Science Friday - Nobels, Argument Logic. Oct 5, 2018, Part 1

Episode Date: October 5, 2018

This week the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology, and medicine awarded its top scientists with its highest honor, the Nobel Prize. And this year, the annual celebration of scientific greatness was punctuated by a historic achievement: For the first time ever two female scientists won the award for both physics and chemistry, Dr. Donna Strickland and Dr. Frances Arnold. Dr. Arnold joins Ira to discuss her award and the legacy of female Nobel laureates. While most of us might think we’re logical people, we still butt heads when trying to persuade people we disagree with. So how can we solve seemingly insurmountable barriers? Abstract mathematician Eugenia Cheng is the author of a new book about how logic can help us agree—or at least disagree more helpfully. She walks Ira through the fallacies, axioms, and even emotions that can inform our arguments. Plus: Sarah Kaplan, science reporter at the Washington Post, joins Ira to talk about this year’s Nobel Prizes and efforts to make the awards more representative of the diversity in science, and other top science headlines, in this week's News Round-up. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. A bit later in the hour, how we can use logic to navigate our way through everyday arguments, divisive political issues, with a little help for mathematician, Eugenia Cheng. But first, this week, one of those rituals of science, the early morning wake-up call from Stockholm to a handful of researchers whose work has changed their fields. Joining me now to talk about the prizes and other slighted short subjects in science is Sarah Kaplan, science reporter at the Washington Post. Welcome back.

Thanks, good to be here. Nice to have you. Let's walk through the Nobel's. We're planning to speak with Chemistry Nobel-Nobelist Francis Arnold later this hour, but briefly, what did she win for? Yeah, so Dr. Arnold and two other researchers, George Smith and Gregory Winter, were awarded the Chemistry Nobel for their work on directed evolution. So this is basically one person called it, applying the principles of Darwin in a test tube,

taking advantage of natural selection and using it to kind of direct bacteria or viruses to produce molecules that can be used for all kinds of useful purposes, whether it's making antibodies or biofuels or drugs. And the chemistry prize was split with two other researchers, right? Yeah, George Smith and Gregory Winter. And what did they win for? So they both work on this technique called phage display, which harnesses bacteria phages. they are viruses that infect bacteria.

And it's kind of the similar principle where you're taking advantage of these living systems to produce useful molecules, proteins and antibodies that have all kinds of biological and medical applications. And what about physics? So in physics, the prize was awarded to three researchers who work with lasers. Pretty cool. Arthur Ashkin, Gerard Moreau, and Donna Strickland. And they basically not just use lasers, but use lasers as tools.

So Ashkin developed this technique called optical tweezers, where he basically figured out that when you point a laser or this focused beam of light at a spherical object, the object is actually drawn towards the center of the beam, and you can use that to manipulate things as teeny as particles or as big as bacterial cells. I've seen the tractor beam. This is like a tiny tractor. It's a real-life tractor beam. Unfortunately, it doesn't work on that largest scale because you need to keep the laser pretty focused. It's fun to think about. And after winning, Donna Strickland explained what amazed her most about the research. I just color of light goes in to just water or any clear anything, and out comes all the colors of the rainbow.

When the pulses are short and intense enough. And it's just remarkable to sit there and go, where do all those colors come from? Shades of Isaac Newton. Yeah, yeah. And it was cool hearing. Strickland actually mentioned that she uses white light generation when she teaches introductory physics course. So that's something that anyone can appreciate. You don't need to be a Nobel laureate to see this really cool phenomenon.

All right, let's move on to physiology or medicine. So the award for medicine went to two researchers, James Allison and Tasukohonjo, for their work on immunotherapy. This is basically a treatment that uses the body's own immune system to fight against cancer. And both researchers discovered proteins that act as breaks on the immune system. So when those proteins are engaged, as they normally are, prevent the immune system from attacking things. But they actually, their research led to this development of a class of drugs called checkpoint

inhibitors that can turn off the brakes and then unleash the immune system and its full force to fight against disease. Yeah, some of those are practical drugs used today, right? Yeah, actually, Jimmy Carter's melanoma, President Jimmy Carter in 2015, underwent immunotherapy as part of his cancer treatment. Let's talk about the two women who won prizes. Is the Nobel Committee working to be more diverse, do you think? Yeah, so this was a big year because two women were among the Nobel laureates, which seems like a low bar, but given the history of the prizes, is actually pretty exciting.

Arnold is only the fifth women to receive the chemistry prize, and Strickland is only the third woman to receive the physics prize, and actually the first in 55 years. And that's not because women haven't been doing prize-worthy work. In physics, a lot of people talk about these amazing women like Vera Rubin who found evidence for dark matter. Shien Shung Wu, who worked on the Manhattan Project, was called the First Lady of Physics. These are women who were pioneers in their field and never received the prizes because of implicit and explicit biases in the way the prizes are awarded. But the Royal Swedish Academy actually has asked nominators to start considering gender, geography, and topic in the nominations for prizes starting in 2019. So they say they're taking steps to try to address those biases. Dr. Arnold's going to be with us on a little bit.

I'm going to ask her about that. In other news, there was a big climate meeting this week, right? Yeah, so actually, right, as we speak, scientists and representatives of more than 100 countries are meeting right now in Korea to assess the chance of limiting climate change to the sort of moderate, manageable level, which is considered 100, or sorry, not 100. That would be a lot. 1.5 degrees Celsius or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels. So this is 1.5 is kind of seen as the guardrail.

That's like the most we can endure without having kind of cataclysmic consequences. And a leaked report that came out a few months ago actually found that our chance of hitting that is very low. Basically unless there's a massive deployment of technologies to remove carbon from the atmosphere, which doesn't really exist at that scale. And so these conversations right now are basically like how dire is this situation and how do what language could possibly express what needs to be done, basically, to meet that guardrail. Finally, there's some really interesting space news, a story about a dwarf planet, but not Pluto.

Not Pluto. This is actually even more of a dwarf than Pluto. It's a teeny tiny little guy way out at the edge of the solar system that actually has been called the Goblin because it was first detected around Halloween a few years ago. And it's one sixth the size of Pluto. It's about the width of Massachusetts, 300 kilometers. And it's this object that was first detected by the Super Telescope in Hawaii and then confirmed through repeated observations. And it has a really weird lopsided orbit that takes it. like way out beyond most of the rest of the giant planets in our solar system,

Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus and Neptune. And it actually takes 40,000 years to circle the sun. And this dwarf planet is really exciting to researchers because its skewed orbit is so weird that suggests that there's something out there. They call it a massive protuber that maybe is shepherding it and other dwarf planets around the edge of the solar system. And so this sort of planet nine or planet X, as it's sometimes called, that people sort of think might be lurking way out in the dark out there.

You know, now that we have the goblin, it's another suggestion that it's there. Those who believe in Pluto's still a planet called the X the 10. Yeah. All right, Sarah, that's fascinating. Thank you for taking time to be with us today. Yeah, thank you. Sarah Kaplan, science reporter at the Washington Post. I want to bring on the Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Francis Arnold.

She's only the fifth woman to ever be awarded the Prize in Chemistry. You're welcome to Science Friday. Thank you so much, Ira. It's so nice to have you. Congratulations. Well, thank you. I'm still stunned. What is more stunning?

Is it the fact that you won the prize, or is there some part of it, the fact that a woman was chosen to win the prize? Well, of course, I'm thrilled to be chosen. I hope it's not just because I'm a woman, but I'm also thrilled to be a woman who won the prize. We had Sarah Kaplan just on the Washington Post saying that in 2019, that the Nobel Committee has directed people to look more inclusive? Well, that's good. There are a lot of brilliant women who do chemistry and do chemistry at the highest levels.

So I think that's a good thing, and we'll see more Nobel Prizes to women. Do you think you'll be an inspiration to some women who are thinking about science? Well, I hope so. Let's talk about just in a couple of minutes, but we have to take the break. What do you think in your work, what your greatest contribution so far has been?

Well, I teach some of the smartest people in the world who come to the California Institute of Technology to do science. And over my career, I've worked with hundreds of really the smartest people in the world. And I would hope that my greatest contribution is the sum of their creativity and contributions. Do you feel like I've looked at your career, you started out and sort of went in all kinds of different directions. What finally got you to where you are? Well, sometimes it's important to go in different directions. You learn different ways of thinking that you can put together in new ways. Finally, I stumbled on biotechnology at the beginning of the DNA revolution and the ability to engineer the most.

complicated things on the planet, biological systems, the gut's in your, the microbes in your gut. That's where I ended up and I've been ever since. I just love it. All right. We're going to talk more. Stay with us, please. We're going to talk more with Dr. Arnold, recipient of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. She is the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, bioengineering, and chemistry at Caltech, and a board member of Illumina, the Gene Sequencing Company in San Diego. If you'd like to talk with you. Dr. Arnold, we're very happy to have you. You can give us a call 844-8255.

You can also tweet us at SciFry. We'll be right back after this break. I'm Ira Flato. You're listening to Science Friday. We're talking with Dr. Francis Arnold, recipient of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. A lot of people think you're a scientist, but you are a very proud engineer, are you not? I am. Tell us what the difference is.

Well, I love to build things. I like to make new things that didn't exist before. Of course, chemists do that as well. They build new molecules. So we're blending together chemistry and engineering in evolution of new proteins. How do you build that? I was watching a TED talk you gave. It was quite fascinating.

And you talked about being able to sit down at a keyboard and type out a recipe for some form of new genetic. mail it out and what a new gene comes back to you? Yes, it's really amazing. It's changed so much in the 30 years that I've been doing this so that today you really can type out a DNA sequence. Now, whether it's a recipe is a different story, and we can talk about that. But you can type out a DNA sequence,

email it off to your favorite supplier of DNA, and they will send you back in the mail that DNA. You say in that talk that I want to, write new DNA. What does that mean to you? Actually, it's easy to write new DNA. What's hard is composing it. You think about it. DNA is the code of life. It's the product of almost four billion years of evolution. We don't know how to compose new DNA. We can write it, we can read it, we can edit it, but we don't know how to compose it. How do you compose something that encodes a complex biological function that didn't exist before.

So what is the problem in the composition? Why can't you compose it? Because we don't understand how DNA encodes function. Remember, molecular biology is a brand new discipline. It's been around, the structure of DNA was published in 1953. So it's not been understood but for a very short time. And how DNA goes through all the complicated things of a cell and makes biological molecules and codes the structure and functions of these biological molecules is a brand new field,

and we still don't understand those rules. So what do you mean then? And what do people mean? and when you say the directed evolution of something, what does that process mean? Well, it's just like breeding. We've been breeding cats, dogs, racehorses, lab rats, corn, for thousands of years without really manipulating the DNA directly.

But now that we can synthesize DNA and put it in a test tube, I can go direct to the DNA and combine, DNA from different sources, different species. I can dial in levels of random mutations. I can direct mutations. So I have control over the underlying DNA diversity. And then I decide who goes on to parent the next generation. And then how do you get a useful product out of that? What's the next step? So you put the DNA into a microbe, and they start reading it as if it were their own. And And they then take the DNA and create the proteins that the DNA encodes. Then I, as the breeder of molecules, so to speak, I have to decide who is better than what I started with, which one of those microbes makes a better protein.

And that's called good old-fashioned analytical chemistry. I take the DNA out of that and feed it back, and I do it all over again. Is it sort of creating life in that cell? You're creating a new form of life, are you not? Well, I think that's probably exaggerating because life was there for me to work with. We're using the tools of biology to make new things. I'm making new proteins. They're not alive.

But they do do some things inside of cells. But you need the cell to help you make the protein. Well, actually, so you don't have to have the cell. There's now very powerful systems where you can do everything from DNA to protein inside of a test tube with no cells at all. And so where do you eventually see this research going? What is your ultimate goal here? Ira, my ultimate goal is to allow human beings to use the power of bioccurring. biology, the power of biology to do chemistry, to make molecules, to make materials, to make

therapeutic agents and pharmaceuticals, and basically all the things we need in our daily lives from renewable resources without producing excess waste. I saw in your talk you said, I have fun forcing molecules to have sex. Oh, yes. I do. Tell me about that. Well, if you think about sex, you have to wonder why nature would devise such a strange process and have all these half the population that doesn't carry the next generation. So there has to be some benefit to recombining your DNA with somebody else's.

And that benefit is the innovation that comes around. If you recombine DNA, you get progeny, you know, recombine DNA that encodes something novel. Let's even get a phone call or two before we have to go. Let's go to Adrian and Hamden. Hi, Adrian. Hi, this is Adnan and Hamden. I grew up in Southeast Asia where my parents, my cousins,

everyone around me were just studying either math or engineering. My son, who is about two and a half years old, what I'm trying to figure out, how to identify his mindset, whether it be towards chemistry, sports, math, so it may not be completely relevant question, but I would love to hear your thoughts on the subject. How to identify your kids or younger generations' skill set so that they can go towards chemistry or science or physics? Did you know at an early age, Dr. Arnold? You wanted to do that? I was lucky. My father was in nuclear physics. and he always thought that girls could do math just as well as boys could.

So he never discouraged me. And I also had four brothers to compete with. And I like being the winner. So I had a father who encouraged my natural tendency, never discouraged it, and had plenty of people to compete with. Well, you know, I hear this from so many scientists we've talked to over the years, that they had a role model, a mentor, somebody could even be their parents. who kept them or kept alive and encouraged their interest in science.

Same thing for you, it seems. It seems so. And I miss my father. He passed away two years ago, but he would have loved this news. And is there a way to answer the listener's call, is there any way to identify at a young age who is talented in science? I think all children are talented. And if they love it, they will ask questions.

They will do it. I think the most important thing is not to discourage someone. I have a tweet from Sydney who says, please ask what she knows about how instinct is encoded in DNA. Example, dogs urge to bury things. I wish I knew. But it's clear that many important behaviors are, at least partially, genetically encoded.

Loyalty in dogs. There's so many interesting behaviors that can be bred. but we don't really understand what the genetic details of that are. As we sequence more things and measure their properties, we'll be using important and powerful tools like machine learning to piece out and to try to pull out what is the genetic basis. Well, you anticipated my last question, and that is, what tools would you like to see?

I mean, I give you, well, you've got some money now from the No-Mill, right? What kind of tools that don't exist would you like to have? Well, I want to be able to measure important properties rapidly so that I can do this breeding faster. I don't have powerful enough tools to do that, but I'm also interested in how do you use AI and machine learning to interpret the results of evolution, to make it even faster than it is now. I noticed on your TED Talk you said that one of your great ambitions is to be invited to give the Ig Nobel Award speech. You know, we broadcast the eggs every year the day after Thanksgiving. And we know Mark Abrams pretty good, so I think we can put a, you know, might be able to put in a good word for you now. Well, I was actually hoping to win the Ig Nobel Prize before.

But that would be fun, too. Oh, great. That would be marvelous. I think it might be a little easier for you now to do that. All right. Dr. for taking time to be with us today. Thank you. Dr. Francis Arnold, recipient of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry,

and she's the Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering, and Chemistry at Caltech. Ever having an argument with someone you thought was being completely illogical? Maybe it was about what to have for dinner, something simple like that, or maybe a little more difficult about climate change or White House policy. Whatever the topic, you know, it is frustrating, right? So offering up your own side of the story, you feel like you're getting nowhere. Nothing's happening. And nothing rational.

Maybe they're even taking the same points you're making and using them to support their own side. Well, my next guest says the hardest part is that we both may employ perfectly sound logic only to come to different conclusions. So how not cut through the middle of that and maybe finally pinned down a good meal plan or a good climate change response? Maybe math can help. Question for you today, listeners today, has anyone's logic ever changed your mind about something? Yeah, did they convince you? Was your mind changed? We want to know your story.

Give us a call 844-724-8255. That's 844-724-8255, or you can tweet us at SciFri. And here to take us through her logic is Eugenia Chang, mathematician, scientist and residence at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. A newest book is The Art of Logic in an Illogical World, and we have an excerpt up at Science Friday.com slash logic. Welcome back, Eugene. Hi, thanks for having me back. How's the piano playing going?

Oh, it's going very well. Thank you very much. We love to have you on last. Thanks. That was really fun. It was fun. You know, you looked around and thought we all need a better understanding of how logic works. What on earth made you think of that?

Oh, I can't imagine. Well, I have to give credit to my students at the School of the Art Institute. of Chicago because I learn so much from them. And when teaching goes well, it's a two-way process. And my art students have pushed me to think about issues of social justice because they care about those questions so much. And if you can find what your students care about and tap into that, then you can teach them so much better through things that are already motivating to them. And so I gradually found more and more ways to think about mathematics by asking questions about social justice. And then the reverse happened as well, where I understood a lot more about

these questions by using a mathematical framework. And my art students were so helpful in doing that that I learned so much and thought, well, I really should share this with the rest of the world. And that's how this book came about. Well, the 800-pound gorilla in the room, at least from me, is because we argue all the time here. What is the point of arguing logically if people are bringing emotions to the table and don't really care about the facts. And now we can't even agree on what the facts are. Don't you need to agree on something to be able to argue logically? It's a very good question, and it can sometimes seem very futile at the moment, as if maybe we're just doomed to take sides. And the trouble is that if we think we're doomed to take sides,

then we will be doomed to take sides. It's a very self-fulfilling prophecy. Whereas I have found ways to understand what other people are thinking from their point of view and to find ways of bridging the gap to show that we're not actually on completely different planets. It's not black and white. It's usually that there's some kind of gray area in between. And if I can find that we're both on the same gray area just in different places, then it's much easier to think about sliding around it than to think about flipping an entire coin onto the other side.

This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. I'm I replato talking with Dr. Eugenia Chang, author of the art of logic in an illogical world. So one of the first things you acknowledge is that the real world isn't actually logical. But we can get a lot of useful work done in the abstract world. Yes, we can find the logic inside situations, even if the whole situation isn't completely logical. And the discipline of mathematics begins with abstraction, where you shave a some of the details that aren't completely relevant to the situation to find out what's really going on at root. And when you've got to the root, it's there that you look at the logic.

And when you shave away those details, you find that a lot of different situations become the same at root. And that gives you a way of connecting different situations and tapping into some understanding that you've achieved elsewhere and making connections between things. But I think that shaving away process, excuse me, is probably one of the most difficult. parts. It might be quite difficult and it's one of the things that is off-putting about mathematics. People often say to me, I was fine with math until the numbers became letters. And somehow that's a scary step. But actually numbers are already abstractions. There are already things where we've shaved away the details that two cookies and two apples, well, if you ignore the fact that they're cookies and apples, then you get the concept of two. And we can do this with arguments in

real life as well, where we can shave away details and discover that arguments about, say, voter suppression have something in common with arguments about cancer screening and arguments about accusations of sexual harassment, for example, because they're all about whether we care about false positives more or false negatives more. And then we can see that those arguments come up in questions about social services and in questions about who should go to university, and those questions are all over the place. What are some of the most common ways that you see people being illogical when they argue? One of the basic ones is when they simply use the wrong definitions right at the start.

And this is one of the key ways in which we might think that people are using the wrong facts. And so, for example, I've seen arguments on the internet. Goodness me, there are some bad arguments on the internet. Never. But I've seen arguments on the internet where people say things like they believe that all immigrants are illegal. and that is not correct. Or they support the Affordable Care Act, but not Obamacare. And they've got the wrong definition of Obamacare in that case.

Or there was a study, a survey of undergraduate male students that showed that many of them said that they would have non-consensual sex if they thought they could get away with it. But they would definitely not commit rape, which means they've got the wrong definition of rape. So we have to agree on terms. We do, and that's something that mathematicians are very careful about, agreeing on terms right at the beginning. So then another very common error that people make is when they make a false equivalence between one argument and another argument. And this often happens in what's called a straw man argument, but I prefer to call it straw person because I don't like gendering things unnecessarily. But if you make an argument that seems quite reasonable to you, sometimes somebody will replace it with a much more extreme argument. and believe that that's what you were trying to say,

and then they'll knock it down because the extreme argument is much easier to knock down. And that can be very aggravating because they're essentially painting you in a very bad light and then taking a moral high ground. I know that argument. Well, talking with Dr. Eugenia Cheng, author of The Art of Logic and Inological World,

join us at 844-724-8255, 844-Sight-4-Sight-Talk. You can also tweet us at SciFry. We're going to take a quick break. And come back and talk with Dr. Chang some more, so stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Plato in a time of contentious news and divisive political races. Can we have better conversations about the issues that get us most emotional, talking about how a better understanding of logic,

logic can help us talk and listen and maybe start to bridge some of those divides or at least understand why we're disagreeing so passionately. Our guest is Dr. Eugenia Cheng, a mathematician, a scientist in residence at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her newest book is The Art of Logic in an Illogical World, and we want to hear from you. Has anyone's logic ever changed your mind about something? Some listeners are phoning in, and first one, Alex, is from Chicago. Hey, a neighbor. Hey, Sally.

Hi there. Hi there. Go ahead. Hi, so I had previously identified myself as an aspiring feminist, and I had done so because my logic was that I really couldn't fully emphasize with some of the issues that women face as a male. And I was met with that logic from a coworker of mine who had said, you know, as a black male, you know, you might be doing things that contribute to white supremacist. systems that you might do so knowingly or unknowingly, but that doesn't necessarily make you no longer an African-American male. In the same way, women or being a man who contributes to misogynistic systems unknowingly

wasn't necessarily make me unable to identify as a feminist. It would just mean that I have to do more to aspire to contribute to feminist systems. And so being able to see the fact that I can still be a male with male experiences, while existing as a feminist, and identifying myself in such a way, it really changed my mind in the way I thought about that. That's great. Thanks for calling. That is great.

That's very heartening. Is, you know, is part of the problem that we don't see how we others see us? I think that is part of the problem, but I think a big problem is that we often spend too long trying to defend our own points of view instead of trying to understand somebody else's points of view. And we often focus on trying to change. someone else's mind instead of trying to see their point of view and see what its validity is. And one thing I found very interesting in the caller's experience is that it was a great example

of using some abstract structure to tap into the person's own experiences. So in a way, I think the logic was used very cleverly, using emotions as well, to say, let's find an analogous situation that this person will understand from their own experiences and then hope that they can translate that to somebody else's analogous experience. I have a tweet from James who says, to me, logical discussions don't require math. It requires empathy. Empathy is caring enough to respect another view and listen to it. Is that emotional?

I don't know. I agree. I think that logic does not require math, but logic is in a way part of math. And these things have porous boundaries. I mean, we've constructed a lot of artificial boundaries between subjects for bureaucratic. purposes. But I am a mathematician, and from my point of view, because I am so deeply steeped in the discipline of mathematics, I find that the full discipline of mathematics helps me with logic in the real world. I'm not saying that you have to be a mathematician in order to use logic,

and that's a good thing, because I think everybody can use logic, whether they're a mathematician or not. Let's talk about some current events. Let's turn out to the hottest topic in current events, and that is voters in Congress are divided over whether to believe accusations of sexual assault against Judge Brett Kavanaugh and whether this should affect his confirmation to the Supreme Court. And you write, then in terms of how people respond to stories about sexual assault, there are a number of different logical processes at play. Tell me what you mean by that.

Well, there's a whole, there are a whole lot of different parts of this argument that we can analyze, starting with what we mentioned before about wrong definitions, because a lot of people are clinging to the principle of the presumption of innocence. And the thing about the presumption of innocence, I think, is that it's technically for court cases and criminal trials. And it's something that gets bandied around as a general principle, but it's really a very specific principle. And similarly, the idea of freedom of speech is often bandied around as a general principle, when in fact that's just about whether you can be imprisoned for saying certain things. So going on from the presumption of innocence, there is a paradox because some people say,

well, we have to presume someone innocent until they're proved guilty. And the thing is that if you have an accuser and an accused person, and let's just say the accuser is a woman and the accused person is a man, then what about the fact that we should also presume the woman to be innocent until she has proved guilty of a false accusation? And so then we have a paradox because we can't actually hold the man and the woman both innocent, at the same time because that causes a contradiction. And mathematics and philosophy have studied paradoxes for a long time and studied ways to resolve paradoxes by shifting levels

or finding that things are at a different level. And the thing is, I think, that we can start with the axiom of presuming the accused person to be innocent. And then we can look at what world that creates for us. And what mathematics does all the time is it starts with some basic assumptions and builds a logical world around that. and then we look at that world and go, what do I think of this world? And so we can look at the world that we've created by presuming accused people to be innocent until proved guilty.

And I think what we should see is that we've created a world in which people know that they can get away with sexual assault. Because there is almost never actual evidence that can prove that it happened. And if they know that they can get away with it, that means that they will do it more. And so we've ended up in a culture where sexual assault can happen and does happen and happens all over the place. place because people know that they can get away with it. So then the question is, do we care about that? And that becomes a question of false positives and false negatives. So do we care that so many people are getting away with sexual assault? Or are we more afraid of what some people are worried about, which is that there will be false accusations and innocent men will be have their lives

destroyed by a false accusation. So having a false accusation would be when somebody is innocent but is thought is accused of being guilty, and the other way is when someone is guilty, but isn't proved to be guilty and so is let off. And that's really about whether you're prioritizing the plight of victims of sexual assault or the potential innocence of men. And we have to have a discussion about that and about the fact that we are somehow prioritizing the men who might be accused. We're prioritizing them over the thousands and millions of women who are suffering sexual assault all the time. And so the question is, are we going to do anything about that? So the next problem is a question of black and white thinking. And this happens a lot where

people get into arguments in extremes. And so many of our arguments at the moment turn divisive because we take extreme opposite positions instead of something more moderate in between. And so there is an argument around saying something like, you are making everyone into a rapist or what one that Professor Langbert said on his blog that we are characterising just spin the bottle crimes as rape. And that's taking a very black and white view of thinking that we're calling all forms of sexual assault and harassment rape, which is not what is happening. There is a scale and there are things that are as bad as rape and there are other things that are bad, but perhaps not as bad as rape, which takes us to the issue of

false equivalences and straw person arguments where you can take that false equivalence and then you can declare, well, you're saying everyone is a rapist, which is not what people are saying, or some people say you're saying, any woman should be able to destroy the life of any man just by accusing him of sexual assault, which again is a very extreme position that I don't think that anyone really is taking. And finally, there's the question of null and alternate hypotheses, which comes up in scientific testing a lot, where you have to decide what your default position is, and then you say, in the absence of further evidence, I'm going to take this default position, and I'm going to wait till I've found enough evidence to change my mind.

And the thing is that in a court case and a trial, it's very important because we're going to punish somebody badly for something. So before we do that, we should be very sure that they deserve to be punished. Whereas in the case of a Supreme Court appointment, then what we're doing is we're giving them something very good and important. And so we should be very sure that they deserve that very good and important thing. And in that case, one might argue that that situation could be negated by one bad thing happening. Whereas in the case of a trial, we should not punish somebody if there is some doubt about whether they should be punished, which means if if there is something good to offset the our sureness about the fact that they are bad.

And those are two, they sound the same, but they're slightly different situations that have a different null and alternate hypothesis situation. 844724825, lots of people checking in on that. Let's go to Karina in Washington State. Hi, welcome to Science Friday. Hi, Ira. Thanks so much for taking my call. My question is, well, I'm wondering how to access my logical arguments when I feel very emotional about the subject that's being discussed, especially if I feel that I have first-hand experience or background knowledge that supports my logic, that sometimes I feel that my emotions get in the way and I end up not feeling logical at all.

Well, good question. Thank you for that question. And I think the first thing that's important to remember is that your emotions are always valid. And I think that we have been led into a situation of a false dichotomy between emotions and logic. And some people, and I'm afraid it's often men, take the position that if you are emotional, then it somehow proves that you're not logical. And that's not the case. I know that I'm a very emotional person and also that I'm a very logical person. I am a successful research mathematician, and my whole profession depends on my use of logic.

But I'm also an emotional person, and those things can go together. They aren't working against each other. So you don't actually have to suppress all your emotions in order to be logical. And if anyone tells you that you're being too emotional and that that means you're not being logical, that just isn't true. That doesn't have to be true anyway. So what I say is that, yes, it is very difficult to find the logic in a situation when you're feeling very strong emotions.

And that's where I feel that the mathematical discipline of abstraction really helps me because it means that I can look at a chain of logic and separate that out from the emotion. So I'm not saying I shouldn't feel the emotions, but I put the emotions in a kind of different compartment and think about the chain of logical steps. And this helps me to understand another person's point of view, even if I disagree with them very, very viscerally and I'm very upset about their position, If I abstract from that and look at their chain of logic step by step, then I don't have to feel what they are feeling,

but I can see the logic that they are using, and those two things can be separate, but then I can actually use the logic to be able to understand their point of view despite my emotional disagreement. This is Science Friday from WNIC Radio. I'm Ira Flato talking with Eugenea Cheng, author of The Art of Logic in an Illogical World. I think, you know, that is one of the hardest things to do these days, is to just count to 10.

Yes, that's a very important aspect of it, because logic is a slow process, and it doesn't happen in the format that is very popular in the current modern world, which consists of a mic drop or a one-liner or some kind of meme that doesn't have very many words in it or a 280-character tweet. logic takes longer than that and I wish that we could all take time to slow down our arguments so that we have time to explore the logic and build the logic. So it's almost like mindfulness, you know, you have to find a way to catch yourself in a moment. Yes, it is a lot like that. And I think that that kind of mindfulness can help us understand the logic inside our own emotions because our emotions are all coming from somewhere. There is something that is causing them.

And I honestly believe that when I see somebody who is feeling something emotional about something very differently from me, if I do that mindfulness for them, even if they are unable to do it for themselves, then I can start to understand what their basic belief is from which all of this is stemming. And maybe I can see how that basic belief is different from my basic belief. And that's why we're different. We think different things, not because our logic is different, but because our starting points are different. different. Well, I have about a minute or so left. I want to ask you about something. You write a great deal about the logic of privilege relating, especially to race and gender. Is that an area especially ripe for a logical treatment? Yes, the arguments get very vehement, and some people get very upset about the whole question of privilege and identity politics. And I think it's important

for us to understand everyone's point of view. And often it's a misunderstanding about what privilege means because, for example, white privilege does not mean that all white people are better off than all non-white people. It means that any white person, if they had all the same characteristics and the exact same life, except that they were black as well, we would expect them to be worse off in society. And so some white people get upset because they say things like, but I grew up poor and I had to work really hard. So that means that I didn't have white privilege. And we need to acknowledge the fact that indeed there are white people who are really struggling, and we shouldn't let our discussion of privilege erase that fact that there are white people who are struggling,

because if we erase that fact, then they get angry and feel that they have been disenfranchised and that they have no voice. But we need to understand that if they were black, then they would have an even worse time, and that's what the logic and the structure of privilege is really about. Dr. Chang, thank you for joining us again. As always, it's a pleasure to have you. very much. Good luck with the book. Eugenie Chang, mathematicians, scientists, and residents at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago. Her newest book is The Art of Logic and an illogical world,

and we have an excerpt up at ScienceFriday.com slash logic. One last thing before we go. This week, the world lost a Nobel physicist, a pioneering educator and a popularizer of science, Dr. Leon Letterman. Not only was he a director of Fermilab, he was a tireless fighter for science, literacy, seeking to reach the public about the importance of science through any means possible.

It's a battle to keep our science programs viable, and that's one of the problems I think we have. There are obstacles towards the goal we have, and we think it's an crucial goal, is to improve our teachers, improve our education, and get the reasonable number, in fact, a general population, the graduates of our high schools and colleges, to be comfortable with science and to be skeptical that you can do everything with science, what you can do and what you can't do. This is public science

literacy is crucial, and if we have that, then we'll have better teachers and better students and maybe we can pull out of this slump. Nobel laureate Leon Letterman speaking to us on Science Friday in 2006. He died this week

at the age of 96 condolences all his friends and family. Charles Berkwist is our director, a senior producer, Christopher Taliatta. Our producers are Alexa Lim, Christy Taylor, and Katie Heller. We had technical engineering help today from Rich Kim and Sarah Fishman.

We're active all week on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all the social media. If you have a smart speaker, you can play Science Friday, whatever you want. So every day now is Science Friday, including our website, all kinds of educational materials, all kinds of stuff to help you

learn more about science and Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato in New York.