Imagine if every article in "Science" or "Discover" had a blurb on it saying something like "Everything you're reading here is false. Go to this site to see how Scientologists have it right and we're all really alien slaves."
Actually I doubt you'd care because, let's face it, like most people you probably don't subscribe to either "Science" or "Discover". But I bet you do read CNN.com or MSNBC.com or FOXNews.com, and that's basically what's happening on those sites, only with Biblical Creationism instead of Scientology.
Here's how it works.
A big, credible site like CNN.com puts code on their web page articles to serve up ads brokered by Google. Google scans each article as it's delivered to your web browser, does some GoogleMagic, and figures out what the page is about. In this CNN science article about finding good DNA in mammoth hairs, for instance, it finds great words like DNA, scientists, and biochemistry. "Aha!" thinks Google, "this page is about science and evolution!"
Meanwhile, creationists sites out there are also using Google, only they want to buy ads. Their audience is the layperson somewhat interested in science, who they hope to sway to their way of thinking (e.g. the universe is only 6,000 years old, Noah's Flood happened just as described in Genesis, etc.), so they go out and tell Google, "put our ads on any page that has these words in it -- DNA, science, scientists, archaeology, and that sort of thing."
GoogleMagic isn't, of course, actually magic; it's just a computer program that tries to match up an article like the one on CNN with an advertiser. The beauty of GoogleAds is that you can be very targeted and only have your ad shown on a page that's probably going to be of interest to your likely customer. If you sell used drill bits, for instance, you probably don't want your ad shown on a page that is about baking cookies.
Thus Google sees a CNN article about DNA, and puts up the creationist ads on it. CNN is "The Most Trusted Name in News", so Joe or Jane Average gives credence to what they publish. They're reading an article written by the AP, another trusted source, which contains excellent, scientifically valid information. They get to the bottom of the page, and see ads for sites that seem to also be about evolution and science, and so they click on it:
And voila, the credibility and reliability of CNN and the Associated Press and all those scientists in the original story get carried through to the creationist site.
There's nothing immoral or illegal about what the creationists are doing here. They have every right to purchase ad words from Google and to try and reach their target audience.
The problem is that they're gaining legitimacy from sources that would otherwise completely undermine everything they say.
I'd love to see groups like the National Center for Science Education put a small part of their budget to countering this tactic. Bid up those same Google AdWords at a slightly higher price so the creationist ads don't get served. Be aggressive and target other words like "creationism", "bible science", "genesis facts", and more to try and get some well-intentioned but misinformed browsers good, accurate, reliable information about science and history.
This isn't about atheism or faith, it's about good science education. You can have a good understanding of real science and still be a Christian, as millions around the world show every day. Having a majority of people in America misunderstand basic scientific concepts is bad for a democratic nation. We can't make good policy or execute sound judgment when our knowledge is built on a foundation of lies.
Monday, October 01, 2007
GoogleCreation?
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Science Encodes Values
Chris Mooney served on the Yearly Kos NetRoots convention's science panel last week, and had this to say in his write-up of the event (emphasis mine):
[I]t has fallen to those of us who oppose the direction the country has been heading to simultaneously champion a way of thinking that would have averted so many blunders and disasters: empirical thinking. Scientific thinking. Critical thinking.
In other words, you might say that now more than ever before, we're finally waking up to the fact that the practices of science themselves encode a set of values -- a way of approaching the world, understanding it, and acting within it. At its core, it's a world view that is humble about what we know and don't know, flexible about what we do and don't decide to do, and open about admitting past mistakes and listening to contrary opinion. In short, it's the utter opposite of Bush's stubborn, inflexible, unwavering certainty about everything.
That bolded statement really spoke to me, because I think very often that science is looked at as a value-free exercise. But it's not. As Mooney says, because it has a certain kind of approach built right into it, it encodes certain values as part of its very substance. That's a powerful statement.
Science's core value of humility is often derided and looked upon as weakness by those who have certainty at the center of their approach to the world. But it's not a weakness to admit you might be wrong. It's instead the greatest kind of strength.
You see the same kind of split in the religious world as well, with some adherents telling us to be humble in the face of the Almighty and others arrogantly proclaiming that there is Only One True Way and they happen to know it, so get ready to be blasted if you oppose them!
It's a fundamentally human schism, one that runs through every movement and every belief system (yes, even rationalism or skepticism).
Arrogance versus humility.
Certainty versus doubt.
I expect that, like light and dark, both are somehow necessary for the universe to keep rolling along. But as for me, I'll always prefer the side that admits it could be wrong, that allows for the possibility of change, and that isn't afraid to stare the unknown in the face and ask "What are you?" And then deal with the consequences of getting an answer.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Texas Creationist State Board of Education
Governor Rick "Good Hair" Perry has just appointed Creationist Ron McLeroy (R-Bryan) to head the Texas State Board of Education. Upon hearing the news, I promptly joined the Texas Freedom Network, an advocacy group helping to promote good science education and the separation of church and state. President Kathy Miller pointed out some interesting nuggets from Mr. McLeroy's past:
• He voted in 2001 to reject the only advanced placement environmental science textbook proposed for Texas high schools even though panels of experts – including one panel from Texas A&M – found the textbook was free of errors. In fact, Baylor University used the same textbook.
• In 2003 Mr. McLeroy led efforts by creationism or “intelligent design” proponents to water down discussion of evolution in proposed new biology textbooks. He was one of only four board members who voted against biology textbooks that year that included a full scientific account of evolutionary theory.
• In 2004, Mr. McLeroy voted to approve "abstinence-only" health textbooks that failed to include any information about responsible pregnancy and STD prevention, despite state curriculum standards requiring that students learn such information.
Look, you're entitled to your own opinions, but you're not entitled to your own facts. And evolution is a fact. Putting someone in charge of the State Board of Education who doesn't know this is like putting someone in charge of the Navy who doesn't believe steel can float.
Monday, May 28, 2007
Biology and Morality: Neuroscience the Next Front in the Religion vs. Science Wars?
Digby linked to an article in the Washington Post today titled "If It Feels Good to Be Good, It Might Be Only Natural" that presages what I believe will be the next major cultural conflict between science and religion: neuroscience.
Grafman and others are using brain imaging and psychological experiments to study whether the brain has a built-in moral compass. The results -- many of them published just in recent months -- are showing, unexpectedly, that many aspects of morality appear to be hard-wired in the brain, most likely the result of evolutionary processes that began in other species.
No one can say whether giraffes and lions experience moral qualms in the same way people do because no one has been inside a giraffe's head, but it is known that animals can sacrifice their own interests: One experiment found that if each time a rat is given food, its neighbor receives an electric shock, the first rat will eventually forgo eating.
What the new research is showing is that morality has biological roots -- such as the reward center in the brain that lit up in Grafman's experiment -- that have been around for a very long time.
The more researchers learn, the more it appears that the foundation of morality is empathy. Being able to recognize -- even experience vicariously -- what another creature is going through was an important leap in the evolution of social behavior. And it is only a short step from this awareness to many human notions of right and wrong ...
You would be hard pressed to find a subject most people would consider more firmly entrenched in the religious magisteria than morality. Why we should act the way we do is, I would argue, just about the most fundamental question religion can answer, at least in terms of its practical impact on everyday life. And now science is beginning to tell us that it has something to say on the subject after all.
Eventually, as research into the biological foundations of human behavior and thought continues, we'll probably end up right where we are today with evolution. There will be a few religious fundamentalist holdouts who reject everything science has to teach us about the world. There will be a few atheists who loudly trumpet this as evidence that God does not exist. And the vast majority will simply shrug their shoulders, understanding that no matter what we learn about the workings of the universe, we're not going to change our minds about what it all means anyway. Theistic moderates will simply claim that "This is how God chose to do it", and atheist moderates will say "Yet again we see that God is not necessary to explain anything, but feel free to believe that if it makes you feel better."
And somewhere, Ken Ham will open an "Anti-Neuroscience Museum", bilking his gullible followers out of millions. THAT you can bank on.
Monday, May 07, 2007
On Being Pluto
I'm not sure why, but I was thinking about Pluto today. Last year it was demoted from a full-fledged planet to a "dwarf planet", which I imagine was a crushing blow to its mother.
What occurred to me was, Pluto doesn't particularly care what we call it. It's still Pluto, a hunk of frozen whatnot orbiting the Sun. Whether we call it a planet or a dwarf or a Flooboozle is irrelevant to its actual nature; it is what it is. Calling it names doesn't really change anything.
I think in our zeal to classify everything and our obsession with putting the universe into neat, understood little categories, we forget that:
The world is what it is.
Maybe it was seeing the Monarch butterfly chrysalis that prompted this thought. No matter what brief slice of time we happen to catch the Monarch in, whether it's a caterpillar or a pupae or a full-fledged butterfly, it is what it is right at that moment. Is the little creature inside that shell a crawler or a flier? Or is it somewhere in between? We're not good as a species at things that defy neat classification. Gray is seldom "in".
Or maybe it was thinking about some recent comments here about atheists. Whether you call a man immoral or moral, good or bad, kind or cruel, he is what he is. Nothing anyone says is going to alter the reality of his objective truth as a being. If he's good, he's good, and calling him bad won't change that.
Applying labels to everything makes us feel better, but I think we're just kidding ourselves. Sometimes words get in the way, making us see the idea of a thing rather than the thing itself.
And all the while I was writing this, Pluto kept spinning its way around the Sun. From unknown mathematical anomaly to faint smudge of light, from asteroid to moon, from planet to dwarf, while we rewrite our textbooks it keeps traveling on its journey, oblivious to the exhortations of the poets and philosophers.
May we all do the same, leaving behind in our wake the curses and labels of those who try to pin us down, content to simply be what we are.
Friday, May 04, 2007
The Evolution of Republicans
In the Republican debate last night, moderator Chris Matthews asked the candidates to raise their hand if they did not believe in evolution. Kansas senator Sam Brownback, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, and Tom Tancredo all raised their hands.
I find it depressing how far one of the only two viable political parties in our nation has fallen. Thirty percent of those who are potential Republican candidates for the office of the most powerful person in the world do not accept a scientific explanation as fundamental to our understanding of the universe as gravity or the germ theory of disease. They might as well have raised their hands to say they don't believe the Earth is round. How can you expect someone to make sound decisions about the direction of our nation when they can't even understand something so fundamental, so clearly true?
I remember when Republicans stood for sober reality, for dealing with the universe and the world as they are and not as we might wish them to be, for wrestling honestly and openly with the problems that beset us. Agree or disagree with their take on how to address the issues, they had the reputation for being realistic about the true nature of the world.
And yet here we are, with thirty percent of their candidates preferring to believe an overly literal translation of an ancient book over what science has clearly proven beyond any reasonable doubt to be true. You can be a Christian and still accept the physical reality of the world -- hundreds of millions of Catholics, including the Pope, understand this along with tens of thousands of theistic scientists -- but that is not what these deeply misguided men have done. They are instead turning their backs on the Enlightenment, refusing to accept the evidence of reason, of rationality, of the intellect, retreating behind a foolish consistency that is as blasphemous as it is wrong.
And they are, potentially, in line to be elected President of the United States of America.
What has happened to this once great party? Where is the spirit of Ronald Reagan, who had the vision to imagine a better world but let it be guided by hard-headed rationality? We've only got two parties to choose from in America, for better or for worse, and one of them is badly, badly broken. If you're a Republican and you're reading this, I beg you, for the health of our country's political future, get involved with your local party organization to change your course, to get back to the good parts of conservatism. Those ideals are being betrayed by these deeply unserious, foolish, misguided men, and in the end it is all of America who will pay as our already limited choices are whittled down to only one.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Have We Found The First Extrasolar Earth?!
Via The Bad Astronomer, there is news tonight out of the European Southern Observatory that the first possibly Earth-like extra-solar planet may have been found! Phil has more:
Why is this planet important? Well, one of the major goals of science right now is to find out if life has arisen and evolved elsewhere in the Universe. Up until 1995 we weren’t even sure if any other stars had planets! Now we know of hundreds, and as the technology gets better, we can find smaller and smaller ones. We’re right on the verge of being able to find ones just like Earth. And while of course we cannot know if this newly found planet has life or not, it’s our best bet yet!
All of the other planets detected so far (and as Phil says it's only been slightly more than a decade since we found the very first one!) have been massive giants, completely unsuited to life as we know it. This world around Gliese 581, however, is the right temperature to hold liquid water, which as far as we know is the one absolutely essential ingredient for organic life.
It is not yet known for sure what this planet is like, and it's still possible that after investigation it does not actually hold liquid water after all. Discovery at the very edges of our knowledge are always contingent, vulnerable to refutation and difficult to prove. But even the possibility is thrilling to anyone who's stared at the night sky and wondered:
"Are we alone? Is there other life out there, around some distant star?"
We probably won't know the answer to that for a long time, but at last it's looking like we might just have the tools to start to figure it out.
Damn, science is cool!
Challenging Preconceptions
Maybe it's the result of being the youngest of seven kids, but for some reason I like finding out I'm wrong. Luckily I'm given the opportunity on a fairly regular basis, although thankfully now that I'm an adult, this is no longer accompanied by "atomic wedgies".
I'm used to actively reexamining some things, taking a proactive approach to maintaining intellectual health. But it's a lot harder to challenge preconceived notions that are so ingrained you don't even know you have them. You can't be proactive if you don't even know there's something there to be acted on.
For some reason, though, this last week gave me three separate chances to reexamine such deep-rooted ideas, in three different fields of inquiry. I'm not sure what to make of them, but I feel like I unearthed little treasures of self-knowledge here, and I wonder where they'll lead me.The Quality of American Health Care
I've always taken it for granted that America has the best health care anywhere in the world, bar none, GO USA!! I tend to be patriotic and naturally assume that we're the best at pretty much everything. This article by Ezra Klein at the very leftist "American Prospect", however, made me rethink that by looking at the national health care systems offered in four other countries. Each system pays at most half of what America does for health coverage, and yet the service is at least as good (and in some cases better). I guess I always knew we paid more, but I just assumed that we were getting much, much more than they were. Now I'm not so sure.Anorexia and Calorie Restricted diets (CR)
Lab experiments in mice seem to show that if you reduce your calorie intake (to as little as 2/3 of what's generally accepted as healthy), you can extend your healthy lifespan by up to half. That means you could, potentially, live to be 150 in reasonable health. Sounds great, right? That's what I thought, and I did some research into the concept, which now has some 2,000 adherents around the country. But then I read this article on Slate, asking the very sensible question "But how is this different than anorexia, which everyone says is a disease?". It made me take a real step back to reconsider the entire notion, not just of CR but of how we classify behaviors and conditions. I also was forced to realize just how much "framing" -- how an issue is put to you -- influences how I react to it ("Anorexia BAD, but Calorie Restriction GOOD!").The Superiority of the Human Mind
Everyone knows that some animals are better at certain things than humans are -- leopards run faster, birds can fly, fish swim better, elephants are stronger, etc. But I alway assumed (without even realizing I was assuming) that humans were unquestionably at the top of the mental abilities ladder. I never thought an animal would prove to be better at any aspect of cognition than a human is -- but I was wrong. According to this article by John Noble Wilford, chimpanzees are clearly better at immediate memory tasks than people are:Tetsuro Matsuzawa, a Kyoto primatologist, described a young chimp watching as numbers 1 through 9 flashed on the computer screen at random positions. Then the numbers disappeared in no more than a second. White squares remained where the numbers had been. The chimp casually but swiftly pressed the squares, calling back the numbers in ascending order — 1, 2, 3, etc.
The test was repeated several times, with the numbers and squares in different places. The chimp, which had months of training accompanied by promised food rewards, almost never failed to remember where the numbers had been. The video included scenes of a human failing the test, seldom recalling more than one or two numbers, if any.
“Humans can’t do it,” Dr. Matsuzawa said. “Chimpanzees are superior to humans in this task.”
Dr. Matsuzawa suggested that early human species “lost the immediate memory and, in return, learned symbolization, the language skills.”
“I call this the trade-off theory,” he continued. “If you want a capability like better immediate memory, you have to lose some other capability.”
So there you have it, three items in the last week that have challenged my preconceived notions and shown me once again how dangerous it is to think we have all the answers, even when we're just sure we do.
Monday, April 09, 2007
How Wrong is Wrong, And How Right Is Right?
Having been wrong a time or two, I can appreciate how important it is to know just how wrong you are. Are you "Sleeping on the couch" wrong, or just "You're doing the dishes tonight" wrong? For a man, evaluating the differing degrees of wrongness is a critical skill.
Which means it should come as no surprise that the most prolific author in American history, Isaac Asimov, wrote something on the subject of "The Relativity of Wrong". In this case, Asimov was concerned not so much with the vagaries of gender relations, but on the utility of science.
I find it ironic that what its adherents see as science's greatest virtue -- the ability to change in the face of contrary evidence -- is seen by its detractors as its greatest weakness. And yet I often read or hear criticisms of various scientific theories (or even the practice of science in general) as being built on a house of sand. I've even felt it myself; one day we're told eggs are the greatest threat to your health since arsenic, the next that eggs are the perfect food. It's frustrating living in a world of uncertainty, and I think that's always been one of the strongest selling points of religion. For religion is always the same, its adherents are eager to tell you. God is eternal and so is their faith.
Of course that ignores thousands of years of schism, sectarianism, and apostasy, but you get the general idea.
In his essay, though, Asimov points out that there are relative levels of wrongness, not an absolute scale where there is only completely right on the one hand, and anything that falls short of it in the other. Even when you're wrong, he argues, you can be less wrong than someone else:The young specialist in English Lit, having quoted me, went on to lecture me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern "knowledge" is that it is wrong. The young man then quoted with approval what Socrates had said on learning that the Delphic oracle had proclaimed him the wisest man in Greece. "If I am the wisest man," said Socrates, "it is because I alone know that I know nothing." the implication was that I was very foolish because I was under the impression I knew a great deal.
My answer to him was, "John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
...
In short, my English Lit friend, living in a mental world of absolute rights and wrongs, may be imagining that because all theories are wrong, the earth may be thought spherical now, but cubical next century, and a hollow icosahedron the next, and a doughnut shape the one after.
What actually happens is that once scientists get hold of a good concept they gradually refine and extend it with greater and greater subtlety as their instruments of measurement improve. Theories are not so much wrong as incomplete.
I know that many theists take the same approach towards religion, and in fact that very argument has been made right here on this blog by GeoPoet. I do have sympathy for that approach, as I do for any endeavor that involves humility and an honest search for the truth, an admission that everything we know is but a beginning to a story that is still incomplete.
That is the profound hope that makes us get up in the morning, that as a species, we are moving in the right direction along the Axis of Wrongness, that we are becoming both closer to right, and closer to wisdom, at the same time. As always, the threat is from fear and malice, from the perverse desire to be right regardless of the evidence, to defend our beliefs (whatever they may be) not because they are less wrong than the alternative, but simply because they are ours.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Global Warming Denialist George Gilder
I'm not a smart man, but I can tell the difference between a bull and a heifer at ten paces with the best of 'em.
Or put another way, I'm a cranky, skeptical old bastard and my friends like sending me nonsense and foolishness to get me all worked up at the idiocy a perverse humanity seems determined to foist on us.
As an example, I offer the following message from something called "The Gilder Technology Report" sent to me by a colleague, who wondered what I thought of it. Nothing like a rousing game of "Skeptic Bating" to get the blood going in the morning, and being an obliging fellow I dove on in.
First, the actual post from Gilder:Friday Feature / Politically Correct Science
Gilder Technology Report Subscriber (3/9/07): George, please weigh in on Gore and global warming.
George Gilder (3/10/07): The disabling flaw of the Al Gore movie is that nearly all the details ( Kilamanjaro, the Chad lake, the spread of diseases and on and on) dissolve as soon as you investigate them.
(It s been colder than usual on Kil; the lake is a few feet deep and disappears cyclically; the diseases are unrelated to GW.)
The key to his scientific argument is the famous Academy Award extrapolation of CO2 increases to the skies, as dramatized by his elevator lift scene.
But far from an exponential, CO2 does not even have anywhere near a linear impact on temperatures. If he compared the increase in CO2 not to existing CO2 but to the gyrations of other greenhouse gasses, particularly water vapor, which is 130 times more voluminous, he would have had to crawl along the bottom of the chart with a magnifying glass.
The idea that CO2, which is absorbed by plants and sustains them (to the extent of a 28% increase in foliage in recent years), is a pollutant of any kind will be regarded by future scientists as the looniest notion of our increasingly innumerate media culture. Nick Tredennick did a great short essay on this.
As Richard Feynman pointed out about adjectival "sciences," environmental science probably isn't. It's science for rich upper class dummies like Bobby Kennedy and Sharon Rockefeller who think they should be able to push around current wealth creators because their own wealth is "well seasoned" by time and refined by Ivy "liberal arts." They themselves are intellectual pigmies compared to their forbears in business whom they depend on for their trust fund support and disdain in politically correct fatuities.
A few red flags go up at once upon reading this. Any time someone says something like "nearly all the details ... dissolve as soon as you investigate them", you should be wary. Yes, it's certainly possible that hundreds or thousands of researchers from across the globe are all wrong -- it's happened before -- but if "nearly all the details" really did "dissolve as soon as you investigate them", don't you think that someone else would have noticed it first? Like, maybe, all of those rival teams of researchers out there who are all looking to make their mark, or a jealous colleague who wants to get published first?
You see this kind of claim all the time, whether it's people denying the Holocaust happened, or that Einstein's theory of relativity was wrong, or that the Earth is only 6,000 years old and evolution is a sham -- "All of these so-called experts are wrong in every way and even I, a layman, can easily show you how!" If it sounds like the guy could be on a late-night infomercial hawking spray-on hair, then the odds are good that he's a crackpot.
As I said, though, sometimes it does happen that the one lone voice in the wilderness is right, and The Establishment is wrong. That's why although this kind of over-the-top rhetoric should make you cautious, you still have to pay attention to the actual claims being made. Which is where George Gilder really falls flat.
For instance, he claims that global warming is wrong because it's advanced by liberal, old-money rich people:It's science for rich upper class dummies like Bobby Kennedy and Sharon Rockefeller who think they should be able to push around current wealth creators because their own wealth is "well seasoned" by time and refined by Ivy "liberal arts." They themselves are intellectual pigmies compared to their forbears in business whom they depend on for their trust fund support and disdain in politically correct fatuities.
Well what the heck does that have to do with anything? Either the data are right or the data are wrong. If increased carbon in the atmosphere causes temperatures to rise, it does so regardless of the motives of those who point it out. If the scientist has skewed the results out of some kind of political or personal agenda, then that will be evident to other scientists who try to recreate the data. Gilder's making an ad hominem attack here, saying that the data is wrong not because the data is wrong, but because he doesn't like the people who published it. And that's not just a formal logical fallacy, it's incredibly stupid. It's like saying "You are wrong that it is raining, and I know this because you're ugly."
Finally there was his statement that:The idea that CO2, which is absorbed by plants and sustains them (to the extent of a 28% increase in foliage in recent years), is a pollutant of any kind will be regarded by future scientists as the looniest notion of our increasingly innumerate media culture.
Besides the unnecessarily histrionic language, the basic idea he's advancing is foolish. There are all kinds of things that "sustain" us and are necessary for life, but which can become deadly in the wrong concentration. Here, let's try it with another important chemical:The idea that H2O, which is absorbed by humans and sustains them (to the extent of a 28% increase in global population in recent years), is a pollutant of any kind will be regarded by future scientists as the looniest notion of our increasingly innumerate media culture.
That will be a great comfort to the thousands of drowning victims across the globe, or to people who die of excessive water consumption (it's called hyponatremia). Too much of almost anything can be bad. We need nitrogen in the atmosphere to breathe, too, but too much nitrogen would eliminate all life on Earth. We need and ingest all sorts of trace minerals that sustain us, like iodine and iron, but eating too much of either of those will kill us too. It's just a silly argument. Amounts matter, relative quantities matter, time and location matter. Making a blanket statement like "CO2 helps plants grow so it can't ever do anything harmful!" is silly.
After I wrote all of this as an initial reply to my friend, I decided to do some Googling to find out who this George Gilder guy was. Unsurprisingly, he's not just a crank, but his idiotic takes on technology caused thousands of subscribers to his newsletter to lose their entire fortunes. Even worse (at least in my book), he's one of the co-founders of the terminally misguided and pathologically dishonest Discovery Institute, an organization whose stated goal is to do away with methodological naturalism (i.e. science as we know it).
Now look, I don't know enough about climatology to know one way or another if global warming is real, and if so whether or not it's caused by human activity. But when I look at the people who say that this is correct on both counts, they're scientists and agencies from many different nations, many different cultures, and many different disciplines. They cross the ideological spectrum, and they have hard data and computer models to back up their claims.
On the other side are people like Gilder and Exxon/Mobile, who make idiotic arguments like "But CO2 is a friend to plants!!!1!". "By their friends shall ye know them" isn't the best way to make either science or policy decisions, but I do think it's enough (especially combined with an absolutely dreadful polemical style and logically ridiculous arguments) to show that Mr. Gilder, at least on this issue, is completely untrustworthy.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Punching Darwin in the Face
At a "getting to know you" type of luncheon some time ago, we had a round-robin where everyone had to answer the question "If you could meet anyone, living or dead, from any time in human history, and punch them in the face, who would you choose?" Paris Hilton hadn't yet hit the international celebrity scene in a big way at that point or I assume everyone would've immediately thrown her out there. Instead, most people had fairly predictable responses, along the lines of "Hitler" or "Stalin", some of the worst specimens of evil scum the species has ever produced.
Then we got to a woman who was a recent Biology graduate of a college in Arkansas, who happened to be a Young Earth Creationist (someone who believes the universe is only 6,000 years old and that the Bible is literally true and inerrant). Her answer shocked me.
"If I could punch anyone in the face," she said with an angry scowl, "it would be Charles Darwin."
We were all fairly stunned, and needless to say the topic was quickly changed to something less controversial. But I couldn't let it go. How could someone who'd studied college-level biology a) not understand the fact of evolution and b) have such a strange view of science that punching Darwin in the face would be a good thing? She clearly thought Darwin was a worse monster than Hitler, or Attila the Hun, or Pol Pot, or even Satan.
The more I thought about it, the stranger the answer was. If your beef is with anyone who might suggest that the universe is less than 6,000 years old, why single out Charles Darwin? Why not choose Copernicus, who first opened the door to the idea that the Bible was not inerrant by proving that the Earth is not, in fact, the center of the universe? Why not the first geologists who proposed the shocking concept of geologic age, showing that the universe was not thousands but rather millions (and later billions) of years old? Without that backdrop of deep time, the idea of evolution probably would never have arisen. Darwin was small potatoes compared to those gentlemen, at least as far as threat to a young earth goes.
Yet there's something about evolution that rankles these people at a deep, fundamental, visceral level. Maybe it's the "I ain't related to no monkey!" reflex. Maybe it's just that we are the fundamental subject of biology, and that's personal in a way that geology (rocks) or astronomy (space) are not.
I can understand -- not accept, but understand -- a revulsion about the ideas of Darwin, but why do they hate him, the man, so very much? They don't go around calling astronomers "Copernicans", and yet all who accept that evolution is a fact are "Darwinists". It's not enough to attack the idea, they have to demean and destroy the man.
It's personal.
They go so far as to try and make up all sorts of stories about Darwin to paint him as some kind of racist, hateful bigot, who did unspeakably horrible things. None of it's true, but that hardly matters to them. Even intelligent, educated people like William Dembski deliberately lie and distort history to tar Darwin with infamy. It's like they hate the idea that Darwin proposed so much that their only recourse is to hate the man who first proposed it. They see Darwin as the high priest of a Satanic cult whose only goal is to undermine Christianity, and thus no slur or lie is hateful enough to compare with the evil of his actual existence.
And yet even if they succeeded in tearing him down as a person, what good does that do? Would finding out that Darwin was, say, a child rapist invalidate the theory of evolution? Can they honestly believe that? Do they not understand that observations and facts exist separately from the people who propose them? Calling Einstein a philanderer is not going to invalidate the Theory of Relativity any more than accusing Darwin of being a racist is going to nullify the Theory of Evolution. The very idea is nonsensical.
At the heart of all of the high-minded protests Young Earth Creationists and ID proponents make about naturalism and "teaching the controversy" is the same basic rage and irrationality that young woman exhibited at lunch. This isn't a dry, academic, objective exploration of the world and those who inhabit it. No, this is a primal fight to the death for these people.
So the next time you're in a discussion with them, or you're doing your best to figure out how rational people can possibly believe in such arrant nonsense, keep in mind that their idea of grappling with a challenging concept is to punch the one who proposed it in the face.
Friday, March 09, 2007
Creationists Aren't Stupid
I once made a comment in a thread talking about a friend of mine who is a Young Earth Creationist (people who read Genesis literally and thus believe the universe is only 8,000 years old), saying that he was one of the smartest people I've ever known. Another reader responded with "Then you need to find some smarter friends".
A lot of people in the creationism debate have this same attitude, that clearly anyone who rejects the idea of an old universe is not just mistaken, but clearly mentally deficient. Some of that is just old-fashioned name-calling, denigrating your opponent like any two kids in a schoolyard brawl. But whatever the cause, the attitude that "If you disagree with me you're an idiot" is foolish and inaccurate, and we ought to stop doing it.
Because I stand by my statement that my friend the Young Earth Creationist is one of the smartest people I know. And here's why I say that.
This guy got an almost perfect score on his SAT when he went to college. He graduated with top marks from one of the best liberal arts and sciences schools in the country. He's a polymath and has unbelievable mental recall, storing everything from childhood phone numbers to the exact values of every rare US coin in history. He's got an intuitive feel for numbers that's pretty amazing. He's started multi-million-dollar businesses, asks penetrating questions, and researches topics of interest exhaustively. He has an incredible knowledge of US history as well as the Byzantine Empire. He was a key player on his university's debate team and can argue just about any side of an issue and by the end of the day have you thinking he's right, only to swap to the other side and convince you he's right on THAT one as well.
In short, he has every attribute of brilliance, except for his belief that the Earth is only eight thousand years old. Does that one failure negate everything else and make him an idiot?
Lots of the leaders of the creationist movement have advanced degrees, up to and including Ph.D.s. It takes a lot of work and at least minimal intelligence to achieve that academic level. No, it doesn't confer infallible genius, but it's also difficult to say that someone who's done it is simply a moron. They've got to have something on the ball that your typical resident of the local mental institution doesn't.
No, these people aren't stupid. They're wrong on the facts, they're willfully blind to dissenting information in many cases, they are as capable of lying and distortion and mistaken ideas as anyone, but they're not necessarily idiots just for dissenting with something you believe to be an objective, fundamental truth.
Calling them stupid is easy, but ultimately it's a cop-out. The thought that someone who's as smart as you could come to a conclusion that's so clearly wrong is frightening. It makes you doubt your own understanding, making you wonder if maybe being smart isn't as reliable a guide as you'd hoped. "If smart people can believe something so foolish," the internal thinking goes, "then what if I -- also a smart person -- believe foolish things as well? But surely that can't be, therefore ... he's an idiot!"
I think Michael Shermer does a great job in "Why People Believe Weird Things" exploring different ways intelligence can be used to protect wrong ideas once they've become internalized. In some respects the greatest strengths of a smart person become subverted, "turned to the Dark Side" as it were, marshaled to protect an idea that should have been shot down by them at the very beginning. But the very fact of their intelligence is what makes disabusing them of the wrong idea so difficult.
What he doesn't do -- and this is something I think those on "our side" of the discussion would do well to emulate -- is to dismiss them as "stupid". That kind of reflexive stereotyping precludes rational discussion rather than facilitates it. It's a lazy shortcut, a childish name-calling, and it's also factually untrue. For people who pride ourselves on honest, objective rationality, we can do better.
These people aren't stupid, they're just wrong.
Friday, February 23, 2007
The Evolving River
I just saw this fantastic picture of the Amazon river posted on this amazing website of aerial photos:
(Warning -- the site is enormous, if you're on dial-up, don't bother. I reduced the size on this particular image to make it less painful, but visit the link for the full resolution version.)
One of the things I like about the photo is how well it illustrates the growing, changing, constantly evolving nature of a healthy, natural river system.
Industrialized nations have largely tamed our rivers, constraining their wandering ways by building up levees and dikes, but wild ones are not naturally static -- they're dynamos of change, even if on our human time scale we tend not to notice. Take a closer look at that photo, with some arrows showing key features:
The water flowing downstream has tremendous force behind it. Powered by gravity and literally tons of mass (both from just the water itself and the various items carried in it), the current carves out the soil of the bank directly ahead of it. Blunted by running headlong into the solid mass, the water turns to one side and continues its journey, curving ever outward.
On the opposite side of the bank, though, the water eddies at a slower pace, and much of the soil, sand, and other particulates carried along in the flow get deposited. The river is carving out a path for itself, like a snake slithering across the dunes, constantly charging forward in one direction and leaving behind a new fresh bank in the other.
Eventually the giant, looping bows in the river get more and more exaggerated, to the point where two of them meet and ultimately break through the bank, forming a new, straighter channel for the river. In the image above you can see the pinch about to happen between the first two sets of red arrows.
Left behind are oxbow lakes, no longer supplied directly by the main waters themselves, orphaned remnants of an earlier time. Some of these oxbow lakes are fed by other sources and remain, but others eventually dry out and all that's left are dry, looping scars -- "meander scars" -- marking out the history of the system in the earth that's left behind. I've marked a few examples in the photo in green.
So the next time you fly or drive over a river, remember that this tame and consistent waterway was once a raging torrent, carving out new course for itself, leaving behind reminders of its former, wilder days until finally it was domesticated by humanity.
Friday, February 16, 2007
The Evolution of the Texas Legislature
If you haven't heard about Warren Chisum (R), House Appropriations Committee Chairman in the Texas state House, sending around an official letter to the entire legislature stating that evolution is wrong and that a non-rotating earth is the literal center of the universe, click here for the whole scoop.
What makes this story particularly interesting to me is that Warren Chisum (R) is the grandfather of a woman I work with!
Combine that fact with the Young Earth Creationist at work, and I think I am safe in quoting the inimitable Jack Nicholson from "As Good As It Gets" to describe my little slice of Texas:
Sell crazy someplace else, we're all stocked up here.
Finally, I want to leave you with some choice words of wisdom from "Exposing the False Science Idol of Evolutionism, and Proving the Truthfulness of the Bible from Creation to Heaven... - since 1973 -", references in the original proposed bill:
The following subjects confirm that the Copernican Model of a rotating, orbiting Earth is a factless, observation-denying deception that is the keystone which is holding up all of modern man’s false "science" and "knowledge".
I can't speak for anyone else, but the idea that legislators in two different states now want to pass legislation making such lunacy the law of the land certainly makes my head spin, even if the Earth does not.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
More Wasabi For Gojira!
My friend John Hartwell alerted me to a fascinating discovery in Japan of a prehistoric shark being found alive. The individual shark wasn't from prehistoric times, mind you, just the species -- sharks live a long time, but hundreds of millions of years is a bit of a stretch even for them. Here's the photo:
And what follows is our e-mail exchange about the article:
Me: Wow, that's really cool! Thanks for sending it along. Of course, being Japanese they immediately cut it up and made sushi out of it, which is really too bad ...
John: yeah, but it was prehistoric sushi. so it was like they were ingesting the power of Godzilla!
Gojira! Gojira! More wasabe for Gojira!
Friday, January 05, 2007
Canyon Finale
OK, I think we're about ready to wrap up this Grand Canyon kerfluffle once and for all. The short version is, the PEER press release is completely misleading about the "gag order", as I covered before. Science magazine apparently will have a write up of all this in a couple of weeks, and the National Parks Traveler site has a great summary as well.
To sum up:
- The National Park Service provides in the gift shop at the Grand Canyon a book that espouses the Creationist view of the Canyon's formation, namely that the Earth is only 6,000 years old or so.
- After complaints from its own as well as outside scientists, the book was moved from the general science section to the "Inspirational" section, along with some Native American stories about how they believe the Canyon was formed.
- PEER issued a press release that pretty much baldly states that the NPS' official position when asked about the age of Grand Canyon was for Park Rangers to say "no comment". It has now been determined that this accusation is completely untrue.
- My conclusion is that PEER wrote a deliberately misleading, inflammatory press release to generate political heat which pretty much took me in, at least for a couple of days.
I'll have some closing thoughts at the end, but the final piece to the puzzle I want to pass along is the press release from the National Park Service itself, which they've granted permission to be distributed:
Recently there have been several media and internet reports concerning the National Park Service’s interpretation of the formation of the Grand Canyon.
The National Park Service uses the latest National Academy of Sciences explanation for the geologic formation of the Grand Canyon. Our guidance to the field is contained in NPS Director’s Order # 6 and requires that the interpretive and educational treatment used to explain the natural processes and history of the Earth must be based on the best scientific evidence available, as found in scholarly sources that have stood the test of scientific peer review and criticism.
Therefore, our interpretive talks, way-side exhibits, visitor center films, etc use the following explanation for the age of the geologic features at Grand Canyon. If asked the age of the Grand Canyon, our rangers use the following answer.
The principal consensus among geologists is that the Colorado River basin has developed in the past 40 million years and that the Grand Canyon itself is probably less than five to six million years old. The result of all this erosion is one of the most complete geologic columns on the planet.
The major geologic exposures in Grand Canyon range in age from the 1.7 billion year old Vishnu Schist at the bottom of the Inner Gorge to the 270 million year old Kaibab Limestone on the Rim.
So, why are there news reports that differ from this explanation? Since 2003 the park bookstore has been selling a book that gives a creationism view of the formation of the Grand Canyon, claiming that the canyon is less than six thousand years old. This book is sold in the inspirational section of the bookstore. In this section there are
photographic texts, poetry books, and Native American books (that also give an alternate view of the canyon’s origin).
The park’s bookstore contains scores of text that give the NPS geologic view of the formation of the canyon.
We do not use the “creationism” text in our teaching nor do we endorse its content. However, it is not our place to censure alternate beliefs. Much like your local public library, you will find many alternate beliefs, but not all of these beliefs are used in the school classroom.
It is not our place to tell people what to believe. We recognize that alternate views exist, but we teach the scientific method for the formation of the Grand Canyon.
I hope this explanation helps.
David Barna
Chief of Public Affairs
National Park Service
Washington, DC
Registered Professional Geologist (AIPG #6528)
Licensed Geologist (North Carolina # 129)
My personal preference is that the Park Service sell no book on site claiming an origin for the Canyon that we know scientifically to be untrue. That's bad for science education in general. Furthermore, if they're going to allow in some religious texts, they're going to have to allow in all religious texts that petition for inclusion, and that's going to get unwieldy real, real fast. What if the Pastafarians want to include a book about how the Grand Canyon was formed by the Flying Spaghetti Monster's noodly appendage?
Having said that, if the books are put in a section that's clearly separate from the scientific stuff, and if the NPS employees are instructed to give out the scientifically accurate information during tours and such, I'm not nearly as pissed off as I was when I read the first PEER press release. Well, wait, that's not true -- I am just as pissed off as I was, only now I'm pissed at PEER. Their poorly written, misleading, deliberately inflammatory piece of propaganda put me in a bad spot and took focus away from the real issues. They hurt the efforts of people who are trying to uphold good science education, and that really irritates me.
This will be the last post from me on this subject, since I don't think there's anything left to say at this point. I've learned a lot from this episode, particularly about the need to keep your skeptical senses carefully honed at all times, especially when it comes to information that seems to support your pre-existing prejudices.
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Grand Canyon Ungagged!
As promised, here's the update from PEER on the Grand Canyon Creationist Gag Order Controversy I previously posted about, here and here.
The short answer is, PEER does not claim that a "gag order" has been issued to Park Service employees. Here's the full email response I received from PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, which he kindly granted me permission to reprint in its entirety:Jeff--
This option is the closest--
Are you simply saying that the NPS hasn't offered an official guideline to its employees as to how they are to answer that question, and not that the official position is to answer "no comment"?
1. Reports from Grand Canyon NP interpretive staff, some of whom have been seeking clarification from their chain-of-command relative to questions about the validity of "young earth claims." The more than three-year hold-up in blocking official guidance on this question is part of this concern.
2. Statements by NPS HQ officials that the creationist view should be given equal time in park materials.
3. The reply from the Grand Canyon superintendent's office to media inquiries on the official park view on the age of the Canyon.
We did not mean to imply that geological information has been deleted from park materials.
Jeff Ruch
Executive Director
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)
2000 P Street, NW; Suite 240
Washington, D.C. 20036
(v) (202) 265-7337
Fax (202) 265-4192
Website: www.peer.org
So there you have it. I want to reiterate that the fundamental issue of a creationist book being sold in a government run national park store is still one that I find completely unacceptable, and the Park Service has been aware of the issue for three years now. They said they would review the policy, and have not, despite written objections from their own scientific advisers, the administrator of the Grand Canyon itself, and outside agencies.
However, it is not true that the Park Service has instructed any employee to say "no comment" when asked about the age of the Grand Canyon, which is very good news indeed.
Thanks to my brother Johnny and my sister Denise for pointing out that, in the words of the inimitable Inigo Montoya, "I do not think this means what you think it means."
I'll forward this on to Phil from "The Bad Astronomer" (a site I like very much), which was my original source for the report. I apologize to my fives of readers for failing to parse the original press release critically enough; it should have instantly set off my "Skeptic's Antennae". I let previous incidents of interference with sound science from Executive Branch appointees influence my assessment of this particular case, and that's usually a bad idea. Mea culpa.
Monday, January 01, 2007
More on the Grand Canyon
At the prompting of my reporter sister and geologist brother, my skeptical antennae finally started quivering over the PEER-reported Grand Canyon story from two posts ago. My sister has an e-mail in to the Grand Canyon park itself asking if they've been told to say "no comment" when asked about the Canyon's age, and I just sent a letter to the PEER contact (reproduced below).
The more I think about it and the more times I re-read the press release, I don't think it says what it looks like it says in regards to the supposed "gag order". The rest of it's true from what I have been able to find out -- the book is for sale, has been for a long time, the park administrator rejected it initially and was overruled by someone up the food chain, and the PR director has not in fact requested any sort of review in the three years since.
However, the most egregious and offensive aspect of the release, the idea that park rangers were being forbidden to talk about the age of the Canyon, doesn't seem to be actually stated in the press release itself. It's easy to come away with that impression, but a more careful reading doesn't really support it. We'll see what PEER has to say about it, assuming they reply at all. Here's the e-mail I just sent.Ms. Goldberg,
I read your press release of December 28, "HOW OLD IS THE GRAND CANYON? PARK SERVICE WON'T SAY" and commented on it at my blog ( http://www.nerdcountry.blogspot.com). The press release has received wide coverage on other blogs as well, many containing the implication that Park Service employees have been told to answer "no comment" when asked about the age of the Canyon:
From Bad Astronomy: Also, guides at the park are not allowed to answer questions about how old the canyon is, despite scientists' incredibly detailed and intricate knowledge of the formation mechanism, scheme, and history of the canyon.
From DailyKos: Is it true what Mrs. Hoover taught me in 8th grade Earth science about the formation of canyons? National Park Service: No Comment.
However, after re-reading the press release more carefully, I don't see that claim laid out explicitly anywhere. You do say:
"It is disconcerting that the official position of a national park as to the geologic age of the Grand Canyon is 'no comment.'" In a letter released today, PEER urged the new Director of the National Park Service (NPS), Mary Bomar, to end the stalling tactics, remove the book from sale at the park and allow park interpretive rangers to honestly answer questions from the public about the geologic age of the Grand Canyon.
I think this is what is being read as Park Rangers being told not to give an age, but that's not what you're actually saying there, is it? My questions to you, therefore, are:
1. Is it in fact your contention that Park Service employees have been told not to give an estimate of the age of the Grand Canyon?
2. If that is your contention, what is your source for it?
3. Are you simply saying that the NPS hasn't offered an official guideline to its employees as to how they are to answer that question, and not that the official position is to answer "no comment"?
Thank you for your help clearing up this point of confusion, this is the only point I haven't been able to verify through other means.
Sincerely,
Jeff Hebert
Bertram, TX
I pride myself on being a skeptic, and on verifying what I spout off before spouting it off, and I suspect on this one I jumped a little too quickly on that aspect of things. If so, I'll definitely fess up.
