10 scientific objects that changed the world

 
New Scientist, which used to be a decent science magazine, has a list of 10 scientific objects that changed the world. You are invited to vote for your favourite on the Science Museum site.

To mark its centenary, the Science Museum in London had its curators select the ten objects in its collection that made the biggest mark on history. Explore them in this gallery, and cast your vote in the public poll to decide the most significant of all.

In fairness, the Science Museum picked ten objects that had a big impact on history. It appears to be New Scientist that labeled these "scientific objects."

Here's a preview.

1. Apollo 10 capsule: engineering, not science
2. Thompson’s Atmospheric Engine: engineering, not science
3. The electric telegraph: engineering, not science
4. Model T Ford: definitely not science
5. Pilot ACE Computer: engineering, but used in science
6. V2 rocket engine: military, not science
7. Penicillin: science as applied to medicine
8. DNA double helix: the only pure science choice
9. X-ray machine: a scientific instrument
10. Stephenson's Rocket: definitely not science

That's quite a list. I really don't like that fact that science and technology are hopelessly confused in the minds of the general public. And I loathe the idea that a so-called "Science Museum" and a so-called "science" magazine can't tell the difference.

The Science Museum in London is a wonderful place but the displays do nothing to teach the difference between real science and its applications.

Here's are some objects that are missing: The Beagle or Darwin's notebooks, Galileo's telescope, the ultracentrifuge, Lucy, the microscope, the electron microscope, William Smith's map, model of an atom, COBE, an early DNA sequencing apparatus, Newton's Principia Mathematica, Lyell's Principles of Geology, a camera, a bottle of oxygen, Pasteur's bell jar, Einstein's 1905 paper "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" ....

I'm sure there are many more I haven't thought of.

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Vaccine refuseniks are free-riders

 
There are some really interesting ethical issues associated with vaccinations. The advantages of vaccination benefit the entire community (the "herd") but not necessarily the individual. If everyone is vaccinated then one person can opt out without a great deal of risk. They get the benefit but don't pay the cost. They get a free ride.

Janet Stemwedel is interested in these ethical problems. Read what she has to say about those who refuse to vaccinate their children at Vaccine refuseniks are free-riders.

I wonder if there's a cultural difference when it comes to these kinds of problems? Are there some cultures who value the society more than the individual and others who value the individual more? If so, do they differ in the number of people who refuse to be vaccinated?

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What Is Natural Selection?

 
If you ever thought that the concept of natural selection was easy then you must read Understanding Natural Selection: Essential Concepts and Common Misconceptions by T. Ryan Gregory. The article appears in the latest issue of Evolution: Education and Outreach and it contains many references to studies of how students perceive evolution.

It's a very good article. Ryan has thought of many misconceptions that I would have missed and he has documented the existence of those misconceptions in the classroom—among students and teachers alike!. He also does a really good job of explaining natural selection, with one important omission.

One thing that the article didn't mention is that natural selection is a stochastic process. A given allele may be demonstrably beneficial to survival but that doesn't mean it will sweep to fixation.

One of the misconceptions that we most frequently encounter in the blogosphere is the idea that whenever a beneficial effect is demonstrated, or conceived, it will automatically take over. The reality is that the probability of fixation is related to the population size and the coefficient of selection. Imagine that a new mutation gives rise to an allele conferring an advantage of 1% on the individual carrying it. The probability of fixation in the population is approximately 2%—in other words, the allele is lost 98% of the time.

Most people think that beneficial alleles will always become fixed in a population. That's one of the most important misconceptions about natural selection and it's a shame that it was left out of the article.

This misconception is behind much of adaptationist thinking. To them it seems to be sufficient to postulate a benefit, no matter how small, and it automatically follows that the entire population/species will acquire it. The reality is that such adaptionist thinking requires two separate components: (1) the existence of a possible beneficial allele and, (2) the demonstration that the postulated benefit is of sufficient potency to lead to fixation with a high probability.¹

There's one other misconception that's missing. Many people think that natural selection only occurs when the environment changes. This is formally equivalent to a belief that, in a stable environment, all species become perfectly adapted so that no further adaptation can take place. There's no evidence to support this concept. It requires that most species are sitting at the top of an adaptive peak.

In order to become perfectly adapted, all possible beneficial mutations would have had to arise and be fixed in the population. I believe that this hasn't happened in most cases so that all species are still capable of further adaption even if the environment has been stable for a million years.

The corollary to this misconception is that species that haven't changed much in outward appearance over a long period of time (e.g. living fossils) have not evolved because their environment didn't change. In fact, we see plenty of change at the molecular level in these so-called "living fossils" and some of that change is almost certainly adaptation.

If you combine Ryan's article with the ideas that natural selection has a stochastic component and that perfect adaptation is rarely achieved, then you will understand natural selection better than most people.

If, in addition, you learn that there's more to evolution than natural selection then will truly be able to say you understand evolution.

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1. For example, it's possible to imagine that there might be an allele conferring a particular behavior that's beneficial. Say, females not communicating with male relatives when they are ovulating. But that's not sufficient. Evolutionary psychologists must also explain why the adaptive benefit is sufficient to lead to fixation and preservation in the population. Is it a 0.001% benefit or a 25% benefit?

Monday's Molecule #125

 
This is the tentative structure of a very important molecule. It's "tentative" because the exact structure hasn't been fully worked out and because the "molecule" is heterogeneous—it's actually a mixture of several similar molecules.

Identify this molecule by giving its common name and the organism(s) from which it is derived. This particular molecule is part of a much larger complex that was first identified over 100 years ago. The person who discovered that large complex received a Nobel Prize. Identify the Nobel Laureate.

The first person to identify the molecule and the Nobel Laureate, wins a free lunch at the Faculty Club. Previous winners are ineligible for six weeks from the time they first won the prize. Please note the change in the length of time you are ineligible. The idea is to give more more people a chance to win.

There are nine ineligible candidates for this week's reward: Laura Gerth of the University of Notre Dame, Stefan Tarnawsky of the University of Toronto, Dima Klenchin of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Adam Santoro of the University of Toronto., Michael Clarkson of Waltham MA (USA), Òscar Reig of Barcelona, Maria Altshuler of the University of Toronto, Mike Fraser of the University of Toronto, and Jaseon Oakley of the University of Toronto.

Mike has saved Canadians from embarrassment.

I still have one extra free lunch donated by a previous winner to a deserving undergraduate so I'm going to continue to award an additional free lunch to the first undergraduate student who can accept it. Please indicate in your email message whether you are an undergraduate and whether you can make it for lunch.

THEME:

Nobel Laureates
Send your guess to Sandwalk (sandwalk (at) bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca) and I'll pick the first email message that correctly identifies the molecule and names the Nobel Laureate(s). Note that I'm not going to repeat Nobel Prizes so you might want to check the list of previous Sandwalk postings by clicking on the link in the theme box.

Correct responses will be posted tomorrow.

Comments will be blocked for 24 hours.

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[Image Credit: The structure of Mycobacterium tuberculosis lipoarabinomannan (LAM) by Achim Treumann and Steve Homans.]

Bill Maher Talks to Francis Collins

 
Catching up on my blog reading, I discovered this on ERV. It's really funny. .... What's that you say? It's not supposed to be funny?


Any further news on whether Francis Collins is going to be head of NIH?

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The Accommodationist Position at NCSE

 
The March-April issue of Reports of the National Center for Science Education contains an interesting article by Daryl P. Domning, a Professor of Anatomy at Howard University in Washington DC (USA). The title of the article is "Winning Their Hearts and Minds: Who Should Speak for Evolution?"

This is an article about whether atheists or theistic evolutionists should take the lead in opposing Young Earth Creationism. Domning is the co-author of Original Selfishness: Original Sin And Evil in the Light of Evolution and he has written many articles in support of a Christian view of science and evolution.

Before I quote from his article in Reports of the National Center for Science Education, can you predict what it will say? Of course you can. Downing is a theist and of course he thinks that evolution should be described from a theistic perspective and not from an atheist perspective. Duh!

Here's the bottom line.

Moderate views on creation-vs-evolution are not in short supply. Yet despite the Gallop polls consistently showing 35-40% of Americans somewhere between the poles of special creationism and striclty materialists evolutionism (with only 9-15% for the latter view), this reality is studiously ignored both by creationists and by materialists like Dawkins (and others). This not only polarizes the debate unnecessarily, but fundamentally misrepresents it. To break this impasse and move toward defusing evolution as an explosive social and educational issues, I propose the perhaps shocking idea that it is time for theistic evolutionists to take over from atheists as the public face of evolution advocacy.[my emphasis]

This is hardly a shocking idea since NCSE, along with major scientific organizations, have been promoting exactly that sort of strategy for many years. The key question is, exactly how are theistic evolutionists going to take over from atheists? Are they going to shout louder?

In this asymmetrical warfare, the secularists make easy, static targets. They fruitlessly deploy ponderous scientific artillery against the light-weight arguments of "scientific creationist" guerillas, and wonder at how the latter blithely dance aside to fight again another day. But the creationist leaders and their lay followers are clearly motivated by those existential and theological concerns and not by science, so the scientific arguments do not lay a glove on them.

This is completely wrong. The atheists are the ones who recognize the real problem. The real problem is not science or the law and the problem won't be solved by winning a scientific debate or a trial in Dover.

The real problem is superstition, often masquerading as religion. As long as people continue to believe that superstition can trump science then no scientific argument will convince them to abandon creationism in its various manifestations—which includes theistic evolution, by the way. The atheists are aiming their artillery at religion.

As long as the secularists insist on prosecuting the war unilaterally in this way, they will not prevail. The only hope for a successful outcome lies with a coalition: the secularists must ally themselves with—indeed yield leadership to—theistic evolutionists, who understand the creationist's religious culture, speak their religious language, and can engege them on their home turf.

Now that's a shocking statement. It's not shocking because it's so stupid, it's shocking because the author clearly has not been listening to the debate. The reason why theistic evolutionists speak the same language as the creationists is because they are creationists. Almost all religions spawn creationism and the rejection of at least some aspects of science. (Strict deism is the only exception.)

The reason why atheists won't ally with theistic evolutionists in a fight against religion should be obvious to anyone who has followed the debate over the past five years. Daryl P. Domning has not been paying attention.

Before the publication of the latest round of atheists books, the fight against creationism was almost entirely led by accommodationists and/or closet atheists. It's reasonable to ask whether they were successful. To ask the question is to answer it. The number of Americans clinging to superstitious beliefs hardly changed for five decades. That's not a success by any stretch of the imagination.

To his credit, Domning seems to glimpse part of this when he says ...

Finally, is my proposal basically a tactical one? Of course it is—because the old tactics have failed to achieve more than a courtroom stalemate, while the soul of creationism is marching on in churches, classrooms, political campaigns, and the rest of society. We have been fighting the wrong war with the wrong weapons. If we are content to rest on our courtroom victories, as the winners of every stand-up fight, we will end up as we did in Vietnam: or as Sitting Bull supposedly said after the Little Bighorn, we will have "won a great battle, but lost a great war."

I'm glad that Downing and I can agree on one thing. Court victories are a mirage.

My solution to the problem of superstitious belief is to challenge it head-on. I presume that Downing wants to fight another battle and continue losing the war. That's understandable since he and I are not on the same side in the battle that I want to fight.

Atheists are directly addressing the real problem, religion. If there are theists who want to join us then they are welcome to do so but they will have to abandon all forms of creationism, including theistic evolution.

The National Center for Science Education is aware of the fact that Domning's article is controversial. In their editorial they state that "NCSE, of course, has a clear policy of religious neutrality." In order to preserve the illusion of balance, NCSE asked three other people to comment on Domning's article.

Sheldon Gottlieb says ...

Considering the complexities introduced by religion, any evolutionist, therefore, could lead the discussion on [science vs religion] and evolution-creation with one proviso: there is no need for atheistic evolutionists to be strident about the non-existence of God, despite the fact that fundamentalists have inexplicably bound the two. The emphasis should be placed on explaining what science is, what is religion, and the differences between them, and framing all [science vs religion] creation/evolution discussions from a scientific perspective (natural explanations of natural phenomena) and not a theistic prespective (untestable and unlimited imaginations about the supernatural).

This is the soft version of accommodationism. It's the failed version. I can't imagine how Gottlieb would want an evolutionist to behave while explaining religion and the differences between science and religion.

Keith¹ Miller says ...

As Domning says, being public advocates for the compatibility of evolutionary science and religious faith is not about injecting religion into science. Far from it! It is simply presenting the true face of science which practiced by individuals representing a very wide range of theistic and not-theistic views.

This is interesting logic. Some of those scientists are Intelligent Design Creationists. Does that mean that NCSE should publicly advocate the compatibility of evolution and Intelligent Design Creationism? Of course not. The decision to pick and choose which religious scientists to support is a conscious one and it means that NCSE takes a position on good religions vs bad religions.

Erik B. Pietrowicz says ...

The public is not generally concerned with making the distinction between scientific evidence and religious belief. In practice, then, the nature of the theological opinions that are commonly associated with evolutionary biology is important, as they can end up driving a false wedge between religion and science in general. Thus, evolution education (and religion?) suffers as atheism and evolutionism become synonymous in the public mind.

This is another example of soft accommodationism. He advocates that we should stick to science and not drag religion into the debate. That's the same old strategy that has failed in the past. This is not a debate about science. It's a debate about superstition.

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1. I misidentified this person as "Ken" Miller in my original posting. This was stupid and embarrassing.

Is Oprah Winfrey giving us bad medicine?

 
David Gorski is a physician who blogs at Science-Based Medicine. One of his recent postings has been published in today's issue of The Toronto star as: Is Oprah Winfrey giving us bad medicine?.

Unfortunately, Oprah displays as close to no critical-thinking skills when it comes to science and medicine as I've ever seen, and uses the vast influence her TV show and media empire give her in order to subject the world to her special brand of mystical New Age thinking and belief in various forms of what can only be characterized as dubious medical therapies at best and quackery at worst.

Naturally, Oprah doesn't see it that way, and likely no one could ever convince her of the malign effect she has on the national zeitgeist with respect to science and medicine.

Consequently, whether fair or unfair, she represents the perfect face to put on the problem that we supporters of science-based medicine face when trying to get the message out to the average reader about unscientific medical practices, and that's why I am referring to the pervasiveness of pseudoscience infiltrating medicine as the "Oprah-fication" of medicine.

There's an interesting background to this story ans David Gorski recounts in the blog [“The Oprah-fication of Medicine” in The Toronto Star].

No one was more shocked than I was when the editor of Sunday Insight section of The Toronto Star contacted me earlier this week to ask if he could adapt my post to a newspaper editorial.

This is a really good sign. A newspaper realizes that blogging and publishing newspapers are not necessarily in competition.

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Psychology and Finger Length

There was a lot of interesting stuff going on at the Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES) conference held recently at California State University, Fullerton (USA).

You can check out HBES.com and read the abstracts of the papers presented. It gives you a real flavor for the kind of "science" being done in the name of evolutionary psychology.

There was a session on "Digit Ratio." Apparently this is a new field of research in evolutionary psychology. It attempts to correlate the lengths of your fingers with various behaviors. The most relevant parameter appears to be the ratio of the length of your index finger and your ring finger (2D:4D). In women these two fingers are the same length while in men the fourth finger tends to be slightly longer.

Two of the papers at the HBES meeting were from Gad Saad, an Associate Professor of Marketing at the John Molson School of Business at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He's the author of a book called The Evolutionary Bases of Consumption.

Gad Saad recently posted on the Psychology Today blog [Can the Length of Your Fingers Affect Your Consumption?]. He said ...

Some have argued that the 2D:4D is nothing more than a "sophisticated" form of palmistry. Others have ventured that it belongs with astrology and phrenology, former scientific fields that are now completely discredited. The reality is that the sheer number of papers that have yielded robust 2D:4D effects in prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journals suggests that it is going to take more than a flippant dismissal, as the means of critiquing this thriving research stream.

That's an interesting argument. It doesn't address the real issue; namely, whether those papers are scientifically valid or not. It merely states that because they are reviewed and accepted by other evolutionary psychologists they must be true. This is, unfortunately, becoming a common excuse these days.

What if peer review is failing to distinguish good science from bad science? I think this is what's happening in most disciplines these days.

Here's the abstract of the presentation given by Gad Saad's group at the HBES meeting.

Finger length ratio and attitudes towards several product categories
Marcelo Vinhal Nepomuceno, Gad Saad, Eric Stenstrom, Zack Mendenhall

The second-to-fourth finger length ratio (2D:4D), a sexually dimorphic trait, is affected by androgen exposure in utero. It has been linked to a wide range of human phenomena including economic outcomes, personality, sexuality, athletic and musical abilities, health status, and occupational interests to name but a few examples. Surprisingly, it has yet to be investigated in the consumption context. Using a sample of 555 university students, we examined if finger length ratio was negatively correlated with products with a male penchant and positively correlated with products preferred by females. Participants responded to several items, which assessed their attitude towards several product categories namely: cosmetics, electronics, pornography, clothing, movies genres (drama, action, science fiction, romance, animation and war), sports (hockey, boxing, synchronized swimming and gymnastics) and genres of video-games (First-person Shooter, Real-time Strategy, Party-game, Platformer and Life Simulator). Two key findings were obtained. First, the length of the index finger relative to the sum of the lengths of all four fingers (2rel) was generally a better predictor of product attitudes than 2D:4D, given that it yielded a greater number of significant effects. Second, we found significant (p<.05) or marginally significant (p<.10) correlations, in the predicted directions, between 2rel and attitudes towards four out of the nine product categories preferred by males and towards five out of the ten product categories preferred by females. The remaining product categories were not significantly correlated to 2rel. This constitutes the first study to demonstrate a link between a morphological trait and attitudes toward specific products.

Could this be scientific evidence that palm reading actually works?

Does this have anything to do with evolution or is the evolution of consumption a separate study?

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Why Won't Your Daughter Call Home?

 
The Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES) is meeting at California State University, Fullerton. There are 450 evolutionary psychologists in attendance [Notes from an evolutionary psychology conference]. I don't think I could be happy there.

One of the attendees is a graduate student named Elizabeth Pillsworth. She studies the evolution of adaptations for avoiding incest. You'll be surprised at what she reports.

The researchers' hypothesis on incest avoidance was that near ovulation, women are motivated to avoid affiliation with male kin (fathers) but not mothers, to avoid the potential costs of inbreeding. Their predictions were that relative to low-fertility days, on high-fertility days women would initiate fewer calls and engage in shorter conversations with fathers, compared to mothers.

They had 51 normally-ovulating women (mean age 19.1 years old) provide complete cell phone bills from one month, along with their menstrual cycle information and details about individuals on their phone bill. It turned out that the subjects called their fathers significantly less than their mothers during high fertility days, and when both mothers and fathers called them during high fertility days they spent less time on the phone with their dads than with their moms.

Conclusion: "this is the first evidence of adaptation in human females to avoid affiliation with male kin when fertility is at its highest."

Isn't that amazing? I can't possibly think of any other explanation. There must be a gene for not talking to your father when you're fertile. I wonder what chromosome it's on?

I wonder if there were any controls—like how often the women spoke to their boyfriends, or when mothers called their sons?

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Laughter Evolved but Is It Adaptive?

 
Jerry Coyne wrote an interesting article about the evolution of laughter. He closes with ..

So laughter, at least when being tickled, appears to be an evolved, innate phenomenon. As I emphasized above, this says nothing about whether it was selected for directly, whether it was a byproduct of something else that was selected, or is simply a nonadaptive epiphenomenon. But as I write, evolutionary psychologists are working on why evolution may have promoted laughter.

Of course evolutionary psychologists are busy working on an adaptive just-so story. That's what they do. You won't catch them explaining anything as an accident or an epiphenomenon.

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Is There a Problem?

 
Fr. Alphonse de Valk writes in Catholic Insight: Atheism: a threat to civilization

Christian belief in Canada

Today the Christian belief in God is under tremendous attack. It began in the 1960’s with the overthrow of the age–old condom nation of contraceptives, divorce, abortion, and homosexual activism (1967-1969). Today in Canada, the leaders of three out of four political parties are agnostics or aetheists. The print and visual media are overwhelmingly agnostic atheist, with the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and the CBC in the lead. Catholic Insight’s March article, “The Frankfurt School” indicates the prevailing ideas now dominant in educational circles. The world-wide elitist hostility towards the Pope for contradicting the folly of the condom is good example of atheists at work. (see above).

So, what's the problem? Sounds like Canadians are on the right track if they condemn the Pope for advocating abstinence instead of condoms.

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[Photo Credit: The Interim]

[Hat Tip: John Pieret of Thoughts in a Haystack]

The Selective Advantages of Hairlessness, Baldness, and Gray Hair

 
Denyse O'Leary collects silly Darwinian tales of the sort usually referred to as "just-so" stories. She alerted me to some real live ones on her blog Uncommon Descent [Darwinian fairy tales: Why middle-aged men have shiny scalps].

It's embarrassing that the creationists have such easy targets.

The just-so stories are written by Terence Kealey who bills himself as vice-chancellor of Buckingham University. (He's also a clinical biochemist.) The stories were published on Times Online as: Guys, be glad to be grey or thinning on top.

Here's are the funny parts ....

We human beings, too, are highly selected sexually, but in our case it is women who are the peacocks: the more beautiful they are, the greater the number and quality of the men who court them. This is why, some 75,000 years ago, we made our last two evolutionary advances: we lost our body hair and we invented art.

...

Art and hairlessness co-evolved because they fed off each other. The girl whose skin was least hairy could paint it, tattoo it, decorate it and clothe it more adventurously than could her furry sisters. So she got more and better men. And in consequence her children - even the males, though to a lesser degree - lost their hair too. We had become the naked ape.

This was all supposed to happen about 75,000 years ago, according to Terence Kealey. It's interesting to speculate on what must have happened.

Small groups of hunter-gatherers met from time to time. Almost all the females probably had sexual partners when they were all hairy. It's unlikely that there were many females who couldn't find a mate.

All of a sudden, there were some new girls on the block. They had less hair and they covered their body with paint and tattoos. These mutants were so attractive to men that they were preferentially chosen as mates and, more importantly, their hairy sisters were ignored. The hairy women didn't have offspring so there must have been quite a few men who were celibate as well. (Unless the mutants had multiple mates.)

That's why hairlessness was rapidly selected.¹

In order to understand the next just-so story you have to know that the article begins with an explanation of why Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister of Italy, had a hair transplant.

Which brings us back to Mr Berlusconi. Hair plays a social signalling role in many older mammals. It goes grey - which can be a good thing. It is only the silverback gorilla(so-called named for obvious reasons) who can corral a harem of females, in part because gorillas of both sexes revere older males. We have retained our head hair so enabling that social signalling: grey hair on men can reinforce an alpha message of chiefdom. As can baldness.

Men have evolved to attract women. Because only some men go bald, we must assume that different women are attracted differently. Some women will be attracted to young men, but young men are untried and therefore risky, so some women will seek sugar daddies instead. Mating with sugar daddies invokes a different set of risks but the trophy wife is nonetheless making a rational choice - one that may well have been rewarded preferentially in the Stone Age - to which she is in part guided by baldness in her man.

Now, what sort of girl will fancy Mr Berlusconi? Clearly the sugar daddy type. But such a girl will subconsciously be looking for baldness in her beau and she may be put off by the mixed messages Silvio's head is transmitting.

The biology of baldness is complex. Some theorists believe that it renders older men so unattractive that - rather than sowing additional wild oats - they are forced to spend more time with their families and so help their children to survive. But the myriad Becky Sharps in literature and history help to disprove that theory.

Now let's imagine that we are back in the stone age. There are a bunch of men who, for undisclosed reasons, have reached the age of fifty and don't have a mate.² There are a number of young women who want an older man for a mate instead of the young men who are probably available.

Most of the fifty year olds have hair that's the same color it has always been. All of a sudden a few mutants appear who have white hair or (gasp!) no hair at all. These older men become so sexually attractive to the young women that they get to reproduce while their hairy friends are spurned. Maybe they painted or tattooed their bald heads. Yes, that would work. I think I'll try it.

That's how the alleles for baldness and white hair get selected in ancient hunter-gatherer societies.

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1. It's a good thing that razors hadn't been invented, otherwise the hairy women could have fooled the men into thinking they were a hairless mutant.

2. I'm assuming monogamy as the default option. As far as I know, this is generally accepted.

Science Literacy and the New Atheist Ideology

 
Matt Nisbet is at it again. Here's something from his latest posting [Science Literacy and the New Atheist Ideology: Rethinking Definitions and Relevance].

Next week there will be big news on the science communication front. In anticipation, I was just going back over some things that I have written on the topic over the past decade. I ran across an essay I wrote for Skeptical Inquirer from 2003, which I posted below the fold. The essay puts into context an interesting debate that took place in the pages of The Guardian between eminent UK scientist Susan Greenfield and science communication professor Jon Turney.

Greenfield's side of the debate reflects a continued dominant line of thinking referred to as the "deficit model," the assumption that public controversies over science are a product of ignorance and that improving the public's knowledge of the technical facts of science--or filling in the deficit--will make the public view science-related issues as scientists do.

Six years on, we still see these deficit model assumptions at play. In fact, as I write in a forthcoming book chapter, the deficit model remains a cornerstone of the New Atheist ideology and movement.

Well-framed, Matt!

Here's my opinion, which I imagine is not that much different from Susan Greenfield's or that of the "New Atheists."

Most public debates about science issues are not really about science at all. They're about religion, morality, ideology, politics etc.

To the extent that natural science is involved, it is beneficial for everyone to understand the facts and concepts correctly. Nothing is more frustrating than when these debates degenerate into disputes about the science. To that end, scientists have a role to play. When it comes to issues like evolution or global climate change, the idea is that everyone should be on the same playing field when it comes to the science.

Is that too much to ask?

No scientist that I know, thinks that's the end of the story. Getting the science right is just one step in the right direction. Communists & capitalists, atheists & theists, vegetarians & omnivores, and quacks & doctors can all have raging debates about science-related issues as long as they all agree on the correct scientific interpretation of the facts.

Read Matt's blog to see why he opposes that point of view.

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Chris Mooney Changed His Mind

 
Chris Mooney and Jerry Coyne are having a discussion about whether religion and science are compatible. Coyne says they are not and I agree with him. We don't know what Chris really thinks on this issue but we do know that he's opposed to debating it in public.

Chris supports the accommodationist position, which means that even if you think science and religion are incompatible you should not voice that opinion in public.

Chris didn't always think that way. Back in 2001 he wrote an article in Slate that mentioned how accepting evolution challenges most religious beliefs. He addresses this in his latest posting [Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself].

…indeed, I find my work from 2001 on this topic pretty unsatisfying. I guess you could say I’ve changed my view; certainly I’ve changed my emphasis. A lot more reading in philosophy and history has moved me toward a more accomodationist position. So has simple pragmatism; I don’t see what is to be gained by flailing indiscriminately against religion, other than a continuation of the culture wars. That’s especially so when those who flail against religion do so in philosophically or historically unsophisticated ways, or (worse still) with the bile, negativity, and even occasional intolerance that I have encountered in such discussions.

This last part is ... how shall we put it ... disingenuous. Mooney and Coyne are having a polite (so far) and intellectual discussion about the compatibility of science and religion. Why do the accommodationists always have to bring up the worst examples of atheists in support of their arguments? Who's "flailing," Chris?

Isn't it strange that they never mention the bile, negativity, and intolerance of the worst religious fundamentalists? Shouldn't that be just as relevant for an accommodationist? I always wonder why people like Chris Mooney and Matt Nisbet don't tell Ken Miller and Francis Collins to shut the heck up because of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter?

And I'm not even going to discuss the backhanded slap about the "unsophistication" of those who think that science and religion are (mostly) incompatible. That's just childish ... and somewhat intolerant.

I am as much an atheist as I have ever been–and I have been one essentially since birth. But I am also much more interested in liberal tolerance (in the classical sense) and in finding common solutions than I am in eradicating religion (if that’s even possible) or in making other people think like I do. I’ll have more on all of this soon as I respond to Coyne.

This is the heart of the issue. Mooney admits that he is not interested in the debate over the truth of religion. In other words, the compatibility of science and religion is just not an issue that concerns him. Fine. Stay out of it. Don't try and argue that others should think like you. Some of us are interested in whether God exists.

Oh, and by the way, Chris, the words "liberal tolerance" don't mean what you think they mean. They are not synonyms for "don't ever discuss the existence of God because it might upset believers."

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The law has no place in scientific disputes

 
Simon Singh has decided to appeal the decision of a British court. That court ruled that his article on chiropractic in The Guardian contained "the plainest allegation of dishonesty and indeed it accuses them (the BCA) of thoroughly disreputable conduct." The British Chiropractic Association (BCA) brought the libel action because Singh's article pointed out the truth; namely, that there is no evidence to support the claim that most chiropractic procedures actually work.

You can read Sing's summary of the events, including his decision to appeal the judge's ruling at BCA v Singh The Story So Far 3 June 2009.

Many prominent scientists and journalist have rallied to Singh's side. Read about this development on Sense About Science and The Independent: Silenced, the writer who dared to say chiropractice is bogus.

Here's the statement. You can sign it on Sense About Science.

We the undersigned believe that it is inappropriate to use the English libel laws to silence critical discussion of medical practice and scientific evidence.

The British Chiropractic Association has sued Simon Singh for libel. The scientific community would have preferred that it had defended its position about chiropractic for various children's ailments through an open discussion of the peer reviewed medical literature or through debate in the mainstream media.

Singh holds that chiropractic treatments for asthma, ear infections and other infant conditions are not evidence-based. Where medical claims to cure or treat do not appear to be supported by evidence, we should be able to criticise assertions robustly and the public should have access to these views.

English libel law, though, can serve to punish this kind of scrutiny and can severely curtail the right to free speech on a matter of public interest. It is already widely recognised that the law is weighted heavily against writers: among other things, the costs are so high that few defendants can afford to make their case. The ease and success of bringing cases under the English law, including against overseas writers, has led to London being viewed as the "libel capital" of the world.

Freedom to criticise and question in strong terms and without malice is the cornerstone of scientific argument and debate, whether in peer-reviewed journals, on websites or in newspapers, which have a right of reply for complainants. However, the libel laws and cases such as BCA v Singh have a chilling effect, which deters scientists, journalists and science writers from engaging in important disputes about the evidential base supporting products and practices. The libel laws discourage argument and debate and merely encourage the use of the courts to silence critics.

The English law of libel has no place in scientific disputes about evidence; the BCA should discuss the evidence outside of a courtroom. Moreover, the BCA v Singh case shows a wider problem: we urgently need a full review of the way that English libel law affects discussions about scientific and medical evidence.

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[Photo Credit: Rex Features]