1 00:00:00,311 --> 00:00:02,894 (upbeat music) 2 00:00:10,500 --> 00:00:11,490 - Good afternoon, everyone, 3 00:00:11,490 --> 00:00:14,610 and welcome to our Wednesday afternoon talk. 4 00:00:14,610 --> 00:00:16,950 I'm a colleague of Dr. Scottgale's. 5 00:00:16,950 --> 00:00:19,470 My name is Ryan Fisher and it gives me great pleasure 6 00:00:19,470 --> 00:00:23,520 to introduce our afternoon speaker, Dr. Joseph Graves, Jr. 7 00:00:23,520 --> 00:00:26,670 Dr. Graves is an evolutionary biologist and geneticist 8 00:00:26,670 --> 00:00:30,180 in the biology department of North Carolina Agricultural 9 00:00:30,180 --> 00:00:34,740 and Technical University in Greensboro, North Carolina. 10 00:00:34,740 --> 00:00:37,710 He completed his BA in biology at Oberlin College 11 00:00:37,710 --> 00:00:40,110 and his PhD in evolutionary, environmental, 12 00:00:40,110 --> 00:00:43,203 and systematic biology at Wayne State University. 13 00:00:44,040 --> 00:00:45,600 His research interests explore 14 00:00:45,600 --> 00:00:48,150 the evolutionary theories behind aging, 15 00:00:48,150 --> 00:00:50,280 and he uses the model organism, the fruit fly, 16 00:00:50,280 --> 00:00:53,310 Drosophila melanogaster, in much of his work. 17 00:00:53,310 --> 00:00:55,440 More recently, he has begun to investigate 18 00:00:55,440 --> 00:00:57,690 the social construction of race 19 00:00:57,690 --> 00:01:00,240 and has revealed that there is no evolutionary basis 20 00:01:00,240 --> 00:01:02,520 for the notion of races in modern humans, 21 00:01:02,520 --> 00:01:06,120 but that these remain because of social subordination. 22 00:01:06,120 --> 00:01:10,110 On this topic, he has published widely, 23 00:01:10,110 --> 00:01:11,430 including "The Race Myth: 24 00:01:11,430 --> 00:01:14,490 Why We Pretend Race Exists in America" 25 00:01:14,490 --> 00:01:16,200 and "The Emperor's New Clothes: 26 00:01:16,200 --> 00:01:19,860 Biological Theories of Race at the Millennium." 27 00:01:19,860 --> 00:01:22,620 We welcome Dr. Graves as he delivers his talk, 28 00:01:22,620 --> 00:01:25,320 entitled "A Voice in the Wilderness: 29 00:01:25,320 --> 00:01:28,800 A Pioneering Biologist Explains How Evolution 30 00:01:28,800 --> 00:01:31,620 Can Help Us Solve Our Biggest Problems." 31 00:01:31,620 --> 00:01:33,510 Welcome, Dr. Graves. 32 00:01:33,510 --> 00:01:35,220 - Thank you, Dr. Fisher, 33 00:01:35,220 --> 00:01:37,890 and I'm going to now share my screen 34 00:01:37,890 --> 00:01:40,503 and start my presentation. 35 00:01:42,900 --> 00:01:47,763 So you know the title and you know who I am. 36 00:01:49,230 --> 00:01:53,677 So this talk is based upon my most recent book, 37 00:01:53,677 --> 00:01:55,320 "A Voice in the Wilderness," 38 00:01:55,320 --> 00:01:59,460 published by Basic Books in 2022. 39 00:01:59,460 --> 00:02:02,310 The purpose of this work was acquaint readers 40 00:02:02,310 --> 00:02:04,350 with my pioneering journey as the world's 41 00:02:04,350 --> 00:02:08,310 first African American evolutionary biologist. 42 00:02:08,310 --> 00:02:10,410 It is divided in two parts. 43 00:02:10,410 --> 00:02:15,410 Part one, The Unexpected Path, is heavily autobiographical. 44 00:02:16,080 --> 00:02:19,170 It focuses on my early life, education, 45 00:02:19,170 --> 00:02:22,440 and also my first significant scientific problems, 46 00:02:22,440 --> 00:02:25,410 study of lakes and rivers, parasitology, 47 00:02:25,410 --> 00:02:28,560 community ecology, chaos theory, evolution, 48 00:02:28,560 --> 00:02:30,330 and the physiology of aging. 49 00:02:30,330 --> 00:02:34,560 Part two covers 50 00:02:34,560 --> 00:02:36,330 the latter stage of my career, 51 00:02:36,330 --> 00:02:39,330 specifically the scientific problems that I think 52 00:02:39,330 --> 00:02:41,070 are some of the biggest. 53 00:02:41,070 --> 00:02:45,150 It focuses on my fight with scientific racism, 54 00:02:45,150 --> 00:02:48,060 on the dialogue between science and religion, 55 00:02:48,060 --> 00:02:51,570 on the genomics of adaptation, and the role that science 56 00:02:51,570 --> 00:02:54,513 can and should play in social justice. 57 00:02:55,650 --> 00:03:00,650 Now, to say that my entry into science 58 00:03:01,410 --> 00:03:05,433 was an unexpected event is an understatement. 59 00:03:06,540 --> 00:03:09,780 I was born four months before Emmett Till was lynched 60 00:03:09,780 --> 00:03:14,130 in Money, Mississippi. 61 00:03:14,130 --> 00:03:17,823 I entered a school system that had rigid racial tracking. 62 00:03:18,690 --> 00:03:21,540 They assumed that children of African descent 63 00:03:21,540 --> 00:03:23,670 were intellectually inferior. 64 00:03:23,670 --> 00:03:28,480 I was placed in the so-called slow learning group 65 00:03:30,210 --> 00:03:34,950 and I became a behavior issue because, quite frankly, 66 00:03:34,950 --> 00:03:37,323 I finished my work very quickly. 67 00:03:38,277 --> 00:03:41,340 A little boy, five years old, nothing to do, 68 00:03:41,340 --> 00:03:43,740 and if you know anything about little boys that age, 69 00:03:43,740 --> 00:03:46,440 it's very difficult to keep them sitting down. 70 00:03:46,440 --> 00:03:48,900 So after an event where I decided 71 00:03:48,900 --> 00:03:51,720 to fly around the room as an airplane, 72 00:03:51,720 --> 00:03:54,330 I was sent to the principal's office 73 00:03:54,330 --> 00:03:57,360 and they called my mother off of work. 74 00:03:57,360 --> 00:03:59,460 Now, those of you who have any knowledge 75 00:03:59,460 --> 00:04:01,230 of African American culture, 76 00:04:01,230 --> 00:04:04,920 you know the worst thing that a child will ever endure 77 00:04:04,920 --> 00:04:07,650 is waiting in the principal's office waiting for their mom 78 00:04:07,650 --> 00:04:09,660 to come in off of work. 79 00:04:09,660 --> 00:04:13,653 You certainly did not expect to survive that encounter. 80 00:04:14,490 --> 00:04:18,480 But instead of her being mad at me, 81 00:04:18,480 --> 00:04:22,290 she pitched a fit with the principal, 82 00:04:22,290 --> 00:04:25,050 declaring that they weren't going to reassign me 83 00:04:25,050 --> 00:04:26,460 to special education, 84 00:04:26,460 --> 00:04:30,360 which in those days meant mental retarded instruction, 85 00:04:30,360 --> 00:04:34,590 but that I was just as capable as any child in the school, 86 00:04:34,590 --> 00:04:36,330 and she won her point, 87 00:04:36,330 --> 00:04:41,220 and I continued on my educational journey. 88 00:04:41,220 --> 00:04:43,923 Now, when I was in third grade, 89 00:04:44,880 --> 00:04:48,600 I had a fateful encounter on the school steps. 90 00:04:48,600 --> 00:04:53,550 I was walking in and I saw some older kids playing chess. 91 00:04:53,550 --> 00:04:55,440 Now, I didn't know anything about the game, 92 00:04:55,440 --> 00:04:57,750 so I asked them to teach me. 93 00:04:57,750 --> 00:05:00,660 They taught me what little they knew 94 00:05:00,660 --> 00:05:04,030 and I played my first game and was beaten 95 00:05:06,480 --> 00:05:08,313 soundly in that game. 96 00:05:09,210 --> 00:05:12,930 But later in the day, when we had our library period, 97 00:05:12,930 --> 00:05:15,510 I went and looked up all the books in our library 98 00:05:15,510 --> 00:05:17,340 on the game of chess. 99 00:05:17,340 --> 00:05:20,883 I settled on Bobby Fisher's classic, 100 00:05:22,379 --> 00:05:26,100 a book called "Bobby Fisher Teaches Chess." 101 00:05:26,100 --> 00:05:29,040 I went home, I stayed up all night, 102 00:05:29,040 --> 00:05:31,660 and read it from cover to cover with this flashlight 103 00:05:32,760 --> 00:05:36,210 under my blankets because if Mom or Dad came in 104 00:05:36,210 --> 00:05:39,420 and I was still awake, I was gonna be in big trouble. 105 00:05:39,420 --> 00:05:43,020 So I went back to school the next day, 106 00:05:43,020 --> 00:05:46,650 looking for those kids, and they were there, 107 00:05:46,650 --> 00:05:51,480 and in the next encounter, I turned the tables on them. 108 00:05:51,480 --> 00:05:55,740 So by the time I was in sixth grade, I was school champion, 109 00:05:55,740 --> 00:05:58,020 junior high school champion. 110 00:05:58,020 --> 00:05:59,370 When I went to high school, 111 00:05:59,370 --> 00:06:02,910 I played third board for Westfield High, 112 00:06:02,910 --> 00:06:05,760 which was New Jersey State Champions, 113 00:06:05,760 --> 00:06:08,400 number five on the East Coast. 114 00:06:08,400 --> 00:06:12,540 We went to the National High School Championship in Chicago 115 00:06:12,540 --> 00:06:13,893 in my senior year. 116 00:06:14,760 --> 00:06:19,230 In the last round, we were tied for fourth place 117 00:06:19,230 --> 00:06:21,633 out of over 200 teams in the country. 118 00:06:23,160 --> 00:06:25,680 The rest of my teammates lost very quickly 119 00:06:25,680 --> 00:06:28,170 because we were all paired up against players 120 00:06:28,170 --> 00:06:30,060 much stronger than we were. 121 00:06:30,060 --> 00:06:33,870 But my game was the final game, 122 00:06:33,870 --> 00:06:36,870 which determined the national championship. 123 00:06:36,870 --> 00:06:41,040 I was playing someone from Rochester, New York, 124 00:06:41,040 --> 00:06:45,033 and if that person beat me, Rochester would win the title, 125 00:06:46,530 --> 00:06:48,480 and if I won or drew, 126 00:06:48,480 --> 00:06:51,870 Evanston, Illinois would win the title. 127 00:06:51,870 --> 00:06:54,180 Now, to make a long story short, 128 00:06:54,180 --> 00:06:55,620 at the end of the game, 129 00:06:55,620 --> 00:06:59,280 with all other games in the tournament hall completed, 130 00:06:59,280 --> 00:07:01,590 there was a huge crowd of Rochester 131 00:07:01,590 --> 00:07:04,413 and Northwestern supporters around the board. 132 00:07:05,580 --> 00:07:08,790 Deep in the game, I decided to sacrifice a rook, 133 00:07:08,790 --> 00:07:12,420 which caused a great stir in the Rochester crowd, 134 00:07:12,420 --> 00:07:15,240 'cause they were absolutely certain they were about to win 135 00:07:15,240 --> 00:07:17,220 the national championship. 136 00:07:17,220 --> 00:07:19,110 But about 10 moves later, 137 00:07:19,110 --> 00:07:23,880 the tone in the room shifted to Evanston beginning to cheer, 138 00:07:23,880 --> 00:07:25,050 even though you're not supposed to cheer 139 00:07:25,050 --> 00:07:26,220 at chess tournaments, 140 00:07:26,220 --> 00:07:30,300 because they realized that my rook sacrifice was sound 141 00:07:30,300 --> 00:07:33,390 and that Rochester was going to lose. 142 00:07:33,390 --> 00:07:35,280 And so the only way he could prevent that 143 00:07:35,280 --> 00:07:38,130 was to sacrifice his rook back, 144 00:07:38,130 --> 00:07:41,493 ending in a draw which gave Evanston the title. 145 00:07:42,510 --> 00:07:45,600 So chess played a major role 146 00:07:45,600 --> 00:07:48,450 in building the kind of mind 147 00:07:48,450 --> 00:07:50,550 that allowed me to think very deeply 148 00:07:50,550 --> 00:07:54,270 about scientific problems, to question assumptions, 149 00:07:54,270 --> 00:07:57,630 which was probably the greatest skill that I developed 150 00:07:57,630 --> 00:08:00,570 over the course of my scientific career. 151 00:08:00,570 --> 00:08:02,970 Now, I knew nothing about college. 152 00:08:02,970 --> 00:08:05,820 I was a first-generation student. 153 00:08:05,820 --> 00:08:07,380 I only applied to three schools 154 00:08:07,380 --> 00:08:09,330 because I didn't know you were supposed to apply 155 00:08:09,330 --> 00:08:10,983 to more than three schools. 156 00:08:12,000 --> 00:08:15,420 I was lucky to earn a scholarship to Oberlin College, 157 00:08:15,420 --> 00:08:18,600 which paid for my tuition. 158 00:08:18,600 --> 00:08:22,530 I had to take out student loans and I had work study 159 00:08:22,530 --> 00:08:24,960 'cause my folks couldn't have afforded 160 00:08:24,960 --> 00:08:29,850 to send me to college, was just not capable 161 00:08:29,850 --> 00:08:32,433 given how little money my family made. 162 00:08:33,420 --> 00:08:38,420 Went to graduate school, first at the University of Lowell, 163 00:08:39,090 --> 00:08:41,250 now known as UMass Lowell, 164 00:08:41,250 --> 00:08:45,660 and there I studied parasitism, 165 00:08:45,660 --> 00:08:49,830 particularly schistosomiasis in Africa. 166 00:08:49,830 --> 00:08:53,700 That earned me a National Science Foundation 167 00:08:53,700 --> 00:08:55,740 graduate research fellowship, 168 00:08:55,740 --> 00:08:58,230 which took me to the University of Michigan 169 00:08:58,230 --> 00:09:02,160 where I began to study problems in community ecology, 170 00:09:02,160 --> 00:09:05,910 particularly mathematics of complex systems 171 00:09:05,910 --> 00:09:08,280 and dynamical complexity, 172 00:09:08,280 --> 00:09:12,870 which in combination with my newfound student activism 173 00:09:12,870 --> 00:09:16,500 was enough to drive me out of higher education 174 00:09:16,500 --> 00:09:19,560 because I realized that solving problems in ecology 175 00:09:19,560 --> 00:09:23,010 was just too hard, not because I couldn't do it, 176 00:09:23,010 --> 00:09:26,850 but because the underlying theoretical structure 177 00:09:26,850 --> 00:09:28,530 of these systems was such 178 00:09:28,530 --> 00:09:31,230 that you really weren't gonna get good answers anyway. 179 00:09:32,190 --> 00:09:35,760 But the other thing is that I had become aware 180 00:09:35,760 --> 00:09:40,560 and attuned to the racial injustice that I was experiencing 181 00:09:40,560 --> 00:09:43,830 in higher education in a new way. 182 00:09:43,830 --> 00:09:48,510 A combination of those things led me into the wilderness. 183 00:09:48,510 --> 00:09:53,490 I was pretty much partially employed for two or three years. 184 00:09:53,490 --> 00:09:55,953 My wife and I were basically starving. 185 00:09:57,060 --> 00:09:59,220 You know, what I didn't know at the time 186 00:09:59,220 --> 00:10:03,540 was that for me to have food at night, 187 00:10:03,540 --> 00:10:05,700 she would go all day without it. 188 00:10:05,700 --> 00:10:07,350 She never told me that. 189 00:10:07,350 --> 00:10:10,860 I'd come home and we'd have something. 190 00:10:10,860 --> 00:10:14,250 And it was those conditions that made me decide 191 00:10:14,250 --> 00:10:18,120 to go back to complete my PhD, 192 00:10:18,120 --> 00:10:21,393 because I thought that we can and should do better. 193 00:10:23,130 --> 00:10:26,760 So I went to Wayne State University, 194 00:10:26,760 --> 00:10:29,880 met with the graduate officer, Bill Moore. 195 00:10:29,880 --> 00:10:32,970 Moore directed me to Professor Leo Luckinbill 196 00:10:32,970 --> 00:10:36,630 based upon the skillset he saw on my CV, 197 00:10:36,630 --> 00:10:40,500 and that is where I got involved in probably 198 00:10:40,500 --> 00:10:44,910 one of the biggest scientific problems of the 20th century, 199 00:10:44,910 --> 00:10:48,270 certainly within evolutionary biology, 200 00:10:48,270 --> 00:10:51,120 and that was the question of the evolution of aging. 201 00:10:51,120 --> 00:10:56,120 Now, at that time, there was no clear consensus 202 00:10:56,340 --> 00:10:59,793 that aging was directed by genes or that it evolved. 203 00:11:00,690 --> 00:11:04,620 Theoretical work, beginning with people like Peter Medawar 204 00:11:04,620 --> 00:11:09,620 in the 1940s, suggested that it must. 205 00:11:09,660 --> 00:11:11,070 George C. Williams, 206 00:11:11,070 --> 00:11:14,670 another one of the great evolutionary biologists 207 00:11:14,670 --> 00:11:16,890 of the mid-20th century, 208 00:11:16,890 --> 00:11:20,430 proposed genetic mechanisms by which it could occur, 209 00:11:20,430 --> 00:11:22,710 but no one had successfully demonstrated 210 00:11:22,710 --> 00:11:27,180 in an experimental system that you could alter lifespan 211 00:11:27,180 --> 00:11:30,663 using the predictions of the Medawar/Williams theory. 212 00:11:31,860 --> 00:11:36,860 And so in 1984, my PhD advisor, Leo Luckinbill, 213 00:11:37,980 --> 00:11:41,967 had successfully demonstrated that you could alter 214 00:11:41,967 --> 00:11:44,970 the lifespan of fruit flies 215 00:11:44,970 --> 00:11:47,823 using the predictions of Medawar/Williams. 216 00:11:48,690 --> 00:11:50,913 At the same time, Michael Rose, 217 00:11:51,750 --> 00:11:54,780 then at the University of California, Irvine, 218 00:11:54,780 --> 00:11:56,670 had also demonstrated 219 00:11:56,670 --> 00:11:59,733 that you could produce postponed senescence, 220 00:12:00,690 --> 00:12:02,520 and both papers were published 221 00:12:02,520 --> 00:12:06,420 in the journal "Evolution" back-to-back, 222 00:12:06,420 --> 00:12:08,823 the Rose paper followed by the Luckinbill paper. 223 00:12:09,840 --> 00:12:14,840 So my question was 224 00:12:14,850 --> 00:12:18,900 what were the physiological consequences 225 00:12:18,900 --> 00:12:20,640 of this postponed senescence 226 00:12:20,640 --> 00:12:23,160 and whether those physiological consequences 227 00:12:23,160 --> 00:12:26,970 matched the predictions of Medawar/Williams. 228 00:12:26,970 --> 00:12:30,720 Now, Phil Service had first examined this 229 00:12:30,720 --> 00:12:32,550 and he was a Rhodes student, 230 00:12:32,550 --> 00:12:35,760 but Service had come upon this accidentally, 231 00:12:35,760 --> 00:12:38,160 and I'll quickly tell the story. 232 00:12:38,160 --> 00:12:43,160 So one day Dr. Rose walked into his laboratory 233 00:12:43,260 --> 00:12:48,180 and he saw his laboratory technician in tears at her desk. 234 00:12:48,180 --> 00:12:50,797 And so Michael went over to her and asked, you know, 235 00:12:50,797 --> 00:12:53,880 "What is wrong? Why are you crying?" 236 00:12:53,880 --> 00:12:57,930 And she finally got up the strength to tell him 237 00:12:57,930 --> 00:13:00,240 that she had killed the flies. 238 00:13:00,240 --> 00:13:01,740 Now, you have to understand the terror 239 00:13:01,740 --> 00:13:04,410 that was running through this young woman's mind, 240 00:13:04,410 --> 00:13:06,270 because it had taken, you know, 241 00:13:06,270 --> 00:13:09,120 Michael years to generate these flies 242 00:13:09,120 --> 00:13:10,827 through experimental evolution. 243 00:13:10,827 --> 00:13:14,730 And so Michael panics and runs over to the incubator, 244 00:13:14,730 --> 00:13:16,440 opens the incubator, 245 00:13:16,440 --> 00:13:19,743 and sees that the flies are still alive. 246 00:13:20,850 --> 00:13:23,760 Now, what had occurred? 247 00:13:23,760 --> 00:13:27,210 The research technician had forgotten to put the food 248 00:13:27,210 --> 00:13:30,510 in the cages over the weekend. 249 00:13:30,510 --> 00:13:33,820 When she came in, she opened the control group 250 00:13:34,710 --> 00:13:38,460 who had all died from starvation and desiccation. 251 00:13:38,460 --> 00:13:42,720 When Michael came in, he opened a different incubator. 252 00:13:42,720 --> 00:13:46,230 These were the postponed senescent flies, 253 00:13:46,230 --> 00:13:49,260 and because of their superior physiological performance, 254 00:13:49,260 --> 00:13:52,050 even though they didn't have food, 255 00:13:52,050 --> 00:13:55,590 they had survived over the weekend. 256 00:13:55,590 --> 00:14:00,510 And so he then reasoned that the selection 257 00:14:00,510 --> 00:14:04,140 had resulted in a different physiology, 258 00:14:04,140 --> 00:14:07,680 specifically related to stress resistance, 259 00:14:07,680 --> 00:14:11,640 in the postponed senescent or long-lived flies. 260 00:14:11,640 --> 00:14:13,650 Now, I came to the same conclusion, 261 00:14:13,650 --> 00:14:17,370 but I did it on the basis of theory. 262 00:14:17,370 --> 00:14:19,590 So in other words, I thought to myself, 263 00:14:19,590 --> 00:14:23,730 if these organisms are living longer, 264 00:14:23,730 --> 00:14:26,790 it probably results from some sort of trade-off 265 00:14:26,790 --> 00:14:30,690 with regard to how energy is being allocated. 266 00:14:30,690 --> 00:14:34,200 Flies living shorter had higher reproductive output, 267 00:14:34,200 --> 00:14:37,080 so I thought they must be directing 268 00:14:37,080 --> 00:14:38,730 that energy towards reproduction 269 00:14:38,730 --> 00:14:42,180 and therefore not towards somatic maintenance, 270 00:14:42,180 --> 00:14:45,330 and flies that lived longer had lower reproduction, 271 00:14:45,330 --> 00:14:49,230 and therefore I suggested that they must be devoting 272 00:14:49,230 --> 00:14:53,190 that energy to somatic maintenance and not to reproduction. 273 00:14:53,190 --> 00:14:55,920 And so I thought the best way to study this, 274 00:14:55,920 --> 00:14:58,710 given that these things are called flies, 275 00:14:58,710 --> 00:15:02,280 is to study their flight mechanism. 276 00:15:02,280 --> 00:15:05,070 And so the first thing I did 277 00:15:05,070 --> 00:15:08,340 was design a way 278 00:15:08,340 --> 00:15:13,020 to get the flies to fly uninterrupted. 279 00:15:13,020 --> 00:15:16,890 Now, it turns out, you know, biology helped me in this. 280 00:15:16,890 --> 00:15:19,440 Fruit flies have what's called the tarsal reflex. 281 00:15:19,440 --> 00:15:21,500 If you pick them up, 282 00:15:21,500 --> 00:15:24,090 if you tether them in place and pick them up, 283 00:15:24,090 --> 00:15:26,170 they will think that they have to fly 284 00:15:27,270 --> 00:15:31,590 and they will fly until their flight fuel is exhausted. 285 00:15:31,590 --> 00:15:34,410 And so I set up banks of flies 286 00:15:34,410 --> 00:15:38,223 connected to light-test fishing line and Duco cement, 287 00:15:39,600 --> 00:15:42,570 and measured their flight duration. 288 00:15:42,570 --> 00:15:44,580 For the short-lived flies, it was really easy, 289 00:15:44,580 --> 00:15:48,060 because they could only fly 20 to 30 minutes. 290 00:15:48,060 --> 00:15:50,190 But we found the postponed senescent flies 291 00:15:50,190 --> 00:15:52,650 were flying for three to four hours. 292 00:15:52,650 --> 00:15:54,720 And so there was a huge difference. 293 00:15:54,720 --> 00:15:57,600 And so the next question I needed to address was, 294 00:15:57,600 --> 00:16:01,260 well, maybe these longer-life flies are flying so long 295 00:16:01,260 --> 00:16:05,910 because they're not flying as fast. 296 00:16:05,910 --> 00:16:07,413 And so to test that, 297 00:16:08,520 --> 00:16:13,020 I designed an infrared detector system 298 00:16:13,020 --> 00:16:15,933 to measure the instantaneous wing beat frequency of the fly. 299 00:16:15,933 --> 00:16:18,300 Now, this was done with a colleague 300 00:16:18,300 --> 00:16:19,890 in the physics department, 301 00:16:19,890 --> 00:16:24,240 and we measured the flies' speed, 302 00:16:24,240 --> 00:16:26,070 and it turned out that the long-lived flies 303 00:16:26,070 --> 00:16:29,040 were actually flying slightly faster 304 00:16:29,040 --> 00:16:30,510 than the short-lived flies. 305 00:16:30,510 --> 00:16:32,370 So we demonstrated 306 00:16:32,370 --> 00:16:36,690 that they had prolonged physiological capacity 307 00:16:36,690 --> 00:16:40,290 and they did it even faster than the short-lived flies did. 308 00:16:40,290 --> 00:16:44,940 This led to my first paper. 309 00:16:44,940 --> 00:16:48,480 Now, I will tell you that this wasn't as easy 310 00:16:48,480 --> 00:16:52,380 as I made it sound, because for some of time 311 00:16:52,380 --> 00:16:55,050 I had been floundering in the lab, 312 00:16:55,050 --> 00:16:59,670 suffering through what we call today imposter syndrome. 313 00:16:59,670 --> 00:17:03,870 Now, they didn't have a name for it back then, 314 00:17:03,870 --> 00:17:07,320 but that's certainly, looking back in hindsight, 315 00:17:07,320 --> 00:17:09,240 what was wrong with me. 316 00:17:09,240 --> 00:17:11,130 I was afraid to try anything 317 00:17:11,130 --> 00:17:12,870 because I assumed that I would fail 318 00:17:12,870 --> 00:17:15,210 and that everyone would base my failure 319 00:17:15,210 --> 00:17:18,570 upon my socially-defined race, 320 00:17:18,570 --> 00:17:22,353 not on any individual attribute I might have. 321 00:17:23,220 --> 00:17:27,390 So that moment when my advisor 322 00:17:27,390 --> 00:17:29,203 literally called me into his office and he said, 323 00:17:29,203 --> 00:17:32,490 "You know, Joe, if you don't get to work 324 00:17:32,490 --> 00:17:36,477 on your thesis tomorrow, I'm cutting you loose," 325 00:17:37,770 --> 00:17:39,000 I designed the experiment 326 00:17:39,000 --> 00:17:41,450 that I just described to you literally overnight, 327 00:17:42,750 --> 00:17:45,690 and I came in the next day and started it, 328 00:17:45,690 --> 00:17:47,643 and the rest, they say, is history. 329 00:17:48,870 --> 00:17:51,360 So I just explained all that, 330 00:17:51,360 --> 00:17:53,700 so I'm not going to go through those slides. 331 00:17:53,700 --> 00:17:56,160 Here's the better picture 332 00:17:56,160 --> 00:17:59,433 of the emitter detector array, 333 00:18:00,330 --> 00:18:03,540 and it led to my first paper, which was published 334 00:18:03,540 --> 00:18:07,983 in the "Journal of Insect Physiology" in 1988. 335 00:18:10,230 --> 00:18:14,610 Now, this work caught the attention 336 00:18:14,610 --> 00:18:17,010 of popular science 337 00:18:17,010 --> 00:18:20,280 because what we had essentially demonstrated 338 00:18:20,280 --> 00:18:24,030 was that if we postponed senescence, 339 00:18:24,030 --> 00:18:27,450 it would lead to an extended period of healthspan. 340 00:18:27,450 --> 00:18:31,500 So we weren't interested in just expanding lifespan 341 00:18:31,500 --> 00:18:35,400 and having a prolonged period of senescence. 342 00:18:35,400 --> 00:18:38,310 What we really were interested in is figuring out 343 00:18:38,310 --> 00:18:42,240 how we could increase the organism's healthspan, 344 00:18:42,240 --> 00:18:47,240 and that's exactly what we did using experimental evolution 345 00:18:47,250 --> 00:18:49,110 in this Drosophila system. 346 00:18:49,110 --> 00:18:52,500 So it was so popular that it ended up 347 00:18:52,500 --> 00:18:54,150 on the cover of "LIFE" magazine, 348 00:18:54,150 --> 00:18:59,150 along with some other researchers in the area of aging. 349 00:18:59,430 --> 00:19:03,150 We were covered in popular science magazines, 350 00:19:03,150 --> 00:19:04,950 such as "Discover," 351 00:19:04,950 --> 00:19:08,640 and even made it onto a snippet of "The Tonight Show" 352 00:19:08,640 --> 00:19:13,640 when the host, Jay Leno, mentioned our research and said, 353 00:19:14,017 --> 00:19:16,620 "Did you hear about these scientists in Irvine 354 00:19:16,620 --> 00:19:19,459 who have figured out how to make fruit flies live longer? 355 00:19:19,459 --> 00:19:21,777 Aren't we trying to get rid of these things?" 356 00:19:23,340 --> 00:19:27,450 Now, so quickly, 357 00:19:27,450 --> 00:19:30,270 how does aging happen? 358 00:19:30,270 --> 00:19:33,990 So to understand that, we need to recognize 359 00:19:33,990 --> 00:19:37,710 that there are two population genetic mechanisms 360 00:19:37,710 --> 00:19:39,030 which are consistent 361 00:19:39,030 --> 00:19:41,910 with the evolutionary theory of senescence. 362 00:19:41,910 --> 00:19:46,380 The first is called mutation accumulation. 363 00:19:46,380 --> 00:19:48,653 This is when an allele 364 00:19:49,980 --> 00:19:54,570 has a neutral impact on fitness early in life, 365 00:19:54,570 --> 00:19:57,720 meaning that it doesn't improve reproduction, 366 00:19:57,720 --> 00:19:59,700 it doesn't improve survivorship, 367 00:19:59,700 --> 00:20:03,150 neither does it decrease those things. 368 00:20:03,150 --> 00:20:07,300 Now, something under those conditions 369 00:20:08,640 --> 00:20:11,580 will essentially be acted on 370 00:20:11,580 --> 00:20:14,670 by the genetic mechanism called genetic drift. 371 00:20:14,670 --> 00:20:17,460 It will be randomly distributed in populations 372 00:20:17,460 --> 00:20:21,510 across the globe since it doesn't increase 373 00:20:21,510 --> 00:20:23,430 or decrease an individual's fitness. 374 00:20:23,430 --> 00:20:27,480 Now, this is entirely independent of what it may do 375 00:20:27,480 --> 00:20:29,463 to an individual late in life. 376 00:20:30,300 --> 00:20:35,300 So if that gene, which is neutral early in life, 377 00:20:35,550 --> 00:20:38,400 has a deleterious effect late in life, 378 00:20:38,400 --> 00:20:41,820 then that will contribute to senescence. 379 00:20:41,820 --> 00:20:45,480 And so we know a number of age-related diseases, 380 00:20:45,480 --> 00:20:48,450 such as Alzheimer's, Huntington's Chorea, 381 00:20:48,450 --> 00:20:53,450 and also now a UK Biobank study coming up, you know, 382 00:20:53,490 --> 00:20:58,380 21st-century standards has examined genomic variation 383 00:20:58,380 --> 00:21:03,060 in humans and found thousands of SNPs 384 00:21:03,060 --> 00:21:07,803 which fall into this mutation accumulation category. 385 00:21:09,570 --> 00:21:13,170 Now, the other mechanism is far more insidious, 386 00:21:13,170 --> 00:21:16,290 and this is called antagonistic pleiotropy. 387 00:21:16,290 --> 00:21:20,640 In this example, this allele 388 00:21:20,640 --> 00:21:23,700 is actually beneficial early in life, 389 00:21:23,700 --> 00:21:25,050 and if it's beneficial, 390 00:21:25,050 --> 00:21:28,170 then positive natural selection will increase its frequency 391 00:21:28,170 --> 00:21:32,130 in the population until all members of that population 392 00:21:32,130 --> 00:21:33,600 and all members of that species, 393 00:21:33,600 --> 00:21:37,923 depending upon what it is, have it, 394 00:21:39,630 --> 00:21:43,200 and that is despite what it does in late life. 395 00:21:43,200 --> 00:21:48,200 So it can cause all sorts of age-related pathologies 396 00:21:48,270 --> 00:21:51,960 at late life, but natural selection is really only concerned 397 00:21:51,960 --> 00:21:55,050 about what you do during your reproductive period. 398 00:21:55,050 --> 00:21:57,540 So if it's deleterious after 399 00:21:57,540 --> 00:22:01,050 net future expected reproduction is zero, 400 00:22:01,050 --> 00:22:05,010 okay, it still will completely (indistinct) 401 00:22:05,010 --> 00:22:06,570 within that population. 402 00:22:06,570 --> 00:22:10,530 Now, an example of this are cancers. 403 00:22:10,530 --> 00:22:12,990 Now, you're probably aware that cancers occur 404 00:22:12,990 --> 00:22:15,750 because of the evolution of stem cells, 405 00:22:15,750 --> 00:22:17,640 which repair tissues, 406 00:22:17,640 --> 00:22:21,240 which undergo a tremendous amount of stress, 407 00:22:21,240 --> 00:22:24,360 such as, you know, white blood cells 408 00:22:24,360 --> 00:22:28,200 and bone marrow tissue, 409 00:22:28,200 --> 00:22:31,470 as well as the epithelial of the gut, 410 00:22:31,470 --> 00:22:33,003 the lung, and the skin. 411 00:22:34,110 --> 00:22:39,110 Well, these are beneficial to bring you to reproductive age, 412 00:22:39,450 --> 00:22:43,890 but they also require fewer mutational changes 413 00:22:43,890 --> 00:22:48,480 to flip to being a neoplasm, 414 00:22:48,480 --> 00:22:53,430 and so they result in producing cancer at late age. 415 00:22:53,430 --> 00:22:56,520 And hence, everyone in the world, 416 00:22:56,520 --> 00:23:00,510 all humans on this planet are predisposed to cancer 417 00:23:00,510 --> 00:23:04,410 and would die of cancer if they lived long enough. 418 00:23:04,410 --> 00:23:08,220 Now, the reason why not everyone dies from cancer 419 00:23:08,220 --> 00:23:11,100 is the fact that we have many other things that kill us 420 00:23:11,100 --> 00:23:12,510 before we would be old enough 421 00:23:12,510 --> 00:23:14,853 to automatically die from cancer. 422 00:23:16,680 --> 00:23:21,680 Now, the work that I described before, in the '80s, 423 00:23:22,290 --> 00:23:23,670 we didn't have the means 424 00:23:23,670 --> 00:23:28,670 to study the genomic foundations of aging. 425 00:23:28,920 --> 00:23:32,550 We did use the genetic tools 426 00:23:32,550 --> 00:23:34,620 that were available at the time, 427 00:23:34,620 --> 00:23:36,960 and we found that there were contributions 428 00:23:36,960 --> 00:23:41,960 from all over the chromosomes in Drosophila. 429 00:23:42,600 --> 00:23:46,440 But in the beginning of the 21st century, 430 00:23:46,440 --> 00:23:50,220 when we had next-generation sequencing available to us, 431 00:23:50,220 --> 00:23:54,480 we were able to sequence the genomes of these flies 432 00:23:54,480 --> 00:23:57,930 and compare them based upon their life history profiles 433 00:23:57,930 --> 00:24:01,380 and show, sure enough, that the effects 434 00:24:01,380 --> 00:24:05,970 on this complex phenotype occur across the genome 435 00:24:05,970 --> 00:24:07,260 when we make these comparisons. 436 00:24:07,260 --> 00:24:12,260 Now, it turns out that we use extremely stringent criteria 437 00:24:13,110 --> 00:24:15,480 compared to what's used in medicine. 438 00:24:15,480 --> 00:24:19,740 So some of you will recognize these plots 439 00:24:19,740 --> 00:24:21,690 as Manhattan plots. 440 00:24:21,690 --> 00:24:26,250 Generally, when you're looking at populations 441 00:24:26,250 --> 00:24:28,620 whose conditions you can't control, 442 00:24:28,620 --> 00:24:31,980 you determine the significance value 443 00:24:31,980 --> 00:24:34,380 at 10 to the minus-1/8, 444 00:24:34,380 --> 00:24:38,763 which in -log p-value would be 8 on the scale. 445 00:24:39,990 --> 00:24:41,970 But in our case, 446 00:24:41,970 --> 00:24:44,940 we rigorously control the environmental conditions 447 00:24:44,940 --> 00:24:47,310 under which our flies live, 448 00:24:47,310 --> 00:24:50,160 so we use a much higher criterion. 449 00:24:50,160 --> 00:24:54,723 As you note, we used a -log p-value of 150, not 8, 450 00:24:55,710 --> 00:24:59,520 and yet we still found highly significant signatures 451 00:24:59,520 --> 00:25:03,210 of selection across the entire Drosophila genome. 452 00:25:03,210 --> 00:25:06,780 Now, if we used the one that's typically used 453 00:25:06,780 --> 00:25:09,900 in these studies, we would've found even more contributions, 454 00:25:09,900 --> 00:25:13,443 which of course we think would've been false positives. 455 00:25:15,030 --> 00:25:19,650 So recently I wrote a short piece 456 00:25:19,650 --> 00:25:23,940 for the blog "Culturico," 457 00:25:23,940 --> 00:25:28,620 explaining how our early experiments teach us something 458 00:25:28,620 --> 00:25:31,860 about how we could possibly develop tools 459 00:25:31,860 --> 00:25:33,180 in the 21st century. 460 00:25:33,180 --> 00:25:36,390 Particularly, the new omics technologies 461 00:25:36,390 --> 00:25:40,350 have placed on the agenda serious interventions 462 00:25:40,350 --> 00:25:43,170 and possible treatments for various symptoms of aging. 463 00:25:43,170 --> 00:25:47,670 So the link to that is in the slide, or you can just simply, 464 00:25:47,670 --> 00:25:50,253 you know, search for it on Google and find it. 465 00:25:51,300 --> 00:25:56,300 Now, as the introduction stated, 466 00:25:57,630 --> 00:26:00,000 also a great deal of my work 467 00:26:00,000 --> 00:26:05,000 has been directed towards systems of social injustice. 468 00:26:05,670 --> 00:26:07,747 So in "Voice," I say, 469 00:26:07,747 --> 00:26:10,800 "There's a great danger to the future of our species 470 00:26:10,800 --> 00:26:12,960 if we allow systems of social injustice 471 00:26:12,960 --> 00:26:14,037 to govern the world." 472 00:26:16,740 --> 00:26:19,320 I've often been asked whether we should teach about this 473 00:26:19,320 --> 00:26:23,610 in biology classes, and my response is, "Absolutely." 474 00:26:23,610 --> 00:26:26,520 We should be teaching about this in biology classes 475 00:26:26,520 --> 00:26:27,993 for two reasons. 476 00:26:29,250 --> 00:26:33,180 First, evolutionary biology 477 00:26:33,180 --> 00:26:36,300 has a deeply problematic history 478 00:26:36,300 --> 00:26:39,720 with regard to the support of things like racism, 479 00:26:39,720 --> 00:26:42,420 social Darwinism, and eugenics, 480 00:26:42,420 --> 00:26:44,830 and it not do students good 481 00:26:45,810 --> 00:26:49,113 not to be made aware of this deeply problematic history. 482 00:26:50,160 --> 00:26:54,360 The second reason is that by examining the claims 483 00:26:54,360 --> 00:26:58,290 of these scientists and their ideas, 484 00:26:58,290 --> 00:27:01,260 we literally provide students with a gold mine 485 00:27:01,260 --> 00:27:05,640 of logical fallacies that can be utilized to teach them 486 00:27:05,640 --> 00:27:09,390 about how the enterprise of science actually works 487 00:27:09,390 --> 00:27:11,937 and thus making them stronger science. 488 00:27:11,937 --> 00:27:16,770 And it's also a story that's full of drama, 489 00:27:16,770 --> 00:27:17,880 full of villains, 490 00:27:17,880 --> 00:27:20,790 and also the heroes of evolutionary science 491 00:27:20,790 --> 00:27:23,250 who have addressed the significance and meaning 492 00:27:23,250 --> 00:27:25,203 of human biological diversity. 493 00:27:26,700 --> 00:27:31,700 Now, I first was pulled into this question in 1994 494 00:27:31,740 --> 00:27:34,500 with the publication of the book, "The Bell Curve: 495 00:27:34,500 --> 00:27:37,500 Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life." 496 00:27:37,500 --> 00:27:40,680 Now, at the time I was a Drosophila geneticist, 497 00:27:40,680 --> 00:27:42,960 working on fruit fly experiments. 498 00:27:42,960 --> 00:27:45,150 I really didn't spend a whole lot of time 499 00:27:45,150 --> 00:27:47,253 on issues related to humans, 500 00:27:48,300 --> 00:27:51,240 but I got a call from a sociologist colleague, 501 00:27:51,240 --> 00:27:54,180 Dr. Ben Bowser, who had read the book 502 00:27:54,180 --> 00:27:56,940 and implored me to write a reply 503 00:27:56,940 --> 00:27:59,940 to the genetic and statistical claims of this book. 504 00:27:59,940 --> 00:28:03,210 Now, at the beginning of this talk, 505 00:28:03,210 --> 00:28:06,000 I was introduced as the first African American 506 00:28:06,000 --> 00:28:06,960 who'd earned a PhD 507 00:28:06,960 --> 00:28:10,200 in evolutionary biology and evolutionary genetics, 508 00:28:10,200 --> 00:28:14,220 so that put me in a unique place to be able to examine 509 00:28:14,220 --> 00:28:17,070 the genetics and statistics of "The Bell Curve" 510 00:28:17,070 --> 00:28:21,960 without using the trope, "Well, it's just racist," 511 00:28:21,960 --> 00:28:24,453 which a lot of people were saying at the time. 512 00:28:25,290 --> 00:28:28,440 The problem with that as a starting point 513 00:28:28,440 --> 00:28:31,410 is that people who don't know any better 514 00:28:31,410 --> 00:28:33,840 simply aren't going to listen to you, 515 00:28:33,840 --> 00:28:37,230 because they're gonna throw up roadblocks 516 00:28:37,230 --> 00:28:41,010 against actually learning what is racist about this work 517 00:28:41,010 --> 00:28:46,010 when it seems and appears to be based upon sound evidence. 518 00:28:46,680 --> 00:28:50,580 So I spent a great deal of time reading the book 519 00:28:50,580 --> 00:28:51,960 from cover to cover. 520 00:28:51,960 --> 00:28:54,090 I made no public statements about it 521 00:28:54,090 --> 00:28:57,810 until I had completed my analysis of the work. 522 00:28:57,810 --> 00:28:59,193 Now, Herrnstein and Murray, 523 00:29:00,660 --> 00:29:05,640 you know, presented this as solid evidence. 524 00:29:05,640 --> 00:29:08,220 As you can see from the slide, 525 00:29:08,220 --> 00:29:12,150 they presented data from the Armed Forces Qualifying Test, 526 00:29:12,150 --> 00:29:15,030 showing that the white distribution of IQ 527 00:29:15,030 --> 00:29:17,250 was one standard deviation higher 528 00:29:17,250 --> 00:29:19,680 than the Black distribution of IQ, 529 00:29:19,680 --> 00:29:23,250 and that they further claimed that this relationship 530 00:29:23,250 --> 00:29:28,250 had been pretty much static over the 20th century, 531 00:29:28,620 --> 00:29:32,340 and while they didn't come down saying 532 00:29:32,340 --> 00:29:35,460 that this was definitely due to genetics, 533 00:29:35,460 --> 00:29:39,090 they cited the work of psychometricians 534 00:29:39,090 --> 00:29:41,010 such as J. Philippe Rushton 535 00:29:41,010 --> 00:29:44,520 who definitely felt that the difference was genetic. 536 00:29:44,520 --> 00:29:47,610 And so this set me along the path of examining 537 00:29:47,610 --> 00:29:52,440 why people would even believe this to begin with. 538 00:29:52,440 --> 00:29:54,667 So the first paper I wrote was entitled 539 00:29:54,667 --> 00:29:58,080 "Race and IQ Revisited: Figures Never Lie, 540 00:29:58,080 --> 00:30:01,080 But Often Liars Figure," in which, you know, 541 00:30:01,080 --> 00:30:05,250 I championed the method of statistical reasoning 542 00:30:05,250 --> 00:30:07,020 as something we should be doing, 543 00:30:07,020 --> 00:30:08,160 and then I showed what was wrong 544 00:30:08,160 --> 00:30:09,600 with their statistical analysis 545 00:30:09,600 --> 00:30:12,870 and how they couldn't possibly come to those conclusions. 546 00:30:12,870 --> 00:30:15,630 And I also pointed out that their use 547 00:30:15,630 --> 00:30:18,030 of the term Black and white had no meaning 548 00:30:18,030 --> 00:30:21,120 with regard to the biological variation within our species, 549 00:30:21,120 --> 00:30:23,190 and in fact, what they were representing 550 00:30:23,190 --> 00:30:25,140 were socially-defined groups 551 00:30:25,140 --> 00:30:27,270 who existed in the United States 552 00:30:27,270 --> 00:30:31,020 in manifestly different social environments, 553 00:30:31,020 --> 00:30:33,600 and then therefore, you could make no claim about genetics 554 00:30:33,600 --> 00:30:35,670 from this data because the environments 555 00:30:35,670 --> 00:30:38,270 in which these two groups lived were never the same. 556 00:30:39,300 --> 00:30:43,590 So I then did make a number of public pronouncements 557 00:30:43,590 --> 00:30:44,820 against this book. 558 00:30:44,820 --> 00:30:48,600 It was covered by "The Arizona Republic." 559 00:30:48,600 --> 00:30:51,930 At this time I was a professor at Arizona State, 560 00:30:51,930 --> 00:30:56,610 and I, you know, responded to claims made by these folks 561 00:30:56,610 --> 00:30:59,820 in "TIME," "Newsweek," on national news, 562 00:30:59,820 --> 00:31:01,683 such as Fox Television, 563 00:31:03,660 --> 00:31:06,850 and that stimulated me to writing 564 00:31:08,160 --> 00:31:09,907 my first book on the subject, 565 00:31:09,907 --> 00:31:11,910 "The Emperor's New Clothes: 566 00:31:11,910 --> 00:31:14,520 Biological Theories of Race at the Millennium." 567 00:31:14,520 --> 00:31:19,380 And this explained the history of racial thinking 568 00:31:19,380 --> 00:31:20,790 in the Western world, 569 00:31:20,790 --> 00:31:24,273 how people had come to believe these falsehoods, 570 00:31:25,560 --> 00:31:29,343 and why, you know, we needed to undo them. 571 00:31:30,270 --> 00:31:33,007 Shortly afterward, I followed that up with a sequel, 572 00:31:33,007 --> 00:31:36,567 "The Race Myth: Why We Pretend Race Exists in America," 573 00:31:37,410 --> 00:31:42,410 which address the ongoing social pathologies 574 00:31:42,420 --> 00:31:44,970 that resulted from racial thinking. 575 00:31:44,970 --> 00:31:47,190 Now, when "The Race Myth" came out, 576 00:31:47,190 --> 00:31:51,153 I thought I had pretty much solved that issue, 577 00:31:52,290 --> 00:31:54,960 that I would never have to write about race again, 578 00:31:54,960 --> 00:31:56,253 and boy was I wrong. 579 00:31:57,390 --> 00:32:02,390 And so with the latter portion of the 2010s 580 00:32:03,467 --> 00:32:07,470 and the social changes that occurred in America, 581 00:32:07,470 --> 00:32:10,890 it was clear that people were being led down the rabbit hole 582 00:32:10,890 --> 00:32:13,530 of racial misconception once again. 583 00:32:13,530 --> 00:32:15,990 So my colleague, Dr. Alan Goodman, 584 00:32:15,990 --> 00:32:19,230 who's at Hampshire College in Massachusetts 585 00:32:19,230 --> 00:32:20,400 and former president 586 00:32:20,400 --> 00:32:24,810 of the American Anthropological Association, 587 00:32:24,810 --> 00:32:25,717 called me up and said, 588 00:32:25,717 --> 00:32:28,780 "Joe, you know, we really need to do a book 589 00:32:30,090 --> 00:32:33,720 where we address these racial misconceptions 590 00:32:33,720 --> 00:32:36,660 in a question/answer format to provide people 591 00:32:36,660 --> 00:32:41,460 with quick and easily understandable ways 592 00:32:41,460 --> 00:32:45,330 of recognizing these misconceptions and the damage they do." 593 00:32:45,330 --> 00:32:49,473 So "Racism, Not Race: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions" 594 00:32:50,790 --> 00:32:54,517 was available in December of 2021. 595 00:32:54,517 --> 00:32:56,340 "Kirkus Reviews" ranked it 596 00:32:56,340 --> 00:33:00,570 as one of the best non-fiction books of 2021 597 00:33:00,570 --> 00:33:02,490 and one of the best books 598 00:33:02,490 --> 00:33:05,790 about being Black in America in 2021. 599 00:33:05,790 --> 00:33:07,680 I found the last one sort of strange 600 00:33:07,680 --> 00:33:09,900 since the book really isn't about being Black in America, 601 00:33:09,900 --> 00:33:12,093 but hey, we'll take the award. 602 00:33:13,470 --> 00:33:18,470 Now, same time, I was now a nationally-recognized figure 603 00:33:19,020 --> 00:33:22,320 on this issue of biological and social conceptions of race, 604 00:33:22,320 --> 00:33:26,490 so I was asked to be in a documentary 605 00:33:26,490 --> 00:33:31,297 about the life of James Watson, which was shown on PBS. 606 00:33:32,670 --> 00:33:35,730 I wrote some opinion pieces about his views, 607 00:33:35,730 --> 00:33:36,903 as you can see here. 608 00:33:38,160 --> 00:33:40,990 So now I'm gonna end my talk today 609 00:33:42,930 --> 00:33:44,730 focusing on something that I think 610 00:33:44,730 --> 00:33:47,703 is probably the most important contribution of my career, 611 00:33:48,600 --> 00:33:50,220 and that is changing the face 612 00:33:50,220 --> 00:33:53,490 of research in evolutionary science, 613 00:33:53,490 --> 00:33:55,593 most recently in microbial evolution. 614 00:33:56,970 --> 00:34:00,270 So here you see a picture of my research group 615 00:34:00,270 --> 00:34:02,460 at the 2018 Congress 616 00:34:02,460 --> 00:34:06,060 of Bio/computational Evolution in Action. 617 00:34:06,060 --> 00:34:09,720 That was a National Science Foundation-funded 618 00:34:09,720 --> 00:34:11,550 science and technology center 619 00:34:11,550 --> 00:34:13,350 of which our university was a part 620 00:34:13,350 --> 00:34:15,603 and I was the leader of our group. 621 00:34:16,710 --> 00:34:20,010 And quite frankly, any of you who have spent any time 622 00:34:20,010 --> 00:34:23,310 at evolution science conferences should quickly recognize 623 00:34:23,310 --> 00:34:24,870 that you will almost never see 624 00:34:24,870 --> 00:34:27,570 a group of this demographic composition 625 00:34:27,570 --> 00:34:29,400 at an evolution conference. 626 00:34:29,400 --> 00:34:33,750 Now, to show you what we've been able to do, 627 00:34:33,750 --> 00:34:37,050 many of the individuals in that picture, 628 00:34:37,050 --> 00:34:40,410 in fact, the two young ladies standing in front of me 629 00:34:40,410 --> 00:34:44,913 are now PhDs in evolutionary computational science. 630 00:34:45,840 --> 00:34:50,840 Okay, so if anyone wants to ask me about, you know, 631 00:34:51,150 --> 00:34:54,240 the microbial work, I'm happy to talk about it. 632 00:34:54,240 --> 00:34:56,520 We're not gonna spend time on it here. 633 00:34:56,520 --> 00:35:00,900 We've published a lot on how bacteria 634 00:35:00,900 --> 00:35:05,900 evolved resistance to nanomaterials and ionic metals 635 00:35:06,780 --> 00:35:09,393 in top-tier journals. 636 00:35:10,260 --> 00:35:12,810 But what I wanted to show you was this. 637 00:35:12,810 --> 00:35:15,120 In December of 2021, 638 00:35:15,120 --> 00:35:18,780 we graduated one PhD in microbial evolution, 639 00:35:18,780 --> 00:35:20,410 Dr. Sada Boyd-Versah, 640 00:35:20,410 --> 00:35:24,270 who's now a post-doctoral researcher at UCLA. 641 00:35:24,270 --> 00:35:27,060 This last December our group graduated 642 00:35:27,060 --> 00:35:31,170 two African American women PhDs in microbial evolution, 643 00:35:31,170 --> 00:35:32,520 Dr. Janelle Robinson, 644 00:35:32,520 --> 00:35:35,940 who now works for a sequencing firm in New Jersey, 645 00:35:35,940 --> 00:35:39,670 and Dr. Mizpha Fernander, who is working with us now 646 00:35:40,680 --> 00:35:45,680 in our Precision Microbiome Engineering Research Center. 647 00:35:46,140 --> 00:35:49,950 We currently have at least three more in the pipeline 648 00:35:49,950 --> 00:35:53,163 who will finish their PhDs from 2024, 2025. 649 00:35:53,163 --> 00:35:57,190 Now, the reason I say this is because for years 650 00:35:58,260 --> 00:36:03,120 I worked uphill against a constant mantra that, you know, 651 00:36:03,120 --> 00:36:06,030 Black students aren't interested in evolutionary science, 652 00:36:06,030 --> 00:36:08,370 that's why there are no Blacks in evolution. 653 00:36:08,370 --> 00:36:11,070 And nothing could be further from the truth, 654 00:36:11,070 --> 00:36:14,070 because here at North Carolina A&T, 655 00:36:14,070 --> 00:36:17,310 we teach evolutionary biology as a required course 656 00:36:17,310 --> 00:36:19,380 to our biology majors. 657 00:36:19,380 --> 00:36:23,940 We have numerous evolution-focused research laboratories 658 00:36:23,940 --> 00:36:28,940 that have African American or African PhD students in them 659 00:36:29,160 --> 00:36:30,960 who are completing their PhD degrees 660 00:36:32,729 --> 00:36:34,323 in evolutionary science. 661 00:36:35,310 --> 00:36:38,670 We as one institution are doing more 662 00:36:38,670 --> 00:36:42,600 than hundreds of institutions have done for decades. 663 00:36:42,600 --> 00:36:46,020 So it's not about the fact or the idea 664 00:36:46,020 --> 00:36:48,180 that African Americans aren't interested 665 00:36:48,180 --> 00:36:49,620 in evolutionary science. 666 00:36:49,620 --> 00:36:51,750 It's a question of how you teach that science 667 00:36:51,750 --> 00:36:54,420 and whether you have the cultural fluency 668 00:36:54,420 --> 00:36:57,750 to be able to present these ideas to students 669 00:36:57,750 --> 00:37:02,070 who start with a negative view of the science 670 00:37:02,070 --> 00:37:04,170 based upon that tragic history 671 00:37:04,170 --> 00:37:07,023 that I have explained earlier in my talk. 672 00:37:08,580 --> 00:37:12,993 Now, we're also engaged in teacher support initiatives. 673 00:37:14,100 --> 00:37:16,620 For those of you who are not in the Southeast, 674 00:37:16,620 --> 00:37:20,910 you may not be aware of the assault 675 00:37:20,910 --> 00:37:23,860 that has been going on against the public schools 676 00:37:24,810 --> 00:37:29,810 with regard to defunding them and making it difficult 677 00:37:29,820 --> 00:37:32,730 for teachers to teach science, period, 678 00:37:32,730 --> 00:37:34,650 let alone evolutionary science. 679 00:37:34,650 --> 00:37:38,700 So we are now part 680 00:37:38,700 --> 00:37:42,180 of the Amgen Biotechnology Experience, 681 00:37:42,180 --> 00:37:47,100 so we now are ABE North Carolina. 682 00:37:47,100 --> 00:37:49,680 This is a picture of our website. 683 00:37:49,680 --> 00:37:51,090 We are working with teachers 684 00:37:51,090 --> 00:37:56,090 from both the Durham and Guilford County school districts, 685 00:37:56,190 --> 00:37:57,780 doing professional development 686 00:37:57,780 --> 00:38:01,410 in cutting-edge biotechnology techniques 687 00:38:01,410 --> 00:38:03,710 that they can introduce into their curriculum. 688 00:38:04,740 --> 00:38:08,790 We, through Amgen, have all of the equipment, 689 00:38:08,790 --> 00:38:11,130 all the supplies needed, 690 00:38:11,130 --> 00:38:14,013 which they then go out and teach these lessons. 691 00:38:15,000 --> 00:38:16,530 We're just getting started, 692 00:38:16,530 --> 00:38:21,210 but we are on a path to become a major force 693 00:38:21,210 --> 00:38:25,833 in how biology is taught in Central North Carolina. 694 00:38:28,290 --> 00:38:31,320 So we also have landed 695 00:38:31,320 --> 00:38:34,800 the Precision Microbiome Engineering, PreMiEr, 696 00:38:34,800 --> 00:38:38,043 NSF Gen-4 Engineering Research Center of Excellence. 697 00:38:39,900 --> 00:38:42,900 It is a partnership between Duke University, 698 00:38:42,900 --> 00:38:46,410 UNC Chapel Hill, North Carolina State, UNC Charlotte, 699 00:38:46,410 --> 00:38:49,953 and my institution, North Carolina A&T. 700 00:38:52,140 --> 00:38:55,830 So finally, I think the most important work 701 00:38:55,830 --> 00:39:00,830 that I have been doing lately is directly addressing 702 00:39:01,140 --> 00:39:04,473 ongoing racial misconceptions in medicine. 703 00:39:05,490 --> 00:39:10,490 Now, it might not surprise folks in this audience 704 00:39:10,620 --> 00:39:12,390 that medical practitioners 705 00:39:12,390 --> 00:39:16,050 are treating human biological variation 706 00:39:16,050 --> 00:39:19,740 using 19th-century typological concepts. 707 00:39:19,740 --> 00:39:23,400 So for them, biological races are real. 708 00:39:23,400 --> 00:39:27,900 People who are members of the socially-defined races 709 00:39:27,900 --> 00:39:31,050 of the United States, for them, for the most part 710 00:39:31,050 --> 00:39:35,400 are thought to be legitimate biological entities. 711 00:39:35,400 --> 00:39:38,130 This is present in the curriculum. 712 00:39:38,130 --> 00:39:43,110 For example, I was asked by Elsevier to help do the revision 713 00:39:43,110 --> 00:39:45,687 of "Robbins & Kumar Basic Pathology," 714 00:39:46,590 --> 00:39:49,950 which was steeped in racial medicine. 715 00:39:49,950 --> 00:39:52,330 So now the new 11th edition 716 00:39:53,370 --> 00:39:56,640 has been improved. 717 00:39:56,640 --> 00:39:58,620 We weren't able to get it all 718 00:39:58,620 --> 00:40:00,750 because we argued with the other editors, 719 00:40:00,750 --> 00:40:04,020 but my colleague, Dr. Andrea Deyrup, 720 00:40:04,020 --> 00:40:07,440 who is one of the editors, and I 721 00:40:07,440 --> 00:40:11,580 have written and included for the first time 722 00:40:11,580 --> 00:40:13,380 in a major pathology textbook 723 00:40:13,380 --> 00:40:17,850 a section on health disparities that isn't typological. 724 00:40:17,850 --> 00:40:21,210 We have also worked in inclusive images, 725 00:40:21,210 --> 00:40:25,950 so showing diseases of the skin in more than one skin tone. 726 00:40:25,950 --> 00:40:29,670 You might again be surprised that medical texts 727 00:40:29,670 --> 00:40:32,400 have routinely shown skin diseases 728 00:40:32,400 --> 00:40:35,100 with only the complexion of Northern Europeans 729 00:40:35,100 --> 00:40:36,600 and not the rest of the world. 730 00:40:37,620 --> 00:40:40,620 So please take a look at the 11th edition, 731 00:40:40,620 --> 00:40:42,990 which we're really proud of. 732 00:40:42,990 --> 00:40:46,380 We've also published papers in major medical journals 733 00:40:46,380 --> 00:40:47,760 on this question. 734 00:40:47,760 --> 00:40:49,777 So in the "New England Journal of Medicine," 735 00:40:49,777 --> 00:40:53,070 "Ongoing Racial Misconceptions in Medical Education" 736 00:40:53,070 --> 00:40:54,693 came out in 2022. 737 00:40:55,800 --> 00:40:58,826 Also, shortly after that, 738 00:40:58,826 --> 00:41:02,040 "The Myth of the Genetically Sick African" for "Genealogy," 739 00:41:02,040 --> 00:41:05,850 and finally, probably the most significant of these papers 740 00:41:05,850 --> 00:41:08,160 was published in "Academic Medicine." 741 00:41:08,160 --> 00:41:10,110 As a result of the publication of this paper, 742 00:41:10,110 --> 00:41:14,580 the American Academy of Pediatrics came out with a statement 743 00:41:14,580 --> 00:41:16,920 opposing racial medicine. 744 00:41:16,920 --> 00:41:19,500 Now, they didn't do that until we showed 745 00:41:19,500 --> 00:41:22,140 that their pediatrics textbook 746 00:41:22,140 --> 00:41:25,743 had all sorts of racial misconceptions throughout it. 747 00:41:28,170 --> 00:41:33,170 Now, we have given talks on race in medicine 748 00:41:33,570 --> 00:41:36,870 across the nation and internationally. 749 00:41:36,870 --> 00:41:40,440 This is a list of our grand round talks 750 00:41:40,440 --> 00:41:45,440 at medical departments, beginning in 2021. 751 00:41:45,630 --> 00:41:48,450 Most of these were virtual because of the pandemic, 752 00:41:48,450 --> 00:41:51,240 but we've also found that virtual format 753 00:41:51,240 --> 00:41:54,270 allows us to give far more talks than we could 754 00:41:54,270 --> 00:41:58,203 if we were traveling to give these talks. 755 00:42:00,780 --> 00:42:04,980 Now finally, "We are all born into various systems 756 00:42:04,980 --> 00:42:06,690 of social injustice. 757 00:42:06,690 --> 00:42:09,600 Some simply refuse to see this fact, 758 00:42:09,600 --> 00:42:11,760 others resign themselves to accepting this 759 00:42:11,760 --> 00:42:13,830 and surviving the best they can, 760 00:42:13,830 --> 00:42:16,350 and then still fewer try changing this." 761 00:42:16,350 --> 00:42:20,790 And this is what my career has been about, 762 00:42:20,790 --> 00:42:23,463 changing these systems of social injustice. 763 00:42:25,440 --> 00:42:26,890 So why does this work matter? 764 00:42:28,680 --> 00:42:31,260 Knowledge is power and scientific knowledge 765 00:42:31,260 --> 00:42:34,320 in the 21st century may be the most significant 766 00:42:34,320 --> 00:42:37,830 for the survival of the human species. 767 00:42:37,830 --> 00:42:41,790 We cannot survive going forward 768 00:42:41,790 --> 00:42:43,860 with the systems of social injustice 769 00:42:43,860 --> 00:42:45,900 that currently govern the world. 770 00:42:45,900 --> 00:42:48,930 They will guarantee the extinction of the species, 771 00:42:48,930 --> 00:42:52,227 as I point out at the end of "Voice in the Wilderness." 772 00:42:53,490 --> 00:42:56,640 We have been involved, I and other colleagues, 773 00:42:56,640 --> 00:42:59,910 in presenting a new perspective 774 00:42:59,910 --> 00:43:01,980 for what science should be doing 775 00:43:01,980 --> 00:43:03,780 instead of supporting the status quo, 776 00:43:03,780 --> 00:43:06,577 and you can read about that in our piece, 777 00:43:06,577 --> 00:43:09,960 "Inequality in Science and the Case for a New Agenda," 778 00:43:09,960 --> 00:43:10,800 which was published 779 00:43:10,800 --> 00:43:13,230 in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences," 780 00:43:13,230 --> 00:43:16,890 also in March of 2022. 781 00:43:16,890 --> 00:43:18,790 Now finally, this brings me 782 00:43:20,430 --> 00:43:23,043 to a growing concern, 783 00:43:24,210 --> 00:43:28,260 and this was outlined by a paper, 784 00:43:28,260 --> 00:43:32,010 an article that came out in "Scientific American" 785 00:43:32,010 --> 00:43:33,573 in October of 2022, 786 00:43:34,620 --> 00:43:38,490 and this opinion piece argued why scientists 787 00:43:38,490 --> 00:43:40,710 should stand for affirmative action 788 00:43:40,710 --> 00:43:42,273 and against scientific racism. 789 00:43:43,110 --> 00:43:46,080 Now, it's highly likely that the Supreme Court 790 00:43:46,080 --> 00:43:49,023 is going to overturn affirmative action soon. 791 00:43:49,890 --> 00:43:53,520 So I was asked to comment in this article 792 00:43:53,520 --> 00:43:56,047 and my statement was, 793 00:43:56,047 --> 00:44:01,047 "Should the Supreme Court overturn Grutter v. Bollinger, 794 00:44:01,290 --> 00:44:03,480 thus essentially ending affirmative action 795 00:44:03,480 --> 00:44:07,320 at historically white institutions of higher education, 796 00:44:07,320 --> 00:44:10,560 they must simultaneously order that all states 797 00:44:10,560 --> 00:44:15,480 who violated the 1879 Plessy v. Ferguson decision 798 00:44:15,480 --> 00:44:18,240 by siphoning funds away from Black education 799 00:44:18,240 --> 00:44:20,340 to support white education 800 00:44:20,340 --> 00:44:23,070 must immediately pay those pilfered funds 801 00:44:23,070 --> 00:44:26,100 into Black public-school districts and HBCUs." 802 00:44:26,100 --> 00:44:27,120 Now, to give you an example 803 00:44:27,120 --> 00:44:29,460 of how significant these funds are, 804 00:44:29,460 --> 00:44:31,920 we've calculated that the state North Carolina 805 00:44:31,920 --> 00:44:34,687 owes my institution, North Carolina A&T, 806 00:44:34,687 --> 00:44:38,940 $1.3 billion as I speak, 807 00:44:38,940 --> 00:44:42,907 and that's just one of the HBCUs in North Carolina. 808 00:44:42,907 --> 00:44:46,380 "Furthermore, they must order that going forward, 809 00:44:46,380 --> 00:44:49,260 a moon-shot level investment in the infrastructure 810 00:44:49,260 --> 00:44:54,260 of HBCU/HSI/MSI and Tribal Colleges must be put in place 811 00:44:54,990 --> 00:44:57,750 to meet the need for equitable education for non-whites 812 00:44:57,750 --> 00:44:58,947 in the United States." 813 00:44:59,940 --> 00:45:04,800 Now, I think I've already demonstrated that we, 814 00:45:04,800 --> 00:45:07,020 at my institution, are capable of producing 815 00:45:07,020 --> 00:45:11,040 high-quality PhDs in science. 816 00:45:11,040 --> 00:45:14,550 The only thing that's limiting us in doing so 817 00:45:14,550 --> 00:45:17,880 is the fact that we don't have the infrastructure 818 00:45:17,880 --> 00:45:21,690 of the other research institutions in our state. 819 00:45:21,690 --> 00:45:24,000 We at North Carolina A&T are on track 820 00:45:24,000 --> 00:45:28,173 to become the first R1 HBCU in America. 821 00:45:29,370 --> 00:45:33,300 It is my hope that if we can land that infrastructure, 822 00:45:33,300 --> 00:45:37,890 that we can redress many of these ongoing issues 823 00:45:37,890 --> 00:45:40,860 with regard to under-representation in science. 824 00:45:40,860 --> 00:45:42,750 So I'm gonna end my comments there 825 00:45:42,750 --> 00:45:45,153 and open it up for question and answer. 826 00:45:57,210 --> 00:45:59,430 - Dr. Graves, this is Nelson Scottgale. 827 00:45:59,430 --> 00:46:01,630 Thank you very much for that wonderful talk, 828 00:46:03,000 --> 00:46:07,230 and the first question we have 829 00:46:07,230 --> 00:46:11,370 in the question and answers, Wonderful talk. 830 00:46:11,370 --> 00:46:14,760 Any thoughts on Stephen Jay Gould's 'The Mismeasure of Man'? 831 00:46:14,760 --> 00:46:16,770 This was my first experience with exposing 832 00:46:16,770 --> 00:46:18,060 of the faulty science involved 833 00:46:18,060 --> 00:46:21,360 in many supposedly scientific conclusions about race." 834 00:46:21,360 --> 00:46:22,650 - Yeah, I've lots of thoughts 835 00:46:22,650 --> 00:46:24,750 on Gould's "Mismeasure of Man." 836 00:46:24,750 --> 00:46:29,280 So first met Stephen when I was a graduate student 837 00:46:29,280 --> 00:46:32,580 at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole. 838 00:46:32,580 --> 00:46:35,150 So he came to give a talk. 839 00:46:35,150 --> 00:46:37,200 You know, I was privileged 840 00:46:37,200 --> 00:46:39,540 to get to go out to lunch with him 841 00:46:39,540 --> 00:46:43,560 and he actually suggested that I apply to go to Harvard, 842 00:46:43,560 --> 00:46:46,140 and the reason I didn't end up in Harvard is in the book, 843 00:46:46,140 --> 00:46:49,140 so those of you who wanna know, read the book. 844 00:46:49,140 --> 00:46:52,173 But "Mismeasure of Man" is a classic. 845 00:46:53,130 --> 00:46:55,020 Gould was not an evolutionary geneticist. 846 00:46:55,020 --> 00:46:56,730 He was a paleontologist. 847 00:46:56,730 --> 00:47:00,090 But he still did a really good job of explaining 848 00:47:00,090 --> 00:47:03,570 why so many of these racial ideas 849 00:47:03,570 --> 00:47:07,313 simply didn't follow legitimate scientific method 850 00:47:09,630 --> 00:47:13,890 and he provided readers with the history and the context 851 00:47:13,890 --> 00:47:17,070 of why people were supporting these racist ideas 852 00:47:17,070 --> 00:47:19,140 in the guise of science. 853 00:47:19,140 --> 00:47:24,140 So I, you know, routinely cite his work. 854 00:47:24,360 --> 00:47:27,690 He was a great contributor to how we understand, 855 00:47:27,690 --> 00:47:30,243 you know, modern ideas in evolution. 856 00:47:31,260 --> 00:47:33,630 You know, since he's not here to defend himself, 857 00:47:33,630 --> 00:47:37,140 I can't really talk about all the times, you know, 858 00:47:37,140 --> 00:47:39,120 because he wasn't an evolutionary geneticist, 859 00:47:39,120 --> 00:47:42,010 I helped to contribute pulling his fat out of the fire 860 00:47:43,170 --> 00:47:46,500 because he said things that weren't really supportable 861 00:47:46,500 --> 00:47:48,360 by what we knew in evolutionary genetics, 862 00:47:48,360 --> 00:47:51,573 but even though the things he said were right, so. 863 00:47:53,070 --> 00:47:53,903 - Thank you. 864 00:47:55,830 --> 00:47:58,653 - Dr. Graves, great talk. It's Ryan Fisher here. 865 00:47:59,580 --> 00:48:01,980 I have the next online question for you, 866 00:48:01,980 --> 00:48:04,357 and it reads as follows, 867 00:48:04,357 --> 00:48:06,480 "What is some advice you would give to students 868 00:48:06,480 --> 00:48:10,500 going into the same or similar fields as yourself?" 869 00:48:10,500 --> 00:48:12,750 - Well, it depends on which students they are, 870 00:48:12,750 --> 00:48:17,750 because, you know, in the academy one's identity 871 00:48:18,030 --> 00:48:22,530 plays a great role in the experience that you receive. 872 00:48:22,530 --> 00:48:26,253 So I went to school with evolutionary biologists, 873 00:48:27,660 --> 00:48:28,980 names you know really well. 874 00:48:28,980 --> 00:48:31,890 For example, Richard Lenski and I 875 00:48:31,890 --> 00:48:35,340 were both undergraduate students at Oberlin College. 876 00:48:35,340 --> 00:48:38,160 We took evolution together. 877 00:48:38,160 --> 00:48:40,260 But Richard would tell you that his experience 878 00:48:40,260 --> 00:48:43,500 in evolutionary biology was very different from mine. 879 00:48:43,500 --> 00:48:45,900 So it depends on who the students are, 880 00:48:45,900 --> 00:48:50,670 and I have written pieces particularly to help students 881 00:48:50,670 --> 00:48:53,973 from racially subordinated groups to do well in science. 882 00:48:55,050 --> 00:48:57,030 But you must be prepared for the fact 883 00:48:57,030 --> 00:48:59,550 that structural racism is real. 884 00:48:59,550 --> 00:49:03,180 It's real in every avenue of this society, 885 00:49:03,180 --> 00:49:04,530 so you're not gonna escape it. 886 00:49:04,530 --> 00:49:05,497 Say, for example, you say, 887 00:49:05,497 --> 00:49:06,330 "Ah, I'm not gonna go into science 888 00:49:06,330 --> 00:49:09,720 'cause I'll have to face structural racism." 889 00:49:09,720 --> 00:49:11,820 That would be a mistake 'cause if you go to medicine, 890 00:49:11,820 --> 00:49:12,870 you're gonna face it there. 891 00:49:12,870 --> 00:49:14,910 If you go to business, you're gonna face it there. 892 00:49:14,910 --> 00:49:17,430 If you go to sports, you're gonna face it there. 893 00:49:17,430 --> 00:49:20,370 So there's nothing that you can do in this society 894 00:49:20,370 --> 00:49:22,233 where that's not gonna be a role. 895 00:49:23,130 --> 00:49:27,870 So the advice I give is not to fall into imposter syndrome, 896 00:49:27,870 --> 00:49:31,350 and really, my career takes off 897 00:49:31,350 --> 00:49:33,210 when I defeated imposter syndrome, 898 00:49:33,210 --> 00:49:36,510 when I recognized that it wasn't me, 899 00:49:36,510 --> 00:49:39,390 that it was the system that I was living in 900 00:49:39,390 --> 00:49:41,550 that was causing all of my problems. 901 00:49:41,550 --> 00:49:43,833 So that's the primary advice I would give. 902 00:49:44,820 --> 00:49:47,223 - Right, I'll pass the questions back to Nelson. 903 00:49:48,780 --> 00:49:51,600 - I hope you can see the comment "Standing ovation" 904 00:49:51,600 --> 00:49:55,590 from the webinar participants, so thank you very much. 905 00:49:55,590 --> 00:49:58,293 I wanna make that vocal for everybody. 906 00:50:00,510 --> 00:50:01,343 The next question is, 907 00:50:01,343 --> 00:50:04,590 "Do you think that science can be married with politics 908 00:50:04,590 --> 00:50:06,870 to spur further action with regards to equality 909 00:50:06,870 --> 00:50:07,833 and human rights? 910 00:50:11,370 --> 00:50:12,720 What do you currently see? 911 00:50:12,720 --> 00:50:15,990 And if so, how do we go about doing that?" 912 00:50:15,990 --> 00:50:17,400 For context, this is a person 913 00:50:17,400 --> 00:50:20,280 who's a criminal justice major, so they're interested in- 914 00:50:20,280 --> 00:50:24,240 - Okay, so chapter, oh, I forgot which number, 915 00:50:24,240 --> 00:50:26,070 I think it's Chapter 12 (Nelson chuckles) 916 00:50:26,070 --> 00:50:27,720 of "Voice in the Wilderness," 917 00:50:27,720 --> 00:50:30,570 it's called the Evolutionary Science of Social Justice... 918 00:50:32,580 --> 00:50:34,140 Bill Hamilton, William D. Hamilton, 919 00:50:34,140 --> 00:50:36,690 was one of my professors at Michigan, 920 00:50:36,690 --> 00:50:39,690 and for folks that know evolutionary biology, 921 00:50:39,690 --> 00:50:41,530 he made a tremendous contribution 922 00:50:42,480 --> 00:50:44,670 when he explained the evolution of altruism 923 00:50:44,670 --> 00:50:45,723 in social insects. 924 00:50:47,180 --> 00:50:50,310 And basically there are two groups of organisms 925 00:50:50,310 --> 00:50:52,920 on the planet that have altruism, 926 00:50:52,920 --> 00:50:55,740 the social insects and vertebrates 927 00:50:55,740 --> 00:51:00,090 such as birds and mammals, okay? 928 00:51:00,090 --> 00:51:02,220 So this is something clearly that evolved 929 00:51:02,220 --> 00:51:05,100 'cause not all other taxa have this. 930 00:51:05,100 --> 00:51:08,010 And when you look at, you know, the mechanism, 931 00:51:08,010 --> 00:51:10,080 the first mechanism is, you know, 932 00:51:10,080 --> 00:51:12,540 altruism towards close relatives, 933 00:51:12,540 --> 00:51:15,090 which almost everybody agrees, you know, 934 00:51:15,090 --> 00:51:17,853 you do for solid evolutionary reasons. 935 00:51:19,080 --> 00:51:20,850 But the other mechanism, 936 00:51:20,850 --> 00:51:23,910 which was put forward by Robert Trivers, 937 00:51:23,910 --> 00:51:26,400 was the idea of reciprocal altruism, 938 00:51:26,400 --> 00:51:29,580 which is you can give altruistic acts to people 939 00:51:29,580 --> 00:51:31,230 who aren't your close relatives 940 00:51:31,230 --> 00:51:33,060 so long as they are reciprocal. 941 00:51:33,060 --> 00:51:36,360 And so the question then becomes, you know, 942 00:51:36,360 --> 00:51:41,220 what improves the survivorship of individuals? 943 00:51:41,220 --> 00:51:43,230 The exploitation of others 944 00:51:43,230 --> 00:51:45,420 or reciprocal altruism towards them? 945 00:51:45,420 --> 00:51:49,170 I would argue, and I do argue, that reciprocal altruism, 946 00:51:49,170 --> 00:51:53,010 that is, doing things that benefit others 947 00:51:53,010 --> 00:51:56,550 that aren't your close relatives is a win-win situation 948 00:51:56,550 --> 00:52:00,930 that create an environment in which all individuals 949 00:52:00,930 --> 00:52:03,510 have an opportunity to see their kids grow up 950 00:52:03,510 --> 00:52:05,190 and be safe and healthy. 951 00:52:05,190 --> 00:52:06,023 - Yes. 952 00:52:06,023 --> 00:52:07,380 - And the alternative, of course, 953 00:52:07,380 --> 00:52:10,440 is what we're seeing in the Ukraine right now, 954 00:52:10,440 --> 00:52:14,310 where people are being, you know, bombed and killed 955 00:52:14,310 --> 00:52:16,170 for the, you know, 956 00:52:16,170 --> 00:52:20,640 I don't understand reasons of a despot, 957 00:52:20,640 --> 00:52:23,103 leading to greater global insecurity. 958 00:52:24,330 --> 00:52:26,820 You know, we've seen over the last couple of weeks, 959 00:52:26,820 --> 00:52:30,390 you know, spy balloons passing over the United States 960 00:52:30,390 --> 00:52:33,060 at high altitude, which were probably always there 961 00:52:33,060 --> 00:52:35,070 and now finally detected. 962 00:52:35,070 --> 00:52:37,170 And it's not as if the United States hasn't been spying 963 00:52:37,170 --> 00:52:40,080 on China too, because they certainly have been. 964 00:52:40,080 --> 00:52:43,470 But, you know, the responses now from both nations 965 00:52:43,470 --> 00:52:47,823 are leading us towards possible nuclear annihilation. 966 00:52:48,720 --> 00:52:51,360 I'm sure you all follow the work of, you know, 967 00:52:51,360 --> 00:52:54,720 the "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" 968 00:52:54,720 --> 00:52:56,670 and the Doomsday Clock is closer to midnight 969 00:52:56,670 --> 00:52:58,350 than it's ever been. 970 00:52:58,350 --> 00:53:01,830 So I think an evolutionary perspective 971 00:53:01,830 --> 00:53:04,740 would tell us that, you know, 972 00:53:04,740 --> 00:53:09,150 win-win scenarios can lead us to a sustainable society 973 00:53:09,150 --> 00:53:11,910 where people aren't shooting nuclear missiles at each other, 974 00:53:11,910 --> 00:53:14,100 that it isn't necessary. 975 00:53:14,100 --> 00:53:17,880 And one of those things that can help us 976 00:53:17,880 --> 00:53:21,750 solve all the other existential problems we have, 977 00:53:21,750 --> 00:53:25,200 like, for example, anthropogenic climate change, 978 00:53:25,200 --> 00:53:28,620 starts with this issue of social justice. 979 00:53:28,620 --> 00:53:31,050 If we cannot solve this, 980 00:53:31,050 --> 00:53:33,390 we will not solve the other existential problems, 981 00:53:33,390 --> 00:53:36,003 and I would predict that we are absolutely doomed. 982 00:53:37,020 --> 00:53:38,490 Now, I believe we can solve this, 983 00:53:38,490 --> 00:53:41,853 but it requires the political and moral will to do so. 984 00:53:43,470 --> 00:53:46,590 - As a follow-up on that, if I may, Dr. Fisher, 985 00:53:46,590 --> 00:53:50,973 could you speak about the importance of voting? 986 00:53:52,110 --> 00:53:56,790 I think that we had a talk yesterday, 987 00:53:56,790 --> 00:54:00,720 talking about climate change and encouraging people 988 00:54:00,720 --> 00:54:05,720 to use their education and vote. 989 00:54:07,080 --> 00:54:08,940 - Well, honestly, I think voting 990 00:54:08,940 --> 00:54:13,940 is the least effective way to make social change. 991 00:54:14,670 --> 00:54:15,503 - Okay. 992 00:54:15,503 --> 00:54:18,330 - Don't get me wrong, I think people need to vote. 993 00:54:18,330 --> 00:54:20,250 That is not what I'm saying. 994 00:54:20,250 --> 00:54:22,830 But it is an extremely passive way 995 00:54:22,830 --> 00:54:24,900 and you're left with, by the way, 996 00:54:24,900 --> 00:54:27,990 the choices of who's in the political system, 997 00:54:27,990 --> 00:54:29,640 and I think that's our problem. 998 00:54:29,640 --> 00:54:30,473 - Okay. - We have 999 00:54:30,473 --> 00:54:32,640 two political parties in which, you know, 1000 00:54:32,640 --> 00:54:34,980 their members are more concerned with reelection 1001 00:54:34,980 --> 00:54:37,445 than they are the good of the American people 1002 00:54:37,445 --> 00:54:39,690 or the international people, 1003 00:54:39,690 --> 00:54:41,730 because as I was pointing out, 1004 00:54:41,730 --> 00:54:44,880 our problems are not just American, they're global now. 1005 00:54:44,880 --> 00:54:47,820 And so we need a different kind of politics. 1006 00:54:47,820 --> 00:54:50,040 We need people to start, you know, standing up 1007 00:54:50,040 --> 00:54:53,940 and taking responsibility for the places they live, okay? 1008 00:54:53,940 --> 00:54:56,673 And from that grassroots movement, 1009 00:54:57,870 --> 00:55:02,460 I believe that we need new political formations 1010 00:55:02,460 --> 00:55:04,470 because the ones that currently exist, I think, 1011 00:55:04,470 --> 00:55:09,470 are incapable of leading us towards a sustainable future. 1012 00:55:09,480 --> 00:55:10,770 So yes, we vote now, 1013 00:55:10,770 --> 00:55:14,010 but we vote for issues and we vote for people 1014 00:55:14,010 --> 00:55:17,400 who have some idea of what direction we should be going, 1015 00:55:17,400 --> 00:55:18,750 but we should have no illusions 1016 00:55:18,750 --> 00:55:21,210 that the current political system is capable 1017 00:55:21,210 --> 00:55:22,800 of meeting the needs of the human species. 1018 00:55:22,800 --> 00:55:23,700 I don't think it is. 1019 00:55:23,700 --> 00:55:24,533 - [Nelson] Hmm. 1020 00:55:26,253 --> 00:55:29,460 - Dr. Graves, I have a broad question 1021 00:55:29,460 --> 00:55:31,920 from one of our online guests, 1022 00:55:31,920 --> 00:55:35,190 which I'll tie in perhaps a question from myself, 1023 00:55:35,190 --> 00:55:38,700 given that we probably need to wind this down. 1024 00:55:38,700 --> 00:55:39,564 So the question- 1025 00:55:39,564 --> 00:55:41,820 - [Nelson] (indistinct) started here, Ryan. (chuckles) 1026 00:55:41,820 --> 00:55:43,597 - So the question from the guest is, 1027 00:55:43,597 --> 00:55:46,230 "What do you hope to see in evolutionary biology 1028 00:55:46,230 --> 00:55:47,220 in the future?" 1029 00:55:47,220 --> 00:55:50,793 And then my question to sort of connect to that is, 1030 00:55:52,080 --> 00:55:53,220 what's your outlook? 1031 00:55:53,220 --> 00:55:56,340 Are you glass half full, glass half empty 1032 00:55:56,340 --> 00:55:59,753 in terms of homo sapiens on planet Earth? 1033 00:56:00,660 --> 00:56:01,890 - Well, that's a tough question. 1034 00:56:01,890 --> 00:56:06,150 I definitely think the glass is halfway, 1035 00:56:06,150 --> 00:56:08,350 so it's a question of which direction, right? 1036 00:56:08,350 --> 00:56:09,540 (host chuckles) 1037 00:56:09,540 --> 00:56:12,360 And if we're gonna go on the basis of current events, 1038 00:56:12,360 --> 00:56:13,650 I would say we're headed down, 1039 00:56:13,650 --> 00:56:15,340 so we're sort of half full 1040 00:56:16,420 --> 00:56:18,660 and the slope is rapidly downhill, 1041 00:56:18,660 --> 00:56:20,700 but that doesn't mean we can't reverse things. 1042 00:56:20,700 --> 00:56:23,160 And that's where, again, where I think that, you know, 1043 00:56:23,160 --> 00:56:25,590 deploying our understandings 1044 00:56:25,590 --> 00:56:28,740 provided by evolutionary science provide us with the means 1045 00:56:28,740 --> 00:56:30,900 to turn the direction around, 1046 00:56:30,900 --> 00:56:32,850 and that's in a number of areas. 1047 00:56:32,850 --> 00:56:36,660 So for example, my research group has been involved, 1048 00:56:36,660 --> 00:56:37,950 you know, over the last couple of years 1049 00:56:37,950 --> 00:56:40,710 looking at how bacteria evolve resistance 1050 00:56:40,710 --> 00:56:42,240 to novel materials. 1051 00:56:42,240 --> 00:56:46,348 Now, this is absolutely crucial area because, as you know, 1052 00:56:46,348 --> 00:56:48,660 you know, bacteria are resistant 1053 00:56:48,660 --> 00:56:51,870 to virtually every antibiotic that exists on the planet. 1054 00:56:51,870 --> 00:56:53,730 The pharmaceutical industry can't come up 1055 00:56:53,730 --> 00:56:56,190 with new antibiotics fast enough. 1056 00:56:56,190 --> 00:56:58,710 So one of the things that evolutionary science 1057 00:56:58,710 --> 00:57:01,380 allows us to do is to come up with methods 1058 00:57:01,380 --> 00:57:05,370 like evolutionary traps in which the organism, microorganism 1059 00:57:05,370 --> 00:57:07,380 can't evolve its way out, 1060 00:57:07,380 --> 00:57:10,260 because you're attacking it in things 1061 00:57:10,260 --> 00:57:12,720 that are fundamental trade-offs. 1062 00:57:12,720 --> 00:57:16,380 For example, the receptor for a phage 1063 00:57:16,380 --> 00:57:18,240 confers antibiotic resistance. 1064 00:57:18,240 --> 00:57:19,470 Well, if you attack it with phage 1065 00:57:19,470 --> 00:57:21,690 and antibiotics at the same time, 1066 00:57:21,690 --> 00:57:23,520 the organism can't evolve its way out, 1067 00:57:23,520 --> 00:57:26,400 or at least it will take a much longer time 1068 00:57:26,400 --> 00:57:28,230 for it to evolve its way out. 1069 00:57:28,230 --> 00:57:31,380 And so, using these kinds of approaches, 1070 00:57:31,380 --> 00:57:33,990 I think evolutionary science is gonna help us 1071 00:57:33,990 --> 00:57:36,273 solve a lot of these existential things. 1072 00:57:37,110 --> 00:57:40,230 Certainly, again, going back to climate change, 1073 00:57:40,230 --> 00:57:43,350 it is imperative that we get a handle on this 1074 00:57:43,350 --> 00:57:48,300 because we already know that vectors of tropical diseases 1075 00:57:48,300 --> 00:57:50,430 are moving into the temperate zones. 1076 00:57:50,430 --> 00:57:53,250 So you didn't have to worry about Zika virus 1077 00:57:53,250 --> 00:57:54,210 a few decades ago. 1078 00:57:54,210 --> 00:57:55,320 Now you do. 1079 00:57:55,320 --> 00:57:57,510 Well, that's a tropical virus, 1080 00:57:57,510 --> 00:58:01,140 which is carried by a tropical insect. 1081 00:58:01,140 --> 00:58:04,410 So I think we're now at, you know, 1082 00:58:04,410 --> 00:58:06,900 some people would say that tipping point. 1083 00:58:06,900 --> 00:58:09,300 I think we're still at the tipping point where, 1084 00:58:09,300 --> 00:58:11,850 if we deploy our best science 1085 00:58:11,850 --> 00:58:14,880 and we deploy it with moral and ethical fiber, 1086 00:58:14,880 --> 00:58:16,353 I think we can survive. 1087 00:58:17,970 --> 00:58:19,260 But if we don't do that, 1088 00:58:19,260 --> 00:58:24,123 I would say the glass is nearly empty, not half empty. 1089 00:58:26,460 --> 00:58:28,260 - Dr. Graves, I wish we could just go 1090 00:58:28,260 --> 00:58:32,340 for another hour at least, but unfortunately we can't. 1091 00:58:32,340 --> 00:58:33,900 So thank you very, very much. 1092 00:58:33,900 --> 00:58:36,060 We really appreciate your talk 1093 00:58:36,060 --> 00:58:38,646 and your willingness to speak today. 1094 00:58:38,646 --> 00:58:40,796 - I hope you guys invite me back some time. 1095 00:58:42,000 --> 00:58:42,833 - Good deal.