What you see isn’t necessarily what you get. Sometimes there’s a counterintuitive feel to trends -- the trend you’d assume to be coming isn’t always the trend that emerges. People expected a sky full of flying cars long ago, for example -- though the technology is there, they so far aren’t practical or safe enough, so they haven’t happened. I almost said, "So flying cars just haven’t come down" -- but that’s what I’d be afraid they’d do: come down through my roof.
Let’s test a few of our assumptions. We tend to assume, for example, that the part of the U.S.A. most likely to have serious earthquakes in the future is California, and maybe the Pacific Northwest. But in fact, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, the central Mississippi Valley is one of the most earthquake-prone regions of the United States. The "New Madrid" seismic zone could well have major, devastating earthquakes sometime this century, causing "widespread destruction from Arkansas to Iowa." People have forgotten the extremely powerful earthquakes that took place there in 1811 when quakes "caused church bells to ring a thousand miles away in Boston and even changed the course of the Mississippi River."
For the rest of our off-the-cuff survey of the Counterintuitive in scientific (and, as we shall see, unscientific) trends, let’s focus on biology.
-- We assume the next revolution in medicine relates to the decoding of the genome. Genetic engineering will surely be an enormous futurological factor -- I honestly expect to see genetically engineered pets in 40 years, flying dogs and talking cats.
But maybe genetic medicine will not be as much a health factor as something called proteomics. According to science writer Tom Abate, "The theory behind proteomics is that the difference between a healthy cell and a sick cell boils down to some difference between the composition of the proteins of the two cells." At a recent two-day conference on proteomics, Robert Toth, vice president for biotech research with Prudential Vector Securities, said, "Genes are only the blueprints for how the body works. Proteins are the building blocks and the moving parts that actually make the body work." Proteomics identifies and tools proteins for very exact tasks inside a cell. This latest proteomics conference had 10 times more attendees than the one in 1998 -- proteomics is the hot new arena for biotech investors and is expected to become a vast industry.
-- We assume that if we cut trees down, we’ll have enough forest to make oxygen so long as we replace them with new plantings. But a report in the journal Science by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry indicates that old, wild forests are far better at replacing carbon dioxide with oxygen. The United States and other countries currently plan to use tree plantations to comply with the Global Warming treaty -- the study suggests that old growth forests would have to be protected in any country hoping to be in compliance.
-- We’ve assumed for a while now that aging has a genetic basis -- and to some extent, it seems to. But the evidence mounts that "toxic oxygen" molecules called free radicals destroy cells in a kind of oxidation, leading to many of the symptoms of old age. Oxidation? Right — in short, we’re rusting! Synthetic versions of the natural enzymes -- superoxide dismutase and catalase -- used by the Buck Institute on Aging in Novato, California restored the health of genetically disabled worms so they lived out their normal life spans. Do the same principles apply to people as to worms? It’d be counterintuitive to think so -- but apparently, according to a report in the journal Science, they do.
Talk of oxidation and anti-oxidants are a mainstay of the "natural" supplement-obsessed alternative health therapists, but not every herbal or supplement-based remedy is "naturally" good for you. We assume that ingesting natural foods is better -- and often it is. Studies show we have better odds against cancer when we have fewer unnecessary food additives, like nitrites, and when we consume produce free of pesticides and fungicides. But a new study in the British journal Free Radical Biology and Medicine also suggests that supplements such as gingko, quercetin, grape-seed extract and flaxseed, containing plant flavonoids, can have the effect opposite to the one you take them for when ingested in high doses. Flavonoids in high doses can increase cancer risk by causing DNA damage and the production of free radicals; and they can disrupt hormone metabolism.
I’d assumed that "creationism" -- which attempts to show through a kind of filtered, blurry attack-logic that Darwin was wrong, and a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis is correct -- was a minority view anywhere civilized. I assumed it wasn’t taught in schools, except by a few cranks to the unlucky kids of similar cranks at certain private schools. But according to a new report by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, only 31 states did "adequate to excellent" in teaching evolution. Nineteen states received "weak-to-reprehensible" evaluations. Kansas "goes so far as to delete all references, direct or indirect, to the age of Earth or the universe, including even radioactive decay." An August 1999 Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll found 50 percent of Americans believe the account of creation in the Bible is literally true. In a 1999 Gallup poll, 68 percent of Americans advocated teaching both creationism and evolution. This, despite the fact that many theologians -- including the great Christian apologist C.S. Lewis and the Vatican Council -- have accepted evolution as a fact. They aren’t so literal-minded about Genesis.
And that revelation about widespread willful superstition leads me to the subject for my next column -- the dismaying trends in the 21st century to an increase in pseudo-science, superstition and public gullibility.
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