Edge Question: Which science concept would make everyone think better?

Here is the "Edge World Question Center", a leading materialist think tank, with 2011's Question:

THE WORLD QUESTION CENTER

James Flynn has defined "shorthand abstractions" (or "SHA's") as concepts drawn from science that have become part of the language and make people smarter by providing widely applicable templates ("market", "placebo", "random sample," "naturalistic fallacy," are a few of his examples). His idea is that the abstraction is available as a single cognitive chunk which can be used as an element in thinking and debate.

The Edge Question 2011

WHAT SCIENTIFIC CONCEPT WOULD IMPROVE EVERYBODY'S COGNITIVE TOOLKIT?

The term 'scientific"is to be understood in a broad sense as the most reliable way of gaining knowledge about anything, whether it be the human spirit, the role of great people in history, or the structure of DNA. A "scientific concept" may come from philosophy, logic, economics, jurisprudence, or other analytic enterprises, as long as it is a rigorous conceptual tool that may be summed up succinctly (or "in a phrase") but has broad application to understanding the world.

[Thanks to Steven Pinker for suggesting this year's Edge Question and to Daniel Kahneman for advice on its presentation.]

164 contributors, many whose names you will recognize, participated.

Any thoughts of your own? Go here to comment.

Note: Interesting, how many key words from medicine easily come to mind, yet medicine has slowly been moving away from a materialist paradigm, as Mario Beauregard and I noted in The Spiritual Brain.

Hat tip: Stephanie West Allen at Brains on Purpose

Repeatability in studies falls over time: Can you give this phenomenon a name?

In “The Truth Wears Off: Is there something wrong with the scientific method?” (New Yorker, December 13, 2010), Jonah Lehrer reported,

Many results that are rigorously proved and accepted start shrinking in later studies.

[ ... ]

... now all sorts of well-established, multiply confirmed findings have started to look increasingly uncertain. It’s as if our facts were losing their truth: claims that have been enshrined in textbooks are suddenly unprovable. This phenomenon doesn’t yet have an official name, but it’s occurring across a wide range of fields, from psychology to ecology. In the field of medicine, the phenomenon seems extremely widespread, affecting not only antipsychotics but also therapies ranging from cardiac stents to Vitamin E and antidepressants: Davis has a forthcoming analysis demonstrating that the efficacy of antidepressants has gone down as much as threefold in recent decades.

[ ... ]

For many scientists, the effect is especially troubling because of what it exposes about the scientific process. If replication is what separates the rigor of science from the squishiness of pseudoscience, where do we put all these rigorously validated findings that can no longer be proved?

Suggestions for names, with rationale, gladly accepted at Uncommon Descent. Also, any idea why it is happening?

Science: Balancing curiosity with accountability

Peter Aldhous, chief of New Scientist's San Francisco bureau, highlights the importance, in a time of recession, of scientists explaining the value of their work, as opposed to heaping abuse on the Tea Party:

Speaking the language of fiscal accountability will be crucial, and here many scientists have a good story to tell. Encouragingly, the researcher whose "questionable" work was highlighted in launching the YouCut Citizen Review has shown the way. Luís Amaral of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, was targeted because of a paper analysing the performance of soccer players. However, this project was a spin-off from a NSF-funded study of ways to make scientific research more efficient. Amaral estimates that it consumed no more than a few hundred federal dollars, and he points out that it provided a great hook to get sports-mad teens interested in data analysis.


Most importantly, Amaral has corrected the record with humility, stating on his blog: "I am a strong believer in accountability. I strongly believe that scientists must balance their intellectual curiosity with the costs to society of embarking on a given research direction."

Of course, most people are curious about the world around us. But deciding which projects to fund is a sure way to be somebody’s villain - so most decision-makers and lobbyists just shrug off abuse.

Coffee!! Pop science and popular culture: Skip the pedantry, just go for the effect?

According to Michael Brooks (New Scientist, 06 October 2009), in Don't be such a scientist, Randy "Flock of Dodos" Olson "advises,

DID you spot James Cameron's mistake in Titanic? Leo DiCaprio is about to drown in the north Atlantic ocean, yet the constellations of the southern hemisphere are aglow in the sky above.

Who cares? Scientists, apparently. The mistake "ruined" the movie for Neil de Grasse Tyson, director of New York's Hayden Planetarium, Randy Olson says.

It's the kind of reaction that gets scientists a bad rap, and Olson - himself a scientist and film-maker - suggests it pays to skip the pedantry and concentrate on the bigger picture. While small factual errors can be irksome, they are not life-threatening, he says - especially when the scientist is in control. If you want to get a message across to the public, don't obsess about facts.

Well, even better: Be a professional Darwinist (evolutionary biologist), and you can just plain make it up as you go along and call it science. Hey, you can even imagine the religious opinions of Old Stone Age man and call that science. Just skip the pedantry. If we agree that what you are saying is only entertainment, sure. I've said so myself.

On the other hand, if you are my dentist or my cat's vet, and you try that, I will complain to your professional society. How important pedantry is depends on the believability or significance of the body of evidence.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Science and media: It helps not to be an arrogant bastard

From the recent Pew Report, we learn:

Public Praises Science; Scientists Fault Public, Media
Scientific Achievements Less Prominent Than a Decade Ago (July 9, 2009)

While the public holds scientists in high regard, many scientists offer unfavorable, if not critical, assessments of the public’s knowledge and expectations. Fully 85% see the public’s lack of scientific knowledge as a major problem for science, and nearly half (49%) fault the public for having unrealistic expectations about the speed of scientific achievements.

A substantial percentage of scientists also say that the news media have done a poor job educating the public. About three-quarters (76%) say a major problem for science is that news reports fail to distinguish between findings that are well-founded and those that are not. And 48% say media oversimplification of scientific findings is a major problem. The scientists are particularly critical of television news coverage of science. Just 15% of scientists rate TV coverage as excellent or good, while 83% say it is only fair or poor. Newspaper coverage of science is rated somewhat better; still, barely a third (36%) of the scientists say it is excellent or good, while 63% rate it as only fair or poor.

Well, if it's not their job to educate the public, it's not the news media's either. Story of my life: There is only so much you can do in 750 words.

By the way, if news reports distinguished between findings that are well founded and findings that are not, all but 5% of everything written on evolutionary psychology could hit the recycler, bypassing the press.

It would suit me fine. There might be space for something more educational than "The gene that makes you want to shop" and "The brain module that makes you tip more." But is that what the U.S. scientists really want? I've yet to get a straight answer out of many of them.

Overall, the American scientists come off as legends in their own minds, believing they are much better than anyone else worldwide - we heard it from them first, remember?

Science and popular culture: Guy pays for recommending vitamin D, finds new job

He pays here:

If the name Michael Holick means anything to you, you will recall that he was asked to resign from a post in Boston University’s dermatology department in February 2004 for promoting "sensible sun exposure" in his book The UV Advantage.

Holick’s thesis—which was apparently anathema to Boston University derm department chair Barbara Gilchrest—is that most people who live in the US north of Atlanta are vitamin D deficient because one of the key sources of that vitamin is the sun. (Vitamin D is essential for the absorption of calcium and thus strong, healthy bones.) And even when the sun shines brightest, and for the longest, during the summer, we’re told to shun the sun and slather our bodies in high SPF sunscreens to defend against skin cancer. But in doing so we might be hiking our risk for a variety of health problems including heart disease, breast cancer, and colon cancer, says Holick.

"You have about a 30 to 50 percent decreased risk of developing colon, prostate, and breast cancer if you maintain adequate vitamin D levels throughout your life," Holick said in a 2007 interview with a Canadian television station.

I am glad that I have nothing to hope or fear from Barbara Gilchrest (identified above), who strikes me as just one of many people who make the lives of those who front new and possibly important knowledge difficult.

So let me just add one thing that anyone can take down and use in evidence against me: Women who are required for cultural reasons to spend their entire lives under heavy clothing are - I am told by a doctor whose opinion I trust - at risk for Vitamin D deficiency.

Look, gals ... wear it, don't wear it. I don't care. Believe what you think is right. But you need a porch or sun room or something where you can just be exposed to the sun (with appropriate privacy, of course), especially if you live in one of the ungenerous latitudes of this world (like my beloved Toronto).

I don't even know that my Rose of Sharon trees (which I mostly grafted myself) will survive this winter, never mind that you can survive in places like Toronto without any contact with the sun ...

If doctors say you need it, believe them. Okay? Insist on it!

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Science: A year-end wad of fraud, falsified data, and other award-winning tenure strategies ...

I just got my e-mail notice of the December edition of the "Outside the Cover" of The Scientist, and it made for a curious reading experience:

Bad news at Cell

Improper citation, disregard for antecedent research, and shoddy experimentation - those are just a few of the allegations levied against a recent Cell paper. Is this paper emblematic of a larger problem in scientific publishing?

(Um, it's a big topic, but let's start with peer review and work backward, okay? The skinny: Do third rate minds get together to suppress first rate minds who challenge their "findings"?)

And at JEB (Journal of Experimental Biology):

In the first retraction in its 85-year history, the journal calls the authors' reuse of images a case of outright fraud, not a careless error as claimed

Nature to retract plant study

A highly cited paper that identified a long-sought receptor critical for mediating plant response to stress is being retracted after researchers were unable to reproduce the results

("But we ran out of Fairy Dust, you see ... " (?))

A Texas stem cell researcher falsified data by mucking around with her results in Photoshop (Another shoo-in for the Muddy Waters award?)

"Officials have halted enrollment in more than 600 human research studies due to shoddy paperwork" (Too bad Miss Grimstone, Secretary (and don't you ever forget it!), retired twenty-nine years ago today ... )

Journal of Evolutionary Psychology: Several prominent evolutionary psychologists have been accused of fraud, in appropriating hundreds of Just-So Stories from other evolutionary psychologists. These academics have hired a lawyer who is defending them on the grounds that they cannot be guilty of fraud because their work is 100% speculative fiction. They can, he admits, be sued for plagiarism. But plagiarism must be proved, and he says there is not enough proof. The urban legends in question have been floating around in the pop science culture for decades, under various guises. His clients also can't be nailed for libel, he advises, because one cannot libel the dead - let alone persons who probably never existed.

(Note: I linked these blog posts for your convenience, but you must register to read them.)

Okay, sure, I made that last one up. The others you can read about elsewhere. I hope this is merely a year end review of regrettable moments, rather than a Krakatoa of corruption just beginning to blow off ...

But I was hardly reassured to read this, sent recently by a friend:

In a 2005 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, epidemiologist John Ioannidis showed that among the 45 most highly cited clinical research findings of the past 15 years, 99 percent of molecular research had subsequently been refuted. Epidemiology findings had been contradicted in four-fifths of the cases he looked at, and the usually robust outcomes of clinical trials had a refutation rate of one in four.

The revelations struck a chord with the scientific community at large: A recent essay by Ioannidis simply entitled "Why most published research findings are false" has been downloaded more than 100,000 times; the Boston Globe called it "an instant cult classic." Now in a Möbius-strip-like twist, there is a growing body of research that is investigating, analyzing, and suggesting causes and solutions for faulty research.

- João Medeiros, "Dirty Little Secret Are most published research findings actually false? The case for reform." (May 21, 2007)

The wonderful thing about science is that it is self-correcting? Oh, come on!

Speaking as a longtime book editor - and mindful of the history of bridge engineering - I would say that self-correction is a sport best enjoyed in the privacy of one's own office before the big launch.

And you do not need any science training to know that fact.

My own sense is that too many people today are invested in proving stuff they are sure is true, and not enough in finding out what is really going on.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Conversations: A defense of amateur science

Friend Forrest Mims, recently targeted as one of Discover Magazine's "50 best brains in science, fielded a complaint from a mutual acquaintance about the fact that I routinely call myself a "hack." (The complainer probably hoped Forrest would ask me to stop because it sounded like a self-putdown.)

I defended myself, pointing out that "Among journalists I know, it is not necessarily a term of abuse. It means "one who lives by writing." That’s why I called my neuroscience, spirituality, and popular culture blog, The Mindful Hack.

Enough of this. Forrest went on to say something I want to share, namely that he is proud of being an "amateur" scientist, meaning that he has many science publications but no science degree. Indeed, he notes,

Discover Magazine has named 10 amateur scientists to its list of "50 Best Brains in Science," including my colleagues Ely Silk, Bill Hilton Jr. and me from the Society for Amateur Scientists.

That's impressive, and it was presaged by an essay he wrote nearly a decade ago for Science:

An editorial in a leading science journal once proclaimed an end to amateur science: "Modern science can no longer be done by gifted amateurs with a magnifying glass, copper wires, and jars filled with alcohol" (1). I grinned as I read these words. For then as now there's a 10× magnifier in my pocket, spools of copper wire on my work bench, and a nearby jar of methanol for cleaning the ultraviolet filters in my homemade solar ultraviolet and ozone spectroradiometers. Yes, modern science uses considerably more sophisticated methods and instruments than in the past. And so do we amateurs. When we cannot afford the newest scientific instrument, we wait to buy it on the surplus market or we build our own. Sometimes the capabilities of our homemade instruments rival or even exceed those of their professional counterparts.
The term amateur can have a pejorative ring. But in science it retains the meaning of its French root amour, love, for amateurs do science because it's what they love to do. Without remuneration or reward, enthusiastic amateurs survey birds, tag butterflies, measure sunlight, and study transient solar eclipse phenomena. Others count sunspots, discover comets, monitor variable stars, and invent instruments.

Hmmm. Speaking of creating it yourself at home, Forrest has a daughter who was the lead author on a journal paper before she had reached the age of majority (in many jurisdictions) ...

He adds,

The Society for Amateur Scientists counts a number of well published Ph.D.s among its members, all of whom have done great work outside their degree fields. In fact, SAS was founded by Shawn Carlson, a noted skeptic with a Ph.D. in nuclear physics. (I have edited the SAS's webzine, The Citizen Scientist for 5 years.)

So, if you want a career in science, but don't want to punch a clock for The Man, consider these folks your friends.

Not everyone does. When I told Forrest I was going to write about amateur scientists, he wrote back to say,

A few Ph.D.s, as you may have noticed, are infected with an arrogance syndrome for which amateur science is a wonderful antidote. Some of these Ph.D.s have spent a career never going beyond their Ph.D. work. Serious amateurs are always going beyond their academic preparation, which is often nil.

Fortunately, most Ph.D.s are very supportive of amateur scientists, which is why SCIENCE invited the essay I wrote. In my career doing science only rarely have I been asked my degree (B.A. in government with minors in history and English). All that has mattered is my peer-reviewed publications and the instruments I've designed.

In fact, one big problem in science today is the sheer number of third rate minds holding down Jobs at Indoctrinate U, and the many other fine institutions dedicated to the suppression of learning. It is from the ranks of these people, I suspect, that most Darwinist trolls are drawn.

As I have noted elsewhere, Darwin - an amateur scientist of some note - would have had more sense than to be a Darwinist had he lived today. Who knows, he might have written Edge of Evolution. He would certainly be a distinguished member of the Altenberg 17, seeking a workable theory of evolution.

Darwin would want a materialist theory, to be sure - but it wouldn't be natural selection acting on random mutations (= poof! in slo-mo). He'd still need Huxley, of course - nowadays, everyone in this line of work needs a troll removal specialist.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:



Robert Frost: The first ID poet?

I'm told that Robert Frost published a poem called "Accidentally on Purpose" at the end of his life (1962)

Accidentally on Purpose
Robert Frost

Till Darwin came to earth upon a year
To show the evolution how to steer,
They mean to tell us, though, the omnibus
Had no real purpose till it got to us.

Never believe it. At the very worst
It must have had the purpose from the first
To produce purpose as the fitter bred:
We were just purpose coming to a head.

Here's the whole thing.

Had Frost lived, would he have been the first ID poet?

(Note: The image is from Wikimedia Commons.)

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:



Ideas have consequences: Jesse Kilgore

Here's a podcast with the father of 22-year-old Jesse Kilgore, who killed himself after reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. Too bad young Jesse did not give himself a chance to read Alister McGrath's The Dawkins Delusion. My thoughts and prayers are with all who knew him. No doubt there was more going on than we know. It's a very sober reminder that, in a world where many believe that young people care only about text messaging aimless gossip, some take the critical questions deadly seriously.

In a very different chain of events a lttile over a year ago, a young Finnish social Darwinist killed himself and eight others , in an event reminiscent of Eric Harris at Columbine.

Significantly, when I reported on the Finnish school shooting, I received a storm of complaints from Darwinists who wanted me to know that their belief system was in no way implicated. I responded,

This tragedy has provoked an enormous outburst of protest from Darwinists on account of my noting that the shooter's motive was social Darwinism. On the rare occasions when a shooter's motive has been anti-abortion advocacy (Rudolph) or fundamentalist madness (Yates), I have NEVER been excoriated by an anti-abortionist or fundamentalist for openly discussing that fact. Indeed, these types of cases were openly discussed among Christian journalists at a number of gatherings in which I participated over the last decade, with conspicuously little defensiveness. We had long accepted that some forms of anti-abortion advocacy and fundamentalism are toxic.

So this storm of comments has been a real eye-opener for me (and I probably rejected more than I accepted, so readers never saw all the somniferous posturing as I did). The storm suggests that - despite claims - Darwinists have never dealt with the legacy of social Darwinism in an emotionally healthy enough way to just put it all behind them. Now that may be because the actual worldview of Darwinism necessitates social Darwinism. Or it may be because no one has said, "let's just do it." Or someone has said that, but the troops didn't get it. It's not really my problem though.

I shut off comments to the post.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Materialist atheists: Beware astrophysics?

Richard John Neuhaus, writing in the December edition of First Things, draws our attention to British sociologist David Martin, writing in the Scottish Journal of Theology

A master narrative of the Enlightenment is that religion recedes as science advances. It would be more plausible were it supported by the evidence, writes Martin.

[ ... ]

It happens that three is no continuing Enlightenment institution in secular contexts comparable to the Church in religious contexts to take the moral flack hurled at the corruptions of power ... Christianity can be blamed for what happened when adopted as the faith of the Roman Empire, whereas Darwinism can innocently wash its hands of what happened when converted by capitalist society into Social Darwinism or deployed by Nietzsche. Yet the metaphors of Darwinism are decidedly more susceptible to malign conversion than the metaphors of Christianity." Martin concludes with this: If I were an atheist anxious to disturb the faith of intelligent young friends, I would recommend a course in biblical criticism, or in psychobabble and sociobabble, or, best of all, a vigorous drench in romantic literary Weltschmerz. But not, definitely not, a bracing course in astrophysics. They might too easily suppos they were tracing 'the Mind of the Maker.'

Yes, unless they take refuge in crackpot cosmologies.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Science and culture: God as an "unnecessary hypothesis?"

In "Theology After Newton", physicist Stephen M. Barr notes:

In Newtonian physics, change and movement were explained by the inertia of bodies and the forces bodies exert on each other. And since God is not a material body, many people thought that the new science had relegated him to the sidelines. At most, he was allowed to act in the distant past, as an all-foreseeing designer, a conception of God that Pannenberg criticizes as leading, on the one hand, to deism and, on the other hand, to a clash between predestination and human freedom. Even worse, the belief that took hold after Newton-that everything could be explained naturalistically, through physical forces and mathematical laws--seemed to make the existence of God an "unnecessary hypothesis," as Laplace put it. As theology lost its explanatory role, its assertions came to be seen as lacking empirical content and therefore as untestable.

Some theologians took refuge in fideism or a "flight to commitment," such as Karl Barth's "altogether unsecured obedience" to the Word of God. Others retreated to the position that theological language is "performative" rather than "informative." Yet others reduced the gospel to social action. The result has been a situation in which theology is marginalized and seen as largely irrelevant to life and thought. Society and its institutions grew secularized, and intellectual life did as well: the study of history and science undertaken without concern for a wider context of meaning. (First Things)

I've been known to call this "flight to commitment" by a ruder name: "aimless Jesus-hollering."

Science writer wonders whether telling people about the "end of science" is bad for business

John Horgan is that science writer who got into a whale of trouble with the big Science establishment a while back for thinking that the glory days of science discovery are over.

That's a thought he is not allowed to have, apparently, even if there is good evidence for it. (I don't happen to agree with him, but I belong to a more enlightened tradition where he should feel free to make his case.) Anyway, he has more recently said:

Some critics worry that my predictions might become self-fulfilling by discouraging young people from becoming scientists. To be honest, I worry about this problem too, especially now that I teach at a science-oriented school. I tell my students that, even if I'm right that the era of profound discoveries has ended, there is still much meaningful work to do, especially in applied science.

They can develop better treatments for AIDS or cancer or schizophrenia. They can invent cleaner, cheaper sources of energy, or devise computer models that give us a better understanding of global warming. They can even help us understand why we fight wars and how we can avoid them. I also urge my students to question all big, ambitious theories, including mine. The only way to find out how far science can go is to keep pushing against its limits.

- JOHN HORGAN is a science journalist and Director of the Center for Science Writings at the Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey.

His comments in Science and Spirit are an illuminating read. Basically, what he is talking about is the end of materialist science, not the end of science - though I don't think he quite realizes that. For example,

Although neuroscientists have acquired increasingly powerful tools for probing and modeling the brain, they have failed to produce a compelling theory of the mind. Nor have researchers winnowed out pre-existing theories. Theories of the mind never really die. They just go in and out of fashion. Some prominent neuroscientists, such as the Nobel laureates Eric Kandel and Gerald Edelman, still think the best theory of the mind is Freudian psychoanalysis.

Our best hope for a breakthrough is to crack the neural code, the set of rules or algorithms that transforms electrical pulses emitted by brain cells into perceptions, memories, and decisions. But recent research suggests that each brain may operate according to many different neural codes, which keep changing in response to new experiences. Some leading neuroscientists, such as Christof Koch, worry that the neural code might be too complex to fully decipher.

Essentially, if the quest is to reduce the mind to the brain, it will fail because the mind is not the brain, as Mario Beauregard and I explain in The Spiritual Brain. But the quest does not have to be that, unless one is a materialist.

Perhaps the real story is that there is no future for materialists in science? Anyway, read the paper and see what you think.

So what has atheism done for science lately?

Indeed, what has atheism done for science?, agnostic Warwick U sociologist Steve Fuller asks, and the answer is, apparently, not much:

The most popular non-answers usually involve some vague appeal to “innate animal curiosity”. But this hardly distinguishes science from, say, gossip or sheer nosiness – let alone religion. It also doesn’t explain why we persist in doing science even when trails grow cold or, worse, dangerous. Most evolutionary explanations account for a trait’s persistence in one of two ways: it either increases our chances for survival or it is the by-product of something that increases our chances for survival. But does science fit either description?

and worse,

More generally, atheism has not figured as a force in the history of science not because it has been suppressed but because whenever it has been expressed, it has not encouraged the pursuit of science. The general metaphysical idea underlying Darwinism – that a morally indifferent nature selects from among a variety of organic possibilities – has many secular and religious precedents across the world. In each case, it has led to an ethic of equanimity and even resignation, certainly not a drive to remake the planet, if not the universe, to our own purposes. Yet, so far we have got pretty far on that drive. The longer we continue successfully, the stronger the evidence that at least human life cannot be fully explained in Darwinian terms.

Actually, never mind human life, I don't think even animal life can be fully explained - or even reasonably explained - in Darwinian terms. And plant life - definitely not! Lamarck and Mendel could tell you far more about plants than Darwin ever did.

What atheism has done for science is sold a lot of popular atheist books that use the word "science" every few sentences. Wow.

See also The god they don't believe in certainly isn't great.

Alarm! Alarm! Critical thinking spotted in vicinity of threatened Pop Science Kludge

British physicist David Tyler muses, "Is critical thinking subversive to science?

The instinctive reaction of most people to this question is "Of course not! Without critical thinking, science is dead!" So when one of the leading science journals carries a report on the Louisiana bill promoting the development of "critical thinking skills" describing it as an "attack [. . .] on the teaching of evolution and mainstream scientific thought on global warming and other topics" - it is time to reflect on the reasons why.

It is indeed. And unfortunately, the answer isn't too hard to figure out.

As science morphs into a faux religion for tax-funded Bo-Bos (bourgeois bohemians, in David Brooks's immortal phrase), the Bo-Bos' witless neuroses become Unassailable.

So, whether the current freakout is the Big Bazooms theory of evolution or the "You Gonna Fry! You Gonna Die!" theory of climate change, the Bo-Bos do insist on being taken Seriously.

And they do NOT want critical thinking applied to the nonsense they have already charged.

The Right's war on science? Lots of ink spilled there, but how about the Left's war on science?

Yuval Levin, senior editor at The New Atlantis, has some fun with the loud red shriekies who believe science is being hijacked whenever it doesn't conform to a left-wing agenda:

... beneath these grave accusations, it turns out, are some remarkably flimsy grievances, most of which seem to amount to political disputes about policy questions in which science plays a role. Ethical disagreements over the destruction of embryos for research are described instead as a conflict between science and ignorant theology. Differing judgments about the proper role of government in sex education in schools are painted as a quarrel between objective public health and medieval prudishness. A dispute about the prudential wisdom of a variety of energy policy alternatives is depicted as a clash of simple scientific facts against willful ignorance and greed. And the countless minor personnel and policy decisions that always shape the day-to-day operations of the federal executive branch are pored over in an effort to reveal a nefarious pattern of retrograde anti-rational obscurantism. The president’s science advisor, it seems, now has an office located a little further from the Oval Office than his predecessors had, and a member of a Food and Drug Administration advisory board once wrote a book about his religious conversion.

But, of course, at a Stalinist tribunal, those would all be firing squad offences, wouldn't they?

Anyway, Levin argues in "Science and the Left" (Winter 2008) that the reality is much more complex. He argues, for example, that while leftism and science used to be at home with each other, environmentalism has challenged that because environmentalism is a deeply conservative trend:

There is no question that for some, especially in Europe, the obsession with climate change is a way to avoid thinking about serious geopolitical problems, particularly the threat of radical Islam. Rather than marshalling modernity to defend itself, this obsession allows Western elites to persist in a silly and feckless pseudo-moralism. Instead of looking to America for leadership and protection, it allows them to blame America for its strength and its confidence. And for some on the left, too, the obsession is a way to stir up the kind of crisis atmosphere necessary for some pet causes and ideas to become politically plausible. But whatever the reason, environmentalism, and with it a worldview deeply at odds with that behind the scientific enterprise, has come to play a pivotal role in the thinking of the left.

So far, the American left has managed mostly to ignore this difficulty, and to treat environmentalism as a cause of the party of science. An ongoing dispute about the basic facts and figures of global warming has made this easier by putting science and environmentalism on the same side for a time. But as that argument subsides, and attention turns to the causes of environmental degradation and to possible solutions, the fissure between science and environmentalism will be harder to ignore. An American environmentalism newly empowered by a decades-long debate that put it front and center on the agenda of the cultural and political left may come to resemble the European Green movement, which shares many of the attitudes of American progressives, but which does not view itself by any means as a party of science. Indeed, the Greens in Europe have been at the leading edge of nearly every contemporary effort to curb the power and the reach of science, most notably biotechnology—from bans on human cloning to prohibitions against genetically modified foods. But in America, the left has yet to confront this glaring complication in its claim to the mantle of the party of science. Science, it turns out, is behind much of what troubles and worries the left.

And much more to think about.

Like many people, I have noticed the growing incoherence of the ideological left on many science-related issues, ranging from the claim that stem cells taken from human embryos are absolutely essential to medical treatments (exploded) to the claim that there are no inherent differences between men and women (exploded) to freaking out over the possibility that the universe and life forms show evidence of intelligent design (they do, and you'll just have to get used to it, Lefty. That's not something you can legislate out of existence).

While you're here, find out WHY there is an intelligent design controversy ...

Science and ethics: When the devil offered a no-strings research post ...

In an earlier post, I quoted British science journalist Geoffrey Lean warning against the "institutionalised idolatry of science." An instructive study subject would be the gifted Werner von Braun, who worked for Nazi Germany and later the United States.

Von Braun, in the words of Mark Walker ("A 20th-Century Faust", a review of Neufeld's recent von Braun biography),

Wernher von Braun is an iconic figure of the 20th century, someone who built deadly missiles for Adolf Hitler and the Saturn V rockets that sent Americans to the Moon. Michael J. Neufeld's long-awaited biography, Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War, steers a course between the extremes of demonization and hagiography. "Von Braun has often been depicted as a saint or a devil, as a hero of spaceflight or as a Nazi war criminal," observes Neufeld. "It is comforting to pigeonhole him as either white or black," he goes on to explain, "because then one does not have to deal with his ambiguity and complexity, or the ambiguity and complexity of the moral and political choices offered to scientists and engineers in the modern era." Neufeld's thorough, nuanced, insightful account does this challenging subject justice.

[ ... ]

Nevertheless, von Braun was one of the most important men of his time. Neufeld characterizes him as "a twentieth-century Faust," someone who succumbed to "the temptation to work with an evil regime in return for the resources to carry out the research closest to one's heart." This book, truly a historian's masterpiece, will become the definitive biography.

Faust might find the field a bit crowded today. I still remember our Canadian geneticist turned environment activist David Suzuki pointing out back in the 1970s that the defense industry (i.e. war) was the major employer of scientists. I hope that's changed now, but it must have left some imprint on a generation.

Fun with David Berlinski: The Devil sketches what we do not know

In The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions, mathematician David Berlinski takes on the shape of what we do not know:

We know better than we did what we do not know and have not grasped. We do not know how the universe began. We do not know why it is there. Charles Darwin talked speculatively of life emerging from a "warm little pond." The pond is gone. We have little idea how life emerged, and cannot with assurance say that tit did. We cannot reconcile our understanding of the human mind with any trivial theory about the manner in which the brain functions. Beyond the trivial, we have no other theories. We can say nothing of interest about the human soul. We do not know what impels us to right conduct or where the form of the good is found.

On these and many other points as well, the great scientific theories have lapsed. The more sophisticated the theories, the more inadequate they are. This is a good reason to cherish them. They have enlarged and not diminished our sense of the sublime. (p. xiii-iv)

One pictures the devil sitting opposite, turning over his now-empty glass ...

Framing science: Finding a frame to fit materialism?

At Overwhelming Evidence, today, I reflect on the comments of Matthew Nisbet at the Framing Science blog.

His comments are a more interesting - and far more significant - illustration of what is wrong with science today than the uproar over Myers's ejection from the Expelled screening.

In his post, Nisbet pleads with Dawkins and Myers to just pipe down.

They are doing more harm than good by linking science with atheism, and he knows that that is not good public relations.

Look, it’s just not good public relations, okay? Things go on from there ...

[ ... ]

Note: I have myself attempted to resolve Myers's expulsion problem by paying for his ticket, if he will agree to watch the whole film, and not run out to trash it halfway through or something similar. I have e-mailed producer Mark Mathis with my offer. It will likely cost me US$8.00 or so, and my freelance writing business can easily spring for it.

It is much easier to solve Myers's problem about getting a ticket than to solve the more serious, science-related problems detailed in the documentary - the problems of people whose careers were destroyed by Darwinists simply because they know reasons why Darwinism isn't true.

For more, go here.

Note: This is the site I am updating on this story.

Scientists terrified that people don't trust them?

But how much "trust" in science is reasonable?

In a most interesting article, "Whither the revered scientist?", Peter Calamai of the Toronto Star asks, noting

After two days of provocative ideas and spirited exchanges at an international gathering recently in Toronto, British museum curator Robert Bud neatly summed up the collective wisdom.

"The scientists are terrified."

This widespread angst among scientists has been sparked by evidence that the traditional social compact between science and the public has been irrevocably sundered. Put bluntly, much of the public no longer implicitly trusts either scientists or their pronouncements about everything from climate change to the safety of children's vaccines.

Most people begin to lose trust when they are ordered to believe stuff they suspect ain't so.

Where have all the Christians gone ... from science?

(Note: This is my most recent ChristianWeek column, in which I address the reason for the current preponderance of materialist atheists in some fields of science.)

When I first started researching the intelligent design controversy, I often heard from Christian notables in science that there was no conflict between faith and science. I didn't suppose that there was a conflict, actually, but I soon came to realize that there is an inevitable conflict between strong Darwinian evolutionists and Christianity. A recent study of the views of key Darwinian evolutionists confirms my best guess - and raises some interesting questions about the Christian community in North America.

In "Evolution, Religion and Free Will" (American Scientist, Volume 95, 294ff) , Gregory W. Graffin and William B. Provine found that, of 149 eminent evolutionists polled, 78% were pure naturalists (no God) and only two were clearly theists (traditional idea of God). Some were in between these poles. The authors describe most of them as deists (some sort of divinity might have got things rolling but it is not God in any sense that Christians understand).

The authors note that the level of advocacy of any degree of theism among evolutionary biologists is the lowest measured so far in any poll of biologists' beliefs. They described the vast majority of their respondents as "metaphysical naturalists", "materialists", and "monists". In other words, these are people who are serious about their materialism and atheism.

These evolutionary biologists generally view religion as a product or byproduct of human evolution so that "... evolution is the means to understanding religion, whereas religion as a 'way of knowing' has nothing to teach us about evolution." The authors make quite clear that "Seeing religion as a sociobiological feature of human evolution, while a plausible hypothesis, denies all worth to religious truths."

So these are the people who are in charge of interpreting biology to your children. Mainstream media, covering the intelligent design (ID) controversy, warn you that most ID advocates are Christians or other theists. But how many have told you what I just did - that most of the people who strongly promote a no-design universe and no-design life forms are atheists? This has been true, by the way, for the better part of a century, ever since James Leuba started his surveys in 1914.

If the design advocates' views are coloured by theism, how is it that the no-design views of the atheists are not coloured by atheism? In adopting this perspective, mainstream media tacitly assume that atheism is the correct view, however one arrives at it. And your tax dollars are commanded in support of that view, as propounded at universities and, increasingly, in public high schools.

It seems to me that there are only two realistic ways to see this: Either atheism is correct, and therefore the reasonable point of view for scientists to have. Or there is some other reason that atheism predominates among biologists.

Here is one reason things have got to this pass: What do non-religious people suggest that their talented children should do? Go into business or science. What do religious people suggest that their talented children should do? Go into the clergy, ministry, or missionary work.
The result? Over time, the upper echelons of science have been dominated by atheists and agnostics. They increasingly dominate public policy too, while Christians praise Jesus irrelevantly in comfy tabernacles where no one but Jesus hears us.

Yet atheism is not evidence derived from science; it is merely a presumption by which many scientists interpret what they see. And the presumption is certainly not shared by all who have experience of the wonders of the natural world. While I was at Write! Canada 2007, I ran into a hand surgeon (now professor emeritus) who told me that he had checked out of believing in a non-design explanation for the human hand as a result of his own best efforts at mending broken hands.

I went away from the conversation with him reflecting on the fact that I may well be the only journalist in Canada who is simultaneously a member of The Word Guild, a confessional Christian writers' association, and the Canadian Science Writers' Association. I will be glad when the day comes that I am merely one of hundreds.

(Note for the record: "Evolutionists" here means scientists who believe that gradual Darwinian processes completely account for every aspect of life and that no design whatever is required. It does not mean scientists who merely accept that evolution occurs or that Earth is billions of years old.)

Peer review: My recent piece sure garnered plenty of comments

The piece I put up the day before yesterday on peer review has garnered a lot of comment. The riff piece at Evolution News and Views probably did too.

Clearly, I was on to something.

There have been some thoughtful reactions, some establishment huffing, and some bizarre reactions. These stand out:

- many people treated the problem as one I had invented, when in reality it only came to my attention because I had lots of stories in an inbox slot featuring high-level dissatisfaction and broadly based new systems . I let a number of stories on peer review get away before I realized that this was definitely slow-cycle news - perfect for a backgrounder.

- some assumed that I had written the piece to highlight the ID guys' troubles, but their troubles are really only a small piece of a bigger problem, and rated only a mention in the article. What I said was "- given the woeful state of peer review - papers that support or undermine ID hypotheses would probably be neither better nor worse recommended if they were never peer reviewed, just published, amid cheers and catcalls."

(Don't forget that, just as ID guys' papers may be unfairly held back, Darwinists' papers may be unfairly advanced, with glaring errors for the ID guys to pick apart. Both outcomes undermine the quality of the system as a SYSTEM.)

- Many people had a hard time grasping a fact that seems simple to me: There is no conflict between the inevitable limitations of a system and the fact/possibility that it is not working. Indeed, that is the precise circumstance that drives the demand for a new system. When I am told that the peer reviewers cannot possibly examine the data in detail due to time constraints, I agree that that is true. But in fields where data rules, I am hardly surprised that new systems are sought where eager grad students may be more than willing to spend the time in order to make their name.

My own view is that the system will become more open and dynamic whether anyone likes it or not because that is simply how things go these days.

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.