Radio Show
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CU Professor Paul Shankman's New Book |
Butterfly Migration . . . and The Trashing of Margaret Mead
We turn now to a long-running controversy in the social sciences – that surrounding anthropologist Margaret Mead and her work in the Samoan Islands. Margaret Mead has been accused of conducting sloppy work - particularly for her famous book “Coming of Age in Samoa”.
University of Colorado Anthropology Professor Paul Shankman spent years studying the controversy and recently published “The Trashing of Margaret Mead – Anatomy of an Anthropological Controversy.” He digs into the background of one of Mead’s harshest critics, Derek Freeman, and uncovers new evidence that Freeman’s fierce criticism of Margaret Mead was deeply flawed.
Groups Featured in this report include:Full Text:[ 2 ] We begin with a look at some of the recent news in science.
[ 1 ] STORY 1:
Eating a diet rich in the phenolic components of virgin olive oil represses several pro-inflammatory genes, and it does it better than eating olive oils that are low in phenols. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Genomics suggest that this partly explains the reduced risk of heart disease and stroke seen in people who eat a 'Mediterranean diet'.
Francisco Perez-Jimenez from the University of Cordoba, Spain, led a team who studied how eating a breakfast higher or lower in phenol compounds affected the gene expression in 20 patients with a problem called “metabolic syndrome.” That’s a condition characterized by high blood triglycerides, high blood pressure, and being overweight—with most weight stored around the waist. In the study, participants with metabolic syndrome ate controlled breakfasts with either phenol-rich virgin olive oil or lower-phenol olive oils. The researchers identified 98 genes that promote the immune system to generate inflammatory conditions that were REPRESSED when the study subjects ate the most phenol-rich olive oils. This suggests that a phenol-rich diet can shift immune system cells to a less damaging inflammatory profile.
[ LLD] STORY 2:
A microbe’s ability to survive extreme cold may be enhanced by substances that can HARM the organism under normal environmental conditions. According to a study by researchers at Queen's University of Belfast, it’s all thanks to “KAY-ah-tropes” a generic term for substances that destabilize key molecular structures in living systems.
While de-stabilizing molecules can a bad thing for microbes under hot temperatures, it can be good at the very low temperatures that make cells get rigid. The Irish researchers reached these conclusions after screening 176 microbes for low-temperature tolerance. From these, they chose the seven most cold-tolerant strains. They were all fungi—you know—stuff related to yeast and mushrooms. The scientists grew those fungi in cultures that were dosed with either KAY-ah-tropes -- which destabilize molecules -- or kosmo-tropes, which stabilize organic structures under normal temperatures.
Microbes growing on both the KAY-ah-trope and the kosmo-trope compounds did best at 30 degrees Celsius, which is 86 degrees Farenheit. At temperatures near 0 degrees Celsius, or 32 degrees Farenheit —or freezing -- most of the microbes the kosmo-tropic media stopped growing. But ---the fungi on the KAY-ah-tropic media continued to grow at remarkably high rates.
And the fungi treated with KAY-ah-tropes withstood temperatures as low as MINUS−80 degrees Celsius, which is more than 100 degrees below zero on the Fahrenheit scale. The findings may enhance the study of low-temperature ecosystems, such as bacterial colonies on the deep-sea floor and microbes that may inhabit planets such as Mars, which has water and KAY-ah-tropic ions.
[ 3 ] STORY 3:
One place those chaotropic compounds may be in rich supply is within our oceans, and new data indicate there are more species of microbes in those oceans than we realized. These new data come from a project known as the Census of Marine Life, which involves over 2,000 scientists from more than 80 countries. The project, which has sampled over 1,000 ocean sites worldwide, has documented that all kinds of ocean ecosystems are teeming with microbes—even deep ocean mud.
These results have forced researchers to drastically revise estimates for the number of microbial species residing there after the census indicated up to one hundred times the expected diversity may be present. When the International Census of Marine Microbes kicked off in 2003, microbiologists had identified 6,000 kinds of microbe and predicted that they might find as many as 600,000. As it turns out, they found there are at least 20 million different kinds of microbes, and the true number may even be billions or trillions. CU Boulder’s Norman Pace says the findings of so many microbes will offer a whole new world of microbial life for scientists to explore.
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[CALENDAR ITEMS?]
Last but not least, Mark Your Calendars for EARTH DAY this Thursday.
In Fort Collins, Colorado State will have a weekend-long Earth Day Celebration and an Open Your Mind Fair.
In Boulder, Schools on Thursday will celebrate a “Bike to School Day.” Students and staff can register online at saferoutes.bvsd.org and the school with the highest participation will earn a prize.
And in Denver, Thursday you can attend an Earth Day Fair in Civic Center Park for ideas about conservation and preservation.
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{MUSIC BREAK: (Herbie Hancock’s Butterfly. What else?)}
FEATURE #1
This week, a few, tattered Monarch butterflies are finally reaching as far north as Kansas. They’re finishing an arduous journey that started last fall when some were born as far north as Canada. Last fall, these delicate creatures flew all the way to Mexico, where they waited out the winter. Now that it’s spring, the survivors have been flying north to lay their eggs. How such a tiny animal can fly so far, with such precision has long been a mystery. Scientists have some surprising answers. From Mexico, How on Earth’s Shelley Schlender reports:
(FEATURE IS 5 MINUTES)
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{MUSIC BREAK (Back to Herbie Hancock’s Butterfly)}
LESLIE: Thanks to Shelley for that report. We turn now to a long-running controversy in
the social sciences – that surrounding anthropologist Margaret Mead and her work in the
Samoan Islands. Margaret Mead has been accused of conducting sloppy work -
particularly for her famous book “Coming of Age in Samoa”.
University of Colorado Anthropology Professor Paul Shankman spent years studying
the controversy and recently published “The Trashing of Margaret Mead – Anatomy of an
Anthropological Controversy.” He digs into the background of one of Mead’s harshest
critics, Derek Freeman, and uncovers new evidence that Freeman’s fierce criticism of
Margaret Mead was deeply flawed.
We’ll discuss the book with Paul Shankman in just a moment, but first, lets hear part of an interview recorded before Margaret Mead died in 1978.
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“Dr. Mead, do you have any advice for the young people of America?
“I don’t have any advice that I can give to all young people, because young people differ so much among themselves. I have some advice for young people Wondering what they are going to do and would like to do something more than marry and have children and bring up their children well and be good local citizens. For those young people who feel they would like to do something more with their lives, to have more of a career, rather than a job, I would suggest that they look very hard at the world they’re living in, realize that they’re looking at the most significant age that the world has faced yet and try to decide what kind of a task will fit best, their capabilities on the one hand, and the demands of the space age, on the other.”
“Thank you very much, Dr. Margaret Mead.”
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Q1: PAUL: THIS IS AN INTERESTING CAST OF CHARACTERS YOU’RE
STUDYING…ONE OF THE FOREMOST ANTHROPOLOGISTS IN THE WORLD
AND A RIVAL ANTHROPOLOGIST DETERMINED TO –AS YOU SAY – TRASH
HER REPUTATION. SUM UP THE CONTROVERSY.
Q2: WHAT DID YOU UNCOVER IN YOUR RESEARCH? WHAT WAS “THE
SMOKING GUN” THAT SHOWED YOU FREEMAN WAS WRONG?
Q: IN WHAT WAYS DID DEREK FREEMAN “CHERRY-PICK” EVIDENCE THAT
SUPPORTED HIS IDEAS?
Q: WHAT DID HE DO WITH EVIDENCE THAT CONTRADICTED HIS THEORIES
ABOUT MARGARET MEAD?
Q3. YOU MET DEREK FREEMAN BEFORE HE DIED. TELL US ABOUT HIM.
WHAT WERE FREEMAN’S MOTIVES?
WHY WAS HE SO DETERMINED TO DESTROY MARGARET MEAD’S
REPUTATION?
Q: FREEMAN WASN’T THE ONLY ONE TO CRITICIZE MARGARET MEAD.
IS SOME CRITICISM WARRANTED?
Q: WHY DID YOU TAKE ON THIS BATTLE?
OUTRO: Thank you. Paul Shankman is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His book is titled “The Trashing of Margaret Mead - -Anatomy of an Anthropological Controversy”.
END BY 8:57:00
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{MUSIC - THEME} [ 1 ] That’s all for this edition of How on Earth. Tim Morton wrote our theme music.
Tom Wasinger produced it. Additional Music from . . . _________________________
[ 2 ] Our website is H-O-E dot K-G-N-U dot NET. You can also find it through the main K-G-N-U dot ORG website. Questions or comments? Call the KGNU comment line at (303)-447-9911. For How on Earth, the KGNU Science show, I’m LESLIE DODSON [ 1 ] And I’m JOEL PARKER
