New logo and some words about our visitor statistics and blog impact

Posted by Erik Svensson

Our blog continues to attract many outside readers, since it was first launched some years ago. We have had aobut 93 000 downloads, although all not unique ones, and although some come from automatic web searches and machines, I still think that we can safely conclude that we have had thousands of human visitors. The number of downloads is currently about 1000 per month, which is a decline from about 7000 per month, before we changed the name and adress of the blog in August 2012. However, this cost in terms of lost visitors will probably be worth it in the long term, as we have a steady increase in visitors and the blog name is now more general and less person-centred.

Interestingly, the currently most popular and visited blog post of ours is the one where our new postdoc Lesley Lancaster was introduced to the other lab-members. This blog post has 1007 visits, which makes me wonder if Lesley is more famous and more popular than a post about Richard Dawkins who is number two, with only 845 downloads? Clearly, Lesley is a more up-and-coming scientist though, than Richard Dawkins who has passed his peak a long time ago. 

I have gotten many positive comments from colleagues from outside, as well as putative postdocs and PhD-students who have expressed interest in joining this laboratory. Several have also said that the combination of  laboratory experimental evolution approaches (flatworms and Drosophila) and field experimental work on non-classical model organisms (damselflies, lizards, birds) is a powerful and attractive combination. The new logo above should hopefully capture this synthetic spirit of our research laboratory. Below, you can download the new header of our blog and use as a logo if you wish, or promote us to interested collegues. 

Interesting interview with Richard Dawkins on the political implications of "The Selfish Gene" and the "God Delusion"

Here is an interesting interview with popular science writer and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, famous for his book "The Selfish Gene" from 1976, which revolutionized the general public's view about the evolutionary process, in particular the role of gene selection, as opposed to naive group selection.I found this video as I was looking for material for an undergraduate course that I am teaching entitled "Human Biology & Evolution". 

It is worth watching, particularly since Richard Dawkins clearly explains what selfish genes are, and what they are not. In particular the crucial notion that selfish genes do not imply that individuals must be selfish, but rather the converse: selfish genes might often results in altruistic individuals. This crucial point has apparently been missed by the many right-winged libertarians and free-market ideologists, who wrote many letters to Richard Dawkins after the publication of his book to express their admiration and support. In this video, Richard Dawkins is very clear about his own view about such political idéas, which are strong in the right-wing segment of the US population: he does not support them at all.

As Dawkins states in the video above: "I have voted to the left in Britain in  my whole life". Selfish genes do thus by no means justify unregulated marked capitalism, although many wishful thinkers on the right side of the political spectrum have tried to exploit the title of his book for their own ideological purposes. As a matter of fact, Richard Dawkins have even stated that an alternative title of his book could very well have been "The Altruistic Organism".

It is important to be fair to Richard Dawkins, as there is actually some serious criticism that can be directed to both his idéa about the overall importance of gene selection, and his rather dogmatic dismissal of higher-level selection, such as at the level of groups, populations or species. Here, I think he is wrong, and there are many leading evolutionary biologists and population geneticists who would agree that group selection can indeed work in many ecological situations, including David Sloan Wilson and Michael J. Wade. 

There are many conceptual problems with Richard Dawkins strict separation between "replicators" (genes) and "vehicles" (organisms) that forms the basis of his whole argumentation that gene selection will always outpower higher-level selection, and some of these problems and logical pitfalls are discussed here.

Personally, I do als think that Dawkin's stance on religion is both unproductive and not very sophisticated, in terms of the nature of the criticism, as expressed in his too hyped book "The God Delusion". Apparently, Dawkinshas also recently stated that he partly regrets that he wrote this book (or should I say pamphlet?). The God that he describes in that book is more of a charicature of religion as he perceives it, than actually depicting the true beliefs of most religous people.

My own personal view, as an atheist, is again much closer to my fellow atheist David Sloan Wilson's view that religion has evolved for some reason, and hence can be treated as a problem that one can study in the light of evolutionary theory. That view strikes me as being a more intellectually fruitful and interesting approach towards understanding religion than just pointing fingers and treating it as a disease, which Dawkins tends to do.

Criticism of Richard Dawkins and the new atheist movement

As evolutionary biologists, we should know the struggle of biologist Richard Dawkins and philosopher Daniel Dennett in defense of evolutionary theory against creationists and religious fanatics. Dawkins and Dennett have also recently been joined by non-biologists, like former leftist writer and critic Cristopher Hitchens, in a struggle not only against creationism per se, but in a broader struggle against religion in general.

All these authors have published books recently which are very critical of organized religion, the most well-known being Dawkins bestseller "The God Delusion". These strong personalities have built up something of a movement which is sometimes called "The New Atheism", with provocative advertisements on buses in England with the message: "God does probably not exist".

What to think about this new movement? From my perspective, I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I am an atheist myself, who would like to see a world will less power for organized religion. On the other side, I dislike the preaching style of both Dawkins, Dennett and Hitchens and think that they might be doing more bad than good in their self-contentious and aggressive atheistic preaching crusade. Their campaign might thus backfire, and push moderate religious groups into allies with religious fanatics. That would be very unfortunate, which is one reason why I am not very enthusiastic about Dawkins recent book and his ongoing atheist campaign.

My mixed feelings are shared by Julian Baggini in this interesting opinion piece, where he argues that the new atheism is destructive. I am also a bit frustrated that a legitimate defence of evolutionary theory (necessary in my opinion), might be "drowned" and confused in campaign for atheism, which is not a scientific movement.