Public Scientific Debates

 
Sean Carrol has posted an article about pubic debates over the validity of string theory [String Theory is Losing the Public Debate]. You should read the article in order to get some idea of the "controversy." Sean thinks that string theory is in much better shape than most people realize, it's just that the supporters of string theory aren't getting their message out.

The article has attracted a number of comments including some from John Horgan and Peter Woit, both of whom are skeptical of string theory. The issue has prompted some discussion about whether public debates of scientific controversies are useful. Sean says yes,

In their rush to find evidence for the conclusion they want to reach, everyone seems to be ignoring the fact that having public debates is actually a good thing, whatever the state of health of a particular field might be. The existence of a public debate isn’t evidence that a field is in trouble; it’s evidence that there is an unresolved scientific question about which many people are interested, which is wonderful. Science writers, of all people, should understand this. It’s not our job as researchers to hide away from the rest of the world until we’re absolutely sure that we’ve figured it all out, and only then share what we’ve learned; science is a process, and it needn’t be an especially esoteric one. There’s nothing illegitimate or unsavory about allowing the hoi-polloi the occasional glimpse at how the sausage is made.

I agree, but I'd like to make an additional point. In the biological sciences there are a number of controversial issues that are not openly debated. I'm thinking of things like evo-devo, punctuated equilibria, adaptionism, RNAi, Neutral Theory, and junk DNA. What happens is that one side gets far more attention that the other so that the very existence of a controversy is buried deep in the scientific literature. Thus, it is possible to get a major grant on genomes based on the idea that Neutral Theory is wrong and there's no such thing as junk DNA. The applicant doesn't even have to justify these assumptions because the controversy isn't visible. This is wrong.

We should have more public debates on some of the topics that really are controversial in biology. (By "public" I'm usually thinking of open debates at scientific meetings.) This is becoming increasingly necessary because there are too many scientists who aren't paying attention and they don't realize that there's more than one side to a story (e.g., Animal Chauvinism, Evolution of Mammals, The Three Domain Hypothesis).

What about the downside? There is a downside and we're much more aware of it than the physics community is. We know that the public loves the debate between evolutionary biologists and Creationists because that's taken as evidence of a controversy. Evolution must not be "proven," otherwise scientists wouldn't be debating with creationists. This is a problem.

One the one hand, I think there should be much more open debate over real controversies in biology. On the other hand, I don't think we should legitimize the Creationist nonsense by debating it. I was recently invited to speak at a meeting with Michael Behe, Marcus Ross, and Paul Nelson. The topic was Intelligent Design Creationism. After some agonizing, I declined because it was apparent that these were not scientific debates in any meaningful sense of the word. How could they be when both Ross and Nelson are Young Earth Creationists? There's no scientific controversy over whether the Earth is only 10,000 years old.

So, the way I resolve this problem is to encourage public scientific debate over real science controversies but discourage public scientific debate over bogus controversies. Let's leave the non-scientific debates to the lawyers.


Via: VideoSift