Ed-ja-ma-whuh?

This photograph was taken off the coast of North Berwick, a little seaside town in Scotland that boasts the Scottish Seabird Center which was (apparently) built at the behest of HRH the Prince of Wales. The gannets in this photograph are fairly common. The colony on Bass Rock numbers 120,000, and it only stands to reason that other improbably large colonies are scattered elsewhere on impossibly small rocks in the North Atlantic. So, you might wonder, why the hell did I have to go all the way to Scotland to see them?

One of the long-running themes of the Science-Based Medicine blog (on which I sometimes comment) is the despair at how seemingly intelligent people fall for things like homeopathy (which =/= herbal medicines, and that's a whole 'nuther game entirely) and the Anti-Vaccination Conspiracy. The writers on that blog especially bemoan the influence of idiots like Jenny McCarthy for their refusal to believe that vaccines are safe (barring rare genetic conditions), do not cause autism--and their refusal to shut the f*ck up already.

There's a connection between these two. I promise.

The McCarthy campaign* was fed by the rise in autism cases, an "epidemic", as the fear mongers like to call it. I have no idea how they picked vaccines to blame it on, since it's become apparent that it's genetics--but anyway: the point is that autism is only reliably diagnosed at around age 2, the age that coincides quite happily with the recommended age of administration of the MMR vaccine. For your average parent, who doesn't have access to neuroscience textbooks and Piaget's work, it's a simple cause-and-effect. If enough parents--just one other one will do--have similar experiences, you start to wonder if you've missed something. And if someone fakes research telling you that your experiences have been scientifically validated, well, there you have it! Proof that vaccines cause autism!

Both of these illustrations point to the importance of education through experience. In the first case, until I saw the birds for myself, I was inclined to think that these were rare. The second case demonstrates how even nominally intelligent people allow personal experiences to trump their better judgment (although the truly intelligent know when to back down in the face of irrefutable evidence). It's very hard to unlearn something that has a deep emotional significance (i.e., validation that your whack-job theory was right)--the corollary is, it's very easy to learn something that does.

So my interest in environmentalism arose largely because when I was 7, one of my mother's friends gave me, as a Christmas present, a little suction-cup-on-the-window bird feeder that came with a little book showing all the pretty birds I could see. It may surprise you to know that I never saw anything more interesting than a crow, but for some reason I got hooked on birdwatching. I'm the person who will stand and scan every last Canada goose in a flock in the hopes of seeing something different--something new. And I did, often enough to make me realize that birds were interesting creatures which in turn sparked even more interest in how to keep them around.

This is probably the main reason why most people just don't care about the environment to the extent that Greens do. In the suburbs of carefully tended lawns and decor-only plants, they don't hear the awesome chirping of a thousand frogs (or one massive bullfrog). The artificial environs mean that most of the smaller songbirds have to find homes elsewhere, so "wildlife" means robins and the occasional fight with the raccoon over the garbage. To enjoy the "outdoors", you drive to a park, where the wildest thing you'll encounter is a fairly tame mallard. If this is the sum of your wildlife experience, of course you won't feel it's worth protecting.

It's all very well and good to point to rising lines on graphs, but to paraphrase the Governator, we have to make Green connect with people like Coke and Pepsi have done with their legions of fans, and you cannot make a solid connection with guilt. Nobody ever got addicted to guilt. They get hooked by "cool!"

Next: Behavioral modification

*Isn't it ironic that Joseph McCarthy did the same thing in the 1950s? Coincidence? If Jenny McCarthy (their names both begin with "J"!) can ask us to believe that vaccines cause autism, then surely my indulging in some little fantasy connecting her, the Communist Party, and eventual world takeover by China is harmless. Right?

On education

One of the things I wish my parents had done when I was little was take us out to the state parks, or some dark corner of the 'burbs where we lived, and point out the stars. The one time I've even come close to seeing the vast expanse of the galaxy we live in was on a night-time road trip to Virginia for a fencing meet, but I have never forgotten how the stars glittered in the sky--and, more to the point, how many there were.

I've always maintained a passing interest in stargazing and astronomy, but my abilities with calculus precluded me majoring in the deep spaces. Still, the night sky is not without its wonders--it's a pretty cool experience to realize that you can see Venus, that Beetlgeuse (Beatle Juice) really is red, and watch a lunar eclipse occur right before your eyes. But it was not until this weekend, when I finally bought what birdwatchers call a "spotting scope" and pointed it at the moon, that I realized, "Gee, I've got a lot of childhood to catch up on." (And no, I did not pay top-dollar for mine)

My parents, like most parents, placed a lot of value on getting good grades in school. I can't help but think that they got gypped into the belief that having an education means that you've learned a lot. I mean, I have learned a lot--but not on the things I was educated in. I've learned about proper soil composition for growing things, the names of all the major waterfowl in the Netherlands, how to feed a species-appropriate diet to cats, and which herbs to use in a tomato sauce. Amongst others. Don't get me wrong, I've also gained a lot through my education--I got my job solely because I was educated in pharmacology--but if you were to ask me which set of knowledge gives me more satisfaction in possessing, it's not the one that involves curves and data points (unless the data points are individual birds, and the curves are Gaussian distributions).

I don't claim to know the "best" way to educate kids. But I don't see how starting with their own interests could lead you too far astray. I sometimes wonder if I could have been an ornithologist, or an ecologist--given my dismal attempt to give a crap about molecular pharmacology, I wonder if I'd start feeling the same way about ecology. I don't think I would have gotten funding. I don't think I would have gotten a job. I don't think I'd be any better at writing papers. But I do think I would have learned a lot more for all my education.