From so simple a beginning…

These days I usually steer clear of creationists. The reason is that I know that I am not going to change any “pure” creationist’s mind in a couple of hours. Creationists almost by definition have closed minds. They start with a religious premise that is assumed to be true and then try to weave evidence around it to support their contentions. This is the hallmark of religious thinking; make assumptions (usually based on a book) and then interpret facts to suit those assumptions. You cannot change such a mindset by simple debate unless the person is ready to actually listen and reevaluate his assumptions. Plus, I think I am aware of most if not all of the standard creationist arguments. I have also discussed most of them multiple times before and am a little tired of reiterating counterarguments. It is a little boring to hear the same arguments, to give the same rebuttals and yet not be able to change someone’s mind. So these days I don’t get into creationist debates. It is an utter waste of time. I don’t bother.

However, it does bother me when someone who seems to be educated in the sciences actually believes any creationist presumptions. And not just because he wants to “respect their opinion” but because he truly and actually wants to justify what they are saying. When I hear something like this coming from a scientifically trained mind, I can’t help but become extremely uncomfortable because there is a genuine problem here; people groomed in the scientific method (or not…) trusting beliefs that fly in the face of every piece of scientific evidence, not to mention rational logic. How can this happen? It is at times like this that I kiss my precious time goodbye, roll up my sleeves and submit myself to the learned opinions of such good folks to hear them out.

So it was with two gentlemen, good friends of mine, whom I will call X and Y to respect their identities. Two days ago, I got into an almost three hour debate with them on creationism. But perhaps not suprisingly, it then came to defining science itself, belief and the limits of our knowledge. While their arguments later appeared to me to be well-known, at the time the form in which they were presented seemed novel and clever, and to be honest I was a little taken aback at the time. Referring to what I said before, these days I avoid any arguments about creationism because the situation seems to be pretty much clear to me and this is likely the last time I argue with them on the matter. But that day, this debate that we had that began with creationism turned into one about the nature of science itself.

Their backgrounds don’t give any inkling that they would believe such things…or at least the background of one of them. X has a master’s degree in microbiology from a well-known US university and now works at the cutting edge of molecular biology and genetics at a well-known medical school. He is known for his hard logic and ingrained skepticism; a set of tools extremely valuable in science. Y on the other hand puzzles me; he is a emphathetic medical doctor with many years of experience in medicine and public health. His religious views have been something of a quandry to me until now. He certainly does not seem to be overtly religious, but neither does he seem to think there is any problem with people’s religious faiths. He seems to think that people’s beliefs justify their actions. That sounds logical, but if anything it calls for empathy but not necessarily sympathy for people who harbour potentially violent religious beliefs. X lives an ascetic life and I wonder how he seems to survive on such a meager subsistence, while Y is inordinately wedded to the idea of pasta.

In any case, the debate started when Y contended that people are free to believe whatever they want to. I think that’s fair, but I pointed out the important distinction between belief and truth to him, a central point that was going to underline everything we said from then on, although its presentation came in many disguises. This is when the fun started, when Y said:

“Look, until science can prove otherwise, we must believe in the status quo, the null hypothesis (note that this sounds “scientific”). When people believed that the earth was flat, science had to come along and prove that it was not. That meant that until science proved it wrong, the existing belief was the truth”

I should actually have challenged him right then and there. There were many things fundamentally wrong with this statement. First of all, there is again the unholy conflation of belief and truth. This by the way also assumes that one thinks that truth in fact is defined by belief, perhaps a perfectly acceptable proposition to armchair postmodernists, but completely unacceptable to almost all of us who don’t equate the two and who don’t consider the two to be the same in daily life. Secondly, we have to be careful what to call the “status quo” in the absence of evidence. For example, how did the universe come into being? Science has a fair idea but admittedly does not know the answer to the ultimate question. So what is the status quo in this case? That the universe was created by the Christian God? The myriad Hindu gods? The fiery breath of the Hottentot God from which it came from? Are all of these status quos? Surely there cannot be multiple realities out there, some even contradicting each other, all of which are true? In addition to these problems is the disarmingly simple and biggest damning argument against the “first cause argument”. If any God created the universe, who created God? So the status quo, assuming it has been defined, does not even simplify the question one bit but pushes it into infinite regress.

So, in the absence of evidence, what is the status quo? I have an answer here which rhymes with the phrase and it is “I don’t know”. And this goes to the heart of religious belief, where religious people don’t want to admit that they don’t know something. They would rather have a well-articulated fantasy-based explanation that has no evidence than no explanation at all, no matter that that explanation is little more than the figment of their imagination (and that of countless others). Scientists and most rational people have no problem admitting they don’t know something, but while scientists are uncomfortable with this ignorance and constantly try to shed light on it, for religion ignorance manifested through faith seems to almost be a holy object to be worshipped unto itself. Ignorance by its very definition will never change until efforts are made to dispel it, but religious people gain great comfort from this unchanging state of affairs. The “status quo” indeed stays so because nobody takes a step to go beyond it.

It was here that my friend X stepped in and went a step further, supporting Y because according to him, scientific knowledge itself is so uncertain that it’s quite all right that both creationism and science should be valid “explanations” in their own way. Apparently his healthy skepticism in scientific matters went so far as to question everything and doubt its existence. As much as I try to stay calm during such arguments, this really made me bristle with indignation. Both of them apparently did not understand the difference between various levels of certainty. They also did not seem to understand that while scientific knowledge is indeed getting revised, it is also getting more and more firmly rooted and validated with every discovery. Debating details does not invalidate the entire enterprise. My doctor friend Y jumped in at this point and gave me an example; when doctors earlier thought that they could explain hepatitis invoking just one strain, it ultimately turned out to be wrong and there turned out to be three strains (A, B, C). Surely that means that scientific knowledge is eternally unchanging?? Of course, I said, but that surely does not overturn, say, the whole germ theory of disease? Just because scientists argue about details does not mean they revise the whole foundations of science. When Einstein discovered profound modifications to the Newtonian view of the universe, that did not suddenly topple over Newtonian gravity, which still is perfectly adequate for most things in life.

To throw what he thought would be more light on this aspect of the discussion, X gave me an example of a glass half-filled with water. He said that if we approach it from a kilometer away, we see nothing and there is only speculation about what’s there. Come a little closer and the certainty about the object increases. Thus, the decreasing distance between ourselves and the glass depicts the change in scientific beliefs. Actually this is a marvelous example, but in fact indicates the exact opposite of what X was saying, the gradually enabling character of science, and not an argument that science changes so much that nothing is certain. In this case, sure, I cannot make out anything at one kilometer. But when I get to 100 meters, I can make out a glass. At 50 meters I can make out a glass but I may not be sure if it’s full or empty. I may even be wrong in my conclusion at this point. But then I get to 10 meters and I confirm that it is a glass that is half-full. Note now that coming closer to 5 meters does not change this perception. I may get a better idea of what the liquid in the glass is (I see bubbles….it must be soda) but the basic perception does not change. Coming even closer enables me to make out the microscopic details of the glass and liquid, but it still does not change my belief that the glass is half-full. Also note that at every point, I have independent tests that can prove this belief and it holds true at every point as well as becomes more certain. This is in fact a great example that while details of scientific perceptions keep on changing, there are much higher levels of certainty for basic assumptions. X’s example in fact demonstrates exactly the opposite of what he says.

To be honest, it was at this time that I started feeling that the whole discussion was rather bizzare, because my friends had suddenly started starting using one of the favourite tools of creationists; to find gaps in our understanding of science, point to how our understanding of the world was improved upon by future discoveries, and thus then tout how the whole framework of science is so uncertain that creationism surely cannot be more uncertain. This is sheer nonsense, and if we were not arguing about creationism, I am sure my learned friends would have known the difference between various degrees of understanding. I say this again; just because scientists argue about details does not mean they doubt the entire enterprise. Just because you don’t know how exactly genetic information is transmitted does not make you doubt the very existence of genes. Evolutionary details are also hotly debated but not a single biologist doubts the fundamental premise of evolution and natural selection and if someone does, the burden of proof is on him for negating the monumental body of evidence gathered in support of both.

I was even more galled when X the biologist said that his mortal mind cannot grasp the fact of human evolution until he sees more “direct” evidence, which is perhaps the wire-cage year long transformation of a primate into a human. You know what, neither can I grasp how that exactly happened. That’s why I depend on indirect exhaustively gathered evidence from the fossil record, from anthropology and from biochemistry and genetics corroborating each other. I agree that evolution is not as directly observable a process as say the photolysis of water. But it seemed strange to me to say the least that X, a biologist who uses indirect techniques to verify data all the time in his lab, is not trusting such carefully tabulated indirect evidence. This was exasperating and I frankly could not believe that Y, the same Y who in the past had dispassionately debated with me and applied the most stringent skepticism to his scientific arguments, was saying this.

To cut a very long story short, this debate went on for almost three hours; for once I had decided that this was a cause not just for arguing against creationism but for defending science. It was only after a long time that I caught the basic thread of the argument, their constant tendency to mix up belief and truth. And when I raised this objection, Y would go back to his old arguments and question the nature of “truth”, trying to convince me that everything is uncertain and that all degrees of certainty are equivalent. Basically all their arguments revolved around these two axioms, which to me clearly seemed to be fundamentally flawed premises.

What is the most fascinating aspect about these points is an almost clinical psychological characteristic; two people trained in the biological and medical sciences who in their daily life routinely draw conclusions based on indirect but firm evidence, who don’t accept facts without justification, who won’t write a single report or prescribe a treatment unless they have repeated their experiments and observations, and yet who when it comes to religious faith will dump this rigor out of the window, conflate belief with truth and proclaim that all degress of certainty are equivalent and therefore admissible. Going back to X’s insistence of more direct evidence, it is almost a trite truism to say that he deals with objects that he cannot directly perceive with this eyes; genes, DNA and antibodies, and yet he believes that they are there only because of some validated if indirect methods. I have said this before; I find such a severing of thinking from reality an almost schizophrenic process. As Sam Harris says, this is a peculiarity that only religion possesses; tell a man that his wife is having an affair and he won’t believe it without justification and evidence, but tell him that there was a prophet born of a virgin mother, who miraculously healed the sick and rose from the dead and he will believe it as if it were an irrefutable fact. A fact which I am sure is of endlessly fascinating value to psychologists and neuroscientists, which is also a cause of much pain and suffering in our world.

Our learned debate ended with Y storming off in exasperation, and X gradually changing the subject when he realised that I had more time to waste and was ready to argue all night. The above description of the debate may give the impression of an entertaining evening, but frankly I was quite disturbed by it and to this day it bothers me. I don’t expect creationists entombed in their dogmatic beliefs to change them. But if rational men and women of science, men and women supposedly of learning and reason too don’t understand the nature and value of scientific inquiry, then to put it bluntly in the words of magicians Penn and Teller, we are screwed. Just we. Science will continue to progress.

All of us are rightly spewing indignation and anger at the spineless machinations of India’s politicians regarding the proposed Indo-US nuclear deal. However it is also instructive to take a look at what the technical and strategic issues and their implications are. The issues are admittedly complex, but as I sifted through some of the myriad points, at least for now one of them in particular struck me as important, possibly misleading and slotted to be a key factor in our present and future nuclear policy.

That point concerns nuclear weapons for deterrence. One of the key purposes of the nuclear deal would be to gain access to international uranium stocks, so that our own rather tighly constrained uranium stocks would be free for generating power. This is a sound proposition. However, many experts including some in the Indian atomic energy establishment have admitted that the freed up domestic uranium stocks could be diverted in weapons research and development. Since India is keeping some reactors off limits from IAEA inspection, this possibility seems to be very real. The question naturally arises; do we need more nuclear weapons? Based on what I have read until now, the answer seems to be no, or at the very most, a few.

Even though the exact number is not known, it is safe to assume that India has around 50 nuclear weapons of the fission and fusion type. A report of the International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM) did an analysis based on known Indian reactor operating capacities as well as possible amounts of material used by India in its two nuclear tests. The report concludes that India has about 500 kg of weapons-grade plutonium in reserve. This is a huge quantitiy, enough to construct about 100 fission bombs. The bombs could be made even more powerful if they were of the “boosted type” in which a mixture of deuterium and tritium is added to increase the yield through fusion.

Any such number of bombs are more than enough for deterrence in my opinion. Assume a conservative total lower limit of bombs of 100. Further assume conservatively that the average yield of the bombs is 10 kilotons each (for comparison purposes, the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki which killed about 100,000 people instantly were 20 kT each). The question is, are these weapons enough for deterrence? There are many factors which we have to consider in this context, but unless I hear a good argument against it, to me the answer currently seems to be yes. Some comparisons reinforce this conclusion in my mind. At the end of World War 2, when some belligerent and hard-hitting officials in the US administration and military were already thinking about knocking out the Soviets in a possible atomic strike, General Leslie Groves who was head of the Manhattan Project commisioned a study to find out the size of arsenal of bombs necessary to destroy 90% of Russia’s biggest cities and perhaps half of their industrial capability. Even considering the crude Hiroshima type bombs then under construction, experts reached a figure of 200. In the face of this fact, it seems absurd beyond reason that at the end of the Cold War, the US ended up with a legacy of around 10,000 weapons.

Other countries have exercised more caution in the building up of nuclear arsenals. Britain has had a fleet of 200 atomic bombs. It was much closer to the European and Russian mainland, yet it never saw a need for a larger arsenal for deterrence. Who would dare attack them when faced with a retaliation with 200 thermonuclear weapons? It took the French a little more to feel secure; about 400. China probably has 100-200. Israel perhaps has 100. All these countries have felt that these arsenal sizes coupled with efficient delivery vehicles are enough for deterrence, and they are. Even five of these weapons reaching “enemy” soil would have a horrendous effect killing millions. These arsenals were fashioned for deterrence against the Soviet Union and China, countries with huge land areas. Surely a fleet of 100 bombs should serve as a detterent against the much smaller Pakistan for us? Possibly much less will do, say around 50. For China, it will take a little more, but given the statistics quoted above for other countries even during the Cold War, there is no reason to think that any number bigger than 200 would be considered woefully insufficient for deterrence. With an average yield of 10-20kT, these weapons would wreak havoc on any highly populated city, and nobody in their right mind would invite such destruction.

India also has efficient delivery systems. Our latest ICBM Agni 2 has a range of around 2500 km, enough to reach some but not deeper targets in China. The missile can easily carry a 20 kT warhead. Development also continues for the Agni 3, which will have similar delivery capabilities with longer ranges reaching deeper into China.

With such a weapons and delivery capability, there seems no expedient reason for India to divert its precious uranium reserves into weapons even with access to foreign reserves. We need all the uranium and plutonium (and perhaps thorium) to generate electricity. As noted above, we have ample plutonium for weapons. In addition, we also have considerable stocks of reactor-grade plutonium to build a bomb or two per year. Reactor grade plutonium has a much higher percentage of an unfavourable plutonium isotope that causes spontaneous fission. Due to this problem, more of it needs to be used in order to make an efficient weapon, but nevertheless it can be used. This extra source of plutonium for weapons seems to make arguments for diverting uranium into weapons-building even more tenuous.

We don’t know for sure whether the Indo-US nuclear deal will be dead in the face of lack of political will. But even if it is dead, does it mean that nuclear power generation in India should stop? Not for the near future it seems. We are in the process of constructing three to four new reactors including a fast breeder reactor at Kalpakkam. Currently it has been estimated by the IPFM panel that our annual production of uranium is around 300 tons. Annual needs of uranium for power production are 450 tons, so clearly we have been having a deficit and this has been considered a key lacuna in our power generation capability. However, two new mines in Andhra Pradesh will produce about 100-200 tons of extra uranium. There is opposition to the opening of the mines that centers mainly around the legitimate issues of pollution and environmental depletion, but this opposition can be overcome by political will and prudent action. The IPFM report makes it clear that if all eight of India’s unsafeguarded reactors are used for generating power instead of weapons material, the uranium requirement will be about 340 tons, only a little more than what is produced currently, and certainly much less that what we could produce if the two Andhra Pradesh mines would be opened up.

So it seems to me that if we don’t divert uranium for weapons building and if we open up the two new mines, India will have enough uranium for power generation for the next decade or so. As noted above, we already have plutonium for an ample nuclear deterrent. Plutonium from the spent fuel rods generated in the power generation from uranium can also be used for weapons. Given our stocks of plutonium, delivery systems and current arsenal, we seem to already possess the minimum credible deterrent against both Pakistan and China. On the other hand, building more nuclear weapons will clearly send out the wrong message to Pakistan, China and the rest of the world and undermine security in South-Asia for no justifiable reason. They will also unnecessarily sap taxpayers’ money, a point that should not be lost on libertarians. In view of this fact, I believe that if we decide to open new mines and use all the uranium that we can without weapons building, we should have enough nuclear material to increase power generation for at least a few years.

I don’t mean to imply that we will be as better off without the deal as with it, at the least because in addition to material we would have also acquired valuable equipment and technology through it. Eventually uranium deposits will be depleted and any access to foreign uranium stocks will always be beneficial. But just because the nuclear deal is currently flailing does not mean that our nuclear power program should also start instantly failing.

Part of the reason I made the trip to London in September was a single goal; to stand at a particular traffic light near the British Museum and take a photo of myself standing there…

Read the rest of the entry on Excursions…

Nuclear terrorism forms an important part of the armamentarium of one of the Bush administration’s favourite pastimes- threat inflation. While it is true that the potential damage that terrorists could cause with even a 1 kT nuclear weapon is tremendous…

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It’s not everyday that you get to have a relaxed, inspirational and informal almost one-on-one chat for an hour with a Nobel Prize winner. Yet that was what it was today morning, when me and just three other students in a small room spent an hour talking about everything under the sun with Peter Agre, winner of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Dr. Agre was here as part of the “Luminaries in Science” series organised by Emory University, which earlier also saw Andrew Fire, the 2006 Medicine laureate.

Dr. Agre’s visit was marked by three events; first, a talk by him about his prize-winning work, then an evening banquet with him, other students and faculty members, and finally today, a one hour student discussion forum. I was fortunate to be invited to attend all three events.

Dr. Agre received the prize for his discovery of aquaporins, important proteins in the human body and other organisms that facilitate the flow of water molecules. Water is so prevalent around us that we often take it for granted and cease to think of it as a wondrous substance. But wondrous it is, and one of its most important functions is in detoxifying the body through urine produced in the kidneys, which are marvels of purification systems. The human kidneys pass the equivalent of 180 liters of water everyday and filter and purify it, and much of the action is made possible by these highly efficient and unique water channel proteins called aquaporins which Dr. Agre’s group discovered. Aquaporins are also involved in general fluid balance and preventing dehydration, lubrications of body parts and tissues, and are increasingly implicated in diseases like malaria and in aging.

Peter Agre is a fabulous guy; warm, funny, extremely laid back and friendly, and exuding modesty without being falsely modest. During his talk, he made it a point to acknowledge at every step the contributions of his co-workers which made his discovery and its implications possible. It takes courage and humility to say that someone else was responsible for a key part of a prize-winning idea, yet that is the way science works and Dr. Agre was very forthcoming in highlighting the contributions of others.

But it was really the one hour “forum” today morning that was unforgettable for me. Only four of us showed up. While I felt this was a little embarrassing, it also meant that we had Dr. Agre to ourselves for one hour and that was exactly how it would turn out to be; a quiet, entertaining, rare and intimate exchange with a fine mind and person. A few minutes later, Dr. Agre arrived alone and sheepishly admitted that even he was not sure what exactly we were supposed to do. That informal beginning set the tone for the next hour’s discussion.

The discussion was extremely informal, and Dr. Agre is such a friendly and “normal” person that after a while I forgot that I was talking to a Nobel laureate. For the next hour, we talked about ourselves, he talked about himself and his life and all of us talked about science and joked around in an incredibly casual and easy-going conversation spiced with anecdotes and humour. It was as if we were discussing sports or current affairs at a friend’s place, and the extremely small group in the small room greatly facilitated the intimacy of the exchange. He asked us all about our background, what brought us to the US and our aspirations. He himself talked about his background, and how it was a lucky break that he got to investigate aquaporins; the proteins actually showed up as contaminants in another study that he was doing, and he actually had to convince the grant agency that this side-direction was worth pursuing. Dr. Agre had Alexander Fleming’s “prepared mind” and perseverance to investigate this phenomenon. In 1992, he identified the long-sought after water channel proteins and jubilation rang throughout his group. Dr. Agre also talked about his personal background, about how his parents had grown up impecunious in trying depression times, about how he was infused with the love of science in the past-Sputnik age. He is also an outdoor enthusiast, and in fact I was pleased to hear that he has been to Pune, to Mumbai, and other parts of India and Asia.

During the next hour we traded thoughts about a variety of things. We discussed the grim funding scenarios in science and the constant politicization of science in the US and lamented the lack of scientific training and therefore comprehension in almost all politicians (read his article here). He said that in this scenario, scientists have even more of a responsibility to objectively discuss scienctific issues without oversimplifying them. I told him about my blog and my simultaneous interest in communicating science, and the talk inevitably turned towards the role that the media plays in the process- almost always an unfavourable one. Dr. Agre said he is happy to talk to journalists about science and said that it is extremely important for them to report scientific facts without hyping them, a fact seldom observed. Dr. Agre asked me what I thought about Sanjay Gupta, the CNN medical correspondent who happens to be a doctor at Emory. He seemed to be very amused with Gupta, and why not! I told him candidly what I think of him; I always have thought that while he is a smart guy, he is called upon by CNN to give expert advice on every topic remotely connected to science. Surely he could not be an expert on everything?! Needless to say, Dr. Agre agreed. Almost none of the mainstream channels here do a good job of communicating science, and even now most of the science writers who do a fine job have a scientific background.

On the other hand, some of the most honest and fair reporters in the US are comedians! Jon Stewart does a much better job of reporting news than other channels. And it turned out that Dr. Agre had appeared on the Colbert Report, where Colbert had flipped his Nobel Prize medal to decide between science and religion! You can watch his interview here.

As the hour progressed, we also talked about the need for young people to go into science and about expectations of “instant gratification” that deter people from studying science. Clearly when this happens, we all lose. Dr. Agre who spent the bulk of his career at Johns Hopkins talked about the inner city youths in Baltimore who get instant gratification from heroin use without thinking about the consequences. You cannot help but get inspired by a Nobel laureate, but Dr. Agre was even more inspiring when he candidly said that as much as he likes to think of himself as the present of science, he is actually the past, and it’s the students sitting in front of him and others, who are the real future of science. When it comes to research, teaching as well as communicating science, it’s up to us.

Before we knew it, the hour was up and we had had a fantastic time. All in all, an unforgettable, immensely satisfying and extremely informal exchange with someone who is not just a great scientist, but a wonderful person.