Sandwalk: Remember Chris Mooney?

Thursday, February 09, 2012

Remember Chris Mooney?

Chris Mooney has achieved some remarkable goals in the past ten years or so. He's an atheist accommodationist who doesn't understand atheism or accommodation. He's a science journalist who doesn't understand science or the important elements of science journalism (it's all about ~~spin~~ framing). He's a supporter of evolution but he's only interested in American politics—he doesn't actually understand evolution.

Nisbet & Mooney Reveal Their True Colors
Matthew Nisbet and Chris Mooney Video on Framing Science
Changing Minds Through Science Communication
For Once, Chris Mooney Talks Sense
The Future of Science Journalism
Science Journalism in Decline
Some scientists are astrologers, therefore science and astrology are compatible
Chris Mooney Changed His Mind
The Doctrine of Joint Belief
Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum in Newsweek
Boring ....
The Difference between Truth and Framing
Chris Mooney vs Atheists: Part XXXIV
Chris Mooney Asks a Hard Question
The Great Accommodationist Dud

Chris is about to publish a new book called The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science--and Reality. Like most professional writers he knows that he has to hype the book in order to get people to buy it so he's started the campaign with an article on HuffPost under their new "Science" category [Want to Understand Republicans? First Understand Evolution].

The main theme is that Republicans are genetically different from Democrats and that difference is due to evolution. No, I'm not kidding ....

Jerry Coyne says "huh?" [Chris Mooney, evolution, and politics]. Get on over to Coyne's ~~blog~~ website and join the fun.¹ Can Mooney, the science journalist, screw up evolution? ... let's count the ways.

1. What would we do for fun if we didn't have Chris Mooney? We'd have to pick of the creationists all the time and thatgets boring.

5 comments :

Anonymous said...: This guy seems to be obsessed with the idea that there is some kind of hard, immutable division between liberals and conservatives. The fact that he is making a case that these differences are genetic is unsettling. Naturally, Mr. Mooney places desirable traits in the "liberal" category and unflattering traits to "conservatives".

After all, he is genetically superior, and those he disagrees with can't help it- they are his genetic inferiors.

I wonder what political moderates or those who are not so easily pigeon-holed are to him? Strange, mutant hybrids?; Thursday, February 09, 2012 2:56:00 PM
SLC said...: The case of Chris Mooney is rather sad. His first two books were quite informative, especially his second book on hurricanes. It is my hypothesis that after he wrote those books, he came under the influence of Matt Nesbit and was brainwashed. Even a sojourn in Los Angeles, 3000 miles away failed to cure him of this problem. He would be better advised to sticking to climate change where he seems better informed then he is on evolution.; Saturday, February 11, 2012 8:13:00 PM
Anonymous said...: This little twerp is about to land in my hometown a week from now. I come from a family of Republicans and hate to disappoint the little Yale English major, BUT my late father's PhD in chemistry was from MIT (he was the DuPont Fellow his last year), my late older brother's PhD in chemistry was from Cornell, my other brother's PhD in physics from University of Rochester. My MA and PhD in botany are from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. I am president of the local Tea Party. Can't wait to hear this wizard explain how/why I and my family are mentally deficient. Oh, and my late mother had her BA in chemistry, but I learned last week from Ms. Rosen that she "never worked a day in her life". I give talks to Tea Party groups on "The Myth of Man-made Global Warming" and believe me it is not a difficult task to debunk that "theory".; Wednesday, April 18, 2012 10:59:00 AM
Larry Moran said...: I'm not a big fan of Chris Mooney but I'm glad that he's coming to town to show you why your ridiculous beliefs are anti-science and irrational.

It's embarrassing that you and your family were once exposed to good science. What happened to make you forget everything you were taught?; Wednesday, April 18, 2012 11:57:00 AM
Anonymous said...: "Oh, and my late mother had her BA in chemistry, but I learned last week from Ms. Rosen that she "never worked a day in her life"."

So anonymous Tea Partier, which one of Mitt Romney's children are you?; Wednesday, April 18, 2012 3:40:00 PM

Quotations

The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me to be so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.Charles Darwin (c1880)

Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as "plan of creation," "unity of design," etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory.

Charles Darwin (1859)

Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation...

Peter Atkins

Quotations

The world is not inhabited exclusively by fools, and when a subject arouses intense interest, as this one has, something other than semantics is usually at stake. Stephen Jay Gould (1982)
I have championed contingency, and will continue to do so, because its large realm and legitimate claims have been so poorly attended by evolutionary scientists who cannot discern the beat of this different drummer while their brains and ears remain tuned to only the sounds of general theory. Stephen Jay Gould (2002) p.1339
The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1977)
Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers "just-so stories." When evolutionists try to explain form and behavior, they also tell just-so stories—and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance. Stephen Jay Gould (1980)
Since 'change of gene frequencies in populations' is the 'official' definition of evolution, randomness has transgressed Darwin's border and asserted itself as an agent of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1983) p.335
The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized by stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as "miracle"—operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat. Stephen Jay Gould (1999) p.84

Quotations

My own view is that conclusions about the evolution of human behavior should be based on research at least as rigorous as that used in studying nonhuman animals. And if you read the animal behavior journals, you'll see that this requirement sets the bar pretty high, so that many assertions about evolutionary psychology sink without a trace.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution Is True

I once made the remark that two things disappeared in 1990: one was communism, the other was biochemistry and that only one of them should be allowed to come back.

Sydney Brenner
TIBS Dec. 2000

It is naïve to think that if a species' environment changes the species must adapt or else become extinct.... Just as a changed environment need not set in motion selection for new adaptations, new adaptations may evolve in an unchanging environment if new mutations arise that are superior to any pre-existing variations

Douglas Futuyma

One of the most frightening things in the Western world, and in this country in particular, is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist.

Francis Crick

There will be no difficulty in computers being adapted to biology. There will be luddites. But they will be buried.

Sydney Brenner

An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: 'I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.' I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist

Richard Dawkins

Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understand it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology.

Jacques Monod

The false view of evolution as a process of global optimizing has been applied literally by engineers who, taken in by a mistaken metaphor, have attempted to find globally optimal solutions to design problems by writing programs that model evolution by natural selection.

Richard Lewontin

More Recent Comments

Thursday, February 09, 2012

Remember Chris Mooney?

5 comments :