor
Eric R. Pianka, an eminent ecologist who studies
desert ecologies, with its 2006 Distinguished Texas
Scientist Scientist award. Professor Pianka used the
occasion to champion the notion, apparently without
sanction of the Academy, that the Earth can only be
saved if ninety percent of the human beings alive today
are purged form the planet. He championed airborne Ebola
as the most efficient virus to accomplish this. And
while he stopped short of calling for terrorist action
to bring this result about, he clearly implied that
this was a right and proper future for our species and
our planet. Astonishingly, after advocating for a future
in which more than 5,000,000,000 persons would die a
slow and agonizing death, many members of the Texas
Academy of Science stood to their feet and applauded.
I want to answer two questions here.
Do academic institutions like the Texas
Academy of Science have a duty to provide Professor
Pianka a forum to advance these ideas? And what might
the consequences be of allowing him to do so? My answer
to the first question is a resounding "no."
Furthermore, I am convinced that continuing to allow
Professor Pianka unfettered access to impressionable
students could one day lead to a loss of life that could
make the Killing Fields of Southeast Asia look like
a picnic ground.
Let me explain.
First, do Pianka's opinions deserve
protection under the rubric of academic freedom? Well,
that depends on whether this ideas are truly academic—that
is, that they are consistent with the best understanding
of our world that science has established.
Now consider Pianka's arguments.
Pianka claims that the natural world
would be "better off" if there weren't so
many humans. To see if that's true, we have to figure
out just what constitutes the "natural world"?
As an evolutionist, I see human beings as the products
of the same natural forces that shaped all other life
on earth. Our brains evolved on this planet subject
to the same kinds of natural selection pressures as
those that shaped peacock feathers. The same can be
said of all of our social structures, our religions
and every other aspect of what we are that helped us
secure resources and propagate our species (the hammer
and anvil of natural selection). In short, our institutions
and our technology are every bit as much a part of the
natural world as elk mating rituals and beaver dams.
In fact, by evolving the ability to adapt the world
to fit us , human beings have become better
at securing resources and procreating than any other
vertebrate on the planet. By this measure, we are evolution's
most successful creation (amongst vertebrates). If extraterrestrials
were asked to select nature's most successful vertebrate
on the Earth they would certainly point to us.
So it seems very strange to me for
an evolutionist to identify one of evolution's most
successful creations as somehow operating outside the
natural order. To do so is to deny this undeniable truth
of evolution.
Pianka, however, is an evolutionist
who believes that humanity is not part of the natural
world. Somehow, the fact our evolution led us to a point
whereby we can adapt our environment to our bodies,
rather than wait for our bodies to adapt to our environment,
puts us in an inferior position in nature. In his mind,
Homo sapiens are the despoilers, the corruptors
of the natural order. This viewpoint is every bit as
anthropocentric as those who would place humans in a
superior position, saying that we are the "pinnacle
of evolution" or "chosen by God." Only
instead of lauding humanity's position in nature, Pianka
denigrates it. Evolution supports neither camp.
Pianka is, of course, free to ignore
the evidence and believe that humanity is, as he says,
the "scourge" on the natural world. But this
is a political opinion based on some vision he holds
in his mind about the way the world ought to be. It
is not a scientific fact. Indeed, it is a glaring scientific
fallacy.
Pianka also argues that human beings
are now so densely populated that they provide an idea
vector for disease transmission, and he expects that
microbes will "ultimately purge the Earth of the
scourge of humanity." (Personal correspondence
with Forrest Mims.)
The data stand utterly against this
idea. Plagues have run rampant through human populations
throughout time. Millions have died. Huge fractions
of some populations have been wiped out. But the net
death rate has never come close to the fractions that
Pianka envisions. Virulent diseases that kill quickly
tend to burn themselves out. Natural selection creates
less lethal varieties because an organism can't spread
if it kills its host before it can propagate. The flu
pandemic of 1918 (the influenza virus is championed
by Pianka) may have killed 50 million people, but that
was only about 5 percent of those infected. Moreover,
every year sees medical advancements—screening techniques
improve, as do our methods of creating new vaccines
and treating illness of all kinds. Not only that, a
desperate situation would be met by desperate measures,
including the implementation of martial law, the halting
of all air and ground traffic except for emergency vehicles
and so on, to stop contagion.
In short, there is no historical precedent
that supports the notion that humanity could be ninety
percent depopulated by a single disease. Moreover, as
time goes on and our technology and awareness grows,
the risk to humanity is steadily falling. Professor
Pianka can believe that microbes will depopulate the
earth if he wants, and such alarmist nonsense by some
Ph.D.s sells lots of books. However, Pianka's viewpoint
runs contrary to the best science.
Since neither of Pianka's foundational
assertions are consistent with the best interpretation
of the scientific evidence, his opinions on these matters
are merely political rants. They therefore do not deserve
protection under the doctrine of academic freedom, and
scientific institutions like the Texas Academy of Science
should have no problem refusing to provide speakers
of his ilk a platform to publicly advance these positions.
The Society for Amateur Scientists
would certainly not allow such ideas to be promulgated
in any forum that we operate, and we hereby call on
all other scientific institutions of
conscience
to do
likewise.
Professor Pianka's
Death Wish
But all this begs an important question.
How could such an eminent ecologist, as Eric R. Pianka
clearly is, be so solidly on the side of absurdity and
death? His on online "obituary" is an independent
indication of his fascination with death. This
document, which is actually a brief autobiography,
provides some important clues.
Professor Pianka describes himself
as both a "hermit" and a "desert rat"
who has spent years living in total isolation in various
deserts while devoted to his studies of lizard ecology.
Now, what kind of man could forsake
the company of his own kind for years? I certainly couldn't.
Humans are, after all, communal animals. We are biologically
programmed to seek out the company—the love and support
and companionship—of our own species, and I feel that
need very strongly. A happy hermit simply must not strongly
feel this basic drive that lies at the very foundation
of our sense of community and of our own humanity.
I can only conclude that years ago
Eric Pianka must have lost touch with his essential
humanity, that is, a strong emotional need for his own
kind. Now, perhaps driven by that terrible depression
that can occur in old men, he seems to have lost touch
with reality.
I offer this under the touchstone of
Ockham's
razor: I think that depression provides the least
remarkable explanation for Pianka's mental descent.
According to his "obit," Professor Pianka
was born in 1939, and depression can be a side effect
of aging, especially in men. Moreover, men often express
their depression by becoming angry at the world—the
"grumpy old man" syndrome. And elderly depressed
men often become fixated on death. Finally, these men
often refuse to admit they have a problem, and so depressed
men in Pianka's age group rarely seek treatment.
If this explanation is the right one,
then he needs to be treated by a psychopharmacologist
with expertise in depression. Until he does receive
the necessary care, we must think of him as a person
in pain, and as such Professor Pianka is certainly deserving
of all of our compassion. But we must not allow our
compassion to move us to complacency in light of grave
and immediate danger of his message.
The Piankians
Some of my friends would prefer to
simply dismiss Professor Pianka's philosophy as merely
the rantings of an old coot; a wild-eyed mountain man
who's compassion and judgment have deteriorated with
age and long exposure to the torments of the desert
sun. After all, they point out, the good doctor hasn't
actually called for acts of terrorism. He hasn't declared
that he wants people to bring about the painful deaths
of over 5,000,000,000 human beings.
True enough. Professor Pianka has never,
so far as I know, advocated that human beings should
act to bring about the depopulation of the planet. He
says only that he thinks that it will happen, that it
has to happen if the earth is too survive, and he strongly
implies that he thinks it would be a good thing if it
did happen. So, is Pianka really a dangerous man?
Sadly, I think he is. You see, I'm
old enough to remember another desert-living child of
the '60s who once had followers. And Professor Pianka
is much more charismatic than Charlie Manson
ever was. Moreover, Pianka has access to captive audiences
of impressionable young students in his college classes
and lectures.
Will Pianka one day have his own "family"
of followers living in the wild with him? Who is to
say? But for an interesting take on this question, consider
this blog
post (scroll down to 9 March) by a new and young
Piankian who became converted at his Texas Academy of
Science lecture.
I simply remember history. Adolph Hitler
did not invent social ideologies based on hatred of
the Jews. He pulled the core of Nazi philosophy from
certain influential German philosophers. Rather, Hitler's
"final solution" merely took these perverted
ideas farther than those philosophers could have imagined
any sane person would take them.
I believe, with the terrible experience
of the bloodiest century in human history behind us,
that all men and women of conscious in the 2001st century
must be proactive in our opposition to genocidal or
apocalyptic philosophies before they have the chance
to inspire some new champion with the will to take their
conclusions to the next step.
The "Scourge"
of the Earth
The more people who believe Professor
Pianka's philosophy that humanity is the "scourge"
of the earth, and that the earth would be better off
if 5,000,000,000 of us were to die a painful death,
the longer men and women of conscious allow this idea
to go unchallenged, the greater is the likelihood some
disturbed people will take it upon themselves to try
to help realize that vision.
And there is plenty of precedent.
Do you recall the Egyptian Airline
copilot who committed suicide by crashing a commercial
airliner full of passengers into the Atlantic? What
about the AIDS-infected dentist who became so depressed
about his condition and angry with the world that he
inoculated innocent patients with that terrible virus?
Think about all the murder-suicides committed each year.
Do you remember that California doomsday cult lead by
an old cancer-riddled guru who convinced his followers
that they could to ride a comet to Heaven? Snipers in
clock towers… terrorist bombers… all people who were
willing to kill themselves and many others because of
some misguided notion that they were serving a higher
cause.
So what if some Piankian disciple—a
former student, perhaps, who works in a biological research
or weapons laboratory—gains access to a deadly pathogen?
What if that person becomes clinically depressed? His
wife divorces him, his child dies, he discovers he's
dying of cancer… Do you think a depressed and angry
Piankian just might convince himself that releasing
that agent would be a great service to the higher cause
of saving the Earth? Do you think he might be able to
infect himself, and then use his own body as the vector
to infect others?
I do, too.
And that is why we cannot afford to
ignore when academics stand and applaud a man who they
just heard openly advocate that the world would be better
off if over 5,000,000,000 human beings were to die as
a result of a horrible disease.
The Citizen
Scientist Community Must Respond
When the professional scientists have
lost their sense of moral outrage of such ideologies,
then it falls to America 's great community of citizen
scientists to be the conscious of science. If we do
nothing when others stand and applaud ideologies of
pseudoscience and death, then history will hold us all
to account for our failure to shake the very rafters
in support of truth and human life.
Professor Pianka's ideas are horrifically
and dangerously wrong. And they must be struggled against.
I urge every reader of The Citizen Scientist to
voice their serious concern over this matter in letters
and phone calls to the Regents of the University of
Texas and to the President of the Texas Academy of Science.
E-mail the Regents of the University
of Texas here.
Or write Regents of the University of Texas, 201 W.
7th Street, Suite 820, Austin, TX 78701-2981. Telephone:
512-499-4402. Fax: 512-499-4425.
E-mail the President of the Texas Academy
of Science here.
Or write Dr. David S. Marsh, President, Texas Academy
of Science, Headquarters, USAF/DFB, 2355 Faculty Drive,
Suite 2P389, United States Air Force Academy, CO 80840-6226.
Telephone: 719-333-6031.
Members of the media may call Dr.
Shawn Carlson at 401-487-1462. 
Special Feature:
Meeting Doctor Doom
Forrest M. Mims III
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