Why ask for meaning when there is none?

The atoms dance their indifferent dance,
Born, mutilated, destroyed, born again.
Until by chance a pulse appears.

An amoeba.
Then trees.
Mastodons.
Reptiles.
Mammals.
(Which order? Who knows)

Then reason,
Cruel, liberating
takes birth in tiny islands of protoplasm.
And Loss, Nostalgia become words.
And yearning takes the form of prayer.
Jehovah, Jesus, Muhammad, Krishna-
Lighthouses to a lost race.
Teachings become platitudes.
Religions they fostered, decay.
And lonely Gautama looking down on Rajagriha,
understands.

Romes flourish, fall.
Pompeii, Machu Picchu, Harappa forgotten.

Copernicus, Galileo and a touch of humility.
And Darwin, humbler still.

Wars:
A race driven insane when the half-truths it
clings on to are questioned.
Moral imaginations soar, plummet.
Never an absolution.

There is and never shall be any meaning here.
Only an endless, insatiable restlessness.

-Abhilash Mishra

Defining important accomplishments in Science can be tricky. If history is anything to go by, seemingly innocuous discoveries  have a habit of altering the course of Science in significant, even profound ways. With this important caveat, here’s what we think were the most significant scientific milestones in the last year.

1. The synthetic genome: In what is widely regarded as amongst the greatest achievements of modern science, Craig Venter and collaborators created the first synthetic genome and inserted it in  “genetically emptied” bacterial cells. The cells produced proteins as encoded  in the synthetic genome and behaved like otherwise normal bacterial cells. This opens up a host of possibilities in synthetic biology- from producing cheap biofuels to creating “designer organisms”.
2. Atoms of antimatter: A beam of anti-hydrogen (i.e. an antielectron orbiting an antiproton) was produced by the ASACUSA group at CERN while another team  (ALPHA) reported they had “trapped” about 40 anti-hydrogen atoms (although for only 170 ms). This will enable the teams to look at spectra from anti-hydrogen which could shed light on new physics and possibly explain why the universe has so much more matter than antimatter. And no, we don’t need to fret about an Angels and Demons scenario just yet.
3. Nerve cells from skin cells: In January a group of biologists at Stanford reported they had transformed adult mouse skin cells into functional nerve cells, skipping the stem-cell phase. This is a huge step in regenerative medicine and could help in the treatment diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

4. An arsenic-bug: While astrobiologists (and science fiction writers) have always speculated the possibility of life-forms dramatically different from ours, there has been scant evidence to support the claim. Specifically, it seemed until recently that the biochemistry responsible for life rested on specific building blocks (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur). In December, a group of NASA astrobiologists reported a newly discovered microbe strain that “grew on” arsenic. The arsenic became a part of the vital biochemical machinery of the microbe including the DNA and cell membranes. This opens up new avenues of research in microbiology as well supporting the view that life could exist in environments very different than the earth.

5. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) achieves maximum collision energies ever: In March the LHC achieved the first proton-proton collisions at 7 TeV (half the total energy of collisions LHC will finally be capable of). These were the most energetic events ever produced in a particle accelerator and it means we can start doing Physics with the data. When fully operational the LHC will help us test the Standard Model of particle physics (our most successful theory of matter and interactions so far) and possibly shed light on exotic new physics.

(The Science and Technology team at CriticalTwenties wishes you a very happy new year)

RELIGION and ART

The Roman Catholic Church does not approve of ART, just like its views on contraception.
It is considered morally unacceptable, as it dissociates the sexual act from the procreative
act. To quote- “The act which brings the child into existence is no longer an act by which two persons give themselves to one another, but one that “entrusts the life and identity of the embryo into the power of doctors and biologists and establishes the domination of technology over the origin and destiny of the human person”. Islam, on the other hand, does not condemn IVF, or AI, as long as the donor sperm belongs to the husband. AI, with any other donor sperm amounts to adultery. The same seems to hold good for Hinduism as well.

I came across a very interesting paper extensively describing the controversies, ethics
and practice surrounding the use of IVF in Islamic and Jewish countries.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1705533/

For sperm donation, the procedure requires the donor to submit a semen sample- which
involves the act of masturbation, which again is condemned by many religions.

CONTROVERSIES and ETHICS

Multiple pregnancy and Embryo Reduction

One important consequence as I mentioned earlier of using these methods, is the possibility
of multiple pregnancy. Any conception following infertility treatment is classified as
a ‘precious pregnancy’ or a high risk pregnancy. Multiple pregnancy per say is also a high risk
pregnancy. In the field of obstetrics, one and one do not add unto two, instead, it is viewed
as eleven, because the rate of complications is more than additive. Besides, as the number of
fetuses increase, so do the rate of deformities, abortion, preterm labour and many more such
complexities. So sometimes, when there are more than two or three implanted fetuses, there
is the option of “embryo reduction”. Embryo reduction amounts to abortion of one of the
successfully implanted embryos. This raises a controversial issue, that of abortion. It is
more contentious, simply because an embryo is ‘created’, only to be destroyed later. How
ethical is that? Life is created, and destroyed, even if it has to be done with due consideration,
for the saving the lives of the mother and the other embryos, how can we make such a
decision?

Since multiple oocytes are withdrawn and multiple embryos are thus generated, the
consequent problem of the fate of the excess embryos poses a dilemma. Previously, these
embryos were destroyed as they ceased to serve their purpose. The same argument of
destruction of a life holds good. Unethical, greedy minds have even used these embryos,
and ‘sold’ them to other couples at later dates. To solve this disconcerting problem, the
following ingenious alternative was thought of. The best approach to this seems to be the
implantation of such embryos into women who are unable to ovulate and/or men who have
azoospermia. These ‘adopted’ embryos are called snowflake children. This is a relatively
new concept- and less than a few hundred children have been born this way.

Another alternative is with the use of a new technique called ‘cryopreservation’ which allows for the eggs/sperms/embryos to be stored under proper conditions, for later use by the
same individuals, in case of future pregnancies.

PGD/PGS
Other medical intervention procedures such as PGD (Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis), or
more specifically PGS (Preimplantation Genetic Screening), used to increase the chances of an ongoing pregnancy, so as to minimize losses due to chromosomal aneuploidies have a high abuse liability. When used for the purpose of sex selection, it poses a significant problem.

Even in developed countries, sex selection is used for purposes of ‘family balancing’. Again,
as these techniques most often involve testing on the zygote at various stages, and if the
zygote is not selected for various reasons, and discarded, it maybe viewed as destruction of
life.

Designer Babies
In case of single mothers and homosexual couples, there is an increasing trend towards
selection of a sperm donor, with specific characteristics. This results in ‘designer babies’.
It can be argued that, this infact is a form of positive eugenics. For example, it is not
uncommon for a recipient to state the exact characteristics, right upto the grades and
scores that the prospective donor acquired in college apart from the physical attributes,
and the family history. Although the thought of a random sperm is disturbing, this approach
seems to be at the other extreme end of the spectrum.
As a stark contrast to the above, there have been a few stray cases reported, of
couples who wish to transmit certain of their ‘deformities’ to their progeny, and hence
ask for those embryos carrying that defect to be selected. The best known example of such
as case was reported in the UK, where a deaf couple was adamant that their child should also
be deaf. Now, what is the ethics in dealing with such a situation? On what grounds, can they be denied, if at all they should be denied?

Special circumstances
Another situation, which creates a lot of confusion, is concerning women who are well
into their menopause. A couple in their fifties or sixties, who have the desire, and who can
afford the treatment. What quality of life will they be able to give the children conceived
that way? However, it is argued, it cannot be denied that they will face more obstacles and
challenges than any other normal couple, as they start with a disadvantage/handicap.
HIV positive couples- two scenarios come to play. An infertile HIV positive couple, and a
fertile couple. In the latter case, IVF maybe done in order to mainly decrease the rate of
transmission of HIV. The main controversy in these cases is more on lines of a psychosocial
basis- the risk of the child being subjected to the emotional trauma of being orphaned in
early childhood. In both cases, however, there seems to be a consensus that ART maybe
applied only to sero-discordant couples- i.e.; only one among the couple being HIV positive,
so that the resultant child will still have one non infected parent with longevity comparable to the normal adult population.
(see http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/content/19/11/2454.full)

Secondary infertility is defined as infertility that occurs following atleast one normal conception/pregnancy, irrespective of the fate of the pregnancy. For cases that have resulted in one or more viable healthy babies before, who undergo ART, coupled with the probable
likelihood of a multiple pregnancy- what is the solution? The perfect example for such a case
is that of Nadya Suleman, who made quite sensational headlines last year. She used IVF,
despite having prior children, and it resulted in octuplets. Quite obviously, she cannot care
for all her children without help from the state. Now, what is the point of such an action?
Most countries do not impose restrictions on the number of children an individual can have.
It is after all, a basic human right. Nevertheless, is there a difference between natural and
artificially created actions? Should there be one? Where is the boundary line in such
cases?

The success rates for these procedures are not clearly defined. Implantation of the zygotes
does not guarantee continuation until term. Coupled with the fact that, these procedures
are extremely expensive, this is often out of reach for a majority of the population.

Surrogacy
With surrogacy reaching great proportions, especially commercial surrogacy, as a part of fertility tourism, there is a fear that in the future, more and more fertile rather than infertile
couples who can ‘pay’ will use surrogate mothers who ‘need’ the money, so as to reduce
the stress associated with natural pregnancy and childbirth. This actually sounds scary.
The question of human ethics plagues us when the surrogate mother is related to the biological mother or father. For instance, the grandmother
agrees to carry the pregnancy for her daughter. Now when the child is born, what does the child call her? Mother or grandmother? In theory, the biological mother is the natural mother, but this can prove to be very confusing and conflicting to the child later, as the grandmother will play an important role in his/her life, anyway, whereas with an unrelated surrogate, she has no such fixed role in the family.

LAW and ART

ART procedures, quite obviously are tightly regulated, as they need to be. Since there are quite a few ethical issues involved, laws have been created to circumvent every problem, andprovide for just solutions. For instance, sperm donors reserve the right to be anonymous, if they chose to. But there also exists a conflict between the interests, andthe rights of the donor to remain anonymous, and the right of the child to know the biological father. Registries are maintained to trace back the origin; in the event the child wants to know the identity of the biological father. Such registries also to some extent prevent the minute, but ethically catastrophic possibility of ignorant consanguineous relationships, between siblings of the same donor. A limit is posed on the number of children that a donor can father and this decreases the possibility of later ‘incest’. The woman is also allowed the option of choosing the same sperm donor for her future pregnancies, to ensure full biological relationship between the so conceived siblings. Some countries are also very stringent about the criteria, on which the recipients of ART are decided, with some allowing only homosexual couples and single mothers to benefit from AI. This is where cross border reproduction, fertility tourism flourish. Surrogacy in particular, has a high demand, with it being ‘outsourced’ to developing countries like India, where women are ‘judiciously compensated’ for their efforts to bear a child. These women, in a desperate
attempt to earn money, enter into contracts, without comprehending fully the consequences.
Studies have proved that most of the time surrogate mothers do not have an emotional
bond with the child, contrary to popular belief. However, in developing countries, as the
maternal mortality rate is not as low as it should be, this is a cause for concern, as it could
very well amount to ‘exploitation’. However, it is argued that, since these pregnancies are
well paid for, and these procedures mostly take place in the better institutions of the
country, mortality is not as big a threat as it is considered to be.

Recently, there has been a decrease in the number of donors leading to a ‘shortage’ of
sperms. This has resulted in ‘exporting’ sperm from other countries. From medical tourism,
we have moved on to ‘fertility tourism’, and pregnancy ‘without borders’.
This practice called ‘cross border reproduction’ as mentioned earlier has its own list of ethical
arguments. See:

http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/10/2182.full?sid=1e28a773-e137-4b96-9937-72d0f435920f#ref-1

On one hand, this may just as well improve our overall genetic pool, as many children
will now be born, regardless of differences in race, caste, social and monetary status etc.
This would create a lot of diversity, creating better possibly genotypes, akin to an ‘artificial
selection’ compared to the ‘natural’ selection of Darwin.

I am not sure, what IVF has done to the practice of adoption, whether it has resulted in a declining trend. All I was able to get was the adoption rates in the last 10 years, which do not
seem to have changed drastically. (http://www.adoptionindia.nic.in/database.htm)

CONCLUSION

ART has served a boon for many couples and families throughout the world, saving
many marriages, and minimizing a lot of psychological trauma that is associated with
infertility. ART will also go down as one of the greatest achievements of humankind, and we
will never cease to wonder at the pure ingenuity of creating life outside the womb.
However on the downside, it has in effect, reduced the act of reproduction to a purely
technological ‘game’, allowing multiple entry points of interference with the natural process
of selection of an embryo, molding it into something that ‘we want’, manipulating and
complicating what is primarily a physiological process, and by bringing in laws to minimize the associated malpractices and the innumerable
ethical intricacies that it raises. This is a big responsibility that we have
conferred upon ourselves- the ability to choose life. Hence, it is in our hands to
see to it that this is not exploited. Various organizations have been established for the
primary purpose of moral policing, and at every stage, just solutions have been made
to offset the disadvantages and problems that these procedures have created. As long as
technology and ethics go hand in hand, this will continue to be a blessing.

INTRODUCTION

To introduce the concept of In vitro Fertilization, or the broader category of Assisted Reproductive techniques that it falls under, there is no better place to start from, than Hindu mythology. The progress of science depends on the rich imagination that the human mind is capable of, and even with an inadequate technology to translate a seemingly absurd and improbable idea into reality, there is no limit to the creativity and fantasy of the mind. In fact, that is where all original ideas are born. Necessity is the mother of all invention, and man as a resourceful being, it is only time that
stands in his way of immediate achievement. In mythology, every birth is a miracle. It is
not humanly possible for a woman to give birth to a hundred sons. Nor is it possible for
a woman to remain a virgin after conception/birth. We can dismiss all that as part of a vivid imagination involved in the narration of the birth of some extraordinary person, mostly God himself in a reincarnated form. However, at the rate we are progressing, most of these stories increasingly appear probable. Did our ancestors have immense foresight? For, the more I think of it, it seems to me, that we are converting those ‘stories’ into real ones!

There is one story that is particularly interesting, to this topic. It is the story of the birth of
Satyavati, the mother of Sage Vyasa, the great seer who composed the Mahabharata, and
who later went on to wed Bheeshma’s father-Shantanu.

It is said that, there was once a Kshatriya king named Uparichara. Being an enthusiastic
hunter, he dismisses the advances of his wife, when she is in her fertile period, and
instead goes hunting. Upon missing his mark repeatedly, he realizes how aroused he is. So,
he ejaculates on to a banyan leaf, folds it, and sends it to his wife through a falcon. The falcon, due to unforeseen circumstances drops the leaf into a river, whereupon it is swallowed by a fish, who is actually a nymph cursed by a Rishi.
Needless to say, a fisherman catches the fish one day, who finds twins inside the belly of the fish, upon cutting it. The fisherman returns one of the twins to the king, and requests to keep the girl, whom he raises as Satyavati, thus also explaining why she always smelt like a fish. This is an interesting, and rather amusing
mythological rendition of artificial reproduction
and surrogacy.

HISTORY

This year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine has been awarded to Dr Robert G Edwards, for
translating this fantasy into a practical reality. The very first IVF baby, Louise Brown was born in July 1978. There have been many advances in ART, both, from the treatment point of view, as well as laws pertaining to the use of the same. The advent of the same has opened a Pandora’s Box of medical ethics, and various legalities surrounding the issue. The technology to create life outside the human body has completely revolutionized obstetrical treatment, giving hope and joy to thousands of couples. It has come so far indeed, that, now we are looking at a ‘fertility tourism’ industry in many
countries.

ASSISTED REPRODUCTIVE TECHNIQUES

ART is broadly defined as ‘all treatments and procedures that involve the in vitro handling
of sperm or oocyte or embryo for the purpose of achieving a pregnancy’. In vitro fertilization is but a part of it. Other popular methods include GIFT (Gamete Intrafallopian transfer), ZIFT (Zygote Intrafallopian transfer), ICSI (Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection), and IUI (Intrauterine Insemination). Surrogacy, where another woman unrelated to the biological father and mother, carries the pregnancy to term also falls under the same category. I shall not discuss the technical details of any of the above procedures as each of them, individually are a topic in itself.

The main motivation for ART is infertility, which is defined as a failure to achieve spontaneous conception, following unprotected intercourse, for atleast one year. Infertility per say could be due to male factors, or female, or both, each of them contributing equally to the total incidence of infertility. The type of ART that a couple receive is dictated by the primary cause for their infertility, the availability of appropriate
technology and the expense of the same.

A CDC report demonstrating the trends of ART and its success over the years-

http://www.cdc.gov/art/ART2007/PDF/COMPLETE_2007_ART.pdf

The major ‘side effect’ of ART is the problem of multiple pregnancy. During implantation,
multiple embryos are selected, to increase the chances of at least one of them being carried
to term. Others are the specific effects of the drugs used for purposes of Ovulation Induction and other relevant procedures.

UPSIDE

The obvious advantage of ART is that it offers another chance to infertile couples who are very keen on continuing their genetic line. It is infact, one of the greatest achievements of science that life can be created outside the human body, in a tiny petri dish. I cannot imagine the adrenaline rush that Dr Robert Edwards would have had, when he created an actual living embryo for the first time!

Another section of the population who largely benefit from this advance are homosexuals.
By the process of Artificial insemination from donors, they are able to bear children. The
same goes for single mothers, thus fulfilling their desires and roles in and as a family.

In cases of individuals suffering from various cancers, who receive treatment in the form of radiation, with their gonads at risk of exposure, oocyte and sperm retrieval and their storage in egg and sperm banks, offer a good chance of a later pregnancy for these individuals, minimizing much of their emotional trauma at
losing fertility.

Gandhi and the Enlightenment

When I was asked to write a post on Gandhi’s views on Science I was a little hard pressed for material. His views on Science are scattered and scant as well as vaguely stated. In fact, his greatest “critique” of science has been equated to his opposition of large scale machinery. This has resulted in him being glibly branded as a nostalgist who was opposed to progressive industrialisation (though some of his writings reveal that he was not opposed to machinery per se but merely industrialisation that further marginalised India’s poor, who stood to benefit the most from industrialisation). His ethical considerations about industralisation seem reasonable though it will be naive to draw any inferences about Gandhi’s attitudes on Science from these views. I shall not discuss this in the post.

Reading through the scant literature on Gandhi and Science I was quite intrigued by his ideas about the Enlightenment. Gandhi’s views on the Scientific Enlightenment were often convolved with his views on ‘The West’ and he was openly opposed to the Enlightenment (though see this for a more nuanced view). In his Collected Works he writes:

“We are dazzled by the material progress that western science has made. I am not enamored of that progress. In fact, it almost seems as though God in His wisdom had prevented India from progressing along those lines, so that it might fulfill its special mission of resisting the onrush of materialism” (CW 35: 524)

I find this view very representative of the anxieties felt by a whole generation about the scientific enterprise. In particular the notion that “materialistic” Science did not need any “transcendental reality” to explain Nature rendered it (Nature) “disenchanted“. Similar metaphysical anxieties about the scientific enterprise have seeped into contemporary debates on Science and Religion. I strongly believe that much of the confusion in debates like these stems from a flawed/incomplete understanding of the modern scientific method. So in this post I’ll try to clarify some myths about the scientific method. In the end I hope to convince you that far from painting a cold, sterile picture of Nature, the scientific method provides us an utterly enchanting and magical view. This would be a fitting tribute to Gandhi on his birthday.

The Scientific Method

The scientific method can be characterised by two salient features-
1. Construction of abstract concepts which help us to describe reality.
2. Making hypotheses about principles using these abstract concepts about natural phenomena and testing these hypotheses against data.

The first point is often not emphasised enough in expositions about the scientific method. Abstract concepts like mass, momentum or entropy are not set out to us on a platter. What we have access to instead, are phenomena. The best we can do is try to design a grammar of concepts that help us to think of these phenomena. For instance the notion of entropy is not at all obvious when we set out to understand the world. Instead we observe that events tend to have a certain “directionality” (eggs can be made into an omelet but an omelet cannot be made into an egg) and entropy is a useful concept to explain this observation.

Beyond framing concepts, the scientific method makes hypotheses using these concepts. For instance, one can have a suite of hypotheses about the entropy of an egg- it can increase, decrease or remain the same. These hypotheses are tested against data and are accepted or rejected with a certain level of confidence (for instance data accumulated through repeated experimentation tells us that the entropy of the egg will remain constant or increase with a very high degree of certainty).

It is important to point out a crucial feature of the scientific enterprise here: Science does not provide us with absolute truths! All it does is does is make hypotheses and as we accumulated more and more data our confidence in our hypothesis either increases or decreases. At some point, a threshold is crossed and we start calling a hypothesis “right” (read “highly probably conditional to current data”) as opposed to others which are “highly improbable conditional to current data”.

As we have continued to accumulate data from more extreme situations over the past century (radiation from deep space, observations of extremely cold atoms, to name a few)  we have had to revise our conceptions about Nature (often dramatically so) and as we continue to gather more data it is likely that our fundamental notions about reality will be revised.

The New Enlightenment

I would like to emphasise that understanding the world through the scientific method does not need any supernatural addendum “to give it meaning” (I’ll use a separate post to justify this in detail, but take my word for the moment). Also people often squirm at the possibility that this method will never lead us to an “absolute truth” (in some ill-defined Platonic sense). But so be it! As Richard Feynman put it very eloquently in his interview  The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: “Reality might just be like an onion with an infinite layers”.
The scientific method has, over the past century, dramatically changed our picture of reality. We have come far from the “sterile” picture of reality painted by Newton and his cohorts. We know for instance that Nature behaves in a radically different way at small scales. Newton’s simplistic picture of gravity as a force has been replaced by the much more elegant picture of Einstein’s  general relativity where it is a manifestation of the curvature of spacetime itself. Genetics and molecular biology have given us an atomistic description of evolution explaining how complex organisms capable of reading and writing blogs emerged from single-celled organisms. Cosmology has revealed that our universe is not static and unmoving like Newton believed but is expanding and began at a finite point in the past. Indeed, looking from our island of history, 100 years after Gandhi voiced his anxieties about the enlightenment, science has painted a picture of reality which is very elegant, beautiful and certainly not sterile.  Had Gandhiji been alive, he sure would have appreciated this.

This post will be too US/Western Europe-centric as most of my expertise, if one may call it that, lies in how the topic of ‘gender and science’ or ‘women in science’ manifests itself in those areas of the world.  I am particularly interested in peoples’ perspectives on similarities and differences for India.  I’ll provide citations for many of the interesting studies which have been done relating to this topic, and if you don’t have access to the articles then email me (jessica.hanzlik@gmail.com) and I’m happy to send you a pdf of the relevant articles.

I. Introduction

I grew up with a science-teacher mother and grandmother, so it wasn’t until I began studying physics at university that I realised that not everyone, and in fact, a very small minority of women, thought that becoming a scientist was a natural career choice.  Shortly after I began to question why less than twenty percent of my classmates were female and why only three of Ohio State University’s sixty physics professors were women, Larry Summers, then-president of Harvard and now-economic advisor to President Obama, controversially brought national attention to this question writ large at a conference on diversifying the science and engineering workforce.  He theorised, among other hypotheses, that the under-representation of women in the top levels of academia (for, you see, the gender disparity that I noticed in my small world was a strikingly-apt microcosm of the larger academic world as well) is due to a ‘different availability of aptitude at the high end’.

What, precisely, did he mean by that statement?  Well, suppose the distribution of ‘aptitude’, as measured by, for example, IQ or SAT scores, among men fits a Bell curve with mean mu-m and variation sigma-m, and the distribution of the same aptitude among women fits a different Bell curve, with mean mu-w and variation sigma-w.  Then, one can imagine a world in which the means of each distribution are equal, but the widths of the distributions are different.  If the Bell curve for men is flatter than that of women, then this hypothetical world would have more of both very low performing men and very high performing men than the equivalent of women.  This situation might, for example, explain why many more men than women are diagnosed with autism, and it might also explain why many more men than women become scientists.  This idea is called the ‘greater male variance’ theory, and it would imply that the gaping gender disparity in the sciences is the expected consequence of natural variation in aptitude and ability among men and women.

II. Evidence

Larry Summers was not the first person to come up with the idea of greater male variance (which is one of the reasons his statements at this conference caused an uproar, eventually leading to a vote of no-confidence by the Harvard faculty and removing him from the presidency).  Researchers have tested the hypothesis in a variety of ways.  One of the most recent studies, ‘Gender, culture, and mathematics performance’ finds that in the US, girls and boys have the same mean score on a standardised mathematics exam, but as the greater male variance predicts, more boys than girls score above the top percentiles.  However, and more significantly, they find that the ratio of boys to girls scoring in the top percentiles has changed not only over time, with the ratio decreasing rapidly as time increased, but that the ratio is not consistent among different ethnic groups within the US nor is it consistent cross-nationally.  The researchers thus conclude that the gender gap is ‘largely an artefact of changeable sociocultural factors, not immutable, innate biological differences between the sexes’.  (Hyde J. et al)

III. Social implications

While biologists have been unable to explain the gender gap in the sciences, sociologists have been much more successful at this goal.  Before we get to some of the more interesting results from sociology, I need to clarify one more point.  Although I didn’t realise it at the time, my anec-data — that twenty percent of my physics classmates were women and FIVE percent of my physics professors were women — is representative of two types of gender gaps in the sciences.  The first order effect is, of course, that much less that half of physical science students are women.  The second order effect is that at every level of the science career trajectory, from undergraduate student to graduate student to post-doc to assistant professor to full professor, the proportion of women drops.  Perhaps this drop is a historical artefact; if thirty years ago, only five percent of science students were women, then we would expect that today, only five percent of full professors are women.  It turns out that the second-order gap is not a historical artefact.  As they move up the science career ladder, women drop out disproportionately at every step, an effect known as the ‘leaky pipeline’.

Let’s turn now to some fascinating sociological research on this topic.

The ‘stereotype threat’ is a phenomenon discovered by sociologists in which a minority group, e.g., women with regard to mathematical ability, risks being judged by a negative stereotype about their group.  The existence and force of the stereotype threat is demonstrated in the study ‘Stereotype threat and women’s math performance.’  For this research, scientists recruited mathematically-qualified men and women.  In round one, they were given either easy or hard math tests.  Women under-performed men on the difficult but not the easy test.  In round two, participants were explicitly told that the test did not measure gender differences in performance, and consequently, women did not under-perform men on identical tests.  In round three, participants were reminded of the stereotype that women are worse than men at mathematics, and subsequently women performed substantially worse.  (Spencer, SJ et al.; Stereotype threat and women’s math performance)

Even if women and men do not subconsciously maintain negative stereotypes about women’s mathematical or scientific ability, other research suggests that further barriers exist to women’s ability to advance their scientific career.  When identical CVs are presented to reviewers, the gender of the name at the top of the CV influences reviewers’ assessment of the applicant’s accomplishments and abilities, with male names being rated as more highly qualified than women’s in some situations.  (Steinpreis, R et al. The impact of gender on the review of the curricula vitae of job applicants and tenure candidates)

In auditions for prestigious orchestra positions, blind auditions, in which applicants play behind a screen concealing their identity, women are 50 percent more likely to advance from the preliminary rounds than they are in open auditions.  Obviously I’m not suggesting that musicians and scientists face identical barriers and difficulties, but the two fields, each demanding years of focused work, are more similar than they are different.

IV. Conclusions

This issue matters both because the current state of affairs is unfair, and because it indicates that we are currently neglecting half of our pool of potential scientists.  We have some really big problems to solve in the next few decades and it seems foolish to ignore a very large group of people who have the intelligence to contribute ideas and solutions.

Fixing the problem won’t happen overnight, but small changes can make big differences.  We now know that explicitly telling women that  there is not a gender gap in scientific/mathematical ability significantly increases their aptitude.  Mentoring young women provides them with successful role models.  Role models can be either male or female — the encouragement and support are what matters.  It seems to me that by making the science world into a more fair and just place, the quality of science produced by scientists can only increase, and that, one hopes, is good for everyone.

Kasturba Medical College, Manipal.)

The year was 1932. The name was Prontosil. It seems very long
ago, indeed. This antibiotic, credited to have saved numerous
lives during the Second World War including that of two premier
world leaders- Roosevelt and Churchill is a long forgotten relic.
Reason? Indubitably, the discovery of Penicillin that followed a
few years later, led the world on to the new craze. And, as the
discoveries moved on, so did the world’s attention. However,
the damage was already done. Overenthusiastic, overzealous
use had already sown the seeds. Now the year is 2010. And the
buzzwords are MRSA, ESBL, MDR, XDR and superbugs.

From the 1940’s, to the 2000s, we have seen the discovery of
progressively novel, improved, and effective drugs. But if we have
been at work, so have the micro organisms. For after all, Darwin’s
theory of Natural Selection and Survival of the Fittest still hold
good, and true. Is it just that, or do we have a bigger responsibility
to the situation we currently find ourselves in? I am referring to the
latest distressing medical sensation- the superbug.

The superbug is not a ‘bug’. It refers to a gene in the bacteria,
named NDM1 (New Delhi metallo lactamase1) that confers
resistance to the bacteria against the drug that originally was
quite effective in destroying it. It is not a recent phenomenon, and
it is definitely not unforeseen. It did not happen in a day, this was
a latent catastrophe waiting to be exposed. It is the culmination of
years of use, misuse, and abuse. Analogous to a long-term side
effect. What first started as Drug resistant bacteria paved the way
for the more resourceful ones called Multi Drug Resistant (MDR)
bacteria, ultimately evolving into the Extremely Drug Resistant
(XDR). And now it is the superbug.

How much blame do we take for it? More than we would care to
accept.

No one likes being sick. And no one wants to see another person
sick. I definitely do not want to go to work sniffing, hardly able to
breathe through my blocked nose. And neither do I want to see
my colleague blow oodles of yellowish green mucous into his
tissue. So, what happens is that, the minute a person gets the
inklings of a cold, or a sore throat, or a feverish feeling, he/she
immediately rushes to the nearest doctor, who may very well be a
fresh medical graduate, overly enthusiastic in both diagnosing
and treating what is obviously a very minor ailment. What most
people miss here is that over 90% of the ‘common’ cold is viral in
etiology. And viruses do not respond to antibiotics. So taking
antibiotics for common cold is like trying to drive a car with no
wheels. Absolutely useless. The consequent improvement in
symptoms is often wrongly attributed to the antibiotic effect, for
viral infections spontaneously resolve in a few days.

There is also the ‘pressure’ that a doctor gets from the patient to
prescribe antibiotics. Most people these days, thanks to Google
are very ‘well read’ about the ‘possibilities’ of serious infectious
conditions. Type in any symptom, go to Wrong diagnosis dot
com, and you have almost 70 diseases listed for each symptom.
From the most common, to the rarer, and to the almost unknown.
There is a reason why doctors study medicine for 5 and half
years. If diagnosing diseases and prescribing medicines was so
easy, things would be very different indeed! Therefore, when the
said patient comes in, with complaints of cold, cough and other
non-specific symptoms and the doctor tries to say that it is just
viral, that it requires nothing more than saline gargles, Vitamin

C and plenty of fluids, he is met with a lot of resistance, and lot
incredulity. Well, the fact is that any symptom, however irrelevant
it maybe to the doctor, always feels very significant to the
concerned person. When in that state of mind, the first thought
that comes to his/her mind is- this doctor is a quack. Hence,
in order to save face, and practice, and for speedy recovery,
antibiotics are often prescribed quite unnecessarily and lavishly.

There is also the practical issue of empirical treatment that is
generally followed. Tests to detect the organism and its specific
drug susceptibility take on an average 3-5 days to be reported,
during which period, the doctor prescribes a certain antibiotic
presuming a particular organism to be the cause based on his
clinical acumen. Most often, he is right, but for the rare cases
where he is not, the issue of drug resistance being an additive
consideration, forces him to switch over to a different antibiotic
later based on the test results. So it sums up to ineffective
antibiotic for ineffective duration, and a potent antibiotic later. It
is a double-edged sword, and it is what is universally done, for
logistical purposes. Saves time, and provides for prompt relief.

There also seems to be an inclination among people to back
off the second some additional test is advised. The label
of ‘unnecessary and irrelevant investigations’ is immediately
attached to the doctor. At which point, once again, there seems
to be no other option, but to prescribe an antibiotic, a broader
spectrum one at that, with the hope that it is effective. Repeated
and very frequent exposure of the antibiotic to the organism leads
on to the development of resistance. Remember DDT and the
mosquitoes?

The next level where things go wrong is with the choice of

antibiotics and the duration of its use. There seems to be a
common misconception that the broadest spectrum of antibiotic
available is always the best. This is not true. Most of the time,
bacterial infections are due to single organisms. Mixed infections
occur in the critically ill, immunocompromised and hospitalized
patients. So, when a simple antibiotic like Ampicillin would do,
many a time, broader spectrum antibiotics like cephalosporins or
macrolides are prescribed. It is cost ineffective, not indicated, and
is associated with the disadvantage of increasing the rate of short
term side effects related to the individual drug, as well as the long
term effect of possible drug resistance.

When an antibiotic has been prescribed for a said duration, it
has to be taken for that period. Most often, within 2 or 3 days of
initiating the treatment, there is a discernable and substantial
improvement in the symptomatology of the patient, which leads
to a self-declaration of cure, and cessation of the drug, without
the doctor’s advice. This, I feel, is the most important contributory
factor to the development of resistance. These, coupled with
the fact that most antibiotics are very expensive, patients often
strike a bargain. It seems almost moronic to continue taking a
tablet that costs 70 bucks for a disease that appears to have been
cured. This allows the resistant bacteria to proliferate. What also
happens subsequently is that, the next time they are confronted
with the same symptoms, there is an inclination to self medicate,
with the same antibiotic. Although there maybe no proof of it
being the same causative organism.

Sometimes in the case of serious infections such as tuberculosis
or HIV, the treatment protocol is against the use of single
chemotherapeutic agents. In situations like this, combination

drugs are mandatory. For, even if the mycobacterium or the HIV
strain develops resistance to one drug, the hope is that the other
drug would take care of the situation to a certain extent. There
is nothing stopping them from developing resistance to all the
drugs, as well, exemplified by the emergence of extremely drug
resistant mycobacteria. With tuberculosis being widespread,
even in the developed nations as part of the re emerging
diseases, its treatment certainly poses a major challenge. With
the advent of national health programs, considerable effort has
been made to categorize tuberculosis treatment regimens, to
ensure a uniform protocol for both its diagnosis and treatment.
This does decrease the misuse of antibiotics to a certain extent.

Another major contributory concern in some countries is the
availability of drugs over the counter. No prescriptions are
required. I was very surprised to note that, Ketamine, an
anesthetic drug was available over the counter! With money being
no issue for the richer section, the broadest spectrum antibiotics
are available very easily, with the patient self prescribing it, and
discontinuing it once the symptoms subside. A vicious cycle gets
set up, a fertile ground is provided for the resistant bacteria, and
they continue to find ingenious methods to circumvent every
effective known antibiotic.

Not surprisingly, in developing countries, spurious antibiotics are
rampant and find their way into the market. Spurious medications
often do not contain the drug in the concentration that is required
for bacterial kill. Diluted medications, once again promote the
growth of resistant bacteria. This is a problem, specifically seen
in developing nations. Another reason why self-medication is
suicide.

Indiscreet use destroys the symbiotic colonization as well, once
again predisposing to more infections and drug resistance.
Studies have shown that the presence of commensals in the skin
and the gut actually prevent pathogenic colonization. That is a
self-goal, attacking the very protectors.

Now, does the idea of a super bug seem surprisingly alarming?
Alarming, yes. But there is no surprise here.

We have been providing fuel to the fire, at every level. It is
almost as if we have been on a steadfast campaign to prove
Darwin’s theory of natural selection, even at the cost of our own
downfall. The superbug per say is not any more infectious than
the next bacterium. However, the genes are transferrable, from
one pathogenic microorganism to another. In addition, very
soon, the rate at which drug resistance is attained will overshoot
our capacity to discover fresh cure. It could be any one of us,
there, in that ICU, with a simple infection that could have been
easily cured, if it had not been for all the over use, misuse and
the abuse. So the next time anyone of us is down with a simple
cold/cough/fever, I hope we take the time to consider popping
some pills randomly. Trust the human body’s ability to mount an
immune response. Everything else that we do is only supportive
to that massive primary effort.

For the first three posts I shall restrict discussion to primary science education (up to the 7th grade). The broad problems at this level that come to mind are:

1.  The style of introducing science/math at the primary level.

2. The glaring divide in quality of science education in urban vs. rural schools.

3. The acute shortage of competent teachers and the vicious loop of bad education spawning bad teachers.

I shall devote a separate post to each problem. At the outset I stress that these problems are rather “secondary” as compared to the more fundamental problems of access and quality of education in India (for an ongoing discussion see here). Nevertheless a parallel dialogue on these issues is important because some of them are more tractable (for instance, designing a good syllabus is a lot easier than solving problems of access).

1. “Chloroform to a child’s reasoning faculties”: Do current approaches of introducing mathematics and science to children make sense?

Understanding mathematics and eventually the scientific method marks a significant cognitive leap in the intellectual evolution of any child. Specifically this entails making systematic  judgments, reaching conclusions about unfamiliar situations using an economy of concepts (as opposed to a more intuitive reasoning seen in younger children). Needless to say the cognitive skills procured thus are valuable for success in all disciplines.

The traditional scientific education however works to facilitate just the opposite. In a typical Indian school one is considered good at math if (s)he can memorize multiplication tables up to 20 and can do “division sums” quickly. These “sums” are done (in most cases at least) in a totally mechanical way, oblivious to principles that underlie them. Unsurprisingly, as the children enter middle-school “word problems” begin to be dreaded!

This problem is fairly pandemic and an English school superintendent, Louis Benezet offered a seemingly radical solution to this problem: abolish all formal mathematical education till the 6th grade. Instead, Benezet advocated learning mathematics in context. Students were encouraged to read widely, give talks on incidents they witnessed and places they visited. Mathematical ideas were then learnt in context (the notion of ascending numbers as unique, convenient markers of a page and not something to be memorized for an exam, being a trivial example).  Benezet also demonstrated that students under this regime grasped formal arithmetic much quicker and better when they were eventually introduced to it (see this paper and references therein).

Not surprisingly, Benezet’s suggestion was ignored by the educational orthodoxy of his day and this very important experiment in science education was mostly forgotten. Some later studies however highlighted Benezet’s concern that traditional training in formal mathematics is “chloroform to a child’s reasoning abilities”. A particularly amusing account is reported by Reusser: When asked “There are 26 sheep and 10 goats on a ship. How old is the

captain?”, 76 out of 97 second-grade students `solved’ it by adding the two numbers. More disturbingly it was observed that the fraction of students answering similar non-sensical questions increased with the year of schooling!

When I first heard of Benezet, my reaction was one of glib skepticism to all “new-age” educational reforms floating around. On second thoughts however, his ideas seem to make perfect sense- abstraction is best learnt in context so it is natural to teach mathematics in a manner students relate to. Science (or the mutation of which is taught in our schools) is best taught in a manner where the student relates to phenomena. These posit unique challenges to designing courses, especially in the Indian context but they can be easily addressed. For instance, a syllabus which has an intensive story-telling component coupled with mathematical problems drawn from the stories would go a long way in changing the stereotype of mathematics as a dull formidable discipline to a relevant, entertaining and a deeply beautiful one.

Needless to say there are several practical problems to implementing such a reform. The most obvious hurdle that comes to mind is the lack of teachers who can effectively implement a syllabus that requires intensive engagement amongst children and one that can often be open-ended. But more on that later.