This week came reports of the death of Sen. William Proxmire, whose fame is tied to his Golden Fleece awards, rather than his pushing of the Genocide convention. (See what's-her-face's book on genocide.) The Golden Fleece was given monthly for a [supposed] instance of bureaucratic waste of money. Sometimes bureaucrats need embarassment, sometimes not. His award seemed to me to be an example of someone searching for uniqueness.
Proxmire often ridiculed various research projects funded by NSF or whoever. Had he remained in the Senate he might well have awarded the Fleece to a project researching why the striped stickleback fish had their stripes (almost sounds like a Rudyard Kipling Just-so story: how the stickleback got their stripes). But also announced this week was a surprising outcome of that research: an explanation for whiteness. Turns out the scientists identified a gene in sticklebacks that controls melanin, giving them their stripes. They then found the same gene in humans, but the gene in caucasians has mutated, leading to white skin in Europeans. (Apparently Asians have a different mutation.)
Of course one butterfly does not make a summer and one instance of research that provides unexpected results does not justify all scientific projects. But it is a reminder that we don't know a lot and mockery assumes we do.
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