The NSF censors itself with an astrophysicist's help

Wow, this story (reported in ScienceInsider by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, "Evolution, Big Bang Polls Omitted From NSF Report") is a scandal.

In an unusual last-minute edit that has drawn flak from the White House and science educators, a federal advisory committee omitted data on Americans' knowledge of evolution and the big bang from a key report. The data shows that Americans are far less likely than the rest of the world to accept that humans evolved from earlier species and that the universe began with a big bang.

They're not surprising findings, but the National Science Board, which oversees the National Science Foundation (NSF), says it chose to leave the section out of the 2010 edition of the biennial Science and Engineering Indicators because the survey questions used to measure knowledge of the two topics force respondents to choose between factual knowledge and religious beliefs.

So the claim is that it is unfair to say people who reject evolution or the Big Bang are scientifically illiterate, as if to do so would somehow infringe their religious liberty. What utter nonsense. I'd almost be happier to believe the data was omitted because the terrible response rates are an embarrassment for this country.

The deleted text, obtained by ScienceInsider, does not differ radically from what has appeared in previous Indicators. The section, which was part of the unedited chapter on public attitudes toward science and technology, notes that 45% of Americans in 2008 answered true to the statement, "Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals." The figure is similar to previous years and much lower than in Japan (78%), Europe (70%), China (69%), and South Korea (64%). The same gap exists for the response to a second statement, "The universe began with a big explosion," with which only 33% of Americans agreed.

The sad thing is that one of the religious accommodationists responsible for arguing that knowledge of evolution and the big bang are "flawed indicators of scientific knowledge because responses conflated knowledge and beliefs," is an astrophysicist: Louis Lanzerotti, at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Lanzerotti isn't the only one to blame, as it seems a philosopher called John Bruer was the primary instigator of this pro-fundamentalist pandering.

When Science asked Bruer if individuals who did not accept evolution or the big bang to be true could be described as scientifically literate, he said: "There are many biologists and philosophers of science who are highly scientifically literate who question certain aspects of the theory of evolution," adding that such questioning has led to improved understanding of evolutionary theory. When asked if he expected those academics to answer "false" to the statement about humans having evolved from earlier species, Bruer said: "On that particular point, no."

If your arguments are trivially demolished within seconds of casual questioning by the Science reporter what business do you have being on the National Science Board?

[Bruer] calls the survey questions "very blunt instruments not designed to capture public understanding" of the two topics.

"I think that is a nonsensical response" that reflects "the religious right's point of view," says Jon Miller, a science literacy researcher at Michigan State University in East Lansing who authored the survey 3 decades ago and conducted it for NSF until 2001. "Evolution and the big bang are not a matter of opinion. If a person says that the earth really is at the center of the universe, even if scientists think it is not, how in the world would you call that person scientifically literate? Part of being literate is to both understand and accept scientific constructs."

Miller has it right. Lanzerotti and Bruer should be ashamed of themselves.

Brian Switek reviews the Templeton Foundation's "Test of Faith" DVD series

Brian Switek has a characteristically thoughtful review of the Templeton Foundation's DVD miniseries "Test of Faith" on his blog. As Brian is not one of those evil "divisive" (or worse: "uncivil") atheists like Dawkins, Coyne or PZ Myers I'd hope that his critique is not dismissed out of hand by pro-religion accommodationists.

Unfortunately for an organization that claims to represent a serious, sober and moderate vision of (some form of) religion and science not in being in conflict, the DVDs engage in much the same sort of God-of-the-gaps teleology and straw-man argumentation that creationists normally engage in.

Nor does the Templeton Foundation's vision of religion sound particularly deist or ecumenical. Brian writes:

I would not have been so aggravated with the program if it presented scientists who said something akin to "I am a Christian/Muslim/Buddhist/Pastafarian/&c. I believe [insert belief system here] on the basis of faith, and I feel what I have come to understand about the nature of the universe is consistent with the faith I practice. Rather than make nature conform to my beliefs, however, I would rather understand the world as it is. If it turns out to be inconsistent with my faith then I will have to question what I believe." I could at least respect that. Instead the Test of Faith series trots out scientist after scientist who believe that they have some special glimmer or proof of God in nature; it is going at the whole thing backwards. The impression the series gives is that the natural world justifies and supports a particular religion, Christianity, rather than stating that some liberal forms of that religion could accept the science of evolution. (Whether evolution is reconcilable with religion depends on what brand religion we're talking about.)

And people wonder why many scientists have little or no respect for the Templeton Foundation?

PS: The 'physicist Katherine Blundell [who] says that there are "truths" in the universe that science does not detect' (*) mentioned is most probably the Oxford astronomer Katherine Blundell, as she is associated with some organization called The Faraday Institute For Science and Religion.

* Oh really. How do you know?

IYA2009 and other stuff...

2009 is the International Year of Astronomy, in case you didn't know, a global effort initiated by the International Astronomical Union and UNESCO.

The International Year of Astronomy (IYA2009) will be a global celebration of astronomy and its contributions to society and culture, highlighted by the 400th anniversary of the first use of an astronomical telescope by Galileo Galilei. The aim of the Year is to stimulate worldwide interest, especially among young people, in astronomy and science under the central theme "The Universe, Yours to Discover". IYA2009 events and activities will promote a greater appreciation of the inspirational aspects of astronomy that embody an invaluable shared resource for all nations.

In other astronomy-related news, Matt Springer at Built on Facts reviews Adam Frank's new book "The Constant Fire: Beyond the Science vs. Religion Debate". Nice segue between IYA2009, Galileo and Science vs. Religion eh? OK, the Catholic Church has apologized about the Galileo thing and it wasn't as simple a case of science vs religion as its often made out to be, but as the Pope's speech greeting those taking part in IYA2009 curiously doesn't mention it I thought I bring it up.

In sadder news, NASA has released its official report on the deaths of the seven astronauts killed when the space shuttle Columbia disintergrated during re-entry on Feb 01, 2003. In short, there was no way they could have survived (NYT article). The sudden loss of cabin pressure asphyxiated the astronauts and rendered them unconscious within seconds, followed by “lethal trauma occurred to the unconscious or deceased crew due to the lack of upper-body support and restraint.”

Norman Levitt Deconstructs Steve Fuller’s Postmodernist Critique of Evolution

Steve Fuller, a self-proclaimed leftist sociologist at the University of Warwick (just south of Birmingham, which is where I did my undergraduate and graduate degrees) was a witness for the defense in the Dover School board trial (i.e for the pro-ID school board). He has a new book out ("Science v. Religion? Intelligent Design and the Problem of Evolution") defending himself and critiquing evolutionary science.

Skeptic magazine has a review of the book by Norman Levitt, a mathematician and author with Paul Gross of several books on the academic culture wars (e.g. "The Flight from Science and Reason", "Higher Superstition" and "Prometheus Bedeviled"), which is worth a read (more for the insight into the unlikely alliance between the leftist and rightist anti-science groups than for a detailed critique of Fuller's book).

http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/07-12-19.html#feature

How not to get tenure

Speaking of the Templeton Foundation, it is claimed that the TF(*) was one of the few sources of funding that Guillermo Gonzalez managed to obtain. Indeed, it seems he only managed to bring in $170,000 spread over 5 years, compared to the average of $1,300,000 other ISU physics and astronomy faculty had brought in while they were on tenure track!

GG's failure to bring in normal levels of funding, in addition to a dramatic drop in publication rate and lack of grad student/postdocs, were major factors in him being denied tenure. These are, along with undergraduate teaching, major aspects of being a professional scientist in tenure-track although tenure is not based on a fixed set of rules.

Many good scientists do not get tenure (e.g. Rob Knob of the Galactic Interactions blog), and many good scientists never even get onto tenure-track in the first place. Given that GG appears to have failed to satisfy the requirements in many ways it is totally unsurprising that he was denied tenure at Iowa State University.

That he espoused an unscientific astronomical version of Intelligent Design and had close links to the Discovery Institute was also, quite rightly and quite fairly, another aspect of concern for the the faculty in the Physics department he was attempting to get tenure from. The Discovery Institutes's anti-secular and anti-scientific agenda, coupled with its manifest dishonesty is no secret. The recently revealed emails clearly show that GG's DI/ID links were known and were (entirely fairly) viewed negatively but were not used as a litmus test to "discriminate" against him. Of course, this will not stop Gonzalez and the DI is hijacking a routine and just decision in order to play politics.

After all, the faculty must have been aware of his views when they offered him tenure-track in the first place - they were no secret in the astronomical community - yet he did get a tenure track position. I have no doubt that while the faculty may have viewed GG's views with distaste they would have given him tenure had he satisfied the standard requirements of all tenure track faculty: bring in funding, mentor students and postdocs, be scientifically productive. Guillermo Gonzalez has only himself to blame for his current position.

Gonzalez could have used those tenure track years to engage in peer-reviewed research to develop the concept of galactic habitability and turn it from a poorly-constrained hypothesis into a robust theory. He could easily have applied for grants to pay for several grad students and postdocs to to work with him to expand our knowledge of the role galaxies play in habitable planet formation and evolution.

But Guillermo Gonzalez didn't attempt to further science. Instead he decided to present his speculative and religiously-distorted views of Galactic Habitability to the unsuspecting public as scientific fact through his book "The Privileged Planet", bypassing peer review altogether.

In the mean time real science, done by real scientists, went ahead and left Guillermo Gonzalez behind. The ADS abstract service records 440 astronomy-related abstracts with the word habitable in 2006-2007 alone. If we repeat the search requiring the surname Gonzalez be one of the authors we get 1 abstract, and its a M. Gonzalez, not Guillermo. I have to expand the search to 2000-2007 before the Guillermo Gonzalez(**) appears, and then only in three abstracts, two of which are reviews rather than new work. Again, by way of comparison 107 abstracts contained "Galactic" and "Habitable" in the abstract between 2000 and 2007 (1353 with the word Habitable alone).

If Guillermo Gonzalez really believed that astrophysics did indeed provide convincing evidence of a Designer (specifically a Christian God) why would he have abandoned actual research?

(*) I am informed that the TF fund many good studies the interaction between science and religion, and that the TF is opposed to the "culture war" spin presented by fundamentalists such as the DI. Some of the people they occasionally fund are less rational though.

(**) There is also another Guillermo Gonzalez in professional astronomy.

Anyway, all this politics is tiring. In my next post we'll be back to discussing really interesting stuff. Yup, more on galactic winds!

Bob Park on Paul Davies and the Templeton Prize

Bob Park discusses Paul Davies's infamous Op-Ed (previously mentioned here) and the Templeton Prize in his November 30th "What's New" column.

Paul Davies does not know what science is

Paul Davies, best known for exploiting anthropic arguments in the service of religious apologetica and presenting the results to the unsuspecting public as popular "science" books, is at it again: a November 24th Op-Ed piece in the NYT that trots out the old canard that science is based on faith in the same way religion is.

When I was a student, the laws of physics were regarded as completely off limits. The job of the scientist, we were told, is to discover the laws and apply them, not inquire into their provenance. The laws were treated as “given” — imprinted on the universe like a maker’s mark at the moment of cosmic birth — and fixed forevermore. Therefore, to be a scientist, you had to have faith that the universe is governed by dependable, immutable, absolute, universal, mathematical laws of an unspecified origin. You’ve got to believe that these laws won’t fail, that we won’t wake up tomorrow to find heat flowing from cold to hot, or the speed of light changing by the hour.

Of course, almost none of this is true, as almost any scientist at any type will quickly tell you.

First of all, the "laws of science" are observed regularities of the way the Universe works, convenient descriptions for human consumption. Indeed, if there were no such regularities then everything we know, including life, could not exist. But that does not mean that a Universe that works differently could not exist.

That nature is ordered such that laws can be ascertained is not an untested assumption (or "faith" as Davies misleadingly but deliberately words it), but a hypothesis that is effectively tested. Even quantum mechanics, with predictions and behaviour that are extremely unusual by everyday standards, is rational and intelligible. Davies statement that "you have to believe that those laws won't fail" is an extremely unusual thing to say - physicists I known don't go around reciting "f=ma" for fear that Newton's Laws will stop working. Imagine if physics on the scale of everyday objects (houses, planets, etc) were not ordered and the so-called laws did fail - you'd work out that was happening pretty quickly.

Why would Davies even make such poorly reasoned claims, why use the word faith for something that is nothing like religious faith (belief without evidence)? Nor is this the only attempt to tie science to religion, specifically Christianity, in the article. The wikipedia article on Paul Davies (as seen at the time of writing on Nov 26th 2007 at 5:30pm EST) is blunt in one (quite probable) interpretation:

Davies recently made his commitment to deism clear in his New York Times Op-Ed, Science on Faith, 24 November, 2007 going so far as to write:

Clearly, then, both religion and science are founded on faith — namely, on belief in the existence of something outside the universe, like an unexplained God or an unexplained set of physical laws, maybe even a huge ensemble of unseen universes, too. For that reason, both monotheistic religion and orthodox science fail to provide a complete account of physical existence.

While coyly refusing to name or identify a particular candidate monotheistic religion, equating faith in the supernatural with a faith that the universe is itself real, testable and knowable is essentially a reductio ad absurdum where science can be faulted for not knowing anything if it can't explain absolutely everything. The only motive for making such an absurd argument is to open a crack where the wedge of deism can be inserted into scientific reason, to divide and dominate it. It is essentially a political, not scientific argument, one that advocates deism in exactly the same way as the "intelligent design" religious movement.

Sadly it is unlikely that the hordes of NYT readers who made this article one of the top emailed articles in the last 48 hours will learn just how wrong Davies is.

Order your Cat-Woman Chimera Now!

The BBC reports that in a partial victory for rationality and progress, the UK government has agreed to allow the creation of "human animal hybrid embryos" for research purposes only (damn, cancel that cat-woman order!), after initially wanting to ban all such research.

Public Health Minister Caroline Flint denied that the government had staged a climbdown, saying they had always wanted to "leave the door open" for this type of research to be allowed on a case-by-case basis.

She said scientists had put forward more evidence about the importance of using hybrid embryos.

"We saw this was an area where these could be used for scientific benefit."

The draft bill allows the creation of human embryos that have been physically mixed with one or more animal cells. However, true animal-animal hybrids, made by the fusion of sperm and eggs, remain outlawed.

Note that actually true hybridization is still banned - effectively what is allow is the creation of a chimera. Still, even restricted in this manner, humanity will benefit.

Scientists say their work could help find cures for devastating diseases, such as Alzheimer's.

Professor Robin Lovell-Badge, head of the division of Developmental Genetics at the MRC National Institute for Medical Research, said: "This research has many potential benefits for the understanding of disease and for treatments and should not be feared."

As usual, the argument against such research is largely based on nebulous claims about "ethics" and "morality," as if research that may lead to actually helping people isn't moral, and as if scientists can not say anything about morals or ethics.

But Josephine Quintavalle, of the campaign group Comment on Reproductive Ethics, disagreed, saying: "It is appalling that the government has bowed to pressure from the random collection of self-interested scientists and change its prohibitive stance.

"This is a highly controversial and terrifying proposal, which has little justification in science and even less in ethics.

As always, what is really happening is that people with religous beliefs about human embryos, beliefs not supported in any way by science, are trying to impose their beliefs on everyone, while under the cover of calling it ethics and morals (and only the religous are allowed to comment on morals in this brave new world we live in).

Note the absurd statement that the Government should take into consideration and act on the best scientific advice ("pressure from a self-interested scientists"), but of course they should bow to pressure from a tiny group of non-qualified, ignorant Luddites.

And as for terrifying, what is terrifying about it? There is nothing terrifying about chimerism (its actually surprisingly common in nature), hybridization or stem cell research. Terrifying is hundreds of millions of children starving or dying of disease each year. Terrifying is overpopulation and climate damage. Terrifying is religious fundamentalism and the brutality it so eagerly incites.

Anyway, hooray for the Labour government in stepping back from uninformed knee-jerk legislating and actually listening to the experts. Its a step in the right direction...

The politically astute will remember that the current US President (GWB) spent time in one of his State of the Nation speeches (normally reserved for such important things as talking about [faked] claims that Saddam was working on getting Uranium from Niger, and also the threat to civilization caused by athletes taking performance enhancing drugs) complaining about "manimals" and how such research would be banned.

Also note that right-wing reactionary "author" (deliberately put in quotes) and anti-science bigot Michael Crichton's novel "Next" contains a subplot about chimerism.

[update: fixed one obvious typo. Added labels. Credit for Cheetara picture: http://www.cheezey.org/thundercats/gallery/cheetaragallery.html].

SciAm review of Owen Gingerich's book

The September 2006 issue of Scientific American has a review of Prof. Owen Gingerich's new book: "God's Universe". Owen Gingerich is or was an Astrophysicist and still is a noted Historian of Science at Harvard - previously mentioned in this blog regarding the Pluto redefinition furore.

Scientists write popular books all the time, but this one is likely to have a different readership from the average popular science book, and get a bit more press too. Why? Well, Prof Gingerich is one of the approximately 40% of scientists who manage to reconcile holding spiritual beliefs while still practicing the methodological/philosophical naturalism required for science. He is part of the smaller (sub)set holding theistic religious beliefs (i.e. believes in God).

Shame on him for violating the stereotype of souless atheistic scientists fiendishly plotting the moral and metaphysical downfall of the West, or whatever it is we're supposed to be doing. I forget now, must have deleted the last memo from SASFPTMAMDOTW from my inbox.

This kind of thing, the apparent oxy-moron of a religous scientist, really gets the media excited. NPR happily interviews Francis Collins (human genome project, whose book is also reviewed in the same SciAm article), in fact just about anyone who appears to break the science vs. religion theme perpetuated by the media seems to be of great interest to the same media. What is annoying is the implicit appeal to authority inherent in such attention: "Tell us about your religious beliefs o wise one. How tolerant and open minded you must be compared to your non-religious fellow scientists."

Why should we view a scientist Joe OverEductated reasons for believing supernatural thing X any more seriously than Joe Redneck's reasons for believing supernatural thing X?

And is Joe OverEducated's vision of what God is anything like Joe Rednecks. Deism, probably the most common form of religious belief by scientists, is so far from your average Southern Baptist's view of Christianity as to be irreconcilable. Yet all these cases of religious scientists are inevitably portrayed as support for Christianity (yes, some fraction are Xtian, but they're can hardly be a majority). I feel that if these interviewers did their job properly and actually probed these issues maybe we'd see less enthusiam for this sort of religious apologetics.

Hopefully our library will get a copy so I'll be able to read Gingerich's book myself, but in the mean time I'll content myself with a few choice quotes from George Johnson's review in SciAm.

... its premise survives: that there are two ways to think about science. You can be a theist, believing that behind the veil of randomness lurks an active, loving, manipulative God, or you can be a materialist, for whom everything is matter and energy interacting within space and time. Whichever metaphysical club you belong to, the science comes out the same.

In the hands of as fine a writer as Gingerich, the idea almost sounds convincing. "One can believe that some of the evolutionary pathways are so intricate and so complex as to be hopelessly improbable by the rules of random chance," he writes, "but if you do not believe in divine action, then you will simply have to say that random chance was extremely lucky, because the outcome is there to see. Either way, the scientist with theistic metaphysics will approach laboratory problems in much the same way as his atheistic colleague across the hall."

Mmmh, thats not promissing - sounds like the standard "materialism is just as much a matter of faith as religion" argument.

The reviewer, moving onto Francis Collin's book which employs a very similar rhetorical devices, remains firmly grounded in reason:

But what sounds like a harmless metaphor can restrict the intellectual bravado that is essential to science. ... Whether they are right or wrong is not a matter of belief but a question to be approached scientifically. The idea of an apartheid of two separate but equal metaphysics may work as a psychological coping mechanism, a way for a believer to get through a day at the lab. But theism and materialism don't stand on equal footings. The assumption of materialism is fundamental to science.