On doubt.

I am a scientist. I am unable to separate the doubting part of my scientist training from the rest of my daily life. Take this little anecdote:

When my son was about 9 months old, Mrs. Factician was playing with some little plastic animals on the coffee table with him. When she said, "Where is the giraffe?" he reached for the giraffe. We were astounded (he was 9 months old, mind you, and hadn't shown an indication that he knew which animal was which prior to this point). She put the animal back, and asked him again, "Where is the giraffe?". Again, he picked up the giraffe.

Mrs. Factician and I started to talk about this. She was of the opinion that he had now learned which animal was the giraffe.

I was a bit more skeptical (perhaps not a good thing for a father, to be skeptical of his son, but like I said, I am unable to turn off doubt when I go home from the lab).

So I tested him. I moved the animals around. "Where is the giraffe?". Again, he reached for the giraffe. Wow, 9 months and he's already demonstrated an ability to identify animals. I was absolutely floored. Every test so far had shown that he could identify the giraffe. But still, I had nagging doubt.

I moved the animals around again. "Ok, now where is the monkey?" He reached for the giraffe. He hadn't identified it with the sound "giraffe" at all. A few repeats of the experiment verified it. The giraffe was merely his favourite animal. It would be weeks still until he positively understood the word "giraffe".

A scientist's life is like this. Constant doubt. Constant testing. Constant experimentation with appropriate controls. Re-evaluating old data. Talking about experiments with other scientists.

The new movie "Expelled" will try to make the point that we have stopped testing evolution by natural selection, and have (as scientists) accepted it as some gospel truth. This is total and complete nonsense. We have continued to doubt it, to test it, and to run experiments with controls. But every test, for over 150 years, has come back confirming that evolution by natural selection is true. That's a boatload of data. That's an amazing amount of confirmation.

While it remains possible that there is another, better explanation, but data suggesting that has not been forthcoming. For now, evolution by natural selection is the best description of the data.

What can one blogger do?

Whenever I feel powerless to change anything, something like this comes along. I can help put Expelled high in the rankings. And get some real information out there. As Carl Sagan says:

"Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time ... when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstitions and darkness."

A creationist, a scientist and a lawyer walk into a bar...

Go here for the punchline. This just cries out for massive linkage.

Waterloo!

Expelled, the Musical is about to hit theaters! In theaters across the country! Well, in a few theaters. This has inspired creationist mathematician and philosopher William Dembski to fire up his prognostication machine!

Hmmm... try these predictions on for size.

A controversial documentary set for release nationwide April 18 could foster a cultural shift "equivalent to the fall of the Berlin Wall," says William Dembski, research professor of philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Wow! The fall of the Berlin Wall, that's huge! Bill Dembski has a long run of predictions. He made a prediction during the trial in Dover, Pennsylvania. What did he say about that?

As a consequence, this [court] case really could be a Waterloo for the other side.

Waterloo! Berlin Wall! Hmmm... He might do well to read a little more Twain:

The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

Mr. Dembski, please get back to work, and publish some papers that have data in them. Really. Movies and court cases don't make creationism intelligent design a science. Data, Mr. Dembski. Data. If you're interested in what it looks like, try this little search on evolution.

Expelled, the musical!

Okay, this deserves all kinds of linkage. It contains humiliation! Armed guards! Nazis! (No, really, it contains Nazis. Well, it contains footage of Nazis). The makers of the pseudo-scientific "Expelled" movie tossed PZ Myers out of the movie (and he's even a subject in the movie!). Or, rather, they Expelled him. Oh the irony! Very funny! Read it! Link it! This deserves to be widely read!

Oklahoma turns to relativistic, post-modern theocracy

The Oklahoma state legislature is in the process of passing a bill that codifies a student's right to remain ignorant - so long as they have a religious reason for doing so.

From ERV:

The bill requires public schools to guarantee students the right to express their religious viewpoints in a public forum, in class, in homework and in other ways without being penalized. If a student’s religious beliefs were in conflict with scientific theory, and the student chose to express those beliefs rather than explain the theory in response to an exam question, the student’s incorrect response would be deemed satisfactory, according to this bill.

Yow. So as long as you say your God told you that 1 + 1 = 3, you get to have the right answer.

From the actual text of the bill, HB2211:

Students may express their beliefs about religion in homework, artwork, and other written and oral assignments free from discrimination based on the religious content of their submissions. Homework and classroom assignments shall be judged by ordinary academic standards of substance and relevance and against other legitimate pedagogical concerns identified by the school district. Students shall not be penalized or rewarded on account of the religious content of their work. (my bold)

I think Oklahoma's in for some good, old-fashioned grade inflation.

"No, all of my answers on all of my tests are divinely inspired. I get an A+"

I can't wait until some Buddhists, Sikhs and Rastafarians sue for their right under this law to answer their own creation stories in science class. I find this bill *very* funny.

Clearly, the good Oklahoma Legislature isn't busy with anything important.

Teach the controversy!

It's a conspiracy!

I must blog!

xkcd nails it again.

No one reads Uncommon Descent?

ERV has said in the past that no one reads Uncommon Descent, the blathering creationist website of creationist William Dembski.

Well, turns out there's some good stuff to be read there, if only by the sockpuppets from AtBC:

Thank you, Dr. Dembski. You are without peer when it comes to The Argument Regarding Design.

Fabulously well done! Head over there and read the confessions of a sockpuppet.

Creationist breaks another commandment

Bill Dembski, creationist-at-large, has broken yet another biblical commandment:

Exodus 20:17 "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that [is] thy neighbour's."

Turns out, Dembski has coveted his neighbor's ass. Or rather, he's coveted Richard Dawkins' rather large book payment:

Dawkins Cashes in on Darwin’s Upcoming Bicentennial William Dembski

The same publisher that brought you DARWIN’S BLACK BOX and THE EDGE OF EVOLUTION (i.e., The Free Press) is paying Richard Dawkins $3.5million for his next book, to be titled ONLY A THEORY? I’m told, however, that other titles are still in the running, including

MERELY A HYPOTHESIS
MERE DARWINISM (this and the last to attract fans of C. S. Lewis)
THE NADIR OF SCIENCE
DARWIN’S DEAD IDEA
EVOLUTION: THE ILLUSION OF POSSIBILITY
DARWINISM DEVOLVING
EVOLUTION: THE SENESCENT YEARS

$3.5million is a lot of money. The question I have is whether Dawkins still worships exclusively in the temple of Darwin or if he now also attends services at the temple of Mammon.

I don't know about you, but Willie Dembski sounds a little jealous. Good thing he's a righteous chap, and doesn't sell his pseudoscience books for cash. Nope, he's just a humble professor. Interesting he never publishes in academic journals, but focuses all his efforts on selling books. But, he would never stoop to trying to tie his books to a movie to increase sales. Indeed, he's not interested in money at all.

Hypocrite.

Hollow Earthers.

From Cectic.

National Academies and Evolution

The National Academies of Science of the US has just released yet another report about evolution. Keep in mind here, the National Academies members are the best scientists in the world. You get invited to join the National Academies after a long and distinguished career as a scientist. Their reports tend to be on the heavy side.

This report is written for regular folks. It's an introduction to evolution in no uncertain terms, and it also blasts creationists:

In the United States, various views of creationism typically have been promoted by small groups of politically active religious fundamentalists who believe that only a supernatural entity could account for the physical changes in the universe and for the biological diversity of life on Earth. But even these creationists hold very different views. Some, known as “young Earth” creationists, believe the biblical account that the universe and the Earth were created just a few thousand years ago. Proponents of this form of creationism also believe that all living things, including humans, were created in a very short period of time in essentially the forms in which they exist today. Other creationists,known as “old Earth” creationists, accept that the Earth may be very old but reject other scientific findings regarding the evolution of living things.

No scientific evidence supports these viewpoints. On the contrary, as discussed earlier, several independent lines of evidence indicate that the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old and that the universe is about 14 billion years old. Rejecting the evidence for these age estimates would mean rejecting not just biological evolution but also fundamental discoveries of modern physics, chemistry, astrophysics, and geology.

Some creationists believe that Earth’s present form and the distribution of fossils can be explained by a worldwide flood. But this claim also is at odds with observations and evidence understood scientifically. The belief that Earth’s sediments, with their fossils, were deposited in a short period does not accord either with the known processes of sedimentation or with the estimated volume of water needed to deposit sediments on the top of some of Earth’s highest mountains.

Well said.

The report is well-written, and well placed. (And is clearly intended to mollify believers that there needn't be any conflict between science and faith). But this is probably a good choice on the part of the National Academies, as clearly their intent is to improve American science education:

The pressure to downplay evolution or emphasize nonscientific alternatives in public schools compromises science education.

This is the central point of the report. So go ahead. Download a copy of the report yourself (you need only provide them with your e-mail address). Send it to the members of your school board. Send it to your creationist aunt. Share it. Get it out there.

Do sciences start first as "proto-sciences"?

A quote from The Design Matrix:

I should make it explicitly clear from the start that I did not write this book to help those seeking to change the way we teach science to our kids. I do not argue that design deserves to be known as science. At best, Intelligent Design may only be a nascent proto-science [my bold] and thus does not belong in the public school curriculum.

Proto. i.e. primordial. Primordial science. He makes it sound like sciences evolve from being "proto-sciences" to being real sciences. Did molecular biology start out this way? Were Watson and Crick just a couple of guys talking out of their butts for years prior to discovering the structure of DNA? Were Meselson and Stahl pushing to have the method of DNA replication taught in schools for decades prior to their actual discovery? Did Hamilton Smith talk about restriction enzymes in Sunday School 20 years prior to his discovery?

The answer to all these questions is no. New sciences don't evolve out of philosophy or religious studies or a bunch of guys in a garage shooting the shit for decades. New sciences evolve out of old sciences. New experiments done using novel techniques that get at new answers. Molecular biology evolved out of biology and chemistry and physics. Synthetic biology is evolving out of genomics and molecular biology. These are people who are working *hard* to do experiments.

Intelligent design has none of this. cdesign proponentsists don't propose experiments. They don't do experiments. They don't answer anything. They write books. That's it. At best, creationism intelligent design is a sloppy, poorly thought out philosophy. It is not science. It is not a "proto-science".

The Design of Life - by William Dembski

The Parable of the Ichthropic Principle

I found this while scanning the internets, and thought I would share:

The Parable of the Ichthropic Principle

Sixty meters underground, a river used to run through the limestone of the Mexican state of Oaxaca. Because the limestone was uneven in density and porosity, the river carved an irregular channel, widening and contracting. Eventually, over a very long period of time, the surface of the land above underwent changes resulting from diminished rainfall. As the volume of water draining through the underground river decreased, the channel it had carved became a cave. Nonetheless, a trickle of rain still flowed through cracks and crevices, enough to maintain stable pools of fresh water in the lightless depths.

In one such pool lived a small school of fish of the family Characidae. Characids are an adaptable group, occupying many ecological niches of the planet Earth. The characids of this geologically isolated pool had several distinctive adaptations, the most unusual being that they were eyeless. Thus we can identify them henceforth as blind cave fish. Lacking sight, the blind cave fish were well equipped to detect vibrations of any sort through the sensory cells of their lateral lines, which was how they foraged for food as well as how they located each other for mating purposes. Fortunately, water is a superb transmitter of vibrations. Greater self-awareness would not have been adaptive in the bleak conditions of their pool, but if they'd possessed it, they would have had no reason to suppose that any other characids inhabited any other pool in this or any other cave, or indeed that any other pool in any other cave was inhabitable.

The blind cave fish had two rigid requirements for survival--oxygen and food. The oxygen in the pool was maintained at roughly the level they required by the dependable trickle of rain which replenished the loss of water through the porous limestone bed of the pool. Also, the water was cold--a constant forty-one degrees Fahrenheit--which of course allowed maximal oxygenation. Although the fish had no "knowledge" of it, a grave danger to their survival existed in two kinds of pollution: nitrates from their own metabolic waste products, and gradual mineralization from the influx of acid rain water seeping through the soil. Periodically, however, drenching storms would flood the land, refilling the underground river channel and flushing the pool. Most of the blind cave fish would be swept away to an uncertain fate, but enough would survive to rebuild their population. Even the most catastrophic flushing would not decimate them, since their eggs, which were adhesive, were always laid in protected chinks and cracks. Had the floor of the pool been smooth, or had the flooding carried other menaces into their cave, no doubt the blind cave fish couldn't have thrived as they did. It should be noted that the thick layers of rock above, which shielded them from hot sunlight, also shielded them from ultra-violet and other forms of radiation that might have threatened their survival.

The blind cave fish were dependent for their nutrition on another intricate and improbable set of circumstances. Since no light whatsoever penetrated the cavern, no photosynthesizing plants or algae could flourish. Nonetheless, populations of microbes and nearly microscopic arthropods shared the pool. These were the food source upon which the blind cave fish depended, though they supplemented their diet by scavenging the corpses of their own dead. In turn the arthropods and microbes were dependent on bat droppings for 100% of their nutrients. The bats, in huge numbers, infested a large dry cavern of the same cave. The only above-water outlet from their cavern to the fresh air above passed through the grotto of the pool, the ceiling of which was too encrusted with stalactites to attract bats to nest. Thus the quantity of guano the bats dropped in flight was always enough to sustain the pool's organisms yet never enough to poison the water.

The blind cave fish were by far the largest and most metabolically active of these aquatic creatures. Having neither predators nor competition, they had ample reason to be happy with their lives--that is, had they had enough self-awareness to exhibit happiness--since each and every condition of their environment seemed specifically suitable to their needs, while any variation of those conditions would have made their life impossible. Indeed, the conditions in which they subsisted were so random yet so improbably assembled that it must have seemed to the fish--again granting them the self-awareness to consider probabilities--that the pool had been designed to provide for their existence.

Allowing them just a bit more rationality than they truly possessed, logic would surely have suggested to the blind cave fish that where there is design, there must be a designer. No matter how much intellect we attribute to our three-inch long albino eyeless characids, however, it's clear they had no means of fathoming the nature of the designer, unless it were itself an inscrutable but omnipotent blind cave fish.

Do you suppose the Disco Institute will pay?

Do you suppose the Discovery Institute will offer to pay the legal fees of the teachers who take their advice?

The Dover decision was not appealed, and so it is not a binding legal precedent anywhere outside of the Dover school district.

Wow.

It seems they're inciting schools to test the legal waters. Would you be willing to bet a million dollars on the Disco Institute's legal advice?

Judgment Day on NOVA

This show was fantastic. It's a look into the trial of Kitzmiller v. Dover School Board, and all the politics, religion and science that went into the trial. For anyone who missed the story, the school board in Dover, Pennsylvania tried to insert a disclaimer into science classes saying that evolution was "just a theory" and that they should look to the book Pandas and People (a creationist text) for alternative "theories".

You can watch the whole documentary here.

Do watch it, but keep this one, teeny, tiny complaint in mind. They present some of the science as if we've just recently sewn up the theory of evolution. Not true. It's been pretty clear that the theory of evolution is the best description for the origin of species on earth for decades. Recent data is just re-confirming the theory of evolution by natural selection over and over and over coming in from completely new angles (i.e. the mountain of data in support of evolution is just getting even more massive). Anyway, watch it, you'll be glad you did.

The creationists still don't get it.

Uncommon Descent is trumpeting the release of another book. They still don't get it:

Critics, in dismissing The Design of Life, contend that intelligent design has collapsed in the wake of the 2005 Dover trial. Author William Dembski responded, “Those same people have been announcing intelligent design’s demise every year since 1990. Strangle it as they might, intelligent design just won’t die. The Design of Life shows why the better arguments and stronger evidence are now on the intelligent design side.” According to FTE president Jon Buell, The Design of Life is not intended for high school students; it is aimed rather at college/university students and adults who want a clearer understanding of why a growing number of scientists doubt Darwin.

But... But...

They couldn't get scientists to take them seriously by writing books for high school kids, so they're going to write books for college kids? This is the approach that they want to take? Oy.

This is the reason scientists don't take them seriously. This is it, folks. If you've never heard it before, this is why. They're not engaging scientists. They're not doing experiments. They aren't testing hypotheses. They aren't writing papers for scientists. They aren't trying to change scientists' minds. They're writing books for kids. (Writing books for kids is important for the future of science, mind you, but it's not where paradigms are upset).

I think it's worth highlighting what stevestory wrote today at AtBC:

On some imaginary day in the future when I have a lot of free time, I'm going to write a long essay contrasting the basic features of scientific revolutions with those of fraudulent pseudoscience. I've read quite a bit about scientific revolutions, from Relativity to H. Pylori to The Barker Hypothesis, and a fair amount about quackery. In the meantime, here's the summary:

Revolutionary Science:
*(Usually) Expert in the field has great idea
*Expert faces lots of hostility and even gets papers rejected
*Expert works hard to gather more data or convince community
*In a few years community rapidly converts
*Tons and tons of normal science is made possible and done in a few short years

Quackery:
(Usually) Non-Expert has idea
*Non-Expert faces lots of hostility and gets papers rejected
*Non-Expert babbles for a long time, no one is convinced
*Non-Expert figures out a way to sucker a bunch of laymen, and claims conspiracy
*Years go by, the scientific community's still not remotely convinced
*No normal science is made possible by quack idea

anybody familiar with science can tell which one ID resembles.

Update:

Mister DNA writes:

I get such a Pinky and the Brain vibe from IDiots. Their plans to defeat Evilution/Darwinism/Materialism never involve something like... oh, I dunno... research; it's always:

1) This press release will be the death of Darwinism!

2) We'll let 9th Grade biology students decide!

3) The mere existence of this "lab" will be a crushing defeat for materialism; we won't even need to do any research! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!one!eleventy!

4) As this flash animation demonstrates, judges aren't qualified to rule on whether or not ID is science.

Judgment Day - Terminator 4

This PBS documentary about the Dover Intelligent Design lawsuit will be showing on PBS next Tuesday at 8. The preview seems a little over the top (the voiceover makes it sound like we'll be seeing a giant man-eating Dembski-robot shooting flames out of his mouth all over the city of Dover). But the show should prove entertaining. Fire up your TiVo.

What is their problem?

This is a quick post to plug ERV's latest post: "The Discovery Institute LOATHES smart college students". What I find the most relevant portion is highlighted below:

These supposed 'professionals' act nothing like real professionals. Though behind-the-scenes mentoring might not be intuitive to a layman, the actions exhibited by professional organizations should be. When is the last time you saw the American Physical Therapy Association release an official rebuttal of a college students opinion piece on her half-marathon training in her college newspaper1? Does Aaron Beck respond to his critics in a sexist, condescending manner on his 'Amazon blog'2? Does Sigma Xi send PR reps after students who critique the activities of a professor who happens to be a Sigma Xi member3??

The Discovery Institute, a group of grown men desperately wanting to be taken seriously as 'scientists', has engaged in all of those behaviors in the past six months. What the hell is their problem??

Indeed. What is their problem? Why don't they engage us in practicing science?