March 22, 2010
Category: Creationism • Culture Wars • Policy and Politics
Casey Luskin, Disco. DJ and legal eagle sparrow asks "When Is it Appropriate to Challenge the [scientific] 'Consensus'?"
Simple answer: When you can make a convincing scientific argument.
Casey disagrees, joining Jay Richards – Prodigal Son of the Disco. 'Tute – in arguing that:
we must carefully examine the scientific, sociological, rhetorical, and political dynamics of a debate to determine if the consensus deserves our assent, or our skepticism.
This actually combines several errors. First, one can be skeptical of something which deserves assent, and indeed to which one does assent. Skepticism of a claim is not the same as rejection of the claim. Skepticism consists not of rejecting claims, but if accepting the limits of one's own knowledge.
This brings the second error. Evaluating claims of scientific consensus doesn't require an examination of rhetoric, of politics, of policy, or grand sociology. It requires assessing 1) the current state of scientific knowledge and 2) the current state of thinking within the scientific community at large.
Most people are not equipped to make that assessment on every given issue. Most people are not equipped to read and evaluate a single paper on a new scientific topic, let alone to evaluate a host of papers, each embedded in a long context of research and internal dispute, and to extract from that complete literature a sense of where the totality of relevant research points.
So what is to be done? One begins by listening to people who are qualified. Examine the writings of leaders in relevant fields, especially review articles that are meant to summarize the history of the field. If those papers are over one's head or if they seem to be in conflict, one looks to peer reviewed summary statements like those issued on global warming by the IPCC. If such documents do not exist (as they do not for most topics), then the assessment must come from a survey like that conducted by Naomi Oreskes, who found that the scientific literature had reached a strong consensus behind global warming.
Richards (and Luskin) endorse 12 criteria for "doubting a consensus," none of which addresses the actual substance of the claimed consensus:
- When different claims get bundled together.
- When ad hominem attacks against dissenters predominate.
- When scientists are pressured to toe the party line.
- When publishing and peer review in the discipline is cliquish.
- When dissenting opinions are excluded from the relevant peer-reviewed literature not because of weak evidence or bad arguments but as part of a strategy to marginalize dissent.
- When the actual peer-reviewed literature is misrepresented.
- When consensus is declared hurriedly or before it even exists.
- When the subject matter seems, by its nature, to resist consensus.
- When “scientists say” or “science says” is a common locution.
- When it is being used to justify dramatic political or economic policies.
- When the “consensus” is maintained by an army of water-carrying journalists who defend it with uncritical and partisan zeal, and seem intent on helping certain scientists with their messaging rather than reporting on the field as objectively as possible.
- When we keep being told that there’s a scientific consensus.
People can be rude, cliquish, and reliant on scientific expertise without undermining the scientific process or the scientific consensus. That "scientists say" certain things in the scientific literature, it matters quite a bit for judging a scientific consensus. And when "the actual peer-reviewed literature is misrepresented," that doesn't justify dismissing what it does find.
Casey concludes by quoting Richards' bizarre claim:
The work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. … There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period. … Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.
It would be trivial to note that the distance of the Earth from the Sun varies from 90 to 95 million miles, and that those numbers change over time in what are known as Milankovitch cycles. And it would be equally trivial to observe that Casey's buddy Tom Bethell loves to attack
relativity and other concepts tied intimately to mass-energy conversion as well as and evolution and global warming and HIV's causation of AIDS. When people respond to each of those acts of denialism, they cite the consensus of expert opinion. If Casey thinks defenses of evolution or global warming based on consensus of expert opinion shows weaknesses of those sciences, does he also question HIV's role in AIDS or the validity of the Standard Model in physics?
But moving past those trivialities, Casey and Jay's underlying point is catastrophically wrong. As John Ziman points out in Reliable Knowledge: "the goal of science is a consensus of rational opinion over the widest possible field" (emphasis original). The beauty of science is precisely that it is rooted in our shared reality, and as such it is subject to the formation of consensus on which new work can build.
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 11:09 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Creationism • Culture Wars • Policy and Politics
It's like he's been reading my mind. He's even nearly re-derived Intelligent Falling. But upside down!
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 6:36 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Policy and Politics
Ari Fleischer had to resign as Tiger Woods PR advisor when it became clear that Fleischer is still less trusted than the massively dishonest Woods. Apparently people are quicker to forgive overwhelming infidelity than shilling for George Bush's invasions of various nations and of our own civil liberties.
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 10:09 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 21, 2010
Category: Policy and Politics
Just watched the House pass the Health Care Reform bill. It's history at work, an achievement on the scale of Social Security and Medicare, a civil rights bill of a sort we haven't seen since the 1960s. President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and indeed Majority Leader Reid all deserve to take a bow.
Even without the reconciliation sidecar, this is a massive improvement for millions of Americans – those with health insurance and those who wish they had it. And when the Senate takes up the reconciliation bill, it'll be an even bigger improvement.
This isn't just a tribute to the President and the leaders of the two houses of Congress. Obama and Reid and Pelosi enjoy their offices because people worked hard to get Democrats elected, specifically with the intent that they would fix the country's disastrous healthcare system. And finally, after a century of struggle, we have a system that extends health insurance access to all Americans, and that sets the stage for refinements (like those which have happened for the first 60 years of Social Security's history) which will ultimately ensure that every American has health insurance, not just theoretical access to it.
Not all see this quite as rosily as I do. My old Kansas friend j.d. thinks that the passage of a bill whose provisions enjoy majority support by a congress elected to enact such a law signifies that "self-governance is over." An anonymous Texas representative thinks that passing a bill which fails to prevent health insurance from covering a certain lifesaving medical procedure for women makes Bart Stupak (and others) "babykiller[s]." The Discovery Institute and former Bush officials join in the outrage that Democratic priorities lean more heavily toward insuring women than that traditional Republican goal of having women die in alleys. Mitt Romney, who passed a nearly identical bill as Massachusetts' governor, is now urging repeal of the federal bill (but not its state version), insisting: "The American people will not stand still for this bill becoming law … they will throw those guys out." I'm guessing that'll earn him as many votes in 2012 as it did in 2008.
At the end of the day, I'll toast the victors and turn the mike over to Wonderella: "quit bitching about the health care thing. If you don't like it, move to Canada."
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 6:12 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 18, 2010
Category: Creationism • Culture Wars • Policy and Politics
Shorter Richard Sternberg: Beginning to Decipher the SINE Signal:
If science fiction weren't fiction, ID would be really good science.
In responding tangentially to
our earlier criticism of him for employing arguments of a paranoid schizophrenic nature which treated movies as if they were evidence of how science works, Sternberg pens an essay in which we're to pretend that we find monoliths on Earth's two moons and they send us crazy signals that make our computers suddenly intelligent.
He quotes a hypothetical critic replying:
We think you’re a nice guy, but your arguments are insane.
Assuming for the moment he's referring to my earlier reply, I think he's missing the point. I wrote:
Now, I'm not claiming that Sternberg is anything – paranoid schizophrenic or scientist – like John Nash. I'm saying that the ID argument is hard to distinguish from the ravings of paranoid schizophrenics.
It's true that I was calling his arguments insane (and his new ones still are), but I never said I think he's a nice guy.
Note also that Sternberg can't even keep his own bizarre moon analogy right. The moons are supposed to be like the genomes of rats and mice, and the monoliths are repeated motifs in the genome that don't have anything to do with making computers homicidal. His analog also have lunar scientists who are meant to be the equivalent of evolutionary biologists, who think that the monoliths aren't products of evil aliens, and who "argue that we already knew all there was to know about that moon back in 1859."
By analogy, then, he's claiming that evolutionary biologists say that we knew all there was to know about the genome in 1859. This seems unlikely.
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 12:53 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Policy and Politics
I don't care for North Korea. It's a repressive Stalinist cult, walled off from reality. But sometimes they find a nut:
A government official in North Korea blamed for the nation's currency devaluation has been executed by the state. "Pak Nam-gi, who was reportedly sacked in January as chief of the planning and finance department of the ruling Workers' Party, was executed at a shooting range in Pyongyang."
Maybe if we stood a few of the
banksters in front of a firing squad, we wouldn't have to fix their mess again.
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 11:37 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 17, 2010
Category: Policy and Politics
Kevin Drum surveys California politics:
It's like living in a Lewis Carroll novel, except with real people. Assuming you still consider California Republicans to be real people, that is.
The inspiration?
In order to tackle a massive deficit, Democrats were willing to cut a billion dollars out of transit funding — a traditional Democratic priority — and Schwarzenegger vetoes it because they didn't also include a tax cut. As a way of tackling a massive deficit. And the California Republican caucus cheers.
It's time for a goddam constitutional convention.
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 11:02 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Creationism
Shorter Richard Sternberg for the Disco. 'Tute: Ayala and Falk Miss the Signs in the Genome:
We should learn how to do science by watching movies.
For reference, actual Sternberg:
In this and subsequent posts, I will provide other sorts of evidence that so-called “junk DNA” is not junk at all, but functional.
We have all seen a variant of the plot in a movie. A strange signal appears…On the Beach…Contact…Signs…. a Coca-Cola bottle… which sometimes leads to a telegraph key being tapped … a complex set of encrypted data with an intricate mathematical pattern…crop circles …
Now, the reason we are drawn in by such stories is obvious: The signals have serious implications for the characters. It could mean the survival of mankind after a thermonuclear war; it could mean that there are other sentient beings in the universe. That is why we would quickly lose interest in the plot if, say, in every scene where a scientist appeared before an important governmental group and said, “The outer space signal contains over sixty thousand, multidimensional pages of complex architectural plans,” she were countered with, “This is exactly the predicted outcome of billions of years of cosmic evolution—you see, random interstellar events lead to just this kind of complex specified information…we are not impressed.” We would want our money back.
Sooo… ID is true because it would be a bad movie otherwise? Nerdy scientists make bad movie characters so we should pretend they don't exist?
There's a name for people who can't tell the difference between fiction and reality, and a name for people who insist there are patterns revealing secrets all around us. Being willing to call some things random is a hallmark of sanity. Consider the case of noted paranoid schizophrenic John Nash, as presented in A Beautiful Mind:
He sees connections everywhere, patterns within patterns within seeming randomness. As he told PBS:
In madness, I thought I had a very important role, and, of course, that includes the messenger-type function. … I saw myself as being a messenger or having a special function. …
At a very early time I got the idea that I would receive a message somehow. Later on I felt that I might get a divine revelation by seeing a certain number that would appear. A great coincidence could be interpreted as a message from heaven.
Compare this to Sternberg's argument:
Aren’t these correlations a bit strange for genomes that supposedly consist mostly of junk and are constantly being corrupted by “degenerative processes”? Why do such “obnoxious sequences” have any kind of conserved higher-order “bar code” pattern? These facts of mammalian chromosome biology have been known for years, if not decades. But, alas, no mention of them is to be found in the literature that wants to emphasize the unintelligent design of our genome. To make up for this lack, then, I am going to discuss such facts in more detail after I show you the mystery signal tomorrow.
Now, I'm not claiming that Sternberg is anything – paranoid schizophrenic or scientist – like John Nash. I'm saying that the ID argument is hard to distinguish from the ravings of paranoid schizophrenics. I mean, Stephen Meyer's book is
Signature in the Cell, not so far a reach from Nash's "messenger-type function." Bill Dembski's entire ID career is based around deciding just how big a coincidence has to be to be considered a message from heaven. And to make that argument, Dembski loves to cite
movies, books, and the
ravings of
Bible Code fans. He
hears books shouting at him. Paul Nelson has
conversations with doodled figures in his notebook. Other IDolators point to
Sherlock Holmes as an example of how science works.
These people are all nice folks and sane, but their arguments are crazy.
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 1:11 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 15, 2010
Category: Policy and Politics
Shorter Ginni Thomas in WaPo: Wife of Justice Thomas starts group for 'citizen activists':
Caesar's wife was a pussy.
Actual spokeswoman for Mrs. Thomas, who recently started a teabagging group using corporate funds as permitted by her husband's vote on
Citizens United:
"She did not give up her First Amendment rights when her husband became a Supreme Court judge."
Words fail. Sure, she didn't give up her right to speak freely, but that doesn't mean she should profiteer using her husband's decisions. Any corporation donating to her group which doesn't think it's buying access to Justice Thomas should fire its executives and start over. Any Supreme Court spouse who thinks his or her private actions don't reflect on the political impartiality of their spouse is nuts. And under the circumstances, Chief Justice Roberts would do well not to
chide the President for leading a "political pep rally" in the Constitutionally mandated State of the Union address if he can't keep his coequal branch from selling itself to the highest bidder.
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 8:37 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Joshua Rosenau spends his days defending the teaching of evolution at 
