THIS is with reference to the op-ed piece

(Oct 2) by Dr Hoodbhoy. We would like to make clear that the School Sciences and Engineering at LUMS was funded by Pakistani philanthropy, not by ‘American dollars’. Dr. Hoodbhoy’s claim is incorrect.The list of donors adorns the entrance to the Sciences and Engineering building.

Dr Hoodbhoy identifies and quotes an email sent by a LUMS faculty member on how ‘reciting holy verses can control genes and metabolites’ without giving the context.

Dr Hoodbhoy raised this matter internally at LUMS and it is worthwhile to quote the email response by the Dean of the School of Sciences and Engineering: “This is with reference to Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy’s email to you. The author [a LUMS faculty member], is clearly excited about a scientific report published in a top-tier journal which indicates that thinking influences brain biochemistry and decided to share it with the Faculty. The reported data is robust. That this indeed happens has been obvious for decades and even centuries because how else could a person retrieve or recollect a memory that has been stored in the cortical areas of the brain.

“Thus thinking about stuff forgotten and retrieving it must be associated with biochemical change(s); same goes for memory storage. Similarly, it is well-known through the work of Fred Gage (Salk Institute) and others that [the] visualisation of happy and sad images influences the brain but in opposite ways.

“Based on this, one wonders whether [the] visualisation of any religious script or its recitation would have a similar impact on the human brain. For an atheist such inputs are unlikely to lead to any changes due to lack of faith; for a devout Muslim or a Jew, however, hearing the recitation of verses from the Holy Quran or Torah is likely to have some impact.

“Such hypotheses can certainly be tested scientifically!...Anyway, the point is that had the author replaced Surat-Rehman with happy and sad images (as Gage has done in his work on neurogenesis), or a movement from Beethoven’s 5th Symphony in his email, it would have evoked a wow from Pervez and whosoever forwarded that email to him. Unfortunately, mentioning Sura Rahman had the opposite effect on him”.

Dr Hoodbhoy further quotes a LUMS faculty member as questioning E=MC2. Again, he fails to give the context which is that of philosophical debate, not the veracity of the equation, but of the limitations of the orthodox concept of the scientific method.

There is no doubt that Pakistani students are poorly prepared to understand the philosophical underpinning of science. That is all the more reason they should be exposed to important issues in the history and philosophy of science.

Yasser Hashmi

Spokesperson, LUMS

Lahore

Published in Dawn, October 24th, 2015

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