The original opinion piece was quite strongly worded; understandably, as this is an issue that’s stirred up strong feelings on both sides. However, there was a tendency for the vituperation in the comments section to be delivered by those who came across as ‘anti’. There was also a tendency from those in that camp to misrepresent facts to suit their point of view. Here’s an example: a commenter claimed that:

salmon are unaffected by natural 1ppm fluoride in ocean water where calcium is extremely high but are narcotized by industrial fluoride in soft water at only 0.3ppm (Damkaer and Dey [15].

That they included a citation number (the [15]) indicates that this was in fact a cut-&-paste from an article somewhere else. But then a colleague of mine pointed out that this was completely incorrect and Damkaer & Dey (1989) had said nothing of the sort (you’ll find the original paper here):

Damkaer and Dey say no such thing. They showed that some salmonid species are able to make a choice to avoid water at concentrations of fluoride at 0.5 ppm when swimming up a river with ambient fluoride concentrations of 0.1-0.2 ppm. There was no evidence, or even mention, of them being “narcotized”. Salmonids show avoidance (or selection) for all sorts of chemicals, even at very low concentrations. Salmonids are particularly good at detecting chemicals at low concentrations in water – they use it as a mechanism to find their home streams, where they were spawned, as adults.

This comment promptly received 16 “dislikes”. Interesting to see that response, rather than engagement with the actual information. Which leads me to wonder, if the case against fluoridation is so strong, why some of its proponents feel the need to resort to distortion & downright misrepresentation of facts in order to bolster it. As this excellent blog post on The Ruminator says, you’re entitled to your opinion, but you’re not entitled to your own facts. (Go on, go & read the whole thing. And the comments.)

I was reminded of a discussion I had recently with a friend who had been on a team-building exercise: apparently the facilitator commented that people who think factually see the world in black-&-white, while those who rely more on intuition are “shades of grey” thinkers. But given the comments of those who just “know” that fluoridation’s bad for you, I’d have to disagree.

(I also wonder whether Hamilton’s councillors found the time to read the various papers cited – sometimes in quite a misleading way – in support of moves to drop fluoridation…)

One questioner asked if any animals ingest fluoride. Jonathan noted that “the ocean contains 1.3ppm fluoride, and the fish are very happy”, and went on to point out that this particular element is pretty much ubiquitous in food and drink. Mary’s response was that

there’s very good reasons why sea water is not suitable for human consumption. One of them, being there is too much fluoride.

Actually, the reason we shouldn’t drink seawater is that our kidneys can’t cope: in attempting to remove the excess salt, they end up producing an excessive amount of urine, so too much seawater will lead to dehydration.

But I wanted to ask: Mary, you’ve indicated here (& in other comments) that fluoride in any quantity is bad for you. So, would you advocate against eating fish and drinking tea (1-9 mg/L)? After all, both have higher levels of fluoride than our tap water does (or will up until June 21, anyway), we’re advised to eat several serves of fish each week, and a lot of Kiwis drink a lot of tea (57-64% were regular drinkers, in a 1999 survey).

There was also the comment that

The evidence that fluoride impacts on other bodily systems is obvious just by using common sense.

The problem here is that common sense is often wrong. That’s why decisions like this really should be based on good scientific evidence, and not on common sense. From a piece on Psychology Today:

…common sense isn’t real sense, if we define sense as being sound judgement, because relying on experience alone doesn’t usually offer enough information to draw reliable conclusions… Real sense can rarely be derived from experience alone because most people’s experiences are limited.

Maybe that’s why (as a species) we’re not very good at handling risk assessment – because we place too much emphasis on common sense?

And an aside to our Mayor: if you believe such decisions are best left to central government, then why on earth did you table the motion to change the status quo, and then vote for it? (Not to mention, deciding to overturn the 2006 binding referendum on this very issue?)

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This really is one of those issues that won’t go away. I wrote about it most recently yesterday, but an earlier piece (back in 2009) garnered some interesting responses.

A key sub-theme that emerged within this topic was the view that fluoride is a chemical or poison.

Yes, fluoride is a chemical. So are table salt & dihydrogen monoxide**. So often we see the term ‘chemical’ used in a pejorative sense, ignoring the fact that everything on the planet, ourselves included, is at some level a concatenation of chemicals. Incidentally, in the right – or should that be wrong? – quantities all are toxic: drinking too much water can be fatal.

The source of fluoride used in water fluoridation is hydrofluorosilicic acid (HFA).

Several submitters attached copies of the Material Safety Data Sheets…. which includes various warnings such as “Avoid contact with skin and eyes”, “Repeated or prolonged exposure may result in fluorosis” and “Avoid contaminating waterways”.

And indeed, there would be major risks in allowing concentrated HFA to come into contact with skin or eyes. But somewhere along the way people seem to have lost track of the fact that people drinking fluoridated water are not exposed to these risks, for the HFA is highly diluted upon being added to the water supply. As above, the dose makes the poison.

One of the papers submitted in support of dropping fluoridation is summarised here (it’s sometimes referred to as the ‘Harvard study’). The paper itself can be read at this link. It’s a meta-analysis of data from China, “where fluoride generally occurs in drinking water as a natural contaminant”. Reasonably large areas of China have groundwater with more than 1.5mg/L of naturally-occurring fluoride – above recommended levels. The study found that

children in high-fluoride areas had significantly lower IQ scores than those who lived in low-fluoride areas

and concluded that

[t]he results support the possibility of an adverse effect of high fluoride exposure on children’s neurodevelopment.

While I’m sure that this was viewed as significant support for stopping fluoridation, there’s something missing:the ‘high-exposure’ groups were receiving naturally-high levels of fluoride in their water, or were drinking water contaminated by industrial wastes. Levels of fluoride in these groups reached more than 30mg/L. The ‘low’ groups (also called the ‘reference’ groups in the study) were getting less than 1mg/L – the same levels found in treated drinking water in New Zealand.

In other words, this study does not demonstrate that the up-till-now-current levels of fluoride in our water represent a danger to children’s intellectual development. (Did those citing it in support of removing fluoride from our water, actually read it?)

Science education: we can do better. Much better.

** You can demonise most things if you try hard enough.

This video featuring philosopher A.C. Grayling, on the BBC’s ‘Future’ page (which alas! did not give an embed code), is a must watch for those concerned with (& about) science literacy. Noting that many people feel excluded by science, he explains why he believes this is a problem, before going on to point out that moves to change things need to start at school:

Our traditional way of teaching science is that the people who are learning it will go on to be scientists. For many people, that’s not the way to go… People could get a good understanding of science, without the need to have technical expertise.

Are our current school (& tertiary) curricula able to deliver on this?

And yes, I found it on FB: Photo: Mister No [ITA], http://on.fb.me/18ssHJl, via Biologia-Vida with Luis Balderas Solis

To which, having watched it, I can only say, ‘no, I don’t think so’.

Why? Well, apart from the music (repetitive rap-style tracks don’t do a lot for me, but then I am a Grumpy Older Person, lol), the whole thing smacks of the old Scala Naturae – the idea that evolution is a linear process. Which is anything but correct. A lot of the iconography of evolution repeats this misconception, but that doesn’t make it right.

And the video contributes to another misconception: that humans are the pinnacle of the evolutionary process. I mean, that’s pretty much all the second half of the video focuses on.

As it happens, it looks like there are several different versions out there. The one below at least has a better handle on mammal evolution (I mean, it has Dimetrodon!, but it still subscribes to those same misconceptions.

Which is rather a pity, really.

Chancellor Rt Hon Jim Bolger, Vice chancellor Professor Roy Crawford, academia, distinguished guests, students at all levels, my whanau, everyone.

This really is an extraordinary and totally unexpected honour that you have bestowed upon me. I find it very difficult indeed to adequately express what it means to me.   

When my daughter Janet handed me the letter from the University on Christmas day, she says it is the only occasion she has seen me speechless. I was truly gob-smacked ! So I will just say ‘Thank you’.

It is actually somewhat ironic, because in the late 1940’s, as a returned serviceman, I took a BSc (Agric) at Reading University, England, and passed with a ‘C’ grade.

But life was too full as a student, what with sport, starting an agricultural journal, getting married to a beautiful civil engineer  graduate of London University, living on a small boat, and many other activities better left unsaid, such that the ambition to attain a First Class Honours degree went by the wayside.

I did, however, become infected with the stimulating topic of science. Even as a 10 year-old, I pored over nature magazines. I still have some of them.

But I left university puzzled. I had been taught things which just did not make sense, such as the idea that mountain formation was due to shrinkage of the earth’s surface, while the concept of so-called continental drift was anathema. And the explanations of  heredity were far from complete or even believable.

It got me thinking about ‘truth’ and the realisation that truth is only that which is the current knowledge and thought, and that it is constantly being replaced with new ideas. And where do ‘facts’ tie in with ‘truth’?.

We moved to Waikato in 1960, and I have followed with interest the development of this University from paddocks to a landscaped campus. Your reputation has grown, and you can now boast of being a leader among NZ universities in the particular disciplines you have chosen to develop. Congratulations.

Universities have critical roles in society.

Research is a heavy responsibility. It is actually a huge privilege to be paid to research. You are a repository of knowledge, not only in your libraries and theses, but also in the research-based understanding lying in the minds of academia.

Then there are your teaching responsibilities, hence all these wonderful students hopefully fired by your inspirational lectures. I know I was by some unforgettable tutors.

But there is another responsibility, which I often feel is not adequately addressed. This is the role of a university as the public conscience.

It has long perturbed me that the public battlers and advocates for a better society are almost all lay people or NGO’s, whereas those very issues are probably being studied in depth in this institution.

It takes courage to step out beyond the walls of the campus and into the hurly-burly of controversy. There are noble examples at this University, and they will know to whom I refer, but I’ll mention one from Waikato, the late much-loved Dr Charlotte Wallace.

Besides being an assiduous researcher of snails, she was totally fearless in her environmental advocacy, and greatly admired and respected as a result. She virtually started, decades ago, the South Auckland Conservation Association. She made a difference.

We look to the Universities to be the champions, the leaders, for the big issues facing us. You have the knowledge. Please, make sure it is put to good use.  

I turn now to you graduates of all disciplines and interests.

I was born in 1924 (I can see you all doing some rapid mental calculations). In that year, there were only two billion people on earth.

Now, in this one person’s lifetime, that has more than tripled. There are three people alive now for every one alive then. Picture if that were to happen to you all present here in the world of 2013. It would seem impossible.

So believe me when I say that maybe I can personally appreciate the creaks and groans of poor old mother earth, and the pressures and stresses placed upon the populace and natural systems.

There are the issues such as climate change, peak oil, the health of the oceans, extinctions and the loss of biodiversity, the rush to urbanization, rising sea levels, let alone the forecasted inability of farming to feed the projected ten billion people.

We ignore at our peril the intricate web of millions of species whose interactions create our living conditions. We have a lamentable inability to recognise the implications of exponential growth, and the menace of the bell curve. The downside of that curve will turn round and bite.

These matters are all interconnected, and cry out for solutions that are also interconnected. My generation has failed to find those solutions, or, where they are blindingly obvious, failed even more miserably to implement them.

Many of these issues were faced by Maori some 5-600 years ago. Their previously known world of easily harvested fish and birds suddenly faced the impacts of resource depletion. Their reactions paralleled those that arose centuries or millennia before in many parts of the world.

Their first reaction was war, to safeguard their food supplies and other resources. The other reaction, to their great credit, was to impose upon themselves strict rules of harvest, through such mechanisms as rahui. There are lessons there for humans everywhere.

And so I look to you, our next generation, to whom we dodderers bequeath our one-and-only beautiful and magical earth. In some ways, it matters little the topic you studied here.

You have, I trust, been taught by this University to think, because you will need to use those analytical skills that are so necessary in any field of study, for the massive tasks you face ahead. You have to persuade both the wider population and the decision makers, of the root problems we face. There are doubters galore, both for commercial and political reasons or because of reluctance to face facts.

The centuries-old saying is ‘There are none so blind as those who will not see’. You have an absolutely necessary task ahead, which may seem daunting, and you may react by thinking ‘what can little me do’.

However, I say you can make a difference. You will recall the butterfly effect, as expounded by Edward Lorenz, he of the chaos theory. He postulated that the effect of a beat of a butterfly’s wing in the tropics could trigger a hurricane many kilometres away.

I say to you, be that butterfly.

It is a sobering thought that you, we, are each utterly unique, an assembly of atoms never ever seen before. You will each therefore by definition, have abilities that are also unique. To make that ‘difference’ I speak of, you need to develop those abilities, and grow a fire in your belly, a determination to see things through.

Many of our gurus talk of the need to have ambition, but they are usually referring to the ambition to make money. While important, money does not equate satisfaction or contentment. Of its own, neither will it solve the problems you now face.

Nor will you achieve overnight success. It may take years, even decades. You’ll suffer setbacks, but that is in the nature of things, and our world needs stubborn battlers.

You will need to learn the skills of working with, rather than against, and of respecting the right of others to hold opinions that are so divergent from your own that they infuriate you. Anger is no solution. I think Churchill is credited with the saying ‘jaw-jaw is better than war-war’.

Seek friends, make alliances, and above all be positive. So often, even those who you originally felt were opponents, were actually just looking for solutions. Find those solutions.

Many years ago, a truth dawned on me. I had been used to complaining that ‘they’ should ‘do something’. ‘They’ frequently didn’t. I then realised that therefore ‘we’ must do something. Again, ‘we’ sometimes failed, and the clear conclusion was that ‘I’ must get stuck in. If I didn’t, why should someone else ?

Then something magical occurred. My actions suddenly activated the ‘we’, and in some cases, the ‘we’ became a reformed ‘they’. So I say, never be afraid to stick your head above the parapet.

Nor should you be put off by time. May I quote the proposed National Wetland Centre, at Lake Serpentine, south of Ohaupo. It is beginning to take shape, 16 years after planning started. Given maybe two more years, it could be completed.

And another issue took 67 meetings to end up with a solution that was welcomed by all parties. The Waikato Ecological Enhancement Trust was formed. It now puts hundreds of thousands of dollars annually into the wetlands and waters of the Waikato Catchment.

Stick at it !

To date, you have been absorbing, assembling, knowledge. Today, from this moment, your role changes. You have been learners, now, while still seekers, you become teachers. You have been followers, now you must become leaders.

Your collective tasks are frightening in their necessity. I challenge you. Get out there. Don’t be afraid. Be determined. Make sure our planet earth continues to be a place of diversity and beauty we can all truly love and protect. Play your part.

Then, when you reach the age of 80, people will say,’ yes, you made a difference’.

I end with a quote from the inspirational Helen Keller: deaf and blind from early childhood.

I am only one, but still I am one.

I cannot do everything, but still I can do something.

I will not refuse to do something I can do.

 

Thank you.

No, seriously – ignore the atrocious cover image & listen to the ideas therein. (I suppose one could argue that the image would get more people to view Thunderf00t’s message than a more mundane title, but would those who came for the cars & women stay for the serious sci-comm message?)

One concern with the paper is individuals who were not taught certain aspects of the NCEA Level 3 curriculum. This is a major issue that has resulted from the preference of schools to not teach certain aspects of the course. There NEEDS to be consultation to standardise the NCEA curriculum as well as ensuring that the gap is bridged with communication between teriary education providers and secondary education providers. As I understand it there is significant concern over the changed NCEA Level 3 Biology course, which now does not teach genetics in year 13. I don’t know the answer in the resolution of this issue, however it will greaty impact on future acedemic success as well as future funding when grades drop.

This student has hit the nail squarely on the head. Teachers reading this will be working on the following Achievement Standards with their year 12 students this year (where previously gene expression was handled in year 13): AS91157 Demonstrate understanding of genetic variation and change, and AS91159: Demonstrate understanding of gene expression. (You’ll find the Biology subject matrix here.)

And as my student says, this has the potential to cause real problems unless the university staff concerned have made it their business to be aware of these changes and to consider their impact. For the 2014 cohort of students coming in to introductory biology classes will have quite different prior learning experiences (& not just in genetics) from those we are teaching this year and taught in previous years. We cannot continue as we have done in the past.

Briefly, the aquatic ape hypothesis (I will NOT call it a theory) purports to explain the evolution of a number of aspects of our morphology: our relative hairlessness & the distribution of that hair, bipedalism, the way so many people like fish (I will put my hand up as an exception to this), distribution of body fat, & so on. ** Unfortunately for this particular just-so story, there’s good evidence that all these features did not evolve at the same time. Bipedalism, for example, pre-dates the chimp-human divergence, but the addition of fish to the diet seems to have appeared much later. Nor is there necessarily strong evidence of any links between a particular feature & the life aquatic. For example, while cetaceans are essentially hairless, seals, sealions and their relatives are covered with dense coats of fur.

Anyway, the hypothesis has recently been the focus of some entertaining parodies, among them the ‘space ape’ version (face-to-face copulation would really have been the only option, dontcha know? for otherwise the jetpacks would get in the way) and – as a conclusion to his explanation of why the aquatic ape idea doesn’t stack up – Henry Gee’s thought experiment involving the unlikely combination of elephants and custard.

Enjoy.

** “& so on” includes the sinuses in our skulls (another feature that reinforces our African origins). Apparently they provided a buoyancy aid – yet they’re found in all mammals regardless of habitat.

[EDIT] However, courtesy of one Smut Clyde I find that the aquatic ape proposal has nothing on this.