Thoughts from Kansas

Doomed to repeat it

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:37:54 -0800

Shorter Ginni Thomas in WaPo: Wife of Justice Thomas starts group for 'citizen activists':

Caesar's wife was a pussy.

Actual spokeswoman for Mrs. Thomas, who recently started a teabagging group using corporate funds as permitted by her husband's vote on Citizens United:

"She did not give up her First Amendment rights when her husband became a Supreme Court judge."

Words fail. Sure, she didn't give up her right to speak freely, but that doesn't mean she should profiteer using her husband's decisions. Any corporation donating to her group which doesn't think it's buying access to Justice Thomas should fire its executives and start over. Any Supreme Court spouse who thinks his or her private actions don't reflect on the political impartiality of their spouse is nuts. And under the circumstances, Chief Justice Roberts would do well not to chide the President for leading a "political pep rally" in the Constitutionally mandated State of the Union address if he can't keep his coequal branch from selling itself to the highest bidder. Read the comments on this post...

Pi Day!

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 22:42:53 -0800

Let it be said, before explaining the lore of Pi Day, that we're planning to have pie, not cake, at my wedding in August. I adore pie in its many forms. I like eating it and I like baking it.

Every year, I get to celebrate pie at least twice. First on March 14, ideally just before 2 o'clock. That'd be 3/14 1:59. The second celebration, favored more by European pie fanciers (fans of tortes and so forth), is July 22, or 22/7. In the states, or at least at NCSE's offices, we celebrate that as Pi Approximation Day, while 3/14 is pie day, a day hallowed by tradition and transcendental mathematics as a time to celebrate delicious delicious pastries.

NCSE's office celebration began on Friday, when we had to scramble to assemble an apple pie from the excellent Bakesale Betty and a great icebox lemon pie. We'll continue the celebration tomorrow, hopefully with pizza and with at least one of the pies I baked today.

The baking started at a farmers market, where I scored some lemons and mandarins for seasoning, and apples, pears, and rhubarb for filling. Rhubarb pie is the king of pies, with rhubarb-strawberry the queen. Apple pie is the president, a leader but never an aristocrat.

The recipes were all based on my dogeared copy of The Joy of Cooking, tweaked to maximize deliciousness.

First, a rhubarb pie, overflowing with tart yum:

Rhubarb is an acquired taste, but once you've got it, nothing measures up. A bit of mandarin zest mellows the rhubarb just enough. I've used this recipe many times, and it never fails.

Then comes an experiment, a tarte tatin. It's made like an upside-down pineapple cake, but with apples instead of pineapple and pie crust instead of cake on the bottom. In this case, it was a mix of Fuji and Pink Lady apples, a combination I've enjoyed before. Looking forward to tasting it:

Finally, an experiment with two variables. I've made circular apple-pear pies before, but never a square pear pie (this with bosc and D'Anjou pears). Making a square pie was worrisome, but mathematicians assure me that pie are squared, so here goes:

In honor of the day, I modified my usual pattern of steam vents for this pie:

How did you celebrate Pi Day?

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Fame!

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 01:57:21 -0800

One of my colleagues from Scienceblogs.com.br contacted me a week or so ago to talk about creationists and global warming deniers, and I just checked and his story for Brazil's largest paper is online. Frankly, I think I gave him one of my juicier quotes:

"Dos negacionistas do aquecimento global, a maioria é motivada principalmente pelos negócios e pela política. Um número chocante de pessoas parece se opor à ideia porque não gostam de Al Gore. Muitos trabalham em empresas petrolíferas ou pertencem a indústrias que teriam de pagar pela mitigação do aquecimento", diz Rosenau. "Então, creio que é uma aliança entre conservadores religiosos e conservadores econômicos. Descobriram táticas que funcionam e compartilham-nas livremente."

Google renders that as:

"Of the deniers of global warming, most are motivated primarily by business and politics. A shocking number of people seem to oppose the idea because they do not like Al Gore. Many work in oil companies or belong to industries that would pay for mitigation warming, "says Rosenau. "So I think it is an alliance between religious conservatives and economic conservatives. Discovered tactics that work and share them freely."

Though what I told him was more like:

Of the global warming deniers, most are motivated principally by business interest and politics. A shocking number of people seem to oppose global warming because they don't like Al Gore! And many either work for oil companies or are in industries that would be asked to pay for policies that would mitigate global warming, so they try to argue that there is no problem because that way they don't have to pay to solve it. … This is a social, cultural, economic, and ultimately political alliance between religious conservatives and economic conservatives. They've found some tactics that work, and share them freely.

Lopes really reported the hell out of the story, talking to Francisco Ayala, Brazilian biologist Sandro de Souza, and Brazilian creationists Enézio de Almeida Filho and Michelson Borges, and bringing in the stolen emails from Climategate, James Inhofe, the Discovery Institute, the South Dakota legislature, and Richard Lindzen's anti-ID/anti-global warming remarks reported at TfK.

Learn Portuguese and read it.

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NCSE, science, education, and religion

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:07:43 -0800

Attention conservation notice: A couple thousand words of reply to questions about why I think NCSE does what it does, delivered in my capacity as a random blogger not as an NCSE staffer. People who don't care about accommodationism or about how I read the NCSE website should probably just go back to pondering diehard scientists.

In comments at Larry Moran's blog, I noted what I regard as a serious error in his description of NCSE's position about science and religion. He initially claimed "As you know, it's the official position of the National Center for Science Education" that "science and religion are perfectly compatible." I commented that is was simply wrong, and Larry has graciously agreed:

It would have been better if I had not used the word "official" since that is a stronger statement than I wished to make. It would be better to say that the public stance of NCSE is to be supportive of the accommodationist position in preference to the idea that science and religion are in conflict and in preference to the position that NCSE should not take a stance on this controversial issue.

I'm not even sure that's right, if we take "the accommodationist position" to be that "science and religion are perfectly compatible," terms which Moran uses interchangeably in his earlier post.

Let me emphasize that my blogging here is not done on NCSE time and I don't base what I say here on private NCSE knowledge, just on things which are publicly available on the web, in public presentations by NCSE staff, etc. I don't make NCSE policy on these matters, I wouldn't want to, and I would want to be misunderstood. For these purposes, I'm just a blogger, like Larry.

I've commented before that "accommodationism" is an excessively vague term, and that vagueness causes real problems. Taking Larry's definition at face value, though, I doubt that most people who are recognized as accommodationists would actually qualify. Most of us recognize that religion is not monolithic, and freely acknowledge that some ideas (e.g., many forms of young earth creationism) are not compatible with science. Thus, whatever compatibility might exist between science and religion is not "perfect." To the specific question of NCSE's supposed "accommodationism," NCSE's webpages are replete with situations where NCSE staff debunks a religious claim using scientific evidence. NCSE seems well aware that science is not perfectly compatible with all forms of religion, and also that proving some conflict does not prove that no form of religion* can possibly be compatible with science (the claim endorsed by most anti-accommodationists, as I understand it).

My position, one which has consistently been called "accommodationism" is that science and religion might be compatible, that I can't know with any certainty whether it is or isn't in part because it's nearly impossible to generalize about all religions. I don't know if that's a definition that anyone else would accept, but it's what I'll use as a guidepost in the discussion to come.

Larry's objection is that he sees NCSE as supporting the "accommodationist position" when it could either oppose it or remain neutral. Larry expresses concern that: "NCSE is taking up the issue rather than being neutral as I would prefer." I tend to think Richard Hoppe did a good job addressing that broad point at Panda's Thumb almost a year ago:

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…With a vengeance

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:10:46 -0800

Today's Washington Times covers the nexus between global warming denial and creationism, quoting from my ScienceProgress piece to show that:

diehard scientists are striking back.

Yipee-kay-yay muppethuggers!

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Poof vs. the neo-creationist "orchard model"

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:35:34 -0800

Upchucky award runner-up and Disco. 'Tute staffer Casey Luskin is upset. Last fall, we were on a panel together, and I mocked his defense of the neo-creationist "orchard model" described in Explore Evolution as claiming that life "poofed" into existence. In the course of one of Casey's regularly scheduled bouts of logorrhea, he decides to respond to this claim:

I presented some of this information discussed below at the St. Thomas conference last fall, and NCSE staff member Josh Rosenau repeatedly alleged that I was making a “poof” hypothesis for the origin of monkeys.

No. That is not what I was arguing at all.

The NCSE made a specific argument for common descent based upon the “continuity” and “consistency” between biogeography and evolution. The evidence presented below refutes their assertion.

This argument is no “poof” hypothesis for the origin of monkeys. In fact, if the only alternative to common descent is, in the words of Josh Rosenau, the “poof” hypothesis, then that says more about common descent being an unscientific hypothesis than anything else.

Fortunately for Mr. Rosenau and the NCSE, there are alternatives to common descent apart from the “poof” hypothesis. Common descent is testable, and in my view it fails the test presented below. Explore Evolution presents a scientifically testable alternative to common descent, the orchard model. The NCSE dismisses it as a “creationist” argument, but as will be seen below, only the hardened Darwinian faithful will buy such quips, dismissals, and refusals to seriously engage this argument.

First, Explore Evolution offers no testable models. It does toss out a preference for a model of life's history as an orchard rather than a single tree, but never states where those trees are supposed to separate. Without that specificity, the claim strikes me as untestable. One could evaluate the likelihood of a specific claimed orchard, but the notion that an unspecified orchard is inherently testable makes no sense.

Second, and more significantly, the "orchard" is a "poof" model. Casey's specific argument (to the extent he has one) is that South American monkeys are not actually descended by common ancestry from the same genealogy as other primates. In short, that they were poofed into existence, fully formed, in South America, while quite similar species existed in Africa, evolving in the manner revealed by fossils, molecules, and anatomy.

The same pattern of fossils, molecules, and anatomy says that South American monkeys are related to the rest of the primates. It's true that we don't have a complete understanding of how they got from Africa to South America, but (contrary to what Casey suggests) rafting across the southern Atlantic at the time in question really isn't that problematic. Mangroves form giant interlinked root structures, and big storms drive massive chunks of forest away. A single pregnant monkey on such a raft is all that's required for successful colonization. And monkeys are social, so you probably wouldn't have just one in a tree. And the raft itself would be full of food (vegetation, insects, fruit), and hollow branches to take shelter in.

No, it's not a high-probability event. Most such rafts would sink mid-ocean. But it only takes one to succeed. South America drifted for millions of years in what George Gaylord Simpson calls "splendid isolation," with a fascinating fauna. That isolation seems to have left the fauna at a competitive disadvantage when exposed to the fauna of North America after the Isthmus of Panama closed, and it is likely that African monkeys would have had a similar competitive advantage upon arrival 50 million years ago.

At the time in question, the Atlantic was narrower than it is now, and sea levels lower than they are today, further narrowing the ocean. Then as now, a current ran from equatorial Africa to equatorial South America, which would push material from Africa to South America.

I understand that Casey finds this scenario unlikely, but it has the advantage of not needlessly calling for monkeys to have been poofed into South America in the process of planting a new tree of life in Oligocene South America. For an orchard model to be realistic, there has to be some mechanism in place that could explain multiple origins of life at the necessary point in time and capable of generating the sorts of life we actually see. Scientists do consider whether unicellular life has multiple origins over 3.5 billion years ago, trying to sort out the ways in which interchange of genetic material in that early period might have interwoven the early shoots of those many trees into a single tree, a process called anastomosis. Calling for the simultaneous origins of unicellular life early in earth's history is not unreasonable, as conditions must have existed at the time which were capable of giving rise to life at least once. The notion of a multicellular organism appearing fully formed in the midst of an existing fauna defies belief.

As to Casey's rejection of the "creationist" label for his favored "orchard" model, I refer him to the work of Kurt Wise, a young earth creationist who introduced the "orchard" to the world in 1990, at the Second International Conference on Creationism. In the figure below, from his 1990 paper "Baraminology: A Young-Earth Creation Biosystematic Method," Wise illustrates his preferred "orchard model." In the text, he explains:

Some modern creationists are suggesting a metaphor of their own — a metaphor which is planted between the Evolutionary Tree and the Creationist Lawn. The new metaphor may be described as the "Neo-creationist Orchard" (see figure 1C). In this metaphor, life is specially created (as fruit trees are specially planted) and polyphyletic (i.e. each tree has a separate trunk and root system). There are also discontinuities between the major groups (trees are spaced so that branches do not overlap and could not and never did anastomose) and there are constraints to change (a given tree is limited to a particular size and branching style according to its type). In these ways, the Neo-creationist Orchard is similar to the Creationist Lawn. They differ, though, in that the Neo-creationist Orchard allows change, including speciation, within each created group (each tree branches off of the main stem). Permitting this type of change (variously called by creationists 'diversification', 'variation', 'horizontal evolution', and 'microevolution') in different amounts in different groups allows the creation model to accommodate microevolutionary evidences (e.g. changing allelic rations, genetic recombination, speciation, etc.).

While the notion of multiple acts of creation yielding multiple trees is not novel to Wise's work, his use of the term "orchard" is new. In a 1996 article for Harper's, Jack Hitt quotes Wise explaining the idea more simply: "I intend to replace the evolutionary tree with the creationist orchard," Wise said, "separately created, separately planted by God."

That's "poof." It's the orchard. The illustration is nearly identical to that used in Explore Evolution to illustrate the "orchard". Search the evolutionary literature all you like, you will not find any papers advocating such a model, in which platyrrhine monkeys (among others) are magically poofed into existence in South America. For Casey to suggest that his beloved "orchard model" is anything but "poof," he needs to do offer an explanation for platyrrhine monkeys.

Alas, rather than offering to explain his orchard model, Casey closes by assuring us "The next three installments [of his blog series] will explain how the sea monkey hypothesis refutes the NCSE’s biogeography objections to Explore Evolution." In other words, rather than defending his own ideas, he'll spend the time attacking other people. I don't think much of the strategy, but maybe Casey will take the advice of his fellow creationists instead. So here's Kurt Wise from Hitt's article:

"My idea is not to attack evolution," he said. "My goal is to develop a theory that explains the data of the universe better than conventional theory but is consistent with Scripture." His major beef with other creationists, he explained, is that they only take pleasure in picking at the weaknesses of evolution. "It's a small person who is focused on attacking a theory. By the time I finished at Harvard, I realized I could destroy macroevolutionary theory at will." …
"I don't want to challenge evolution," he said, his voice echoing in the dark stone chamber. "I intend to replace it."

Wise's ideas have no currency, in no small part because they add nothing to our knowledge, and where they can be tested, they are wrong. His goal of replacing "everything after, oh, about 3200 B.C." is ludicrous, but no less ludicrous than the Disco. 'Tute's goal of "nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies," and ultimately "to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions." The problem is, 12 years later, Disco. has nothing new to offer, no mechanism, no process, just flawed and failed attempts at challenging evolution. As the communications director of their creationist branch explains today,

we do not favor mandating the teaching of intelligent design — as is so often misreported — but rather that we think when evolution is taught teachers should present both the evidence the supports Darwinian evolution as well as some of the evidence that challenges it.

Where once the mighty 'Tute sought the "integration of design theory into public school science curricula," all they want now is for teachers to spend time criticizing evolution.

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Blinded by the Disco. light

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 01:45:29 -0800

Casey Luskin, intrepid Upchucky also-ran, is aflutter. Last week's New York Times story about creationists and global warming deniers partnering up has the whole Disco. 'Tute in something of a tizzy, but Casey's outrage is of a special sort.
Casey, you see, thinks the the Times misdescribed Selman v. Cobb County. The article states:

The legal incentive to pair global warming with evolution in curriculum battles stems in part from a 2005 ruling by a United States District Court judge in Atlanta that the Cobb County Board of Education, which had placed stickers on certain textbooks encouraging students to view evolution as only a theory, had violated First Amendment strictures on the separation of church and state.

Although the sticker was not overtly religious, the judge said, its use was unconstitutional because evolution alone was the target, which indicated that it was a religious issue.

This is accurate. It's what the judge ruled. And so, of course, Casey is deeply insistent that it isn't what the judge ruled:

The problem with the NY Times’ claim is that the Selman case did NOT rule that the sticker was unconstitutional due to the fact that “evolution alone was the target.” In fact, in the Selman v. Cobb County ruling, Judge Cooper held that the Cobb County sticker had a valid secular purpose and that it was permissible to single out evolution. In the words of Judge Cooper’s lower court ruling in Selman, “The School Board's singling out of evolution is understandable in this context” because “evolution is the only theory of origin being taught in Cobb County classrooms,” and “evolution was the only topic in the curriculum, scientific or otherwise, that was creating controversy.”
The court then found two legitimate secular purposes for the sticker. The sticker was permissible because the purpose of “[f]ostering critical thinking is a clearly secular purpose . . . [and] because [the disclaimer] tells students to approach the material on evolution with an open mind, to study it carefully, and to give it critical consideration.” Additionally, “presenting evolution in a manner that is not unnecessarily hostile” in order to “reduce[] offense to students and parents whose beliefs may conflict with the teaching of evolution” was held to be a permissible purpose. In the end, the court struck down the sticker on other grounds. (See Selman v. Cobb County Board of Education, 390 F. Supp. 2d 1286, 1302-05 (N.D. Ga. 2005) vacated and remanded, 449 F.3d 1320 (11th Cir. 2006).)

So the NY Times was flat wrong to claim that Selman held it is impermissible to single out evolution.

I'm not a lawyer, but I've picked up some things over the years, and one of them is that the test at issue in Selman is something called the Lemon test. It has three parts (actually prongs, because lawyers love cutlery). The first is purpose: a government action may not have a primarily religious purpose. The second is effect: its effect cannot be to elevate one religion over another, or religion over nonreligion. The final is entanglement: The action cannot excessively entangle government with religion. In the 1980s, Justice O'Connor began combining the latter two prongs into a single "endorsement" test, where a policy must have a secular purpose and the policy must not endorse a particular religion or religion over nonreligion. It tends not to make a big difference in practice, but judges often perform both analyses just in case.

Anyway, the court in Selman looked at a sticker which the local board of education wanted affixed to biology textbooks and applied the Lemon test. And the court concluded that, yes, placing the sticker on books does serve a secular purpose. Had the court stopped there, Casey would be right.

But the court only stops when a policy fails one of the prongs, or after looking at all the prongs. Indeed, the same paragraph which includes the sentence: "The Court finds the School Board's explanation to be rational and does not declare the Sticker to violate the purpose prong of Lemon," continues:

However, because the administration suggested alternative language that did not place the emphasis so heavily on evolution, albeit after the Board adopted the Sticker, the message communicated to the unformed, reasonable observer is that the School Board believes there is some problem peculiar to evolution. In light of the historical opposition to evolution by Christian fundamentalists and creationists in Cobb County and throughout the Nation, the informed, reasonable observer would infer the School Board's problem with evolution to be that evolution does not acknowledge a creator.

The court notes that isolating evolution like that has caused legal trouble before:

In Epperson, the Supreme Court declared an anti-evolution statute unconstitutional because it "select[ed] from the body of knowledge a particular segment which it proscribe[d] for the sole reason that it is deemed to conflict with a particular religious doctrine." Similarly, in Edwards, the Supreme Court declared that a balanced treatment statute was unconstitutional because "[o]ut of many possible science subjects taught in the public schools, the legislature chose to affect the teaching of the one scientific theory that historically has been opposed by certain religious sects."

In both cases, the court ultimately found the policies unconstitutional. For someone actually reading the text of the ruling, this is a bad sign for the sticker. It looks kinda like the court is building toward saying that singling out evolution in the sticker was also unconstitutional in the way that singling out evolution made policies unconstitutional before. Aaaaand here's how it went:

just as evolution was isolated in the statutes in Epperson and Edwards, evolution is isolated in the Sticker in this case. In the absence of an explicit explanation on the Sticker for evolution's isolation, the Court believes the Sticker sends an impermissible message of endorsement.…
the Sticker focuses exclusively on evolution … and there are no other stickers placed in any other textbooks used in the Cobb County School District regarding any other subjects … These facts support Plaintiffs' argument that the Sticker, considered in context, conveys a message of endorsement.…

considering all facts and circumstances related to the Sticker and its adoption, the Court is convinced that the Sticker's primary effect … endorses religion. …

In sum, the Sticker in dispute violates the effects prong of the Lemon test… Adopted by the school board, funded by the money of taxpayers, and inserted by school personnel, the Sticker conveys an impermissible message of endorsement and tells some citizens that they are political outsiders while telling others that they are political insiders. … the Sticker has already sent a message that the School Board agrees with the beliefs of Christian fundamentalists and creationists. The School Board has effectively improperly entangled itself with religion by appearing to take a position. Therefore, the Sticker must be removed from all of the textbooks into which it has been placed.

See what the court did there? It found the Sticker unconstitutional because it violated the second two prongs of the Lemon test – and therefore the endorsement test – in no small part because it singles out evolution. (Note to Casey: "singles out" and "isolates" would be synonyms.)

Now, my first thought was just that Casey might've been lazy. Maybe he got to the bit about "The Court finds the School Board's explanation to be rational and does not declare the Sticker to violate the purpose prong of Lemon," and stopped reading. But that doesn't work, because even before getting to that, the decision says:

the informed, reasonable observer would perceive the School Board to be aligning itself with proponents of religious theories of origin. … in light of the sequence of events that led to the Sticker's adoption, the Sticker communicates to those who endorse evolution that they are political outsiders, while the Sticker communicates to the Christian fundamentalists and creationists who pushed for a disclaimer that they are political insiders.

This is not what you write if you plan to say that there's no unconstitutional endorsement of or entanglement with religion. It's what you write as you prepare to say that there might be circumstances where a policy singles out evolution for valid secular reasons, but which nonetheless has an unconstitutional effect, thus invalidating the policy.

Casey is just wrong.

But he sent his plaint to the Times, and they politely informed him that they checked with real lawyers, and those lawyers "concur" that "our characterization of the decision was correct and that no correction is warranted.” Having been rebuffed by the reporter, by the editors, and by lawyers with at least modest literacy, Casey didn't take the hint, so he posted his complaint and selections from the Times' response at the Disco. 'Tute complaints department (created, they explain, for "the misreporting of the evolution issue"), hoping that if he didn't link to the ruling itself and the various other documents relevant to the case, that his readers would just take his word for the ruling's content.

Maybe they will. And maybe they'll buy his elaborate conspiracy in which … well, let's let Casey explain:

Despite my requests, they [staff at the Times] have refused to release information about which “lawyers” “concur” with the NY Times’ inaccurate description of the ruling.

We do know one of the NY Times sources—and he’s not a lawyer. Kaufman’s original article cites Josh Rosenau of the NCSE to wrongly claim that Selman struck down policies that single out evolution, which means that, unfortunately, the NCSE gave inaccurate information to the NY Times which has now been promulgated around the country.

My God! NCSErs under every rock!

Yes, I spoke to the reporter about this, and suggested that the Selman ruling spurred attempts to tie creationism in with other scientific notions found distasteful by conservatives. And I did suggest that it was the Selman ruling's emphasis on the isolation of evolution which gave impetus to that move. I still think that. Because I know that "isolate" and "single out" mean the same thing, and because I know that the purpose prong is followed by two others, and because the court found that isolating (or singling out!) evolution violated those other prongs in Cobb County, I'm comfortable saying that other courts may well find policies which single out evolution to be unconstitutional. But I'm not the lawyers that the Times contacted.

What's most disappointing is that, for all Casey's bluster in his blog post (and presumably the letter he sent to the Times), he knew he was wrong. He knew this because he wrote this about the Selman case in a 2009 law review article (p. 54):

While the sticker passed the purpose prong of the Lemon analysis, the judge ruled that the disclaimer failed the effect prong of the Lemon test. The court observed that “citizens around the country have been aware of the historical debate between evolution and religion.” The court found that the school district did not intend to endorse religion, but nonetheless “the Sticker sends a message to those who oppose evolution for religious reasons that they are favored members of the political community, while the Sticker sends a message to those who believe in evolution that they are political outsiders.” In this particular case, “the informed, reasonable observer would know that a significant number of Cobb County citizens had voiced opposition to the teaching of evolution for religious reasons” and “put pressure on the School Board to implement certain measures that would nevertheless dilute the teaching of evolution.” Although the district did not intend to endorse religion, “the informed, reasonable observer would perceive the School Board to be aligning itself with proponents of religious theories of origin.”

While Casey decided not to emphasize the decision's specific references to the effect of singling out evolution, he quoted language found all around those passages, so I presume he read those bits as well, and saw how the parts he's quoting here connect to the parts about isolating evolution. So we know that, within the last year, Casey has apparently read the ruling. He saw that the sticker failed the Lemon test, and why. He knows better, yet he keeps advancing a claim which he knows to be wrong. I cannot fathom why. The issue isn't even the dishonesty of haranguing reporters with meritless demands for a correction, but the massive FAIL embodied in trotting out the attempts by others to set him straight that I find so puzzling.

The Times reporter has no anti-Casey agenda. She just has an accurately-describe-reality agenda. And if that agenda happens to be anti-Casey, the problem is Casey's, not the reporter's.

Images:

"The Combat Look," p. 33 of The Disco Handbook.
Cobb County sticker, NCSE.
"Is Your Bathroom Breeding Bolsheviks?" poster reproduction, Northern Sun catalog.

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In which I begin to appreciate twitter and tangle with moral philosophy

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:37:40 -0800

When I started tweeting (@JoshRosenau), I was unconvinced. I'm already overwhelmed with silliness and interesting people writing interesting stuff, so why would I a) want to read more and b) want to restrict myself and others to 140 characters. And the character limit still grates, though I'm learning to have smaller ideas.

But what's nice about twitter is that it's a massive conversation across continents with the people you like chatting with. And the 140 character limit eliminates the throat-clearing and extended explanations that tend to come into contentious blog posts. You can link to that, or you can just say what you think and see whether anyone disagrees, and then reply if and when they do.

Fun.

So Daniel Loxton, who I met last summer at DragonCon and who edits Junior Skeptic magazine, has gotten some flack for writing a book about evolution in which he says that science and religion can be compatible, and kids should talk to their parents and trusted community leaders about how evolution fits into their own moral universe. This spawned a long comment thread at his blog, much of which was obnoxious, and an interesting set of exchanges on Twitter. For instance, he and Jim Lippard have been discussing whether everything useful ultimately has scientific basis, or if there are things outside of science. This is a central point in the ongoing blogwar over accommodationism, but perhaps thanks to the strictures of Twitter, the discussion stayed focused and seems to be getting somewhere. Loxton began by arguing:"[if metaphysics are in scope for science] then political theory must be in scope too. Everyone's pet peeve is in scope." Lippard countered by noting: "Facts & values aren't completely independent--science & ethics, science & politics, and science & law all overlap." After a few rounds, Lippard adds: "We start doing science w/extra-scientific background assumptions, & doing science can cause us to revise them."

I replied: "Values influence what scientific questions you ask, too. And policy comes from the interaction of evidence and values." The conversation continued a bit, then waned, then was picked up by SkepDude. After some back and forth in the same vein, SkepDude raised an interesting question that I throw out to the blogs as well: "I'll stick to my Hitcheneske [sic] challenge: Can you conceive of one moral principle/action that would not exist if not for science?"

This is nice, as it turns the common plaint of anti-accommodationists on its head. The request is often (to quote Larry Moran's recently discussed blog post): "offer up examples of knowledge gained by religion that are fully compatible with the scientific approach but couldn't have been derived from that approach alone." This always struck me as a loaded question, as it kinda begs the question. A theist might offer "God is love," or "Jesus is the son of God." The reply would be that these claims aren't verifiable scientifically, and various corollaries to them seem to contradict our scientific understanding of the world (massive suffering for the former, the Resurrection for the latter). We can argue about theodicy, and whether various theological approaches to the problem of evil leave a loving God as a viable option, and a lifetime of talking about religion convinces me that this discussion will not result in a theist conceding theodicy as insurmountable. But even if theodicy ultimately disproves a loving God, it doesn't disprove the core theological truth claim: "God exists." I don't know of anything that could do so, and Richard Dawkins and other anti-accommodationists have conceded that point as well.

There are other problems with the underlying notion of compatibilty implied by Moran's question, but that's for another post.

SkepDude's formulation corrects many of these flaws. If compatibility meant that the two produce identical outcomes, it would simply mean that one or the other was otiose. The test of whether things outside of science are compatible with science is whether the two produce distinct but non-contradictory (or, perhaps given that science is changing and inherently uncertain, minimally contradictory) results. So "do unto others as you would have then do unto you" works nicely as an example which fits Skepdude's framework. It's an idea which existed before science in pretty much all religious systems. Experiments in evolutionary game theory show reciprocal altruism of that sort to be stable strategies, but there are other stable strategies. To choose which strategy we follow, we need something more.

Religion is not the only source of that "something more" of course, but it is a source, and the choice, whatever its basis, is ultimately one made on extra-scientific grounds.

So what do you think of SkepDude's challenge? Is there a moral principle which would not exist but for science?

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WaPo: Down with pandas, up with octopus!

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 10:15:28 -0800

I can't say I disagree with these pro-octopus sentiments, though having a cheap and charismatic supergenius escape artist does not preclude having a panda too:

Washington needs a new animal celebrity, one more in line with our character, intellect, values and personality. We need to love and celebrate an animal that is more than a bamboo-eating ball of fur. We must end our cuteness dependence on China, for crying out loud.

Helloooo, giant Pacific octopus.

No, really, it makes perfect sense. …

When it feeds, it often slowly descends onto a coral, ballooning around it, then devouring any of the fish that try to swim away, trapped by its expansive embrace.

A Georgetown fundraiser, perhaps?

Our cephalopod of the moment arrived in a brown cardboard box from Vancouver via FedEx last month. …

Alan Peters, who has been the curator of the zoo's invertebrates exhibit since its opening 23 years ago.… "But the octopus, now that really is a charismatic, amazing animal."

Our octopus is just a three-pound, fist-sized youngster, and the zoo is still unsure of gender. But who cares if it's male or female, as long as we no longer have to deal with all those excruciating details of panda fertility? …

The octopus is actually a fascinating creature, less cute perhaps but far more cerebral than many other zoo inhabitants. Kind of like policy wonks.

They are the only invertebrate to have shown the ability to solve puzzles and mazes, and some scientists are pursuing the theory that their changing of colors and patterns is a complex language.

And an octopus has three hearts, just like some of our city's tireless nonprofit do-gooders. …

"Oh, they can be on T-shirts, mugs, key chains -- anywhere a panda can go," Peters begins to dream. He has never had an animal go that big.

Yes, please! I have no fewer than 8 cephalopod t-shirts, plenty of room for National Zoo swag. I'll come by to get my shirt in October during USA Science and Engineering Festival!

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In which I am misunderstood

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 01:05:15 -0800

Larry Moran is unhappy with me. This is fine; I knew that posting "On the need for grownups" would get people angry, and it did. I hoped it would spark some productive discussion, and it has, at least via email.

What bothers me is that the reasons Larry is upset seem to entirely misconstrue what I wrote:

Joshua Rosenau has fired another shot in the accommodationist war. As usual, he focuses more on rhetoric and mudslinging than on the logical arguments that are presented by both sides. In this case, he demeans all those who disagree with him in On the need for grownups [Updated]. Apparently, there are very few honest people on my side of the argument.
I'm not going to reply to Josh. He's gone beyond the pale as far as I'm concerned and no amount of rational argument is going to convince him that science and religion may not be compatible. His mind is firmly made up and now he's just making sure that his side gives out as many insults—perceived or real—as it receives.

A few things to note. My comments were not directed at the honesty of anyone involved. I don't think Larry is arguing for a position he does not believe, nor that PZ, or Jerry Coyne, or Ophelia Benson, or I, or Chris Mooney, or Matt Nisbet, or any other participant is defending a position that is not deeply held. I do think that dishonest arguments are being made, and I wish that would stop. But I think anything I said which demeans his side in the fight could be said also of my own. Just as I can offer some defense of my own bad actions, I don't doubt that Larry, et al. can defend themselves. My point was that this creates a cycle of insult and defense and retribution which is unproductive. I wanted to urge people to move past that cycle and behave in a manner better reflecting the maturity and intellect of the participants.

When I called for grownups, I wasn't saying that the participants aren't already grownups. In most areas of our lives, we all behave very differently that we have in this particular fight. I was recognizing that my own "side" is no better than the other in terms of grownup behavior, and I was hoping others would join in breaking that cycle. Maybe it'll work and maybe it won't. Maybe I'm the wrong messenger for that.

But Larry also raises a point that is worth considering on all sides. He asserts that "no amount of rational argument is going to convince [Josh] that science and religion may not be compatible." First, I don't feel like I've seen nearly enough rational argument, so much as I've seen emotional argument. (Again, from both sides.) Second, I'm comfortable with the possibility that the two might be incompatible (indeed, some religions are admittedly and obviously incompatible with science; others, to my eye, seem to be capable of compatibility). My objection is to the claim that all religions are inherently incompatible with science. Third, I wonder what rational argument would convince Larry that science and religion may be compatible. My guess is that the same is true of him that is true for me, which leads me to a broader and overarching consideration.

This is a point that John Wilkins raises quite nicely in reply to my original post, which is that questions about the compatibility of science and religion do not seem to be amenable to scientific testing. And as Larry's definition of science seems to be coextensive and indeed synonymous with rationality or rationalism, then maybe these questions can't be resolved via rational discourse.

If we were discussing this in person, I might precede that claim by enquiring first whether Larry thinks theology counts as rational argument. I expect that he'd say it isn't, holding out the need for empirical evidence as an input to the logical disputation. He might not put it exactly that way, but some version of this reference to empiricism is common enough in the versions of the conversation I've seen over the last few years that I don't think I'm unfair in assuming the conversation would get there eventually.

And that's when I'd ask what sort of empirical evidence exists regarding compatibility of science and religion. Larry's post lays out the reasons why he rejects the evidentiary value of millions of religious people who find their faiths compatible with science, nor the numerous churches who have policies against setting their faith in opposition to scientific evidence or against scientific processes. Others in Larry's camp have also argued against allowing such evidence. And let us simply accept the claim without haggling over the right and the wrong of these arguments (but reserve the right to take up the merits of the argument later).

Aside from looking at people, though, what evidence could there be about how science works or how religion works? Both are human enterprises. Science is a practice, a way of testing certain sorts of claims (at minimum) about the world. Religion is a practice as well. I cannot conceive of some Platonic ideal of either science or religion which operates independent of the context of humans thinking certain things and doing certain things. If we cannot use the evidence of how people do those things as evidence, then we are solidly into the realm of the untestable.

Which is fine. Lots of stuff goes on in that realm. Art is, to my mind, the least controversial to point out, but I think that preferences for one sports team over another and indeed for one sport over another also qualify. So do matters of national pride, not to mention system of government and economic systems. The choice of computer operating system, or programming language for software authors, is in this realm. So is which brand of knife a chef uses, and which kind of food and which food preparer one prefers. I tend to think religion fits nicely into this series, but as that's fairly central to the dispute at hand, we can set that aside for now.

This is not, of course, to say that evidence has no relevance to these matters. There are things which are genuinely easier in Perl than in C, and things which can be made to run faster by programming in C than in Perl. But there's no absolute standard by which to say that speed of operation is better for a given job than speed of programming. And programming is a craft, so sometimes it's considered better to do something the hard way than the easy way. Sometimes that self-imposed constraint is exactly what makes a good program great. There may be answers that are clearly wrong, but none that is definitely right.

In such circumstances, I try to apply the maxim: de gustibus non est disputandum (there's no disputing about tastes). This isn't to say you don't talk about them, but there's nothing gained by escalating discussion to dispute. My fiancée doesn't care to eat red meat, and while I occasionally try to tempt her with delicious bacon or a nice brisket, I do so knowing that I won't change her mind, and that actually trying to logic her into eating meat would only cause resentment. I hope the parallel to the current accommodationism fight is obvious.

And because the last post was so negative, let me say that folks like John Wilkins and John Lynch and Jason Rosenhouse and Sean Carroll have set good examples of discussing science and religion without (much) vitriol. I'd like to see other people (including myself) doing more of the same.

People will do what they want, of course. I'm not the king of the internet, and my feelings about what constitutes asshole behavior are also matters of taste. Disagree with me. My point is: if you treat me like an adult, I promise to do the same, and hopefully I'll do that anyway.

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Oscar scandals explained

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:40:49 -0800

If you were curious why Farah Fawcett and Bea Arthur and Ed McMahon were omitted from the In Memoriam section of the Oscars show, apparently Hollywood has discovered Wikipedia's notability requirement:

"I would not say that it was an oversight," Leslie Unger, spokeswoman for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, tells E! News. "No matter how carefully and how conscientiously people address who is included, there are people who just simply can't be."…

"In any given year there will always be some people that other people think should have been included and that there's more justification for one person versus another," says Unger. "It is impossible to include everybody." …

"Every year there are many difficult decisions that have to be made and not everybody who passed during the year can be included," says Unger. "That's the unfortunate reality."

Then again, her friends probably shouldn't have tried to explain why she deserved to be remembered. Says Craig Nevius, "Fawcett's close friend and producer of her documentary, Farrah's Story":

"She loved television, and she was primarily a star on TV, but she was also a star on stage and film. You know, how you can discount Extremities [which earned her a Globe nom for Best Actress in a Drama], The Apostle [which earned her an Independent Spirit nom for Best Supporting Actress] and Dr. T and the Women, I don't know.

How indeed? I didn't even remember that Fawcett was in The Apostle, but at least I knew it existed.

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On the need for grownups [Updated]

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 12:14:13 -0800

Attention conservation notice: This post should have been broken into about three parts, but it's written now and I don't care. Read it at your risk. Consists of points I've made before to little avail, thinly veiled disdain for people I respect, and cartoons.

As I've said before, reading anti-accommodationists is bad for the health and bad for the brain. It was a habit I kicked, and getting back to it, even slightly, has not been a cheering experience.

It reminds me of the reason I don't write about Israel/Palestine. One side commits some atrocity, and this leads the other side to commit its own atrocity, justifying it by pointing to the previous evil act. "Oh, no," says the first group, "we did that because of some earlier atrocity." And pretty soon you're arguing about who offered what in a private meeting between two dead people with no witnesses on a balcony in 1948. Sometimes you wind up debating who did what in the desert 5000 years ago. And the atrocities continue apace.

At the end of the day, you decide that all involved are assholes, and start wondering if it would be possible for them all to lose. Then you remember that it's the grownups who are assholes, and not all of them. There are children who need homes, and schools, there are quiet farmers and programmers and engineers who just want to build a society and raise families, and you realize that you can't throw your hands in the air and consign the whole mess to the ash heap. You need to find some way to fix the atrocious situation, and fuck the people standing in the way.

That greatest disanalogy between that and the accommodationism wars is that resolving Israel/Palestine affects people's daily lives in a measurable way. Sure, the atrocities in Israel and Palestine are greater than anything done by either side of the accommodationism wars (or the framing wars, or the various earlier iterations of this leading back through Gould and Ruse and Dawkins in the '80s, and on to Huxley and Darwin and Wilberforce if you like). But that's a matter of magnitude, not of substance. The difference of substance is that resolving the status of the Palestinian territories actually matters to the way real people live their lives every day, while resolving whether scientists should advocate against religion really doesn't.

Nonetheless, we've had our own version of the cycle of rhetoric so elegantly laid out by Tom Tomorrow above.

In the most recent iteration, we've had Chris Mooney winning a grant so he can write a book. In this day and age, any science writer or journalist of any stripe who can stay employed and be funded to do research deserves praise and congratulations. But because Mooney's funding comes from the John Templeton Foundation, a group dedicated to promoting a particular view on the compatibility of science and religion, that praiseworthy achievement has won opprobrium.

No, opprobrium is too gentle. It's won Chris yet another outpouring of bile. Apparently now it's "bribery" for a foundation to award grants to journalists. There's really no response possible to Coyne's rant except to post the Dinosaur comic above. People do a job and get paid for it. Coyne is paid in part by The New Republic, where his editor is among Chris's fellow fellows at Templeton. Is Coyne being bribed by getting money from a stooge of Templeton? Has bribery from the NIH silenced his criticism of NIH Director Collins? Might bribery be the wrong word to describe getting a grant?

And apparently now disagreeing with PZ about science and religion means you want to be religious, or perhaps to have an organic brain disorder.

I commented on the latter blog post, agreeing with others that it was a cheap shot and reminding PZ of his own wise words:

Don't fall for their subtle attempts to divide the unbelievers. Religious institutions would love to see atheists continually demonized, even by, especially by, agnostics. It furthers their ends, not ours. There is no meaningful division — we are all abandoning the old superstitions together.

Chris is an atheist. He's stated it publicly, and is now working with a secular humanist organization (producing a smart podcast on science issues for Center for Inquiry). When called on the cheap shot, PZ first replied: "Did you read Mooney's last book, Josh? It's a bit late to tell ME that I'm taking cheap shots." I left another comment, noting that two wrongs don't make a right, but got no reply.

Ophelia Benson picked up not on that post but on [a discussion of Chris's grant spawned in part by] Jerry Coyne's bribery charges. Not, alas, to chide Coyne for his absurd double standard, but to pile on Chris. The question she poses is whether "Chris Mooney is a man more sinned against than sinning."

Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe it's wrong to equate getting a grant with taking a bribe. Maybe it's wrong to demonize your critics just because they demonized you.

There's no question that lots of anti-accommodationists (née anti-framers, née New Atheists, née anti-NOMAists, née Huxleyans, etc.) got upset with Mooney and Kirshenbaum's treatment of them in Unscientific America. There were some genuine misstatements, some places where the book's excessive hunt for brevity led to the loss of needed nuance, and some places where Chris and Sheril have a different interpretation of events than the anti-accommodationists. The anger may have been justified (though I tend to think not). And they got their revenge. They panned the book in prominent settings (in reviews that misrepresented the book, FWIW), and mounted a deeply personal campaign against the authors. "The Colgate Twins" and "Mooneytits and Cockenbaum" are among the nicer nicknames they were given – names which add nothing to the discourse but vitriol. Ophelia is right that there were criticisms offered of their ideas as well, but the notion that their critics were focused only on the intellectual merits of the claims advanced in the book and at Chris's blog is laughable in its revisionism. Whoever started it, it's fair to say that Chris and Sheril have gotten their just desserts. Endlessly picking on them because they wrote a book, or criticized a book review before that, is unspeakably petty.

Ophelia argues (as PZ does implicitly as quoted above) that "Chris picked a fight." But the idea that he originated the fight is, again, patent revisionism. It's a fight that's raged for a long time. In my experience with the blogosphere, it got raunchy first with the publication of Dawkins' The God Delusion, in which NCSE and other groups willing to work across religious lines in defense of evolution are called "Neville Chamberlain evolutionists." It turns out, that phrase was itself a reference to an analogy offered 20 years earlier by Michael Ruse, in response to an earlier iteration of this war. I'm sure we can trace it back to the ancient Greeks without breaking a sweat.

But who cares? Who cares, first, who started it? What matters here, and in any similar escalating conflict, is who ends it. It won't stop overnight, but every time someone stands up to their compatriots and demands honorable behavior, it's a step toward a better day. It's good to see that commenters at PZ's blog are pointing out the obvious flaws in the logic and tactics of his declaration of war on Ken Miller (to whit, if a journalist chose not to present PZ's own kind words about Miller, might she also have omitted Miller's kind words about his atheist colleagues?). Thus far, PZ seems uninterested in replying to his internal critics, but it's a start. And likewise, I'll call out anyone on my side of the fence who I see stepping out of bounds.

And maybe, if we all do that, we can get back to a slightly more productive dialog about how best to encourage science literacy.

To start, we might talk about the merits of Daniel Loxton's new children's book about evolution. Loxton is a great guy, the editor of Junior Skeptic. In the course of his book, he suggests that kids with questions about the religious implications of evolution talk to their parents or a community leader. In other words, he acknowledges a common question about evolution, and declines to proselytize or in any way advocate for or against religion. In exchange, he's gotten a lot of grief.

The thing is, he's not wrong in saying that science can't answer kids questions about religion. And he's dead on in saying this:

Are the only two choices confrontation or dishonesty? Does being “a little bit nicer to religious people” necessarily entail a “compromise…for the sake of some kind of political expediency”?
I respectfully submit that the answer is “no.” It has long struck me as strange that atheists and religious fundamentalists share an assumption that atheism and acceptance of evolution are the same thing. This assumption is, at least in demographic terms, incorrect. Discussions about public attitudes toward evolution typically neglect a remarkable fact:

In North America, most of the people who accept evolution are religious.

And, I don’t mean by a small margin, either. We’re talking about an overwhelming majority. For decades, Americans who think “Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process” have consistently outnumbered those who think God had no part in evolution by margin of three to one (or more). Some of these theistic evolutionists subscribe to an Intelligent Design-type belief that is clearly not supported by the evidence, but many mean something altogether more metaphysical (such as the common Catholic idea that god infused immaterial souls into hominids at some point in human evolution, or the notion that all natural processes are divinely ordained).

Given that, I think we can confidently conclude that most people who say evolution is compatible with god say so, not for political expediency, but because this is what they believe.

Now it may be that those people are all wrong, that Francis Collins is wrong, and that Daniel's philosophical position (which I and many other nontheists share) is also wrong. But the solution is not to demand that Collins be fired, to attack Loxton for writing a book that states what he believes to be true, and to mock people who have a view of the world that is different in unfalsifiable ways from that of Richard Dawkins or PZ Myers. Having a discussion is fine, but the kneejerk accusations of dishonesty are not. It's not OK to do as PZ did, instantly asserting that it was written that way because:

speaking the truth on this matter — that science says your religion is false — is likely to get the book excluded from school libraries everywhere.

Daniel clearly doesn't think that science says every religion is false. It certainly falsifies particular claims of particular religions, but Daniel clearly does not think that this justifies the inference that science disproves all religion. And neither do I. And it is arrogant, dishonest, and irrational to impute base commercial or political motives whenever people write things you disagree with. Maybe they just disagree.

And if you aren't capable of having a civil conversation with people you disagree with, you have no warrant to present yourself as arbiter of "science in its purest form" (sorry Ophelia). If you want to be treated as defenders of rationality, then engage in rational discourse. Not namecalling (note here that David Heddle is dead-on in writing: "'accommodationists' is kind of like the 'colored people' or 'negro' version of the word faitheists"), not imputation of secret motives, not armchair psychology. Engage the argument, and denounce and marginalize people who can't engage in reasoned discourse. Is that so hard?

Updated to note (3/7, 2:00 am): Ophelia Benson correctly notes that her reply was not to Coyne's post about bribery, but to Sheril Kirshenbaum's post commenting on the response to Chris's grant, a response largely driven by Coyne's criticism and other comment spawned by it. In search of brevity I collapsed that causal chain, and regret having introduced imprecision at minimum or error and confusion at worst. My apologies to my readers and Ms. Benson; I've made some small changes in square brackets which I hope will clarify matters. I hope that this and any other errors or ambiguities present in this post will not be allowed to distract from its central message.

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Call a fleet of wahmbulances!

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:24:18 -0800

The Disco. 'Tute is displeased. Or perhaps not. They love attention, especially in a venue like the New York Times. But they hate having attention drawn to their agenda or the details of what they advocate. Thus, we get…

Shorter Disco.:

Yes we think AGW and evolution are bogus, but how dare people draw attention to our views!

Disco had started calling for a wahmbulance even before yesterday's front-page-above-the-fold article about efforts to link global warming with creationism. Then it got published, and the calls to whine-one-one started rolling in. "Oh my ZOMG," the pearl-clutching Seattleites wrote, "finally someone noticed that we dislike evolution and global warming with nearly equal passion, but why must they write stories about our efforts to link the two in state and local policies?"

Joining the cries from Disco. communication's staffer Rob Crowther and John West – the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture's head – newly returned fellow Jay Richards and Disco. club owner Bruce Chapman have weighed in. Chapman opens his post by writing:

Left wing ideology, the pursuit of government grants and the stifling of scientific dissent work together to hobble progress, reduce freedom and raise costs. Slowly people are going to figure it out. Support the right to scientific dissent, therefore, or give another weapon to Leviathan.
Unintentional assistance comes our way today from The New York Times.

And so forth. Indeed, to Chapman's eyes, the error the Times makes is not in linking denial of evolution and of global warming, but in not going further:

you can add to these two issues some other controversies in science, where a left wing elite, using the enormous financial resources and regulatory power of government, such as the EPA, the NIH and the National Science Foundations, seeks to suppress dissent from the reigning ideology. … opponents of embryonic stem cell research, as our Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith has written, often are either ignored or denigrated in academia and government. … the supposed scientific case for the philosophic idea that animals have "rights", sometimes rights superior to those of certain human beings (e.g., elderly people in comas, unborn children).…
The problem, therefore, is not (as the Times imagines) that some conservatives have noted such linkages, but that so many other conservatives, neo-conservatives and moderates are unable to connect the dots.

But then comes Richards at the blog of the AEI, which can be shortered:

(Image via).

Richards writes:

when I read anything on the environment in the New York Times, I try to keep a couple of deconstructionist qualifiers running in the back of my head: “This is what the New York Times wants me to believe about the issue” and “What are they trying to accomplish with this piece?”

After some dawdling, Richards lays out several claimed similarities between evolution and global warming, and several differences, and decries the Times attempt at linking the two. The goal, he insists is to "Divide and conquer skeptics of global warming orthodoxy and Darwinism, by painting the latter as ignorant religious zealots, in hopes of starting a fight among conservatives." Which sounds like exactly Richards' boss's desire in attacking his conservative pals who refuse to "connect the dots."

Time to prep a carpage unit! Mass grievances en route.

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Which scientists are being persecuted?

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 20:42:08 -0800

James Hrynyshyn has a great response to John West's quote in today's New York Times article on creationism and global warming:

Any efforts to ensure science education is "balanced," in any subject, must be accompanied by reassurances that science classes will stick to science, and not embrace misinformation from ideological or religious think tanks masquerading as proponents of science.

How can one tell the difference? It can be challenging for dilettantes not familiar with doing a little work. For example, when John West of Seattle's creationist Discovery Institute says things like this:

"There is a lot of similar dogmatism on this issue," he said, "with scientists being persecuted for findings that are not in keeping with the orthodoxy. We think analyzing and evaluating scientific evidence is a good thing, whether that is about global warming or evolution."

...it's critical that anyone unfamiliar with recent events do a little sincere research. Then they'd discover that the only climatologists being persecuted these days are those who accept the basics of anthropogenic global warming. From the Guardian:

Rick Piltz, a former official in the US government climate science programme who now runs the Climate Science Watch website, said Inhofe and others were getting in the way of scientific work. "Scientists who are working in federal labs are being subjected to inquisitions coming from Congress," he said. "There is no question that this is an orchestrated campaign to intimidate scientists."
Michael Mann, a scientist at Penn State University who is on Inhofe's list of 17, said that he had seen a sharp rise in hostile email since November.

"Some of the emails make thinly veiled threats of violence against me and even my family, and law enforcement authorities have been made aware of the matter," he told the Guardian.

He said the attacks appeared to be a co-ordinated effort. "Some of them look cut-and-paste."

Or this from The Climate Daily:

The e-mails come thick and fast every time NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt appears in the press.
Rude and crass e-mails. E-mails calling him a fraud, a cheat, a scumbag and much worse.

To Schmidt and other researchers purging their inboxes daily of such correspondence, the barrage is simply part of the job of being a climate scientist. But others see the messages as threats and intimidation - cyber-bullying meant to shut down debate and cow scientists into limiting their participation in the public discourse.

"I get a lot of hate mail," said Schmidt, a climate modeler at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies who also runs RealClimate.org, a website devoted to debunking myths and errors about climate change. "I get a lot of praise mail, but pretty much every time I have a quote in a mainstream publication I'll get a string of emails from various people accusing me of various misdemeanors and fantasizing about my life in prison."

Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, has a 19-page document of "extremely foul, nasty, abusive" e-mails he's received just since November.

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A conundrum about evolution acceptance

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 18:50:31 -0800

Looking through the raw data from Pew's surveys on science from last summer, I cannot make heads or tails of certain findings.

I started out looking at the correlation between rejection of evolution and rejection of global warming. As one would expect, it was significant. But the survey handily also asked not just about people's personal belief regarding these sciences, but also their beliefs about the views of the scientific community. And again, people who think scientists reject evolution are more likely to think scientists reject global warming.

Then I got interested in whether people who think evolution is rejected by scientists also personally reject it, and that's where things get odd.

Here's the table from R:

		Do scientists agree that humans evolved over time?
		No	Don't know	Yes
Humans and other living things have/have not evolved over time	Have not	294	76	251
	Don't know	40	62	49
	Have	249	103	877

You'd expect all the responses to be grouped along the diagonal, with people who know scientists accept evolution also accepting it themselves, those who think scientists rejecting evolution rejecting it themselves, and maybe some spread among people who don't know or refuse to answer one question or the other.

Instead, the vast majority of people who accept evolution know that scientists do as well (and vice versa). The "don't know" answers are distributed remarkably uniformly, as are the answers from people who either personally reject evolution or who think scientists do.

To a degree, this makes sense. Lots of creationists know evolution is well-supported by scientists. They think the scientists are wrong, biased as they are by evil sciency things. I suppose it even makes sense that creationists should be equally likely to think scientists accept or reject evolution, though the nearly identical numbers in those cells are surprising.

What makes no sense is that, among people think who think scientists reject evolution, equal numbers personally accept and reject the science. If you think scientists dispute the claim, why would you accept it?

The only explanation I can conceive is that people in the survey were choosing answers somewhat at random, or at least with no clear conception of what they were answering. And surely all the clueless people too proud to say "don't know" didn't choose the same combination of answers. So how many people from other groups should be moved into the don't know column? If we assume they distributed randomly, it requires us to take 249 from each other group, leaving 2 people agreeing that scientists back evolution but who disagree personally, which is clearly too small. And reducing the group who reject evolution and think scientists do too to a mere 45 people doesn't seem reasonable. Perhaps this difference is driven partly by a slight asymmetry in the questions, where people are asked about scientists' views on the evolution of humanity, while they are asked their own views about humans and other living things. Acceptance for evolution of non-humans generally runs higher than acceptance of evolution alone, but simply mentioning human evolution should get people's dander up either way.

My guess is that most people haven't got carefully reasoned opinions about the issue. Most know that scientists back evolution, and so they back it as well. Outside that group who back the scientific consensus, there's no particular coherence. And maybe that's an important enough lesson, but I'd like a bit more. I'm checking with Pew for clarification, but thoughts from readers in the comments are welcome.

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