Slashing Science

A researcher protesting on Plaza Bolivar this week displays
a sign claiming he needs a microscope to see his science budget.

Colombian Pres. Santos has not, like U.S. Pres. Trump, denied basic science - but he is acting that way.

'Did you know that the government plans to cut 40%
of the science and technology budget?

The other day, across Colombia scientists protested against the government's proposed slashing of the science budget from 380 to 220 million pesos - a drop of 41%. The cuts include reductions in Colciencia's budget and the shifting of royalty money from science to road infrastructure.

Science isn't the only area scheduled to suffer: The environmental budget is also on the chopping block. That makes no sense in a country suffering a horrific deforestation rate, and in which the guerrilla demobilization has created new environmental challenges.

The big winner? Defense - which makes no sense, since the FARC, Colombia's biggest and oldest guerrilla group, just signed a peace treaty, gave up its weapons and demobilized.

Running with full tanks: Pick-up trucks carry soldiers thru La Candelaria.

An El Tiempo graphic showing the government's 2018 budget proposal.
The environment and science lost. The military won.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Talking Truth to Turkey

Turkish Pres. Erdoğan and Pres. Santos talk trade yesterday.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Bogotá yesterday to met with Pres. Santos to talk about trade and fighting terrorism.

Those are important matters, naturally. And if Santos really wants to curry the Turkish government's favor, perhaps he should start by changing Colombia's name.

That's because Erdogan recently claimed that Muslims discovered America before Christopher Columbus did in 1492.

A pre-Columbian Muslim map supposedly showing America.

"Contacts between Latin America and Islam date back to the 12th century. Muslims discovered America in 1178, not Christopher Columbus," Erdogan said, according to the Washington Post. "Muslim sailors arrived in America from 1178. Columbus mentioned the existence of a mosque on a hill on the Cuban coast."

While it is certainly possible that Muslim Arabs or Africans reached America before Columbus, there's no solid evidence for it, and they certainly did not spread Islam thru the New World. Supporters of the Islamic discovery theory point to a line in Columbus's log referring to sighting a 'Mosque' on the Cuban coast. But no evidence of a pre-Columbian mosque has ever been found, and serious historians generally believe that Columbus used the word to describe a geographical outcropping.

If people from the Old World had really made sustained contact with New World residents, they would surely have left physical, cultural and even genetic evidence. After all, one of the first things different peoples do upon meeting is have sex.

Of course, one European nation, the Vikings, did visit America before Columbus - and we have archaeological evidence of their short-lived settlement on Newfoundland. Archaeologists do also believe that Polynesians visited South America's western coast before Columbus, based on evidence in languages and chicken DNA. If Arabs, Africans, Greeks, Romans or Chinese had really made trading visits to the Americas, we'd find evidence such as Old World products in pre-Columbian graves. And it would have made no sense for the visitors not to have carried home crops such as corn and potatoes which quickly spread across the world after Columbus's voyage, or not to have left behind technology such as the wheel and compass.

But the strongest evidence of lack of significant pre-Columbian contact is the medical one. After the Spanish arrival in the Americas, indigenous Americans died by the millions from new diseases. Some historians estimate that new diseases killed 90% of indigenous Americans. If the Old World and New World peoples had had previous contact, then the Americans would have had immune protection to things like chicken pox.

Erdogan's historical fantasies might not matter any more than do those of people who deny Darwinian evolution. Unfortunately, however, in both cases those who contradict science and history in these cases are also prone to contradict fact about more important issues. Deniers of evolution also tend to reject evidence of global warming, which happens to be about the biggest threat to Earth's well-being. Erdogan does appear to accept global warming. But he does not appear to value free speech and fair elections, which is why he's taking Turkey away from its tradition of secularism and democracy.

In any case, Erdogan's resentment against the Catholicized version of history is perhaps understandable. After all, the Spaniards had just ousted the last Moslems from Spain and proclaimed that the Americas were their reward for cleansing Spain of Jews and Moslems.



By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Colombian Antarctic?

The Colombian ship ARC 20 de Julio among Antarctic icebergs.

The Colombian scientific ship ARC 20 de Julio arrival in Antarctica made waves back home.

Malpelo Island: Colombia's gateway to Antarctica?

But is anybody asking what in the world Colombian scientists are doing on the white continent? Can Colombians, experienced in tropical research, really contribute anything amid snow and ice, where scientists from the United States, Britain, Russia and other nations have been carrying out studies for decades?

Looking toward Antarctica? A booby bird
on Colombia's Malpel Island.

The expedition's website's slogan is 'In search of our own white south.' Does this mean that Colombia is buying into the bizarre 1956 'Teoria da Defrontação' dreamed up by Brazilians desperate for a way to claim a piece of the southern continent. The Teoria holds that any South American nation with territory with an ocean sightline to Antarctica can claim at least a sliver of the continent. Colombia's tiny, uninhabited Malpelo Island just barely meets that criteria. No matter that it's thousands of

Malpelo Island. Withinsight of Antarctica?

miles away, north of the Equator and that no flake of snow has ever fallen on Malpelo, some might see it as justifying a claim on Antarctica.

Needless to say, Brazil's Teoria da Defrontação has not gotten much international legal traction. Antarctica remains a scientific reserve, belonging to nobody.

And it's hard to believe that these researchers couldn't have done lots more valuable science if they'd stayed home and visited Colombia's Amazon, one of the world's most biodiverse places, and one where many or most of the plant and animal species have never been studied.

Colombian jungle. Full of unstudied biodiversity.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Colombia's Favorite Meteorite

What's left of the meteorite of Santa Rosa on display in the Museo Nacional in Bogotá.

A midget on the meteorite.

In April 1810, a meteorite fell from the sky near the town of Santa Rosa, in Boyaca, Colombia. The metallic rock's voyage didn't end there, however. Today, the meteorite's pieces are distributed throughout museums and universities in Colombia, United States and England.

It was a young girl, Cecilia Corredor, who discovered the meteorite, called an aerolito, while chasing a bird. Villagers dragged the 750 kilogram rock into town, where for years it found use as a blacksmith's anvil. Later, the town built a pedestal and placed the rock in a position of honor in the town's plaza.

There it sat for almost a century until American meteorite collector Henry A. Ward got wind of the huge rock. He traveled to Santa Rosa, where he made a deal with the governor: In exchange for the rock, he'd give the town a bust of Pres. Rafael Reyes. The deal was sealed, and Ward's men proceeded to haul the rock off of its pedestal.

Ward poses by the stone,
while still on its pedestal.

But exporting a huge rock isn't easy - physically or politically. Colombia was still smarting from the loss of Panama, which had been sliced off and made independent by U.S. Pres. Theodore Roosevelt. Should a gringo be able to carry off a national heirloom?

"That meteorite is mine, by all rights human and divine," Ward wrote to a U.S. friend.

After an exchange of letters - in which U.S. officials spelled Colombia 'Columbia' - Ward received permission to cut off 100 kgs from the meteorite. He instead sliced off 300.

That material is now distributed throughout universities and museums in the U.S. and England. But the largest piece of the stone, weighing 411 kgs, is in the Museo Nacional in Bogotá, where an exhibition illustrates the rock's wanderings.

Want to learn more about the famous meteorite? Visit the museum, or read all about it here.

Ward's men haul off the rock.

The meteorite being cut, a 14-day process.

The remaining meteorite in the Museo Nacional.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Fall of an Idol?

Raul Cuero. (Photo; El Espectador)

It was a wonderful, inspiring life story: An AfroColombian child of Buenaventura, one of Colombia's poorest cities, overcame innumerable obstacles to become a star researcher and inventor in the United States, even working for NASA.

Unfortunately, the story seems to be untrue, or at least inflated.

Raul Cuero was the son of illiterate parents. From an early age he showed an interest in research, and his botany work moved a foreign visitor to help Cuero travel overseas to study. Today, at age 65, he teaches in a small United States agricultural university, works on inventions and does contract research. He's published research papers and has several U.S. patents to his name.

Cuero's life story is unquestionably impressive. But being good was evidently not good enough for him: he wanted to be great. And the Colombian media played along. Colombian newspapers, magazines and television celebrated Cuero as a great inventor and award-winning NASA researcher.

El Tiempo columnist Maria Isabel Rueda recently even asked Cuero whether he dreamed of winning the Nobel Prize. (To his credit, Cuero said that awards weren't important.)

But Rodrigo Bernal, an ex-professor of agricultural engineering of the National University, decided to dig deeper into Cuero's story. It turned out, as Bernal wrote in a cover story in El Espectador, that Cuero's dozens of 'scientific papers' were mostly news reports about himself, that the NASA awards were rather routine recognitions and that Bernal had only two minor patents to his name. Bernal added many other details which Cuero appeared to have exaggerated or distorted to add to his own legend. Cuero has worked for NASA, for example, but only as a contractor.

One of Cuero's recent books even describes him as 'One of the world's most important scientists.'

In his response, Cuero did not directly deny Bernal's affirmations. 'I'm not an orthodox scientist," he wrote. "In essence, I'm an inventor...I'm an inventor and my purpose is to create things which serve humanity and create economic impact.'

Give Cuero credit for accepting the criticisms gracefully. In fact, Cuero is a very impressive guy. How many of us have even one invention or scientific article to our names? How many of us overcame a dirt-poor background and racial discrimination to become university professors and do work for NASA?

Cuero is rightly an inspiration for many poor youth. But he inflated his impressive life history into a legend, and paid the price when the exaggerations were inevitably uncovered. Sadly, those distortions will leave a lasting stain on his exceptional accomplishments.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Robot Invasion

A modern girl's best friend - a robot.

Robots have occupied Bogotá's Planetarium (but only until tomorrow). Most are projects by local univesities, a few private efforts. I'm not sure they're true robots, however, as the creators of only one of them told me their device can operate independently.

This one-armed gripping machine was created by students of Universidad Agraria. During the exhibition a handler was controlling it, but he told me the robot can manuever independently and do tasks such as carrying, moving and sorting objects by size.

Robocol, by Universidad de los Andes students, is designed to do scoop up dirt for research on other worlds. The students entered it in a NASA contest, where it finished in the top for, this guy told me. The machine certainly didn't succeed out of cuteness.

Any robotic people around?

The Robotic Social Network. Sounds charming - and soon to overtake Facebook.

Big Brother's all-seeing eye.

...or two eyes.

Buy my robots. 

The Warrior One car.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours