The Wondering Mind

Again! A supposed scientist and researcher apparently saying stupid things!

So I was reading this article about deception in the NY Times, when I came across the following quote about half way through the article.

“There’s a counterintuitive motivation not to detect lies, or we would have become much better at it,” said Angela Crossman, an assistant professor of psychology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

I read to mean one of two things. The professor is either suggesting that with proper motivation we would have evolved a better ability to detect lies, or that we would all be better at learning to detect lies. Maybe I’m missing a third – and the correct – explanation, but if I’m not, Angela Crossman is being very silly.

We would only “have become better at it” through evolution if that ability gave us a reproductive edge over others in propagating our genes. While it might seem useful in figuring out if your husband is cheating on you, that only gives you satisfaction. This is not a skill that would necessarily improve the probably of your genes surviving and propagating in a human society. After all, detecting lies in others is usually not a life or death issue for most people; it will not literally save your life.

Also, in most human societies, it probably does not seriously impact your ability to reproduce, although it may impact your ability to reproduce with the person of your desires. (That’s a whole other problem.) So for the ability to detect lies to have an effect on our evolution, it would have to impact our ability to reproduce so severely that you have a hard time finding a mate, any mate, without this ability. I don’t think that is the case.

If Ms. Crossman is talking about learned skill, there is no more reason “we would have become much better at it” than I would have become better at math or speaking French. We all have something we are terrible at, no matter how “motivated” we are to be better. While most of us, given the proper motivation, could potentially be better at many things than we already are, there are limits to the effect of such motivation. In the same way some people have the hardest time conquering calculus, even if they were offered vast rewards, this might be the limit of our lie detection abilities. Assuming no evolutionary changes.

Now a possible third explanation that I am missing is that there is a back-story to this, which would put the quote in proper context. In this case, it would mean other data and theories also suggesting a counterintuitive motivation. In which case, the fault lies with the reporter for omitting an important piece of information. If not, Ms. Crossman is making a leap in assumption, based on data which would support her hypothesis only weakly.

This woman is a professor in psychology, so she would have studied biology and understand the concepts of evolution. The quote, if in proper context, would suggest otherwise. It’s no wonder the general public are so ill-informed about evolutionary principles.

Those denying evolution seem to be the new “flat-earthers”. You get an eclectic mix of people who are too stupid to understand the material mingling with those who have stuffed their ears and are shouting “La, la, la, la” to drown out a truth they find too troubling to their existing beliefs. This story seems to be of someone from the former group than the latter.

Adnan Oktar is someone who first gained prominence by publishing a creationist book in Turkey, which was then sent to many leading biologists and others working in biological and related sciences. Let’s ignore the fact that this idiot clearly does not have the money to ever pay out on his offer. The real problem seems to be that Oktar does not understand the material and is too stupid to realise this.

Mr Dawkins had written of Mr Oktar’s book: “I am at a loss to reconcile the expensive and glossy production values of this book with the breathtaking inanity of the content.”

Mr Oktar had responded: “We could have spoken on a more scientific basis if he had been able to produce an intermediate form fossil capable of confirming evolution in the face of all the hundreds of fossils in my book.”

Unfortunately, as this article in the NY Times makes clear, he doesn’t understand the science, so I’m not sure how anyone is supposed to speak to him “on a more scientific basis”. According to Kevin Padian, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Berkeley,

He said people who had received copies were “just astounded at its size and production values and equally astonished at what a load of crap it is.

“If he sees a picture of an old fossil crab or something, he says, ‘See, it looks just like a regular crab, there’s no evolution,’ ” Dr. Padian said. “Extinction does not seem to bother him. He does not really have any sense of what we know about how things change through time.”

As the New Scientist points out, any attempt to have a scientific discussion with Oktar would be useless.

So, will Oktar cough up? Unlikely. You might call the problem the Sorcerer’s Apprentice syndrome. Poor Mickey Mouse found out that every time he chopped up one of his magic brooms, the problem doubled as each half sprouted new legs and continued its duties.

Palaeontologists everywhere can sympathise with Mickey’s plight. When a seemingly large evolutionary gap is plugged with a remarkable new fossil, as happened just the other day with the discovery of a new primitive turtle from the Triassic, it just leaves two smaller gaps on either side. Now, instead of one gap in the fossil record there are two, and creationists argue that the fossil record is, paradoxically, even worse than it was before the new discovery.

What Oktar is demanding is for organisms to evolve right before his eyes. That is enough to tell you he just doesn’t understand the science. So good luck on anyone trying to get paid on this offer.