This isn’t how I’d want to hear it.

A pass out of class, summoned mysteriously to the media center.

Corralled toward tables with dozens of classmates, whispering, searching each others’ eyes for a clue.

In their upright clothes, adults — administrators, counselors, absolute strangers — stand around the perimeter, somber yet chummy: the public school system crisis team in full force, assembled and ready.

Waiting for “everyone” (whoever that is) to arrive, wondering at the common thread between us all.

Then the cleared throat, the single sheet of plain white photocopy stock, the authoritative recital:

We have some sad news to share with you that some of you may not have heard. On [INSERT DATE], [INSERT NAME], a [INSERT GRADE LEVEL] in our school, died suddenly. [INSERT ONE SHORT, PASSIVE VOICE, NONCOMMITTAL, ZERO-BLAME SENTENCE ABOUT CAUSE OF DEATH.] We will need to wait for an investigation to be completed before we can know more.

We are never prepared to deal with an unexpected loss such as this, and doing so may take some time. When we hear sad news like this, lots of people feel many different emotions — sadness, anger, confusion, helplessness, guilt. All of these feelings are normal. Reactions to death may vary for each of you. Members of our counseling staff will be available in the media center if you feel you would like to talk to someone. Your teacher will sign your agenda book to let you come down to the media center.

At this time we do not have information about funeral services.

A pause for questions. As if.

Statement delivered, they stand there, watching, adult eyes fixed on us, looking for — what? A crack of emotion? A “normal” response? Shall we distribute the candles right here and sing Kum Bah Ya?

No one walks up to them. No one makes eye contact. A few sniffle, a few whisper; most wonder how long until we can return to class, please.

It’s not a crisis management event. It’s not a grief counseling session.

It is death.

School has nothing to say in its face.

Noon, the kitchen lights off.  He sits in the dim blue air chewing orange slices, talking about his new bicycle helmet, thumping his palms on the table and bounce-kicking in the garish plastic booster he’s too old for but still enjoys. He’s backlit, the box window tracing his shape in a gentle blue that nestles in his curls. Rattling off lines from bedtime books, his round eyes look to mine for approval. At two and a half he’s shed the last signs of the toddler — he is all boy. He asks for more chocolate milk, shoulders in their rugby shirt squared to face me, neck lifted, anticipating. Yesterday’s hike shows in the sun splashed across his cheeks. He’s no copy of me: chestnut hair is lighter than mine, not as tangled; forehead wider, bolder; eyes Egyptian-pinched. But as he holds his cup with head tilted, awaiting my answer, it occurs to me, watching this little person as I finish the dishes in the sink: if I had the power to custom-craft a child, I would make him exactly like this. Curious, rambunctious, sincere. A bit ruddy, a bit tender. And absolutely perfect.

How ludicrously they dangled up there — two little wires suspending them beneath the spine, about midway between ribs and tail. Grayish-white, cylindrical; small batons frozen in midair.

Leg bones. In a whale.

I remember gaping at the overhead skeleton as my fourth grade class filed through the Smithsonian. I wondered if whales even knew they had those bones. Could they feel them? I marveled at the vastness of time, the relentless march that expelled fish onto land and drew them back again as mammals.

It almost seemed too incredible — but there they were, leg remnants in a whale, plain as day. Two hundred million years could do anything. (They could even draw a whale out of a deer the size of a fox!)

Back in class we heard more examples of vestigiality. Evolution was sloppy: organs and behaviors important for survival at one point in time might not be later on, leaving behind some unused (or at least less-used) pieces. Ostrich wings. Cavefish eyes. The human appendix, coccyx. Junk DNA. It would take whales millions of years more to shed the last vestiges of their leg bones — unless, of course, they put them to some other use. (Wrapped in blubbery flesh as they were, away from other bone or even muscle, that was doubtful.)

I was a good little science student. I understood vestigial organs well.

Much later, in my mid-twenties, I thought through what I’d learned about evolution through public school and college, and came up with questions. The universe — scratch that, the human mind was extraordinarily complex; how could such order arise from unconscious forces? I flirted with the idea of function by design, which of course implied a Designer.

But there was that issue of vestigiality: organs without function. Would a Designer give humans a tailbone, an appendix? Would a Designer write gobbledygook into DNA?

Then again, what if scientists were wrong?

Nah, scientists investigate everything. If the appendix served a function we’d know about it.

Imagine my surprise, then, when this article appeared in October 2007:

CNN: Purpose of appendix believed found

Some scientists think they have figured out the real job of the troublesome and seemingly useless appendix: It produces and protects good germs for your gut.

That’s the theory from surgeons and immunologists at Duke University Medical School, published online in a scientific journal this week.

The function of the appendix seems related to the massive amount of bacteria populating the human digestive system, according to the study in the Journal of Theoretical Biology. There are more bacteria than human cells in the typical body. Most are good and help digest food.

But sometimes the flora of bacteria in the intestines die or are purged. Diseases such as cholera or amoebic dysentery would clear the gut of useful bacteria. The appendix’s job is to reboot the digestive system in that case.

The appendix “acts as a good safe house for bacteria,” said Duke surgery professor Bill Parker, a study co-author. Its location _ just below the normal one-way flow of food and germs in the large intestine in a sort of gut cul-de-sac — helps support the theory, he said.

Also, the worm-shaped organ outgrowth acts like a bacteria factory, cultivating the good germs, Parker said.

Reading this, I thought immediately of junk DNA. “They’re going to figure it out,” I told my wife. “I need to blog about it, make my prediction public. Evolution’s supposed to be this great predictor, but it’s throwing them off. A Designer wouldn’t write junk code. It must serve some kind of purpose. Maybe it’s structural, it holds DNA together somehow; maybe it helps in replication. I don’t know. Whatever it is, I need to go on record!”

Four days later my second son was born, and in the ensuing crazyness of adjusting to two-child parenthood, I let that prediction languish in my to-blog list.

Too bad. Within three and a half months (January 200 came this article:

Science Daily: Tiny genetic differences have huge consequences

A study led by McGill University researchers has demonstrated that small differences between individuals at the DNA level can lead to dramatic differences in the way genes produce proteins. These, in turn, are responsible for the vast array of differences in physical characteristics between individuals.

This study solves in part the mystery of how a relatively small number of differences within DNA protein coding sequences could be responsible for the enormous variety of phenotypic differences between individuals. It had previously been shown that individual differences reside in simple, relatively small variations in the DNA sequence called single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs, often pronounced “snips”), which exist primarily in the “junk code” of the DNA not previously known to have any profound genetic effect.

“There are many SNPs,” explained Dr. Jacek Majewski of McGill University. “If you add them all together, you’d expect that two individuals would differ at more than a million of those positions. So we have a million or more small differences that distinguish you and me, and yet it would be very hard to explain all the phenotypic differences in the way we look, grow, and behave just by the handful of these protein coding differences.”

Majewski and his colleagues have demonstrated that the natural processing of messenger RNA (mRNA), via a process called splicing, is genetically controlled by these SNPs. The SNPs in certain individuals lead to changes in splicing and result in the production of drastically altered forms of the protein. These out-of-proportion consequences may lead to the development of genetic diseases such as cystic fibrosis and Type 1 diabetes.

Junk DNA isn’t rubbish at all. Junk DNA shapes protein production, and that, in turn, shapes who you are.

Long touted as proof of evolution, vestigiality is beginning to collapse. And despite insistence on evolution’s predictive power, as a concept vestigiality tempts scientists to overlook possible function. “No use researching that,” they dismiss, “it has no function at all — it’s vestigial!” Such an attitude is no less responsible for thwarting scientific inquiry than the roundly-criticized creationist mantra “God did it.”

The appendix was vestigial until Duke researchers discovered its purpose. Junk DNA was vestigial until McGill researchers discovered its purpose.

More and more, the supposedly sloppy process of evolution is morphing into a tight economy of design. Function exists where it was once thought lacking, demonstrating that where vestigiality is concerned, intelligent design has more predictive power than evolution. We only need to look.

And there’s the rub: Darwinists who point at vestigiality as proof of evolution may not want to look.

But now is not the time to skimp on inquiry. No more easy outs: going forward, the concept of vestigiality should be treated as temporarily void so we can take a vigorous, open-minded look at organs and behaviors once considered obsolete. In all cases we must investigate function with the conviction that it will be found — and acknowledge the possibility of our own shortcomings if it is not.

We need to reopen cases long gone cold. Coccyx. Ostrich wings. Even cavefish eyes — which may indeed be vestigial (even creationists recognize variation and speciation of animal kinds since creation), but you never know until you look.

I missed going on record with my prediction about junk DNA. Fair enough; I get no credit for that one. But now I’ll make a new prediction, one even more radical.

Those little whale bones?

They serve a purpose.

That purpose will be found. But not by deductive Darwinism.

No, it’s going to take a little old-fashioned inductive science.

It’s everywhere these days. Whether the topic is economics or romance, politics or sports, articles often refer to studies that explain why we do what we do from an evolutionary perspective.

Since survival of the fittest shaped our minds as well as our bodies, the research strategy is to determine how any (and every!) behavior contributed to gene propagation. According to the Center for Evolutionary Psychology (CEP), such findings prove evolution’s importance:

[C]onsideration of how humans evolved can inform various subfields of neuroscience and psychology. The very idea that humans evolved has come under legal siege in the U.S. during the last several years. It is important to continue to demonstrate that humans no less than other species show significant evidence of being the organized product of natural selection —- and in subtle, unexpected ways not easily explained by blank-slate learning or “intelligent design”. (source)

Sadly, despite so hefty a claim of importance, evolutionary psychology makes presumptions that lead to hasty conclusions, neglecting to investigate fully the reasons for our behavior.

Consider a recent study by Yale postdoc Joshua New, who used pairs of images with just one change to find that the human mind pays more attention to animals than to inanimate objects:

Recent experiments show that the visual priorities of our hunter-gatherer ancestors are embedded in the modern brain. What our eyes look at is guided by brain mechanisms that pick out some portions of a scene over others. Since keeping an eye on predators and prey was important during our evolution, Joshua New and colleagues investigated whether animals, both human and otherwise, are more likely to draw visual attention spontaneously. The researchers showed subjects pairs of photographs of natural scenes in rapid alternation, with the second photograph including a single change. As predicted, subjects were faster and more accurate detecting changes involving animals than inanimate objects. If experience were producing this attentional bias for animals, then people should also be good at detecting changes to vehicles -— they have been trained all their lives, as drivers and pedestrians, to monitor vehicles for sudden, life-or-death changes in trajectory. Yet they were much slower in detecting changes to vehicles than to more rarely experienced animal species, indicating that learning is not the source of this difference. The bias for animals, the authors conclude, is like the appendix —- present in modern humans because it was useful for our ancestors, even if useless now.

We derived the hypothesis of an animal monitoring system by considering what impact an evolutionary history of foraging and predation should have had on the priorities built into human visual attention. To test this hypothesis, we used the change detection paradigm, in which subjects are asked to spot the difference between two rapidly alternating natural scenes. This paradigm is famous for eliciting change blindness—a condition in which observers are unaware that the scene is changing, even when major changes are introduced. (E.g., whole buildings can repeatedly appear and disappear without the subject noticing.) We discovered that change blindness is limited to inanimate objects. We found, as predicted, that animals are treated differently by visual attention.

In this paradigm, the only task subjects are given is to detect changes, so they are free to follow their own inclinations in attending to different entities in photos of complex natural scenes. Our experiments show that they are faster and more accurate at noticing changes in animals (and humans) relative to changes in plants, buildings, tools, vehicles and other artifacts. For example, changes to a small nonhuman animal at the periphery of a complex natural scene are detected faster and more accurately than changes to a large building at a scene’s center. It is a remarkable effect, once one has experienced it for oneself. (source)

Test how your own mind detects changes in scenes here.

New’s study is useful in showing that non-animal objects attract our attention less than animal. It informs us, for example, that a stray dog might distract a driver from a red light or even an oncoming car, and we can devise preventative/safety measures from there. For that we should be grateful.

Yet the hasty presumption of an evolutionary history of “keeping an eye on predators and prey” actually neglects other possible explanations for our visual prioritization:

1. The eerieness of seeing the animate frozen by photography. A still image of a waterfall, which is normally in perpetual motion, probably would be detected quickly.

2. Anthropomorphism: our expectation of personality in animals. An image of an anthropomorphized car (Lightning McQueen) or building (Amityville Horror, or any haunted house with discernible eyes and mouth) probably would be noticed faster than animals we typically do not anthropomorphize, such as starfish or sea urchins.

3. Complexity of shape. Buildings and cars do not alter shape, but animals do when they move (wings in or out, legs back or forward, head up or down). We are likely to notice quickly a change in a non-animal object that does change shape, such as a Tilt-a-Whirl.

4. Emotional connection. Humans draw close to animals in emotional bonds. An inanimate object to which humans also bond emotionally, such as a diamond ring or baseball cap, probably would be noticed faster than an animal to which humans do not typically bond, such as a hermit crab.

Doubtless, additional explanations for New’s finding may be proposed.

To be fair, New’s research did not investigate the reasons behind differences in change detection. He made a prediction about the human mind based on a presumption of evolution, and that prediction proved correct.

Whether or not it was a lucky hit remains to be seen. Creationists could have theorized the same visual prioritization based on the ordering of Genesis, then proclaimed confirmation of six-day creation. Hindus could have theorized the same visual prioritization based on animals possessing recycled souls, then proclaimed confirmation of reincarnation. Sure enough, Darwinists brush over such nuance to declare another victory for the predictive power of evolutionary theory. The original presumption must have been correct; evolution must really be fact!

Not necessarily. Each of the four alternatives I proposed might also have predictive power — power that could nail more precisely the dynamics of how our minds prioritize what we see.

Will they be investigated? Probably not; the explanation has already been presumed. Why do we notice animals faster than other objects? Because we evolved that way.

Thus evolution functions as the “God did it” response that thwarts, rather than fuels, open inquiry, leaving us without a full explanation.

Psychology and neuroscience are excellent fields that constantly break new ground, yielding wonderful advances for humanity. I wouldn’t expect much from evolutionary psychology, however — it is the 21st century’s sophistry.

In the middle of naptime he screams. One knee is twisted between two crib rails; pain and entrapment drive him to panic. Must’ve been playing instead of sleeping.

As my wife disentangles him, she gets a whiff of another stealth activity. Corroborating evidence surrounds him: smear across his chest, clawmarks on his sheet, makeup applied to the face of his stuffed cow. What arrived in his diaper is now everywhere.

I am summoned. Together we adults impress upon our child the seriousness of this infraction. Do not play with poopy. Do not even touch it. We strip him of his clothes, make a pile of blankets, sheets and Mr. Cow.

We employ shame: Poopy is very dirty. Playing with poopy is very, very bad.

Fear: If you play with your poopy again I will spank you. I pantomime on his bare bottom. This is spanking. It will hurt.

Guilt: Mommy will have to wash everything. I don’t know if the poopy will come off Mr. Cow’s face. Let’s hope Mr. Cow makes it.

We pull the dirty materials from his room, then lay him down to finish his nap.

He sleeps a long time — another two and a half hours. Without him the house is abnormally still. If I did that, I tell my wife, I wouldn’t want to show my face either.

Finally he wakes. The past is past; it’s time to affirm. Did you have a good nap? Would you like something to eat? He appears dazed, withdrawn — probably still groggy, but it’s unlike him. Perhaps we laid it on too thick. When he names a snack we make a show of helping him into a chair and getting it for him.

Then on the tabletop his jeep rolls out of reach, he stands and leans forward to retrieve it, his chair kicks backward …

“Honey watch it watchit!” I yell at my wife, who is closer.

“BEN!” she screams, lurching.

It is over; she caught him. He’s okay. In the silence ringing from our shouts, we breathe.

Honey, you can’t stand on your chair, my wife warmly admonishes. You need to stay on your bottom, like this.

But when I come around to kiss his forehead, I see it in his face. That we were concerned for his safety, that we didn’t want him to get hurt, doesn’t matter. He was wrong. Again. He is always wrong, and in a flash I remember what that was like, how it felt to be scolded for spilling the cup, for dropping the glass peanut butter jar, for not taking out the trash until there were maggots, maggots in the house! The paper deadline missed, the friendship snuffed by misspoken words, the job lost over a dumb assumption, and the girls — who knew a thing about girls? So many rules, and the only way to learn them was to get them wrong.

It’s not easy being young.