Dr. Adam Rutherford on Genetics, Racism, and Humanism
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/01/10
Dr. Adam Rutherford’s biography states: “I write and present documentaries for the BBC radio and television (highlights below), on evolution, genetics, anatomy, art and spider-goats. On radio, I present Radio 4’s flagship culture programme Start The Week, and was the host of Inside Science for 8 years. With my friend Hannah Fry, The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry, now on its 20th series. My most recent radio doc was on Long Covid, which aired in October. I’ve made programmes about AI and robotics; the inheritance of intelligence; on MMR and autism, the 20-year legacy of the MMR scandal; epigenetics; astronomy and art, scientific fraud, and the evolution of sex, and I’ve been a guest on 9 episodes of the Infinite Monkey Cage, and James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction. And a berzilion other things.”
Here we talk about evolutionary genetics, racism, and humanism.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, thank you for your service in humanist leadership in one of the larger secular humanist organizations in the world, Humanists UK (formerly the British Humanist Association), you have an intriguing expertise important to numerous poignant domains of societal discourse at the moment, i.e., genetics particularly and science generally. I mean this: We’re in the era of empowered ignorance and, even worse, the not-wanting-to-know crowds. So, this will be interesting to formulate some questions. Let’s start on a narrative note, not footnote though, what is the personal story into science education, genetics specialization, and humanist philosophy, for you?
Dr. Adam Rutherford: Well, the first thing is that I’m not sure I agree with the premise. We are certainly in an era where the voices of those who reject science are emboldened and amplified, but much of the general public trust in science is at an all time high, and was enhanced during the covid era (I was author on a study which tested this, and the results were largely positive).
So to answer the actual question, Humanism is a worldview that is tied very strongly to science, because it rejects supernatural explanations for the universe. Science, more than anything else, is a way of knowing, which is not perfect, nor the only way of knowing, but it rejects dogma (in principle, though perhaps not always in practice), and is self correcting (though only when we bother to self-correct). So we derive confidence in a scientific worldview by doubt and constant challenge, and that appeals to my sensibilities. Evolutionary genetics specifically has helped cement that bond between my scientific thinking and Humanism because it reveals two very clear anti-dogmatic stances about life: one) that all life is begotten not created, and two) that race is not biologically enshrined.
Jacobsen: Why the pursuit of evolutionary genetics?
Rutherford: ‘Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution’: Theodosius Dobzhansky. Evolution is what got us here, so one might argue that it is the most powerful force in the universe. That’s the pompous answer. The fun one is that it’s mostly about sex and families.
Jacobsen: How did specified research in gene CHX10 in eye development and the work on stalk-eyed flies become a) research interests and b) a manner in which to see the subtlety of nature in evolution? Nature has had two great, simple tools: a long time and a big playground.
Rutherford: A random walk. There was never a grand plan, and I am catholic in my interests. I ended up on eyes, because the stalkies have the eyes on the ends of long stalks (hence Stalk Eyed Flies), and this traits is sexually selected, meaning that the females prefer bigger ones, which drives evolution towards them becoming exaggerated. We were trying to find the mechanism for that drive, but never could get it to work. But the genes involved also equivalents in humans, and they are active in eyes. It was the genes I was following, not the eyes. So yes, the cleverness of evolution as a tinkerer is right there in that switch, wildly different eyes, same genes, doing slightly different things.
Jacobsen: How did you become an audio-visual editor for the major journal of science, Nature, for a solid decade? That’s just a cool add-on to your resume.
Rutherford: By the end of my PhD I had worked out that I was better at talking about science than doing it. So I took a job as an editor at Nature, and had various roles. This was the early 2000s and we were somewhat forward looking in thinking about the potential of the web for science communication. One of the ways we started experimenting was in audio and video.
Jacobsen: How do you frame scientific interviews for a popular audience, such as those with David Attenborough or Paul Bettany? (How did you not become distracted by Attenborough’s awesome presence, given by his voice?)
Rutherford: Well, they are just people, and I’m interested in people. I think you have to be slightly nosey to be a good interviewer. Bettany was fun to talk to; he’d just been cast in a small voice-only role in a film called Iron Man. He had never heard of the character. Being a comic nerd, I had.
Jacobsen: You perform an important public service, which, as far as I know, most societies do not have the enjoyment of existing. That is to say, your work on Inside Science with mathematician Prof. Hannah Fry gives a platform for public, more accessible conversation about science. (So, thank you both.) How did this opportunity arise for you? What is the real strength of working together with Hannah on Curious Cases?
Rutherford: We met, liked each other, and then worked out how to combine our love of science with our love of each other’s company. The key to that programme is that we make each other laugh.
Jacobsen: To the original question preamble, and to the narrative response about Humanism, you are the President of Humanists UK. There is a rise in strongly conservative religious – selective – literalists with aims for social influence, political power, and institutional dominance in several geographic regions of the world. How can Humanism provide a more convincing narrative to individuals who may be seduced by the rhetoric of these (re-)emergent fundamentalist trends?
Rutherford: Humanism shares many values with other religions, such as being driven by compassion and kindness, but our bond with science is born out of a rejection of all aspects of supernature, couped with a curiosity to understand the world, and question it. In its most pernicious forms, religion asks you not to question, but to believe, and so can run counter to a scientific worldview. We are creatures burdened with biases that distort our understanding of nature. We invented science to free us from those shackles, so we can see the world how it is, rather than how we perceive it to be. That is true freedom.
Jacobsen: Continuing directly from the last question, sometimes, as with the American example for certain, these religious groups can be racist movements: racialist in conceptualization, racist in undertone, and, at worst, outright racist in speech and acts. What is the shorthand argument – the humanist argument/scientific argument – to shutdown or provide a more convincing empirical argument against mostly benign racialism (just using the categories, wrongly) and, obviously, not-benign open racism (prejudice and bigotry)?
Rutherford: Science has – and probably will always be – often co-opted into pre-existing political ideologies. Biology was a subject born in service of racialised thinking and European expansion. That is a pernicious history that underwrites our field. But the trajectory of that history is celebratory, as it is also the field – particularly human genetics – that has dismantled the biological concept of race. Knowing that history and the science that emerges out of studying how people are similar and how they differ is a powerful weapon against racial prejudice. I have no doubt that bigotry persists, but science is no ally to racists.
Jacobsen: How can people get in contact with, volunteer for, or become members of, Humanists UK?
Rutherford: We are a deeply secretive organization and no amount of Googling or going directly to humanists.uk will reveal exactly how to join, and the wonderful community of people that make up Humanists worldwide.
Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Adam.
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