Friday Five: Boaty McBoatface or why we can't have nice things

RRS Sir David Attenborough

In March 2016 the Natural Environment Research Council asked the people of the internet to name its newest research ship. The ship was due to study the effects of climate change for the British Antarctic Survey, an institute dedicated to researching polar regions, and would be part of the most advanced floating research fleet in the world 

The United Kingdom's science minister, Jo Johnson, said the public naming campaign, #NameOurShip, was intended to give everyone across the UK the "opportunity to feel part of this exciting project and the untold discoveries it will unearth."

Some people came on board (sorry, not sorry) with appropriately prestigious names for the world-class research vessel, such as RRS (Royal Research Ship) Shackleton, RRS Falcon, RRS Endeavour or RRS Attenborough. Others, however, offered up less serious suggestion, such as former BBC Jersey radio presenter, James Hand who proposed the infamous Boaty McBoatface. Despite receiving ten times more votes than any other name, the vessel was eventually named RRS Sir David Attenborough.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge with Sir David Attenborough at the official naming ceremony of RRS Sir David Attenborough - photo credit British Antarctic Survey

Hand apologised for the entry and for causing NERC's website to crash with all the excitement about Boaty McBoatface. But the people at NERC were not at all offended, with a spokesperson tweeting back, "A bit of fun is good for us all", and noting that now millions more know about a research ship looking to address the ever-important issue of climate change. And in a move that kept everybody happy, Boaty McBoatface is the name of one of the submersibles deployed from RRS Sir David Attenborough. The advanced underwater submarine is designed to reach depths of 6,000m and journey independently under the ice in polar regions, to conduct a range of expeditions in the Arctic and Antarctic regions.

Boaty McBoatface

Meanwhile, proving that the Great British Public really can't be trusted with voting in polls (cough *Brexit* cough), other names suggested for the $288million world-class polar research vessel were:

1. RRS I Like Big Boats and I Cannot Lie
2. RRS Capt'n Birdseye Get Off My Cod
3. RRS It's Bloody Cold Here
4. RRS What Iceberg
5. RRS Big Metal Floaty Thingy-thing

Debunking the Myths: Inferior

Inferior by Angela Saini

4th Estate

Pp. 237

Angela Saini contends that the so-called science which has labelled women as ‘the weaker sex’ is biased and influenced by politics, history, and social culture. Sick of people (men) telling her that women are inferior to men based on dubious scientific data, she wrote this book in an attempt, “not to lose control but to have at hand some hard facts and a history to explain them”. She challenges myths and provides explanations as to why some assumptions were made in the first place. Even though science is perceived to be neutral, women have historically been excluded from research, experiments, and theories. “Women are so grossly under-represented in modern science because, for most of history, they have been treated as intellectual inferiors and deliberately excluded from it.”

Darwin in his The Descent of Man believed that women were inferior because he couldn’t see any women doing the same intellectual things. “The evidence appeared to be all around him. Leading writers, artists and scientists were almost all men. He assumed that this inequality reflected a biological fact.” In evolutionary terms, drawing assumptions about women’s abilities from the way they happened to be treated by society at the moment is narrow-minded and dangerous.

Those ‘Men are from Mars; Women from Venus’ type ‘theories’ remain popular because anything that claims to explore sex differences is highly sought-after by media outlets looking for clickbait articles. People who counter that differences are not wholly due to genetics are often labelled sex difference deniers, in a way that would never be introduced in debates about race or colour; not since the 1950s, anyway. Sexual selection theories which were proven to be incorrect and unscientific, however, are making a popular comeback.

People are messy and come with preconceptions and prejudices. Saini argues that it is impossible not to politicise scientific data and that neuroscience has profound repercussions for how people see themselves. Humans are bound to pick up attitudes and adopt behaviours based on societal expectations rather than independent biological factors or sex chromosomes. We are also able to change and adapt as recent research into neuroplasticity confirms that the brain isn’t set in stone in childhood but is in fact mouldable throughout life.

Saini also debunks several myths, such as the one that women are better at multi-tasking than men. The paper that was published on this subject, actually never reported this claim, but the cultural and gender stereotypes were stressed in the press release. A further belief is that in previous cultures men went hunting while women gathered, making the males dominant. Research by Bion Griffin and Agnes Estioko-Griffin into the Nanadukan Agta refutes this assumption, suggesting that males did some tasks and females did others. “By and large people did whatever they wanted to do. There was no sphere of work that was exclusively male or female – except perhaps the killing of other people.  Women would stay back when groups of men went out on raids of their enemies”.

Hunting was not the primary source of nutrition anyway, so the group that hunted did not have the most crucial task. While studying the !Kung hunter-gatherers in southern Africa in 1979, Richard Borshay Lee noted that women’s gathering provided as much as two-thirds of food in the group’s diet, so gathering was arguably a more important source of calories than hunting. It is also likely that the first tools were digging sticks and containers for the food, which, being made from wood, skin or fibre, would break down and disappear over time leaving no record, unlike the hard-wearing stone tools that archaeologists have assumed were used for hunting. “This is one reason that women’s invention, and consequently women themselves, have been neglected by evolutionary researchers.” Many of these myths began because they fitted the dominant – male – narrative that positioned women as inferior.

Humans are not automatically the same as other animals, and much of our behaviour is more likely due to societal pressure than biological expression. Women are not inferior, and the science that seeks to suggest this is the case is inevitably flawed. It is time for this to be recognised and stopped. Sarah Hrdy argues, “A feminist is just someone who advocates for equal opportunities for both sexes. In other words, it’s being democratic. And we’re all feminists, or you should be ashamed not to be.” This is the science we should all follow.

Friday Five: Books Read in July

By sheer coincidence it appears that I have read five books in July, and that red features quite prominently in the covers. Here, then, are brief overviews (full reviews to follow later).

5 Books Read in July:

1. To Calais in Ordinary Time by James Meek (Canongate) - Mixing elements of The Canterbury Tales and Shakespearean comedy, this story takes place in South-West England in 1348 as a group of bowmen travel through the country from Outen Green in Gloucestershire to Calais to fight the French, while the plague is advancing steadily towards them. As the novel was published in 2019 all the reviewers drew contemporary parallels with Brexit and the existentialist threat of the climate crisis, but anyone now would automatically think of the Covid pandemic. The novel is narrated from three different people’s perspectives, and the voices are clearly different - there is much merit in juxtaposing the courtly language and behaviour of French romance with the idioms and earthy attitudes of the English soldiers, and the novel was unsurprisingly on many newspapers' 'Books of the year' lists. 
2. An Anonymous Girl by Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen (Picador) - this is one of those currently fashionable psychological thrillers about women behaving badly. New York psychologist, Dr Shields conducts an experiment on morality and ethics which make-up artist, Jessica wangles her way onto - fraudulently taking the place of the 'real' subject. It soon transpires that all is not as it seems (surprise!) and that everyone is manipulating each other. The two characters are meant to be written individually but they sound exactly the same, apart from one of them refers to 'you' throughout, which soon becomes intensely irritating. We are meant to find the vapid minutiae of their existence fascinating - from how they dress to what they eat - and it won't be long before someone snaps up the rights and makes another tediously glib and glossy film.  
3. Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor (Riverhead Books) - Every living body breathes, but it turns out that half of us are doing it wrongly. Ancient humans and Eastern mystics knew the correct methods, but modern lifestyles have ignored them leading to multiple health issues including tooth decay, sleep apnoea, anxiety, asthma, and the preponderance of choking. It may be skewed towards anecdotes and storytelling rather than academia and science (think popular American documentary podcast) but there's enough insight to challenge conventional wisdom and make the case for nasal breathing over mouth breathing.
4. The Good People by Hannah Kent (Picador) - Set in 1825 in South-West rural Ireland, this novel explores liminal spaces and inexplicable things: “The strange hinges of the world, the thresholds between what was known and all that lay beyond”. In this world many follow the ‘old’ beliefs that children (and adults) could be stolen (swept) by the fairies to be replaced by changelings. It is dripping with pathetic fallacy as the female power (herbs and agricultural lore represented by the Wise Woman) is challenged by that of the male (a priest with punishments and preaching of sin). A great one for book clubs, it gives rise to much discussion, but - as to be expected - things are pretty grim. 
5. Briar Rose: A Novel of the Holocaust by Jane Yolen (Tor) - Jane Yolen has form for taking mythical legends and fairy stories, and twisting them into contemporary tales with relevance and meaning. In this YA novel of a young woman, Becca, trying to find out more about her grandmother's mysterious past; the castle is a concentration camp; the sleeping beauty is gassed; and the prince's kiss is the breath of life. That's not a spoiler, because all of that is obvious from the title, but Yolen believes it is not the past that makes us who we are, but the way we tell our histories. Every other chapter returns to the recounting of the familiar fairy tale interspersed by Becca's explorations into the unknown; a way in which ritual can help us comprehend the horrific and inexplicable truth.

That Way Madness Lies: The Warlow Experiment

The Warlow Experiment by Alix Nathan

Serpent's Tail

Pp. 276

This novel is based on the true story of an eccentric Victorian gentleman, Herbert Powyss, who conducted an experiment; he placed an advert in a newspaper asking for a man to volunteer to be placed in isolation in his cellar for seven years with ‘every convenience desired’ but ‘without seeing a human face’. John Warlow was the only person who answered the advert, ‘a semi-literate labourer with a wife and six children to provide for’. Alix Nathan imagines how this experiment might have worked, or not, and she has created a rich novel of mental manipulation. She imagines that Powyss wants to see how a mind would cope without social contact and write up his findings to present to the Royal Society.

Powyss is typical of his era in that he likes to collect and catalogue things. He imagines that a human would be no different to his plants, “where so often he’d exerted order and precision, used good sense and experience, where reason had ruled”. Many of the metaphors are flora-related; he also hangs paintings on his walls of the Dutch masters and the cover of the book is a Flemish Vanitas image with fruit and flowers surrounded by insect life. Even the endpapers are glorious depictions of wildlife on wallpaper, representing both the care with which Powyss took to furnish Warlow’s underground apartments, and the never-ceasing ecological effects of co-existence.

Everyone in the house is affected by the presence of the man in the cellar, including the cook and the butler. The novel frequently switches perspective mid-chapter from Powyss to Fox, his old schoolfellow, or Hannah, Warlow’s wife, to Catherine, the housemaid. As one expects, madness ensues, and there are clear echoes of Frankenstein, Pygmalion, and even Jekyll and Hyde. Science without nature is abhorrent and potentially impossible. Life is fragile and unpredictable. Alix Nathan’s book is a superb rationale for the Ethical Conduct of Human Research Committee.

Friday Five: Still Cross

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have found that cross-stitch is wonderful therapy. It helps me to relax; I get to stab things without hurting anyone; I am able to express my sentiments in a non-violent manner; and I end up with a product that I can give as a gift. Here are my latest creations. All the patterns and explanations are taken from Really Cross Stitch; for when You Just Want to Stab Something a Lot by Rayna Fahey.

Five More Cross Stitches:

'"She was warned. She was given an explanation." Such chilling words when you consider their intent: to silence a woman's political voice.

Fortunately it takes a lot more than that pitiful attempt at bullying to silence Sen. Elizabeth Warren, whose refusal to stay silent energised a movement. 

These three words have become a rallying cry for women fighting to be heard in male-dominated spaces. The knack for persistence is a requirement for any activist, just like cross stitch. So consider this pattern part of your revolutionary routine.'

'Sometimes the state of the world really is quite rage-inducing, and five minutes watching the news can leave you feeling very stabby indeed. 

Channel your rage into this project! There have been countless studies expounding the mental health benefits of craft. Something about the gentle repetitive nature of creating with your hands calms and balances the mind. One thing's for sure, by the time you've stabbed your needle through these 750 stitches you're bound to feel much better. There's a reason it's not called "happy stitch".'

'"I am not as nasty as racism, fraud, conflict of interest, homophobia, sexual assault, transphobia, white supremacy, misogyny, ignorance, white privilege..." Nina Donovan

Funny how men in power really don't like it when people have political opinions that challenge their domination over the world. Of course if those people happen to be women, or even worse *gasp* women with political power, the dudebros get real upset real quick and the name-calling begins. Yes, we are here to destroy the joint. Calling us names just fuels our fire."

'Compassioning: verb; the act of choosing not to be an asshole to your fellow humans.

Call me a Buddhist if you must, but is there any evidence anywhere that building walls makes people safer? If they work so well, why do people make such a big deal of tearing them down?

Here's an idea, how about we introduce a new measure for governments: the National Index of Compassionate Elected Representatives. Let's rank all politicians and see who truly tops the NICER list.'

'If you think telling your kids there's no Santa is hard, try telling them there's no North Pole.

There are some corporate spin doctors who really have a lot to answer for. Honestly, imagine having the job where you have to come up with ways to spin total climate destruction and obliteration of life as we know it. Somehow they've even managed to propagate the idea that climate change is something "invented" by political activists to, I don't know, make the world a better place or something... Next time you're up against some skeptic, remember:

What do we want? Evidence-based science!
When do we want it? After peer-based review!'

Frozen: Let It Go

Ice by Louis Nowra

(Allen & Unwin) Pp. 322

In the 1880s British entrepreneurs Malcolm McEachern and Andrew McIlwraith tow an iceberg to Sydney and introduce locals to ice. It goes down a treat, but as the iceberg melts, the frozen body of a young sailor is found within it. Malcolm is lost in grief for the death of his wife, Ann, and he attempts to preserve her memory. A parallel story is narrated by a young man who takes over his partner’s research work (she was writing a biography of Malcolm McEachern) after she is frozen in a coma. Images and metaphors of arresting time resound throughout the novel.

Early Sydney comes alive through the impressions of the young men as they first arrive. It is a character in itself, defying description and confounding assumptions; full of possibilities as people flee the Old World and try to reinvent themselves in a land of opportunities. Malcolm is always chasing the latest business venture: he brings refrigerated meat from Australia to London, electricity to Melbourne and order to the Tokyo electric tram system. He is attracted to what he calls Australia’s “dirty prism of classless democratic optimism” which allowed him to succeed in business.

Malcolm is clearly a man’s man, dismissing women as inferior and the representation of women within the novel is astoundingly weak. Malcolm’s mother remarries and excludes him from her life, and his second wife, Mary, is unkindly portrayed as some sort of harpy, despite the fact that his treatment of her is appalling. He mourns his first wife, Ann, building her a mausoleum – a weird subterranean world of bottled embryos – and Mary disappears into the background to lead a separate life.

The telling of Malcolm’s story is full of things that biographers could not have known but must have imagined; as the tale proceeds the narrator becomes increasingly unreliable. Ann dies, which is convenient, because live women are so messy, and Malcolm is distraught, but is the narrator talking about himself or about Malcolm? “Until he’d married her he had been unloved and she had awoken love in him, as surely as if it were a delicious, sweet emerging from melting ice. She had given him a purpose, a sense that he was human and loving, but a callous God had snatched her away from him, scooped his insides out and rendered him hollow.”

The references to being frozen in form and time are both literal and metaphoric as the lines between subject and biographer blur. The frigid purity of ice is contrasted with the warm sensuality of the body. Malcolm makes a wax effigy of Ann and keeps it in his catacombs where he builds a room for her and visits her for necrophiliac purposes. “It was as if she was frozen, like the perfectly preserved American sailor excavated from the iceberg.” The similarities with the drug – “the drug that ruined your life and mine” – are not accidental.

Malcolm’s time is one of great change and discovery and he himself is a man of science and technology. The scientific developments of the age – X-rays; atoms; telephones; electricity – become confused with spiritualism and mesmerism because “The boundaries between the possible and impossible were quickly narrowing at an astonishing pace.” Mary believes that, “Scientists belong in the darkness of their laboratories, not in the bright light of society.” Darkness and secrecy, however, lead to obsession and madness, which will always be revealed when exposed to the light.