The anaesthetic of familiarity: how our upbringing can blind us to the obvious

In the restored Edwardian school classroom at Auckland's Museum of Transport and Technology (MOTAT) there is a notice on the wall stating 'Do not ask your teacher questions.' Fortunately, education now goes some way in many nations to emphasising the importance of individual curiosity rather than mere obedience to authority. Of course, there are a fair number of politicians and corporation executives who wish it wasn't so, as an incurious mind is easier to sway than a questioning one. As my last post mentioned, the World Wide Web can be something of an ally for them, since the 'winner takes all' approach of a review-based system aids the slogans and rhetoric of those who wish to control who we vote for and what we buy.

Even the most liberal of nations and cultures face self-imposed hurdles centered round which is the best solution and which is just the most familiar one from our formative years. This post therefore looks at another side of the subjective thinking discussed earlier this month, namely a trap that Richard Dawkins has described as the "anaesthetic of familiarity". Basically, this is when conventions are so accepted as to be seen as the primary option instead of being merely one of a series of choices. Or, as the British philosopher Susan Stebbing wrote in her 1939 book Thinking to Some Purpose: "One of the gravest difficulties encountered at the outset of the attempt to think effectively consists in the difficulty of recognizing what we know as distinguished from what we do not know but merely take for granted."

Again, this mind set is much loved by the manufacturing sector; in addition to such well-known ploys as deliberate obsolescence and staggered release cycles, there are worse examples, especially in everyday consumerism. We often hear how little nutritional value many highly processed foods contain, but think what this has done for the vitamin and mineral supplement industry, whose annual worldwide sales now approach US$40 billion!

Citizens of developed nations today face very different key issues to our pre-industrial ancestors, not the least among them being a constant barrage of decision making. Thanks to the enormous variety of choices available concerning almost every aspect of our daily lives, we have to consider everything from what we wear to what we eat. The deluge of predominantly useless information that we receive in the era of the hashtag makes it more difficult for us to concentrate on problem solving, meaning that the easiest way out is just to follow the crowd.

Richard Dawkins' solution to these issues is to imagine yourself as an alien visitor and then observe the world as a curious outsider. This seems to me to be beyond the reach of many, for whom daily routine appears to be their only way to cope. If this sounds harsh, it comes from personal experience; I've met plenty of people who actively seek an ostrich-like head-in-the-sand approach to life to avoid the trials and tribulations - as well as the wonders - of this rapidly-changing world.

Instead, I would suggest an easier option when it comes to some areas of STEM research: ensure that a fair proportion of researchers and other thought leaders are adult migrants from other nations. Then they will be able to apply an outside perspective, hopefully identifying givens that are too obvious to be spotted by those who have grown up with them.

New Zealand is a good example of this, with arguably its two best known science communicators having been born overseas: Siouxsie Wiles and Michelle Dickinson, A.K.A. Nanogirl. Dr Wiles is a UK-trained microbiologist at the University of Auckland. She frequently appears on Radio New Zealand as well as undertaking television and social media work to promote science in general, as well as for her specialism of fighting bacterial infection.

Dr Dickinson is a materials engineering lecturer and nanomaterials researcher at the University of Auckland who studied in both the UK and USA. Her public outreach work includes books, school tours and both broadcast and social media. She has enough sci-comm kudos that last year, despite not having a background in astronomy, she interviewed Professor Neil deGrasse Tyson during the Auckland leg of his A Cosmic Perspective tour.

The work of the above examples is proof that newcomers can recognise a critical need compared to their home grown equivalents. What is interesting is that despite coming from English-speaking backgrounds - and therefore with limited cultural disparity to their adoptive New Zealand - there must have been enough that was different to convince Doctors Wiles and Dickinson of the need for a hands-on, media savvy approach to science communication.

This is still far from the norm: many STEM professionals believe there is little point to promoting their work to the public except via print-based publications. Indeed, some famous science communicators such as Carl Sagan and Stephen Jay Gould were widely criticised during their lifetime by the scientific establishment for what were deemed undue efforts at self-promotion and the associated debasement of science by combining it with show business.

As an aside, I have to say that as brilliant as some volumes of popular science are, they do tend to preach to the converted; how many non-science fans are likely to pick up a book on say string theory, just for a bit of light reading or self-improvement (the latter being a Victorian convention that appears to have largely fallen from favour)? Instead, the outreach work of the expat examples above is aimed at the widest possible audience without over-simplification or distortion of the principles being communicated.

This approach may not solve all issues about how to think outside the box - scientists may be so embedded within their culture as to not realise that there is a box - but surely by stepping outside the comfort zone we grew up in we may find problems that the local population hasn't noticed?

Critical thinking is key to the scientific enterprise, but it would appear, to little else in human cultures. If we can find methods to avoid the anaesthetic of familiarity and acknowledge that what we deem of as normal can be far from optimal, then these should be promoted with all gusto. If the post-modern creed is that all world views are equally valid and science is just another form of culture-biased story-telling, then now more than ever we need cognitive tools to break through the subjective barriers. If more STEM professionals are able to cross borders and work in unfamiliar locations, isn’t there a chance they can recognise issues that fall under the local radar and so supply a new perspective we need if we are to fulfil our potential?

Unwanted aliens: is a predator-free New Zealand realistic by 2050?

In a moment of half-baked madness worthy of Donald Trump, the New Zealand Government has announced a plan to make the nation predator-free by 2050. As can be imagined this statement has attracted a wide range of opinions, even from across various conservation groups. These vary from the extremely optimistic viewpoint of Forest and Bird advocacy manager Kevin Hackwell, who claims it is achievable even earlier, to the Green Party's conservation spokesman Kevin Hague, who publicised a University of Auckland study estimating the project's budget at an astonishing if not untenable NZ$9 billion.

With the government prepared to provide just one-third of the plan's funding, it's difficult to imagine which private sector companies would be willing to supply the lion's share over the next three decades. As expected, the response of New Zealand's political opposition has been to pour very cold water on the plan, including the claim that no nation has ever managed to wipe out its population of rats (Hamelin and its Pied Piper notwithstanding).

One of the most essential questions is what is defined as a pest in the context of this proposal?  The relevant Department of Conservation (DoC) page names three principle animal pests: possums, rats and stoats, with a further page expanding the list to other introduced animals and freshwater fish, including cats and dogs (both domestic and feral). Some of the species listed were deliberate introductions, mainly in the Nineteenth Century, whilst others came in accidentally under the radar - New Zealand's biosecurity protocols not always being as draconian as they are now.

A few statistics offer a frightening idea of the scale required: as of 2001 it was estimated that there were seventy million possums in New Zealand, eating 21,000 tonnes of vegetation every night. Needless to say, much of this material consists of endemic species such as pohutukawa and southern rata trees. This then has a knock-on effect for the native fauna that feeds or nests on these species, which of course is in addition to being direct prey for the possum.

Although cats and dogs might be thought of more as pets than pests, even in low numbers they can be devastating to native wildlife. A classic example is the extinction of the Stephens Island wren thanks to a number of feral cats, whilst it is thought that one stray dog managed to kill more than five hundred large brown kiwi in the Waitangi State Forest in less than a year.

DoC's Battle for our Birds scheme relies on aerial drops of poison and ground baits/traps to eradicate the key non-native pests. This year their target area was almost 900,000 hectares; to give an indication of the increase in scale necessary for a nationwide eradication, New Zealand is close to 27 million hectares in total. Perhaps the much-misused term 'paradigm shift' could be safely applied in this circumstance?

At this point it should be mentioned that there are varied opinions as to what the government's planned outcome is. After all, there have been humans living in New Zealand for over seven centuries, so there is little chance of any except the most remote locales returning to a pristine ‘natural' wilderness, even if we knew exactly what that meant. Having said that, the Pleistocene Park project in Russia is attempting something along similar lines. A small region of north Siberian tundra is being converted into glacial period steppe, using musk ox and other large animals as surrogates for extinct mega fauna such as mammoth and woolly rhinoceros. The resulting flora appears to be much more diverse and interesting than the unmanaged wilderness surrounding it, which is ironically the antithesis of what one would expect or hope for with untouched versus deliberately altered landscapes!

Then there's the scale issue: whilst possums, rats and mustelids are relatively easy to track and observe, small species such as wasps and argentine ants are far more difficult to locate, never mind eradicate. Although they don't inflict as much obvious damage to the native flora and fauna, they can nonetheless cause fundamental changes to the ecosystem. Wasps for example eat honeydew, which is an important food source for lizards and native birds such as kaka.

It isn't just insects that would be tricky to wipe out. The rainbow or ‘plague' skink was accidentally introduced from Australia about half a century ago and now seems ubiquitous in Auckland; I've seen it everywhere from volcanos to paddocks, gardens to garages, even inside a bookshop. Thanks to much faster reproduction and maturation rates than native equivalents, it appears to be rapidly out-competing them.

One issue that prevents a complete turning back of the clock is the extinction of dozens of species since the arrival of humans in the country. How can the ecosystem, especially food webs, maintain a long-term balance with key species missing? No-one is suggesting we bring in cassowaries to replace the nine species of moa. Of course, being large creatures they were probably none too numerous, yet there is an hypothesis that they may have been involved in an evolutionary arms race with lancewood, the juvenile trees being well-protected against moa browsing them.

Therefore any attempt to preserve a largely native ecosystem will need to ensure the food webs are fully-functional, with plenty of indigenous pollinators such as short-tailed bats and kereru (native pigeon). Key native species need to identified and preserved just as much as introduced ones removed. This in turn begs the obvious point that since evolution is an ongoing process, are we attempting to freeze the environment at a particular snapshot in time rather than allowing nature to take its course? Even accounting for punctuated equilibrium, natural selection hasn't suddenly stopped in New Zealand any more than it has elsewhere.

The pest-free project will presumably need to tackle species in a certain order, since if mustelids and feral cats are eliminated then rats will proliferate, whilst without rats as prey, the former species will be forced to look for alternative food sources instead; doubtless native birds would form the mainstay of this.

As I have discussed elsewhere, it shouldn't just be the enemies of the native poster species that are targeted. There are plenty of critters less famous than parrot kakapo and ancient reptile tuatara that deserve some attention too, with the endemic weta an obvious example (over twenty percent of its species are currently under threat). Invertebrates play an almost unknown role in nutrient recycling and waste disposal, as well as appearing on the menu of more conspicuous animals. Considering that the takahe, the largest species of swamp hen, was thought extinct for half a century, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised about how little is known concerning the size and condition of native creepy crawly populations. However small and insignificant we might judge them, we ignore their loss at our peril.

Also often overlooked are the native freshwater creatures. Competition comes in the form of the high number of invasive species that compete or predate on them. A key example is the aggressive gambusia, a Mexican fish introduced to eat all the mosquito larvae - which of course it fails to do. Interestingly enough, the DoC website excludes some introduced species from its list of pests: salmon and trout for example are categorised as 'sports fish'. Therefore is economics the government's primary motive for the pest eradication plan, rather than good old-fashioned conservation for the sake of it? After all, the extremely rare takahe was once given second place to herds of elk that had been introduced to serve as a big game animal.

There may be something in this. Mainstream politicians are renowned for their lip service commitment to environmental issues. Could it be that in the wake of the highly negative stories earlier this year concerning exceeded fishing quotas and river pollution, the government is fighting to redeem New Zealand's '100% Pure' brand image?  In addition, agriculture might benefit from an increase in native species' populations. An outstanding example of the latter is shown by a Federated Farmers of NZ estimate that native bees provide pollination services to the tune of NZ$4.5 billion per year!

Finally, we get to flora. As Bec Stanley, a curator at Auckland's Botanic Gardens, is keen to point out, the majority of people have plant blindness compared to their interest in animals. There are thought to around three invasive plant species for every four natives, with old man's beard, gorse, ragwort and nightshade being amongst the best-known culprits. These can smother and kill native plants, thus depriving indigenous animals of food. Despite being vital to the ecosystem, the war on introduced vegetation really seems to be underdeveloped compared to that against non-native animals.

It doesn't take much to upset the balance of at least a local-scale environment. The surviving remnants of mighty kauri forest are currently facing a disease thought to be caused by an introduced water-mould pathogen, a clear case of David conquering Goliath. Without careful consideration, the project to rid New Zealand of introduced pest species could end up doing more harm than good. The motives are potentially dubious and the research chronically under-funded. It remains to be seen whether there is the willpower to see it through or if it is just one more piece of political rhetoric that evaporates by the next election. Personally, I'm in favour of the idea, but uncertain of how realistic it is. Regardless, the citizens of New Zealand need to do their best, lest many more species join the ranks of moa, huia, adzebill and many, many others. After all, who wants their children living in an environment dominated by feral pigeons, rats and possum?