Ok, that's funny, and I like the reference to Denise Richards' most unconvincing protrayal of a scientist ever.
And I understand the immense appeal of bashing the right with their support for ID. When your opponent's base has off-kilter views, you have to force the contradictions! Were I Ted Turner, (or non-insane media magnate with Ted Turner's basic beliefs) I'd have TNN replaying "Inherit the Wind" 24/7.
But seriously, is anyone really concerned that intelligent design is going to impede American dominance of science and economic competitiveness? Three points:
1. Like anyone in an American high school is learning anything anyway. Please. We are ahead of the game if they can do algebra.
2. Compartmentalization is real. Let me repeat. Most people -- indeed, most engineers, cell-biologists, computer programmers and entrepreneurs -- believe some obviously goofy stuff. This impacts their ability to function as rational actors in their chosen disciplines not at all. 80% of the population of Cambridge Mass probably thinks that rent control is a viable way to ensure a good low-income housing supply, and we manage to staff our biotechs
3. ID is remote from concerns that would actually effect the function of science. Even if the US public school system turns into a 100% efficient propaganda machine and all seniors believe that the flagellum is "irreducibly complex," how precisely, is this going to effect their ability to run a western blot?
80% of the population of Cambridge Mass probably thinks that rent control is a viable way to ensure a good low-income housing supply, and we manage to staff our biotechs
Ok, that's funny. And of course someone can believe in intelligent design and still be a great coder or engineer. The problem is that ID is part of a world-view that devalues science as such, and the people who hold that world-view are part of a political movement that frames every factual dispute as a political dispute. Put those together and put those people in power and you have a culture that doesn't hold much promise of making science a priority. The harms aren't hypothetical or in the future. We know that EPA reports have been re-written to jibe with the administration's agenda, and that crap about abortions causing breast cancer is part of official propaganda.
And, this just makes it embarrassing to be an American.
This impacts their ability to function as rational actors in their chosen disciplines not at all.
ID is remote from concerns that would actually effect the function of science. Even if the US public school system turns into a 100% efficient propaganda machine and all seniors believe that the flagellum is "irreducibly complex," how precisely, is this going to effect their ability to run a western blot?
Someone who can't tell the difference between a logical argument and bullshit is handicapped in learning new things. If we teach children that bullshit like ID is valid argument, to the extent that they believe us, they become unable to distinguish valid argument from bullshit in the future.
Like anyone in an American high school is learning anything anyway. Please. We are ahead of the game if they can do algebra.
What a repulsively elitist thing to say -- American high school students are all such morons it doesn't matter if we tell them lies? Why not shut down all the schools -- book-larnin never did no one no good nohow?
It wasn't a million years ago -- in fact, it was not quite ten years ago -- that the shoes were on the other feet. Leftier people were very mad at Dow Corning over the allegations that breast implants (which a horrible patriarchy imposes on women) cause connective tissue disease. There was no good science to support this thesis, and Republicans, who saw a good corporate citizen besieged by tortious torture, decried junk science and cheered Marcia Angell on as she pointed it out.
baa, people like the student who informed her professor that she was not allowed to learn about evolution--this at a reputable post-secondary institution--are not going to be making great contributions to biological science. I mean, maybe she'll be able to run a Western blot, in the sense that she'll be able to pour the relevant reagents in and record what's on the paper (or whatever it is, I sure can't do it myself), but maybe total and complete fucking rejection of the scientific method would impair her ability to work. I'm just saying. And ID involves total and complete fucking rejection of the scientific method--we're not talking creationism, we're talking concluding that science supports conclusions that it does not in fact support (and vice versa). Which takes care of point 2--those people aren't economists, are they?
And as for point 1, I think that's largely bullshit, but even if it isn't we should avoid filling high-school students' minds with things that will actively prevent them from learning anything in the future. If I were teaching Civil War history, I'd much rather have students who'd never heard of the Civil War than students who'd been filled with all that bullshit about how the South wasn't trying to defend slavery but states' rights.
As has been observed elsewhere, a lot of the real damage here comes from the anti-science attitude that the ID proponents are instilling. ID means: We must reject facts about biology that every reputable biologist believes. Not much of a step to: We must reject facts about climate science that every reputable climate scientist believes. Etc. But, you know, this is going to hurt our science competitiveness in the long run. If you raise up a generation of kids to think that crackpots are just as good as scientists, it seems likely that the crackpots are going to get a share of the funding, and that means less for the scientists.
You know I like you, baa, but is there anything your Republican allies do that you won't defend?
Not all leftier people. This leftier person thought the implant witch hunt was stupid and political.
But you could make a case that embracing ID will turn off some of the foreign brains that might otherwise be attracted to our country. Sure it may not be a huge factor, but put it along with the other baggage associated with the ID believer and it all adds up.
It does, in fact, matter that the Republican party is becoming increasingly anti-science. The decision to ignore scientific fact in favor of stroking the base has had an increasingly deleterious effect on a host of issues ranging from the environment to medical research to reproductive rights.
Nor do I think it trivial that the president and, apparently, much of his party thinks it's a nice idea to dramatically shrink the size of the set of American students qualified to become doctors, biologists, and medical researchers.
And for the record, it's stupid, ignorant and elitist to blithely make the claim that "[no one] in an American high school is learning anything anyway."
it's stupid, ignorant and elitist to blithely make the claim that "[no one] in an American high school is learning anything anyway."
Yes, it is, but I assumed it was just baa feeling bored and poking a stick into the hornets' nest of sweet reason that is the Unfogged comments section.
While the theoretical case agaisnt the effectiveness of rent control is quite solid and Posner once put it into an opinion basically for fun (it demonstrably had no effect on the ruling), my understanding is that the empirical evidence is surprisingly mixed about whether or not it actually reduces the housing stock available to people with low-incomes. I do not have a cite for this claim at this time, and I know I should provide one if I want it to be believed.
Well, yes. What does he think, that there's a conspiracy among biologists not to research testable hypotheses produced by ID theorists, or to prevent the results of such research from being published? Saletan implies that liberals, or biologists, or some kind of closed-minded villians are shutting ID out of access to scientific validation. This is nonsense -- the reason that ID isn't an area of scientific (rather than political) controversy is that there's nothing to test about it. If there were, it would be getting tested.
Saletan is completely goofy on this issue, and on most politics-of-science issues, which is what makes it utterly tragic that all he writes on now is politics of science. Did you see the harebrained piece he wrote on how Bill Frist is now pro-choice because he supports some stem cell research?
Saletan misses the point of ID. It's not that ID is a retreat. It's a second attack. A decade ago nobody was talking about teaching young-earth creationism next to evolution because it was flat-out absurd: God making the world in six days doesn't even smell like science. ID is creationism repackaged to look more like science, sure, but that doesn't make ID a concession from creationists - that makes it a trojan horse. The very fact that creationists are pushing ID now in a way that they weren't pushing young-earth creationism a couple years ago shows these people are far from backing off.
Saletan provides, as far as I can tell, no evidence for the central proposition of his article, namely ID, "accepts falsification, not authority, as the ultimate test." The only falsifiable statements that ID theory makes (AFAIK) are of the form "There is not yet a satisfactory evolutionary explanation for X, therefore design." That's not the kind of falsifiable claims we're normally talking about.
My point is that the level of cognitive harm will depend on just what's in the curriculum, and that question isn't answered by saying "ID's in."
I disagree. The very phrase, "Intelligent Design," presupposes an Intellect, vast (& c & u if you like the Old Testament, & w & s if you're more at home in the New) enough to have Designed the universe. This assumes facts not in evidence. And assuming facts not in evidence is diametrically opposite to the procedures of science.
But Labs, you're assuming that nothing changes except the introduction of some ID. In that case, of course there's no harm. Look, maybe there aren't people in this country that wants things to be basically theocratic, and maybe those people don't have the support of the party in power, but, if they do, then ID is just a foot in the door, which is why it upsets people so much.
1. believe it or not my comment has little to do with defending "what my republican allies want" -- it's just making the point that the effect that teaching Intelligent Design, bogus as it may be, would have on American economic competitiveness is minimal.
2. I suppose one could read my "comment one" as the claim that most people are natural slaves. Alternately, one could think that of the 99 problems one could legitimately have with the way in which American highschools are preparing kids for the workplace of tomorrow, ID ain't one. That's my view.
2a. Stupid, ignorant, and elitist. If I am also a hemophiliac, does this mean I am a Romanoff?
3. If the problem is the "anti-science attitudes," then fine, count me four-square against anti-science attitudes, the promulgation thereof, and people in power who cynically twist science to further their political aims. But in the grand panolply of programs that instill an anti-science attitude, ID is a weird candidate, mainly because it functions at this immense philosophical remove from the actual conduct of science. ID seems to me like a (bogus) life science analog of the "physical constants are fine-tuned for life" argument in physics. Say you are a scientist who believes in ID: how does this actually change your condut of science? It's hard to see how, right? That's why it's not science: at best, it's some unfalsifiable philosophy of science mumbo jumbo.
And of course slolerner's 10 is right: willingness to twist science (or, if you'd like, facts) to suit a political view is an failing that has no one home on the political spectrum.
SL: really? So you think it's just as harmful to teach the very weirdest thing that goes by the name of ID (something close to Young Earth Creationism) as to teach a view that says:
Evolution can explain everything after, say, DNA/RNA, including getting humans from single-celled thingies, but the basic chemistry is irreducibly complex, and therefore requires a designer.
? That strikes as immensely implausible, simply because it's saying that no matter how much of bad thing X you've got, the amount of harm is the same. Sometimes true, but hard to see here.
And it's also just wrong to teach kids that untestable word-spinning is the same thing as science. It's harmless to the extent that they don't understand what's going on, or that they aren't paying attention (and depite my snapping at baa earlier, I do recognize that lots of what gets taught in high schools doesn't get through to anyone), but to the extent that anyone takes anything away from being taught ID as valid science, they will have become less able to recognize how science works.
Whoops, mised FL's comment. His second paragraph is, I think, exactly right. If the fear is that ID is a thin end of the wedge leading to rejection of all science, then it's hard not to be worried about the rejection of all science. If, instead, ID is a sop to people with strong religious beliefs who don't want to feel that state schooling is *undermining* their religion, then it's one of those many unfortunate compromises I'd be prepared to make.
(and the compromise, just to be clear, is not the one my political party makes with it's base so that I can get my policy preferences; but rather the compromise I make, as a citizen of a liberal regime, with people who have views I regard as nutty but more or less want to get a along with)
If the fear is that ID is a thin end of the wedge leading to rejection of all science, then it's hard not to be worried about the rejection of all science. If, instead, ID is a sop to people with strong religious beliefs who don't want to feel that state schooling is *undermining* their religion, then it's one of those many unfortunate compromises I'd be prepared to make.
I almost feel compelled to say that to provide a link is not necessarily to endorse the content linked thereby. But I am glad to see that Kaus is not the only Slate writer taken to task in the comments here.
Besides, FL is making the point that I would have made. The type of ID does make a difference, though I'd prefer none of it in the science classroom.
Also, I'd read the New Yorker more if it weren't for the cartoons.
Ogged, if the argument is "it's a wedge! we're in danger!" that's very different from "It's bad for business!"
I agree with baa about long-term economic competitiveness. Didn't Mississippi just lose a car plant to Canada because Toyota couldn't find enough *literate* workers south of the border?
And of course slolerner's 10 is right: willingness to twist science (or, if you'd like, facts) to suit a political view is an failing that has no one home on the political spectrum.
See, it's things like this that make me think you're defending what your Republican allies want--because the Republicans are by far the worst offenders here. ID, climate science, missile defense, and I could go on, all balanced off by some bit about silicone implants that doesn't measure up to the right's attack on Herb Needleman? Please. See Chris Mooney passim.
I don't remember it all that well now, but my AP bio class spent a great deal of time on evolution/origins. I don't remember how much showed up on the AP test, though, so I don't know how much marking (e) none of the above and then writing in "result of design" would hurt anyone.
FL: Speaking for myself, I went into high school believing in young-earth creationism and with a ton of pressure coming from ludicrously conservative parents. I was consciously looking for excuses to keep believing more or less what they believed. If I'd gotten a couple weeks of ID in tenth grade, I'd have probably taken it with a sigh of relief and ignored the actual science, which could have significantly altered the trajectory of my college career from that point on. I really do think, to some students, this would have an effect, and not a good one.
Actually, I'm not sure this is the only reason it upsets people so much. I have been thinking, in a psychotherapeutic way, about why the ID business hits me at a gut level. I believe it is because it represents an attack on the use of evidence to formulate theories, irrespective of those theories' effects on structures of belief that buttress authority. Let's for the sake of brevity call this "use of evidence to formulate" etc. science.
Science instills the understanding that truths about nature are available to you, personally. You don't need to get them from the man in the funny hat with the shepherd's crook, or from the man behind the pretty blue circular seal. Truths exist outside of politics. (For those of you interested in technical discussion of such truths....)
To the extent that anyone wants you to learn ID, they want you to believe that there are no such truths, that scientists are simply arrogating to themselves an authority they don't have to propound a theory without adequate evidence for it. I.e., they're simply setting up a false idol in the temple. Whatever scientists' flaws, this is not how the community of investigators generally works nor is it basically what science is.
But in the grand panolply of programs that instill an anti-science attitude, ID is a weird candidate, mainly because it functions at this immense philosophical remove from the actual conduct of science. ID seems to me like a (bogus) life science analog of the "physical constants are fine-tuned for life" argument in physics. Say you are a scientist who believes in ID: how does this actually change your condut of science? It's hard to see how, right?
Here, I think you're talking about something other than ID. The belief that life and all organisms were created by an intelligent designer is entirely compatible with, albeit irrelevant to, evolutionary theory. Pretty much any Christian (Jewish, Muslim) biologist has to hold that belief insofar as they think that God created the world and everything in it, including all organisms. This needn't interfere with their scientific study of how those organisms have evolved over time, and usually doesn't -- there are plenty of religious biologists.
ID rests on the claim that evolutionary theory is categorically insufficient to explain the facts about how organisms and species have changed over time -- that there are questions that not only has biology not yet answered, but that we now know that biology will never be able to answer without assuming the existence of an Intelligent Designer. This is unsupported nonsense and shouldn't be taught to students as if it made sense. Belief in ID would change the behavior of 'scientists' who accepted it -- research conducted under a theory that defines significant areas of inquiry as unknowable is not going to produce answers in those areas of inquiry.
BTW, I agree that ID isn't a big problem about what's being taught in our public high schools, because AFAIK you can't teach ID in public high schools. But if you're talking long-term competitive edge, and that's what KF monkey is talking about, then (as LB says) teaching students that word-spinning is legitimate science is not going to help us when some of those students have to do science. At best it's going to lead to a lot of time being wasted in college biology classes while the prof explains that they were taught a bunch of lies in high school.
As for parents worrying that public schools are undermining their religion--do we have to start teaching American history in a way that's compatible with the literal truth of the Book of Mormon as well? I think it would be massively inappropriate to teach atheism in biology classes--especially because legitimate biology isn't incompatible with theism--but there's no right to be taught that science doesn't say what science says, or vice versa. If you want kids to be told that they have the right to accept the teachings of faith over the teachings of science, maybe that's OK in a liberal polity, but no one has a right to have their kids taught that The False is The True.
the basic chemistry is irreducibly complex, and therefore requires a designer
is just as bad as Young Earth creationism. It's not a question of how much of a bad thing you've got, it's a question of whether you're teaching science or not. Sticking a little "God-of-the-gaps" wherever your current knowledge wears a little thin is a way of saying: no need to inquire further into this problem; God explains it. In other words, no need to do any more science.
Slol- Yes! Exactly! It's an attack on the very idea that thinking can produce correct answers -- that there's any point in valuing the intellect as a tool for making contact with reality.
It is not something I'm willing to compromise on even if it makes some people happy -- their counterparts manage to suck it up and deal with a school system that doesn't teach nonsense in every other industrialized country in the world. I don't see why we have to be the ones who give in.
43: SloL, I think you're getting at something really important there. Why am I so mad right now? Because I think that ID is a microcosm of the attitude that you can ignore facts that don't support your world view--the attitude that, I think, is doing its best to wreck our country. The same attitude exemplified by those who think that U.S. prison camps are all about the Lemon Chicken.
(Though I have to object to the formulation that scientific truths are available to you personally. Everyone has to get most of their scientific truths from someone else--just like we all have to get facts about politics from reporters. The trick is knowing the difference between real scientists and junkscience.org as sources, and between FOX news and Unfogged.)
I think that's why I found Hanna Rosin's article about Patrick Henry College so disturbing. You have conservative Christian parents home-schooling their kids and sending them to a particular college, it seems specifically so their views will be set before they're exposed to dissenting viewpoints (though the history teacher at PHC seems to be trying to stir them up a bit). In a liberal polity can we object to this? But isn't it going to create a market failure in the marketplace of ideas?
I don't see why the God of the gaps is more harmful than another false theory.
Because if you truly believe that God, with His divine authority, reigns in this particular gap, then you wouldn't feel the need to pursue, or might even feel barred from, an investigation of it, lest you trespass on divine turf. God's word is, well, Holy Writ. But just because Ike Newton says it's so don't make it so.
in the the small God version of ID we simply have a failure of information
No, we have the insertion of divinity where we should have a failure of information.
"We don't know how this happens" is where science starts. "God makes it happen" is where science stops.
I do think ID is not just about questioning the authority of science, but a wider questioning of authority and expertise in general (in the Schiavo case the judges were questioned too, not just doctors).
By the way, slol, do you remember the Thomas Haskell essay where he talks about how he agrees with evolution because he agrees with (I think he even says defers to the expertise of) biologists, not because he's evaluated the evidence for himself?
48: But Newtonian mechanics was a false scientific theory. It lived and died by the scientific method. ID doesn't--it lives by its ideological support among non-scientists. (I'm not endorsing the "all ID equally bad" thesis, definitely endorsing "all ID bad.")
Last comment on this-- I really have to work. SL, my point is that if you really believed that p, for whatever reason, you wouldn't bother much looking around for alternative hypotheses; it seems to me that the traditional theist & IDer as much as anyone can be wrong in judgments about where the limits of knowledge are-- and can recognize this.
Anyway. A conversation to be resumed at another time, I hope. While we're psychologizing, I offer this explanation: I'm a bit exercised by this because (a) down the hall are a couple of people who are smarter than I am, who have better CVs than I ever will, and who know more logic than I do (I know more notes but they play a mean peano) who take ID seriously, after a fashion, and it's sort of weird to hear people say that it's completely dumb and that ID makes you incapable of understanding the Lowenheim-Skolem results or whatever; (b) I find odd and offputting the piety surrounding the notion that if we deviate-- just one inch!-- from teaching the Very Purest Science to our adolescents the heavens will fall.
eb's 51: Yes, and I think Haskell really drops the ball there. Unlike him, I do not "believe in evolution." Which is to say, it is a category mistake to say, "I believe in evolution." You might as well say, "I believe in aerodynamics." Don't. It is not a phenomenon whose existence requires or even asks belief. It is a theory that explains the facts; it works; you can (in the case of aerodynamics literally) ride on it, as William James would say.
Okay, so, I hope it's not bad manners to answer FL after he's, Elvis-like, left the building, but saying
down the hall are a couple of people who are smarter than I am, who have better CVs than I ever will, and who know more logic than I do (I know more notes but they play a mean peano) who take ID seriously
is also an argument from authority, much as ID is, and I should imagine you philosophers wouldn't like it. I hope, maybe down another hall at College, there are some biologists....
Well, actually it's not, because he's not claiming that other people's beliefs make it true (setting aside that they don't think it's true), only that if smart people take something seriously, it might be worth taking seriously. That's just humility and good sense.
(a) down the hall are a couple of people who are smarter than I am, who have better CVs than I ever will, and who know more logic than I do (I know more notes but they play a mean peano) who take ID seriously, after a fashion, and it's sort of weird to hear people say that it's completely dumb and that ID makes you incapable of understanding the Lowenheim-Skolem results or whatever;
If I were going to speculate unwarrantedly about people whom I've never met (which of course I'd am) I would speculate that they don't actually accept ID -- that instead they are theists, who believe that an intelligent designer, God, created the universe and everything in it, and out of feelings of affiliation with other theists your colleagues conflate those religious beliefs, in themselves perfectly compatible with science, with ID, which claims that religious belief or its functional equivalent is necessary to explain things that cannot be explained by science alone. If they really are believers in ID as a necessary component of biology, I don't know what to tell you.
I stand abashed and corrected. But I disagree, still, at least tangentially. I know lots of peopple with impressive CVs and bigger salaries than mine who believe, e.g., (to repeat) that breast implants cause connective tissue disease. Good science does not support this claim.
Now, if by "taking seriously" such a claim, you mean patiently explaining why you think it's not a good one, then I suppose I agree with you and in this thread I've tried to explain why I think claims made on behalf of teaching ID are insupportable (I don't think I said it was dumb).
But if by "taking seriously" such claims you mean according to them the same respect you might a peer-reviewed body of literature whose reasoning you can follow, then I suppose I disagree with you.
SloL, I don't mind arguments from authority in their place. I do think that the reason that I believe that the earth goes round the sun is that I've been told so by all the reputable scientists, not that I've tried any of the relevant observations for myself. Ditto for "humans evolved from other species." And "Smart person X believes seemingly crazy theory T" does give me reason to reconsider theory T's craziness; though in the case of this theory I think I'm smart enough to see that smart person X's arguments are bad (note: the person I have in mind is not FL's colleague).
But, you know, the fact that Isaac Hayes is pretty cool doesn't mean we should stop making fun of Scientology.
Perhaps it's a function of my location, only a scant few miles from Kansas, but it seems to me that it's a remarkably ignorant high school kid who's unaware of the controversy surrounding the teaching of science that conflicts with religious doctrine. No matter what ninth graders are actually told by their teachers or textbooks, they will decide for themselves what to believe and what they will accept as science.
I think that slol gets to the heart of the issue here: according to them the same respect you might a peer-reviewed body of literature whose reasoning you can follow.
We have a system in place for sorting and structuring information, it works pretty well, and we don't just junk it because it makes people uncomfortable. That, at base, is what we suspect the ID'ers of doing. We think it harms the scientific culture if we start taking arguments seriously that we normally wouldn't, because it makes the notion of "rigorous science" less rigorous.
lots of peopple with impressive CVs and bigger salaries than mine who believe, e.g., (to repeat) that breast implants cause connective tissue disease
But almost certainly out of ignorance, not because they've studied the issue and come to a different conclusion. My sense of "take seriously" is that they find it interesting as a strategy and set of beliefs, quite independent of whether they believe it themselves.
Also, most of the smart people in my field take seriously, after a fashion, the idea that you are a brain in a vat. It's an interesting philosophical case (isn't it, John Emerson?). Doesn't mean we should start teaching it as a live possibility.
L., somehow I'm reminded of the line "That's not enough, I need a majority." That may make me a Romanoff.
To Weiner's 59: I think and hope my relationship to the claim that the earth goes around the sun is not simply one of accepting an argument from authority, and I'll go out on a limb and say I expect this is actually true of you too. Stipulating that this is not my field, I think and hope I accept (provisionally, pending further evidence) the claim that the earth goes around the sun because I understand that
(a) as a matter of theory, math explaining the effect of gravity shows how one object might elliptically orbit another (as a student, long ago, I may even have worked a two-body problem or two)
(b) scientists report astronomical observations consistent with the proposition that they are stationed on an Earth that orbits the Sun
(c) while such observations can be made consistent with the theory of a geocentric solar system, this requires the adoption of a very inelegant and cumbersome set of explanations, and by Occam's Razor we might accept the more elegant, heliocentric theory instead
(d) interplanetary probes have been sent off and perform (too much oftener than not to be simply luck) based on the assumption of a heliocentric solar system.
Given this chain of understandings, it seems to me that the only things we're accepting from authority are the basic empirical data -- i.e., that scientists are not lying about the astronomical observations nor are engineers and the press lying about the interplanetary probes. (The moon landing, on the other hand....)
I think that the wedge theory is valid and in the long run will lead to real economic effects. A secondary ill effect is the production of a miseducated public which cannot be convinced of any scientific fact whatever with regard to political issues, since it decides all questions by a combination of religious faith, trust in individuals, ideology, whim, and hatred for taxes and government regulation.
It's sort of like a Mafia guy walking into your place, grabbing a doughnut out of the display, eating it without paying, and then walking out. "It was only one doughnut" is not the right answer.
Delay is on record as saying that Baylor and Texas A&M are godless liberal institutions where no one should ever send their kids.
Baylor and Texas A&M.
The Republican head of the Senate education committee here in Oregon (a conservative Christian) advised parents never to send their kids to public schools. He had a big hand in educational budgeting.
While I do not know exactly how far they want to go or whether they will succeed, blithely writing off the threat is lunacy.
[I have deleted a Godwin's Law violation citing a clownish event in 1923.]
I don't have a problem deferring to those who have earned their expertise in a particular field and whose work has made it through the peer review process (though I'm aware that even peer-reviewed work does not infrequently get overturned by other peer-reviewed work).
The problem seems to be the conflation of elitism with expertise so that people can campaign against scientific rigor simply by labeling some of its conclusions the product of far away, out of touch elites. There's a difference between saying that "in a democracy anyone should be able to acquire expert knowledge for themselves" and that "in a democracy A's opinion on subject X is as good as B's regardless of whether or not A or B have put in the effort to acquire expert knowledge about X." In the latter case A and B are often evaluated according to criteria that have little to do with X (usually expressed in terms of "credibility").
To ogged's 62: to the extent that my friends who believe that, or another crackpot theory, believe it simply out of ignorance, then I think they're actually better off than ID proponents. In your scenario my misguided friends simply don't know that the science is not on their side, and if they did, they'd change their minds. ID proponents, or anyway many of them, know to a certainty that the science is not on their side, and instead of changing their minds are trying to change the definition of what qualifies as science.
eb's 66: Ah, but again, we have a problem here. In science (forget about democracy for a moment) A's opinion on subject X is no better than B's, even if A has put in the effort to acquire expert knowledge unless A can adduce evidence in support of A's opinion.
I point this out because in the law, what I have just said is not true; expert opinion has weight owing to the expert's qualifications, irrespective of whether the expert supplies evidence. It must be balanced against opposing opinion and other evidence.
This is an important distinction between science and law, and at the heart of the ID debate. ID'ers want to carry on as if this were an adversarial ("teach the controversy"), legal dispute. Scientists want to proceed scientifically.
I'm not exactly disagreeing with you, slol. In the realm of science - which I would say includes the science classroom - ID doesn't cut it. But in the realm of politics there will be a constituency for arguing against the authority of peer-review in the name of "democratizing knowledge."
washerdreyer, I'm not sure a majority of high school kids can be remarkably ignorant high school kids. I will concede, however, that lots of high school kids are dumb. Still, they're pretty much all at least dimly aware of the controversy, right?
The topic that doesn't interest me here is the explanation for the Complexity of Life; the one that does has to do with the accomodation of various diverse viewpoints within a liberal society, and so on-- i.e. how to live together with people you think are kind of out there, in various ways.
I should work rather than addressing this, but the toleration of of other viewpoints necessary in a free and liberal society does not include the encouragement and active support of viewpoints calculated to destroy that freedom and liberalism. While anyone who wants to advocate ID is free to do so on their own dime, the public schools should not be supporting it.
In high school itself, I had a running argument with a more literal-minded friend who denied my thesis that "average people are stupid." Years later, he conceded.
Those are both awesome. If you look at Wayne's list of movies, you might save time by choosing the ones that can't be used as porn titles.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 2:21 PM
Note no comments until the porn update.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 2:24 PM
I wasn't here.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 2:31 PM
Ok, that's funny, and I like the reference to Denise Richards' most unconvincing protrayal of a scientist ever.
And I understand the immense appeal of bashing the right with their support for ID. When your opponent's base has off-kilter views, you have to force the contradictions! Were I Ted Turner, (or non-insane media magnate with Ted Turner's basic beliefs) I'd have TNN replaying "Inherit the Wind" 24/7.
But seriously, is anyone really concerned that intelligent design is going to impede American dominance of science and economic competitiveness? Three points:
1. Like anyone in an American high school is learning anything anyway. Please. We are ahead of the game if they can do algebra.
2. Compartmentalization is real. Let me repeat. Most people -- indeed, most engineers, cell-biologists, computer programmers and entrepreneurs -- believe some obviously goofy stuff. This impacts their ability to function as rational actors in their chosen disciplines not at all. 80% of the population of Cambridge Mass probably thinks that rent control is a viable way to ensure a good low-income housing supply, and we manage to staff our biotechs
3. ID is remote from concerns that would actually effect the function of science. Even if the US public school system turns into a 100% efficient propaganda machine and all seniors believe that the flagellum is "irreducibly complex," how precisely, is this going to effect their ability to run a western blot?
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 2:36 PM
Hasn't TNN been replaced by Spike TV or something?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 2:42 PM
Well Spike Tv isn't going to be running no "Inherit the Wind." Although for a long time WWE Raw featured a strong focus on Evolution.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 2:45 PM
80% of the population of Cambridge Mass probably thinks that rent control is a viable way to ensure a good low-income housing supply, and we manage to staff our biotechs
Ok, that's funny. And of course someone can believe in intelligent design and still be a great coder or engineer. The problem is that ID is part of a world-view that devalues science as such, and the people who hold that world-view are part of a political movement that frames every factual dispute as a political dispute. Put those together and put those people in power and you have a culture that doesn't hold much promise of making science a priority. The harms aren't hypothetical or in the future. We know that EPA reports have been re-written to jibe with the administration's agenda, and that crap about abortions causing breast cancer is part of official propaganda.
And, this just makes it embarrassing to be an American.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 2:48 PM
This impacts their ability to function as rational actors in their chosen disciplines not at all.
ID is remote from concerns that would actually effect the function of science. Even if the US public school system turns into a 100% efficient propaganda machine and all seniors believe that the flagellum is "irreducibly complex," how precisely, is this going to effect their ability to run a western blot?
Someone who can't tell the difference between a logical argument and bullshit is handicapped in learning new things. If we teach children that bullshit like ID is valid argument, to the extent that they believe us, they become unable to distinguish valid argument from bullshit in the future.
Like anyone in an American high school is learning anything anyway. Please. We are ahead of the game if they can do algebra.
What a repulsively elitist thing to say -- American high school students are all such morons it doesn't matter if we tell them lies? Why not shut down all the schools -- book-larnin never did no one no good nohow?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 2:49 PM
Maybe in a new version Bryan could run over Darrow with a wheelbarrow. Or they could try to settle it outside: call it "The Ramble in the Bramble."
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 2:50 PM
It wasn't a million years ago -- in fact, it was not quite ten years ago -- that the shoes were on the other feet. Leftier people were very mad at Dow Corning over the allegations that breast implants (which a horrible patriarchy imposes on women) cause connective tissue disease. There was no good science to support this thesis, and Republicans, who saw a good corporate citizen besieged by tortious torture, decried junk science and cheered Marcia Angell on as she pointed it out.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 2:53 PM
William Saletan had an interesting take on how ID has become more like a science than creationism.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 2:56 PM
baa, people like the student who informed her professor that she was not allowed to learn about evolution--this at a reputable post-secondary institution--are not going to be making great contributions to biological science. I mean, maybe she'll be able to run a Western blot, in the sense that she'll be able to pour the relevant reagents in and record what's on the paper (or whatever it is, I sure can't do it myself), but maybe total and complete fucking rejection of the scientific method would impair her ability to work. I'm just saying. And ID involves total and complete fucking rejection of the scientific method--we're not talking creationism, we're talking concluding that science supports conclusions that it does not in fact support (and vice versa). Which takes care of point 2--those people aren't economists, are they?
And as for point 1, I think that's largely bullshit, but even if it isn't we should avoid filling high-school students' minds with things that will actively prevent them from learning anything in the future. If I were teaching Civil War history, I'd much rather have students who'd never heard of the Civil War than students who'd been filled with all that bullshit about how the South wasn't trying to defend slavery but states' rights.
As has been observed elsewhere, a lot of the real damage here comes from the anti-science attitude that the ID proponents are instilling. ID means: We must reject facts about biology that every reputable biologist believes. Not much of a step to: We must reject facts about climate science that every reputable climate scientist believes. Etc. But, you know, this is going to hurt our science competitiveness in the long run. If you raise up a generation of kids to think that crackpots are just as good as scientists, it seems likely that the crackpots are going to get a share of the funding, and that means less for the scientists.
You know I like you, baa, but is there anything your Republican allies do that you won't defend?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:00 PM
Is William Saletan ever right about anything?
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:00 PM
Not all leftier people. This leftier person thought the implant witch hunt was stupid and political.
But you could make a case that embracing ID will turn off some of the foreign brains that might otherwise be attracted to our country. Sure it may not be a huge factor, but put it along with the other baggage associated with the ID believer and it all adds up.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:01 PM
Re: 4:
It does, in fact, matter that the Republican party is becoming increasingly anti-science. The decision to ignore scientific fact in favor of stroking the base has had an increasingly deleterious effect on a host of issues ranging from the environment to medical research to reproductive rights.
Nor do I think it trivial that the president and, apparently, much of his party thinks it's a nice idea to dramatically shrink the size of the set of American students qualified to become doctors, biologists, and medical researchers.
And for the record, it's stupid, ignorant and elitist to blithely make the claim that "[no one] in an American high school is learning anything anyway."
Posted by Isle of Toads | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:03 PM
it's stupid, ignorant and elitist to blithely make the claim that "[no one] in an American high school is learning anything anyway."
Yes, it is, but I assumed it was just baa feeling bored and poking a stick into the hornets' nest of sweet reason that is the Unfogged comments section.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:06 PM
eb, check this New Yorker piece on Intelligent Design. What Saletan doesn't recognize is that ID has already failed as science.
While I'm Google-bombing, Intelligent Design.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:07 PM
While the theoretical case agaisnt the effectiveness of rent control is quite solid and Posner once put it into an opinion basically for fun (it demonstrably had no effect on the ruling), my understanding is that the empirical evidence is surprisingly mixed about whether or not it actually reduces the housing stock available to people with low-incomes. I do not have a cite for this claim at this time, and I know I should provide one if I want it to be believed.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:09 PM
I don't think googlebombing works in comments anymore, since all links get the "nofollow" tag.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:09 PM
Curse you, Ogged!
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:09 PM
I believe you, washerdreyer, because you're a regular here, and you say it's so.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:10 PM
Curse the spammers, Matt.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:10 PM
ID has already failed as science.
Well, yes. What does he think, that there's a conspiracy among biologists not to research testable hypotheses produced by ID theorists, or to prevent the results of such research from being published? Saletan implies that liberals, or biologists, or some kind of closed-minded villians are shutting ID out of access to scientific validation. This is nonsense -- the reason that ID isn't an area of scientific (rather than political) controversy is that there's nothing to test about it. If there were, it would be getting tested.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:14 PM
Is William Saletan ever right about anything?
Saletan is completely goofy on this issue, and on most politics-of-science issues, which is what makes it utterly tragic that all he writes on now is politics of science. Did you see the harebrained piece he wrote on how Bill Frist is now pro-choice because he supports some stem cell research?
Saletan misses the point of ID. It's not that ID is a retreat. It's a second attack. A decade ago nobody was talking about teaching young-earth creationism next to evolution because it was flat-out absurd: God making the world in six days doesn't even smell like science. ID is creationism repackaged to look more like science, sure, but that doesn't make ID a concession from creationists - that makes it a trojan horse. The very fact that creationists are pushing ID now in a way that they weren't pushing young-earth creationism a couple years ago shows these people are far from backing off.
Posted by Isle of Toads | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:15 PM
I curse the darkness, personally.
Posted by mike d | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:15 PM
Saletan provides, as far as I can tell, no evidence for the central proposition of his article, namely ID, "accepts falsification, not authority, as the ultimate test." The only falsifiable statements that ID theory makes (AFAIK) are of the form "There is not yet a satisfactory evolutionary explanation for X, therefore design." That's not the kind of falsifiable claims we're normally talking about.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:15 PM
"I do not have a cite for this claim at this time"
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:17 PM
Anyway, that googlebomb does exist. I should go do it at home.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:19 PM
[redacted]
Posted by [redacted] | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:25 PM
My point is that the level of cognitive harm will depend on just what's in the curriculum, and that question isn't answered by saying "ID's in."
I disagree. The very phrase, "Intelligent Design," presupposes an Intellect, vast (& c & u if you like the Old Testament, & w & s if you're more at home in the New) enough to have Designed the universe. This assumes facts not in evidence. And assuming facts not in evidence is diametrically opposite to the procedures of science.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:29 PM
But Labs, you're assuming that nothing changes except the introduction of some ID. In that case, of course there's no harm. Look, maybe there aren't people in this country that wants things to be basically theocratic, and maybe those people don't have the support of the party in power, but, if they do, then ID is just a foot in the door, which is why it upsets people so much.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:32 PM
Oy vey.
1. believe it or not my comment has little to do with defending "what my republican allies want" -- it's just making the point that the effect that teaching Intelligent Design, bogus as it may be, would have on American economic competitiveness is minimal.
2. I suppose one could read my "comment one" as the claim that most people are natural slaves. Alternately, one could think that of the 99 problems one could legitimately have with the way in which American highschools are preparing kids for the workplace of tomorrow, ID ain't one. That's my view.
2a. Stupid, ignorant, and elitist. If I am also a hemophiliac, does this mean I am a Romanoff?
3. If the problem is the "anti-science attitudes," then fine, count me four-square against anti-science attitudes, the promulgation thereof, and people in power who cynically twist science to further their political aims. But in the grand panolply of programs that instill an anti-science attitude, ID is a weird candidate, mainly because it functions at this immense philosophical remove from the actual conduct of science. ID seems to me like a (bogus) life science analog of the "physical constants are fine-tuned for life" argument in physics. Say you are a scientist who believes in ID: how does this actually change your condut of science? It's hard to see how, right? That's why it's not science: at best, it's some unfalsifiable philosophy of science mumbo jumbo.
And of course slolerner's 10 is right: willingness to twist science (or, if you'd like, facts) to suit a political view is an failing that has no one home on the political spectrum.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:35 PM
SL: really? So you think it's just as harmful to teach the very weirdest thing that goes by the name of ID (something close to Young Earth Creationism) as to teach a view that says:
? That strikes as immensely implausible, simply because it's saying that no matter how much of bad thing X you've got, the amount of harm is the same. Sometimes true, but hard to see here.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:37 PM
And it's also just wrong to teach kids that untestable word-spinning is the same thing as science. It's harmless to the extent that they don't understand what's going on, or that they aren't paying attention (and depite my snapping at baa earlier, I do recognize that lots of what gets taught in high schools doesn't get through to anyone), but to the extent that anyone takes anything away from being taught ID as valid science, they will have become less able to recognize how science works.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:38 PM
Stupid, ignorant, and elitist. If I am also a hemophiliac, does this mean I am a Romanoff?
No, it just means you should have plenty of band-aids about the house while you're busy being stupid, ignorant and elitist.
Posted by Isle of Toads | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:41 PM
Whoops, mised FL's comment. His second paragraph is, I think, exactly right. If the fear is that ID is a thin end of the wedge leading to rejection of all science, then it's hard not to be worried about the rejection of all science. If, instead, ID is a sop to people with strong religious beliefs who don't want to feel that state schooling is *undermining* their religion, then it's one of those many unfortunate compromises I'd be prepared to make.
(and the compromise, just to be clear, is not the one my political party makes with it's base so that I can get my policy preferences; but rather the compromise I make, as a citizen of a liberal regime, with people who have views I regard as nutty but more or less want to get a along with)
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:41 PM
If the fear is that ID is a thin end of the wedge leading to rejection of all science, then it's hard not to be worried about the rejection of all science. If, instead, ID is a sop to people with strong religious beliefs who don't want to feel that state schooling is *undermining* their religion, then it's one of those many unfortunate compromises I'd be prepared to make.
Yeah, I think this is the issue.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:42 PM
I almost feel compelled to say that to provide a link is not necessarily to endorse the content linked thereby. But I am glad to see that Kaus is not the only Slate writer taken to task in the comments here.
Besides, FL is making the point that I would have made. The type of ID does make a difference, though I'd prefer none of it in the science classroom.
Also, I'd read the New Yorker more if it weren't for the cartoons.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:43 PM
Ogged, if the argument is "it's a wedge! we're in danger!" that's very different from "It's bad for business!"
I agree with baa about long-term economic competitiveness. Didn't Mississippi just lose a car plant to Canada because Toyota couldn't find enough *literate* workers south of the border?
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:43 PM
And of course slolerner's 10 is right: willingness to twist science (or, if you'd like, facts) to suit a political view is an failing that has no one home on the political spectrum.
See, it's things like this that make me think you're defending what your Republican allies want--because the Republicans are by far the worst offenders here. ID, climate science, missile defense, and I could go on, all balanced off by some bit about silicone implants that doesn't measure up to the right's attack on Herb Needleman? Please. See Chris Mooney passim.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:44 PM
I don't remember it all that well now, but my AP bio class spent a great deal of time on evolution/origins. I don't remember how much showed up on the AP test, though, so I don't know how much marking (e) none of the above and then writing in "result of design" would hurt anyone.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:45 PM
FL: Speaking for myself, I went into high school believing in young-earth creationism and with a ton of pressure coming from ludicrously conservative parents. I was consciously looking for excuses to keep believing more or less what they believed. If I'd gotten a couple weeks of ID in tenth grade, I'd have probably taken it with a sigh of relief and ignored the actual science, which could have significantly altered the trajectory of my college career from that point on. I really do think, to some students, this would have an effect, and not a good one.
Posted by Isle of Toads | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:47 PM
why it upsets people so much
Actually, I'm not sure this is the only reason it upsets people so much. I have been thinking, in a psychotherapeutic way, about why the ID business hits me at a gut level. I believe it is because it represents an attack on the use of evidence to formulate theories, irrespective of those theories' effects on structures of belief that buttress authority. Let's for the sake of brevity call this "use of evidence to formulate" etc. science.
Science instills the understanding that truths about nature are available to you, personally. You don't need to get them from the man in the funny hat with the shepherd's crook, or from the man behind the pretty blue circular seal. Truths exist outside of politics. (For those of you interested in technical discussion of such truths....)
To the extent that anyone wants you to learn ID, they want you to believe that there are no such truths, that scientists are simply arrogating to themselves an authority they don't have to propound a theory without adequate evidence for it. I.e., they're simply setting up a false idol in the temple. Whatever scientists' flaws, this is not how the community of investigators generally works nor is it basically what science is.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:49 PM
But in the grand panolply of programs that instill an anti-science attitude, ID is a weird candidate, mainly because it functions at this immense philosophical remove from the actual conduct of science. ID seems to me like a (bogus) life science analog of the "physical constants are fine-tuned for life" argument in physics. Say you are a scientist who believes in ID: how does this actually change your condut of science? It's hard to see how, right?
Here, I think you're talking about something other than ID. The belief that life and all organisms were created by an intelligent designer is entirely compatible with, albeit irrelevant to, evolutionary theory. Pretty much any Christian (Jewish, Muslim) biologist has to hold that belief insofar as they think that God created the world and everything in it, including all organisms. This needn't interfere with their scientific study of how those organisms have evolved over time, and usually doesn't -- there are plenty of religious biologists.
ID rests on the claim that evolutionary theory is categorically insufficient to explain the facts about how organisms and species have changed over time -- that there are questions that not only has biology not yet answered, but that we now know that biology will never be able to answer without assuming the existence of an Intelligent Designer. This is unsupported nonsense and shouldn't be taught to students as if it made sense. Belief in ID would change the behavior of 'scientists' who accepted it -- research conducted under a theory that defines significant areas of inquiry as unknowable is not going to produce answers in those areas of inquiry.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:52 PM
BTW, I agree that ID isn't a big problem about what's being taught in our public high schools, because AFAIK you can't teach ID in public high schools. But if you're talking long-term competitive edge, and that's what KF monkey is talking about, then (as LB says) teaching students that word-spinning is legitimate science is not going to help us when some of those students have to do science. At best it's going to lead to a lot of time being wasted in college biology classes while the prof explains that they were taught a bunch of lies in high school.
As for parents worrying that public schools are undermining their religion--do we have to start teaching American history in a way that's compatible with the literal truth of the Book of Mormon as well? I think it would be massively inappropriate to teach atheism in biology classes--especially because legitimate biology isn't incompatible with theism--but there's no right to be taught that science doesn't say what science says, or vice versa. If you want kids to be told that they have the right to accept the teachings of faith over the teachings of science, maybe that's OK in a liberal polity, but no one has a right to have their kids taught that The False is The True.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:52 PM
To FL's 33:
Yes, I think
is just as bad as Young Earth creationism. It's not a question of how much of a bad thing you've got, it's a question of whether you're teaching science or not. Sticking a little "God-of-the-gaps" wherever your current knowledge wears a little thin is a way of saying: no need to inquire further into this problem; God explains it. In other words, no need to do any more science.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:54 PM
Slol- Yes! Exactly! It's an attack on the very idea that thinking can produce correct answers -- that there's any point in valuing the intellect as a tool for making contact with reality.
It is not something I'm willing to compromise on even if it makes some people happy -- their counterparts manage to suck it up and deal with a school system that doesn't teach nonsense in every other industrialized country in the world. I don't see why we have to be the ones who give in.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 3:55 PM
[redacted]
Posted by [redacted] | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 4:00 PM
43: SloL, I think you're getting at something really important there. Why am I so mad right now? Because I think that ID is a microcosm of the attitude that you can ignore facts that don't support your world view--the attitude that, I think, is doing its best to wreck our country. The same attitude exemplified by those who think that U.S. prison camps are all about the Lemon Chicken.
(Though I have to object to the formulation that scientific truths are available to you personally. Everyone has to get most of their scientific truths from someone else--just like we all have to get facts about politics from reporters. The trick is knowing the difference between real scientists and junkscience.org as sources, and between FOX news and Unfogged.)
I think that's why I found Hanna Rosin's article about Patrick Henry College so disturbing. You have conservative Christian parents home-schooling their kids and sending them to a particular college, it seems specifically so their views will be set before they're exposed to dissenting viewpoints (though the history teacher at PHC seems to be trying to stir them up a bit). In a liberal polity can we object to this? But isn't it going to create a market failure in the marketplace of ideas?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 4:03 PM
I don't see why the God of the gaps is more harmful than another false theory.
Because if you truly believe that God, with His divine authority, reigns in this particular gap, then you wouldn't feel the need to pursue, or might even feel barred from, an investigation of it, lest you trespass on divine turf. God's word is, well, Holy Writ. But just because Ike Newton says it's so don't make it so.
in the the small God version of ID we simply have a failure of information
No, we have the insertion of divinity where we should have a failure of information.
"We don't know how this happens" is where science starts. "God makes it happen" is where science stops.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 4:05 PM
I do think ID is not just about questioning the authority of science, but a wider questioning of authority and expertise in general (in the Schiavo case the judges were questioned too, not just doctors).
By the way, slol, do you remember the Thomas Haskell essay where he talks about how he agrees with evolution because he agrees with (I think he even says defers to the expertise of) biologists, not because he's evaluated the evidence for himself?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 4:05 PM
48: But Newtonian mechanics was a false scientific theory. It lived and died by the scientific method. ID doesn't--it lives by its ideological support among non-scientists. (I'm not endorsing the "all ID equally bad" thesis, definitely endorsing "all ID bad.")
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 4:08 PM
Last comment on this-- I really have to work. SL, my point is that if you really believed that p, for whatever reason, you wouldn't bother much looking around for alternative hypotheses; it seems to me that the traditional theist & IDer as much as anyone can be wrong in judgments about where the limits of knowledge are-- and can recognize this.
Anyway. A conversation to be resumed at another time, I hope. While we're psychologizing, I offer this explanation: I'm a bit exercised by this because (a) down the hall are a couple of people who are smarter than I am, who have better CVs than I ever will, and who know more logic than I do (I know more notes but they play a mean peano) who take ID seriously, after a fashion, and it's sort of weird to hear people say that it's completely dumb and that ID makes you incapable of understanding the Lowenheim-Skolem results or whatever; (b) I find odd and offputting the piety surrounding the notion that if we deviate-- just one inch!-- from teaching the Very Purest Science to our adolescents the heavens will fall.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 4:18 PM
eb's 51: Yes, and I think Haskell really drops the ball there. Unlike him, I do not "believe in evolution." Which is to say, it is a category mistake to say, "I believe in evolution." You might as well say, "I believe in aerodynamics." Don't. It is not a phenomenon whose existence requires or even asks belief. It is a theory that explains the facts; it works; you can (in the case of aerodynamics literally) ride on it, as William James would say.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 4:18 PM
Okay, so, I hope it's not bad manners to answer FL after he's, Elvis-like, left the building, but saying
is also an argument from authority, much as ID is, and I should imagine you philosophers wouldn't like it. I hope, maybe down another hall at College, there are some biologists....
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 4:21 PM
is also an argument from authority
Well, actually it's not, because he's not claiming that other people's beliefs make it true (setting aside that they don't think it's true), only that if smart people take something seriously, it might be worth taking seriously. That's just humility and good sense.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 4:23 PM
(a) down the hall are a couple of people who are smarter than I am, who have better CVs than I ever will, and who know more logic than I do (I know more notes but they play a mean peano) who take ID seriously, after a fashion, and it's sort of weird to hear people say that it's completely dumb and that ID makes you incapable of understanding the Lowenheim-Skolem results or whatever;
If I were going to speculate unwarrantedly about people whom I've never met (which of course I'd am) I would speculate that they don't actually accept ID -- that instead they are theists, who believe that an intelligent designer, God, created the universe and everything in it, and out of feelings of affiliation with other theists your colleagues conflate those religious beliefs, in themselves perfectly compatible with science, with ID, which claims that religious belief or its functional equivalent is necessary to explain things that cannot be explained by science alone. If they really are believers in ID as a necessary component of biology, I don't know what to tell you.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 4:27 PM
I stand abashed and corrected. But I disagree, still, at least tangentially. I know lots of peopple with impressive CVs and bigger salaries than mine who believe, e.g., (to repeat) that breast implants cause connective tissue disease. Good science does not support this claim.
Now, if by "taking seriously" such a claim, you mean patiently explaining why you think it's not a good one, then I suppose I agree with you and in this thread I've tried to explain why I think claims made on behalf of teaching ID are insupportable (I don't think I said it was dumb).
But if by "taking seriously" such claims you mean according to them the same respect you might a peer-reviewed body of literature whose reasoning you can follow, then I suppose I disagree with you.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 4:29 PM
SloL, I don't mind arguments from authority in their place. I do think that the reason that I believe that the earth goes round the sun is that I've been told so by all the reputable scientists, not that I've tried any of the relevant observations for myself. Ditto for "humans evolved from other species." And "Smart person X believes seemingly crazy theory T" does give me reason to reconsider theory T's craziness; though in the case of this theory I think I'm smart enough to see that smart person X's arguments are bad (note: the person I have in mind is not FL's colleague).
But, you know, the fact that Isaac Hayes is pretty cool doesn't mean we should stop making fun of Scientology.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 4:32 PM
Perhaps it's a function of my location, only a scant few miles from Kansas, but it seems to me that it's a remarkably ignorant high school kid who's unaware of the controversy surrounding the teaching of science that conflicts with religious doctrine. No matter what ninth graders are actually told by their teachers or textbooks, they will decide for themselves what to believe and what they will accept as science.
Posted by L. | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 4:33 PM
I think that slol gets to the heart of the issue here: according to them the same respect you might a peer-reviewed body of literature whose reasoning you can follow.
We have a system in place for sorting and structuring information, it works pretty well, and we don't just junk it because it makes people uncomfortable. That, at base, is what we suspect the ID'ers of doing. We think it harms the scientific culture if we start taking arguments seriously that we normally wouldn't, because it makes the notion of "rigorous science" less rigorous.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 4:34 PM
lots of peopple with impressive CVs and bigger salaries than mine who believe, e.g., (to repeat) that breast implants cause connective tissue disease
But almost certainly out of ignorance, not because they've studied the issue and come to a different conclusion. My sense of "take seriously" is that they find it interesting as a strategy and set of beliefs, quite independent of whether they believe it themselves.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 4:35 PM
Also, most of the smart people in my field take seriously, after a fashion, the idea that you are a brain in a vat. It's an interesting philosophical case (isn't it, John Emerson?). Doesn't mean we should start teaching it as a live possibility.
L., somehow I'm reminded of the line "That's not enough, I need a majority." That may make me a Romanoff.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 4:36 PM
To Weiner's 59: I think and hope my relationship to the claim that the earth goes around the sun is not simply one of accepting an argument from authority, and I'll go out on a limb and say I expect this is actually true of you too. Stipulating that this is not my field, I think and hope I accept (provisionally, pending further evidence) the claim that the earth goes around the sun because I understand that
(a) as a matter of theory, math explaining the effect of gravity shows how one object might elliptically orbit another (as a student, long ago, I may even have worked a two-body problem or two)
(b) scientists report astronomical observations consistent with the proposition that they are stationed on an Earth that orbits the Sun
(c) while such observations can be made consistent with the theory of a geocentric solar system, this requires the adoption of a very inelegant and cumbersome set of explanations, and by Occam's Razor we might accept the more elegant, heliocentric theory instead
(d) interplanetary probes have been sent off and perform (too much oftener than not to be simply luck) based on the assumption of a heliocentric solar system.
Given this chain of understandings, it seems to me that the only things we're accepting from authority are the basic empirical data -- i.e., that scientists are not lying about the astronomical observations nor are engineers and the press lying about the interplanetary probes. (The moon landing, on the other hand....)
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 4:50 PM
I think that the wedge theory is valid and in the long run will lead to real economic effects. A secondary ill effect is the production of a miseducated public which cannot be convinced of any scientific fact whatever with regard to political issues, since it decides all questions by a combination of religious faith, trust in individuals, ideology, whim, and hatred for taxes and government regulation.
It's sort of like a Mafia guy walking into your place, grabbing a doughnut out of the display, eating it without paying, and then walking out. "It was only one doughnut" is not the right answer.
Delay is on record as saying that Baylor and Texas A&M are godless liberal institutions where no one should ever send their kids.
Baylor and Texas A&M.
The Republican head of the Senate education committee here in Oregon (a conservative Christian) advised parents never to send their kids to public schools. He had a big hand in educational budgeting.
While I do not know exactly how far they want to go or whether they will succeed, blithely writing off the threat is lunacy.
[I have deleted a Godwin's Law violation citing a clownish event in 1923.]
Let's please return to the frivolity now please.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 4:51 PM
I don't have a problem deferring to those who have earned their expertise in a particular field and whose work has made it through the peer review process (though I'm aware that even peer-reviewed work does not infrequently get overturned by other peer-reviewed work).
The problem seems to be the conflation of elitism with expertise so that people can campaign against scientific rigor simply by labeling some of its conclusions the product of far away, out of touch elites. There's a difference between saying that "in a democracy anyone should be able to acquire expert knowledge for themselves" and that "in a democracy A's opinion on subject X is as good as B's regardless of whether or not A or B have put in the effort to acquire expert knowledge about X." In the latter case A and B are often evaluated according to criteria that have little to do with X (usually expressed in terms of "credibility").
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 5:05 PM
To ogged's 62: to the extent that my friends who believe that, or another crackpot theory, believe it simply out of ignorance, then I think they're actually better off than ID proponents. In your scenario my misguided friends simply don't know that the science is not on their side, and if they did, they'd change their minds. ID proponents, or anyway many of them, know to a certainty that the science is not on their side, and instead of changing their minds are trying to change the definition of what qualifies as science.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 5:08 PM
eb's 66: Ah, but again, we have a problem here. In science (forget about democracy for a moment) A's opinion on subject X is no better than B's, even if A has put in the effort to acquire expert knowledge unless A can adduce evidence in support of A's opinion.
I point this out because in the law, what I have just said is not true; expert opinion has weight owing to the expert's qualifications, irrespective of whether the expert supplies evidence. It must be balanced against opposing opinion and other evidence.
This is an important distinction between science and law, and at the heart of the ID debate. ID'ers want to carry on as if this were an adversarial ("teach the controversy"), legal dispute. Scientists want to proceed scientifically.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 5:12 PM
[redacted]
Posted by [redacted] | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 5:13 PM
Weiner-
You don't think people who were "remarkably ignorant high school kids" constitute a majority? How uncharacteristically optimistic of you.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 5:16 PM
I'm not exactly disagreeing with you, slol. In the realm of science - which I would say includes the science classroom - ID doesn't cut it. But in the realm of politics there will be a constituency for arguing against the authority of peer-review in the name of "democratizing knowledge."
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 5:21 PM
washerdreyer, I'm not sure a majority of high school kids can be remarkably ignorant high school kids. I will concede, however, that lots of high school kids are dumb. Still, they're pretty much all at least dimly aware of the controversy, right?
Posted by L. | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 5:24 PM
The topic that doesn't interest me here is the explanation for the Complexity of Life; the one that does has to do with the accomodation of various diverse viewpoints within a liberal society, and so on-- i.e. how to live together with people you think are kind of out there, in various ways.
I should work rather than addressing this, but the toleration of of other viewpoints necessary in a free and liberal society does not include the encouragement and active support of viewpoints calculated to destroy that freedom and liberalism. While anyone who wants to advocate ID is free to do so on their own dime, the public schools should not be supporting it.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 5:27 PM
"Remarkably ignorant high school kids", like above-average high school kids, are the vast majority of them.
Fewer than 10% of HS kids are normal, however. (It wasn't just you.) HS kids are just losers.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 6:03 PM
In high school itself, I had a running argument with a more literal-minded friend who denied my thesis that "average people are stupid." Years later, he conceded.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 6:05 PM
If average people are stupid, then above-average people like you must be very stupid, ogged.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 6:10 PM
Good one, dumb shit.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 6:12 PM
"average people are stupid."
Nothing drives this point home harder than working retail.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 6:14 PM
Pus-licker.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 08- 9-05 6:18 PM
Hey, I just caught 70. "Uncharacteristically"? I am a bundle of sunshine and joy!
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-11-05 10:37 AM