Hot Debate: Dawkins and Pell

This debate is well worth and hour of your time. Cardinal George Pell of Australia debates Professor Richard Dawkins on God, evolution, intelligent design and climate change.

Rebecca Skloot on science journalism

During a 2010 visit to her alma mater - Colorado State University - Rebecca Skloot gave a series of seminars on communicating science to the public. I asked her what she thought about the role of science journalism in a world where more and more scientists are communicated directly to the public. Here is her answer.

Creating Freedom

Creating Freedom
  EPISODE ONE: the lottery of birth
                    a film by Raoul Martinez

Creating Freedom - Part 1: The Lottery of Birth (Trailer) from Creating Freedom on Vimeo.

Urban Garden Revolution

Cheers to Green Ninja!

Dan Dennett: Philosophy's Santa Claus

Here Dan Dennett discusses his concept of consciousness and presents critiques of various concepts buried in the words "free will." Before encountering Dennett's take on this I had seen the English words "free will" and "consciousness" as Trojan horses for faith-based learners and other such metaphysical proponents. Dan Dennett, on the other hand says those words need to be taken for what they are - placeholders for a more complex amalgam of naturally occurring phenomenon that science is on the march toward understanding.

Evolution on Manhattan

Here is the first video I've seen from a new branch of the TED talks called TED-Ed. The idea of these videos is to animate lessons making them widely available to any curious person with an internet connection. I applaud the advocacy of creativity and transparency.

The contemporary illustration of accidental evolution at the hand of human development is particularly poignant.

Inside the Climate-Change-Denial Playbook

Last week I posted a video of Senator James Inhofe interviewed by Rachel Maddow. In this interview Inhofe makes assertions that made my jaw drop. Namely, that environmental lobbying groups out-spent oil-and-gas lobbyists by over a billion dollars in 2009.  He even sites Nature Magazine as the source for this "fact." A "fact" that he clearly got wrong by grossly misrepresenting and confusing the numbers.

The opinion piece in question can be viewed here. The numbers reported by the editors are as follows; $272 million spent by oil-and-gas lobbyists opposing cap-and-trade in 2009 while $229 million spent by environmental groups lobbying for cap-and-trade legislation. By claiming that environmental lobbyists spent nearly a billion dollars more than oil-and-gas lobbyists while the article clearly states that environmental groups spent 43 million dollars less, Inhofe is guilty of an egregious falsehood. 

Incidentally, Inhofe also describes Nature as a "very liberal publication." This struck my as particularly hilarious as the vast majority of the material written about in Nature is derived from primary research conducted in laboratories all over the world.  It has the highest impact factor of any academic journal and publishing in said journal is the most competitive endeavor a scientist can undertake.  In all my life I have not seen a single member of the US congress argue about the scientific reporting in Nature Magazine unless it threatened their bottom-line. You don't see Inhofe arguing over the liberal or conservative way in which the crystal structure of Malaria parasite proteins are described. Imagine hearing a senator argue - Yes, the cysteine-rich Duffy-binding-like domains of the parasite's erythrocyte binding protein actually only bind to right-leaning cell surface receptors - COME ON!

I want to emphasize that the article Inhofe refers to is a brief OPINION piece, not a full-on research article. It is an opinion written by the editors encouraging their audience to read a report made by a professor at American University in Washington, DC named Matthew C. Nisbet. The title of professor Nisbet's article is - Climate Shift: Clear Vision for the Next Decade of Public Debate.  

While reading professor Nisbet's response to Inhofe's misuse of his report I came across a very interesting paragraph describing the playbook of the climate-change-deniers.  The following paragraph makes clear that there is an orchestrated effort among some conservatives in Washington to frame climate-change consistently in a severely anti-science manner.  

"During the 1990s, based on focus groups and polling, Republican consultant Frank Luntz helped shape the climate skeptic playbook, recommending in a strategy memo to lobbyists and Republican members of Congress that the issue be framed as scientifically uncertain, using opinions of contrarian scientists as evidence. He also wrote that the “emotional home run” would be an emphasis on the dire economic consequences of action, impacts that would result in an “unfair burden” on Americans if other countries such as China and India did not participate in international agreements.^"

Using anti-science tactics is intolerable to me and I feel sad for the people of this county who are fooled by charlatans like James Inhofe.  They are making a mockery of this republic and it makes me want to scream!

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Reason Rally Highlights

Scared Science: belief and bias

~Tom Paine's Ghost is happy to present a guest post by Mieka Jensen.

Scared Science: belief and bias

One version of a famous story goes, Darwin recanted on his deathbed. Refuting his own theory of evolution and asking God for a pardon. For many this comes as a slap in the face, like telling Harvard you’re going to get your masters degree online instead. While that account is hotly debated, denied by his own children, if anyone were going to recant it probably would have been Darwin. Just for the irony. He was surrounded by a scientific community, his father and grandfather were doctors, and was raised as a Unitarian, which is what cause many to think Elizabeht Ried (aka Lady Hope) made the whole thing up.  

Should he have recanted on his deathbed, it was almost as if he knew that someday his name would be a flashpoint for the divide between secularism and Christianity and he wanted to complicate the issue. Needless to say, even a whisper of a rumor that it happened was enough for scientists who followed him to follow his supposed suit.

The trend continues even among scientists today. Professor and scientist Antony Flew, a lifelong proponent of atheism, announced he had switched to deism in 2004, six short years before his death. Other examples tell similar stories. Apparently old age brings its own doubts – or faiths – to the forefront, even within the scientific community.

Science has long been the bastion of factual evidence and practical atheism, at least in the minds of nonprofessionals. Actually, scientists lean slightly more toward deism than atheism, with studies showing that as many as 66 percent of scientists admit in believing in some sort of god. Doctors and other higher education professionals follow suit.

Similar studies have shown that, far from stepping away from their faith as long supposed, college students tend to stick with their religious affiliations in greater numbers than their unschooled peers. This may be the result of the confirmation theory, which suggests that the knowledge education gives deists also provides them with more tools to ignore evidence against god or create an even greater number of excuses for god and the afterlife.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, larger numbers of natural scientists working in biology, chemistry, and physics, tend to stick to their atheist guns, while social scientists tend to favor a master-design theory in greater numbers. This leads to several disturbing questions for the scientific community. If so many scientists are believers in a god, how does this influence their work? Are they tempted to fudge details or slant findings to support their own worldview? What avenues of study may be ignored?

Peer pressure also plays a role. Naturally opened-minded, perhaps scientists are swayed into agreeing with beliefs their colleagues hold while reserving private doubts themselves, making it difficult to count on the accuracy of any study. Politics and government laws may also encourage one point of view over another, especially when it comes to handing out grants.

In a worst-case scenario this leads to an arms race, where two divergent groups of scientists run toward evidence (or theories) that support their own worldview rather than favoring the truth. But in the best cases, scientists put their personal beliefs on hold when it comes to examining the evidence and considering alternative theories. After all, for every Darwin and Flew, there is a Stephen Hawking who states, "Science makes God unnecessary."

Meika Jensen is a west coast freelance writer who is currently beleaguered by the prospect of applying to Berkeley graduate school in the next few years to study the development of communications. With a diverse array of interests and an insatiable appetite for magazines, she is always happy to write a post or just talk one over. Follow her on Twitter: @MeikaJensen."

Tim DeChristopher

A hero of mine named Timothy DeChristopher was transferred from solitary confinement back to minimum security prison after people called their respective congress people to complain. Here's a guy doing jail-time for blocking oil and gas drilling in one of the most beautiful places on earth while not a single banker is in jail for preying on American home-buyers. I continue to be outraged by this especially considering that the group of oil and gas leases DeChristopher blocked were deemed inappropriate to begin with by the Obama administration. If you can help him out at bidder70.org.