A consortium of high-class science organizations, including those on the screenshot below, are asking for citizens to suggest science questions that can be put to the Presidential candidates. Click on the screenshot to go the pages, where you can both suggest questions or vote on the many already suggested.
Some are good (“How do you plan to clean the plastic from the ocean?”), some are bad (“Do you believe in science?”) and some are mixed (“Do you believe in evolution?” which has a better subtext: “The science community fully believes in evolution, yet certain religious persons refute the evidence. Do you believe in evolution, or do you believe the scientific community (composed of our nation’s top scientists) to be wrong.?”).
Ir’s nice thought to collect these, and, as I recall, this endeavor actually got some candidates to answer questions in the past, but the chance that the answers will actually influence voters is close to zero. (That is, of course, despite the strong importance nearly all Americans give to science.”) They seem more concerned with questions like “What’s going to happen to my pocketbook?” or “How do we keep Hispanics out of the U.S.?”
In a Republican interview I’d ask: Where does the sun go at night?
Guaranteed to stump.
“Where does the sun go at night?”
My answer would be a question: “Relative to what?”
Or I might be snarky and suggest it visits Tasmania.
Or I might be politically slippery and ask: “where would you like it to go?”
I’d lead into that with something a bit easier like “What’s that big bright thing in the sky called?”
“Back into my arse.” — D.T.
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😀
Sun goes up, sun goes down. You can’t explain that.
Nice; I wondered who’d be first with that one.
Trump will promise he can stop the sun from going down at night.
And make it think it was its own idea.
“Do you accept that human activity is causing an increase in average global temperature and that this will have potentially deleterious effects on the environment and human well-being? If not, is it because you think that climate scientists are wrong in their conclusions and predictions? Or is it because you fear the socioeconomic and political cost of actually doing something about it?”
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Yes, unlikely, possibly, yes.
Much simpler: “Do you plan on regulating CO2 emissions? If so, is your goal for your first four years of presidency to slow growth, make emissions flat/stable, or reduce them?
Sure there is a lot more to it. But if they aren’t willing to do that, they probably aren’t willing to do anything.
That’s unfair, a kind of false dichotomy. Many people do not accept AGW simply because they are unconvinced. Expert opinion doesn’t (imho shouldn’t) always determine individual belief.
Regarding the pledge of allegiance: “Atheists believe that the concept of a God is based only on mythology”
So is allegiance itself and the concept of nationhood. These are not concepts amenable to scientific testing.
Nope. They’re certainly within the remit of evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, anthropology, sociology and political science.
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Ant wrote: “They’re certainly within the remit of evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, anthropology, sociology and political science.”
Psychology is involved in religion; does that make religion “scientific”?
In the sense that it’s a human construct that can be investigated and explained by science, yes. (See Pascal Boyer, for example.) In the way it makes truth claims about the world and our place within it, no.
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Ant writes: “In the sense that it’s a human construct that can be investigated and explained by science, yes.”
I doubt this but am willing to look at links you will please provide.
If you’re too lazy to Google “Pascal Boyer” I’m certainly too lazy to do your work for you.
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“Durkheim, Dawkins, and Alper all have different scientific explanations for the existence of religion.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kidspirit/has-science-explained-rel_b_2552380.html
What a ridiculous thing to write but, after all, it’s the Huffington Post.
Science ought to arrive at the same answer (duh). It’s like three scientists arriving at significantly different values for the average force of gravity at the surface of Earth.
The writer admits at the end that none of these authors actually succeeds in providing a scientific answer.
Next up:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2010/01/14/can-science-explain-religion/
“the centerpiece of Wright’s theory—are what game theorists call non-zero-sum interactions.”
Sure, why not. Its a reasonable guess, ready to add to a pile of similar reasonable guesses.
It also apparently collapses into a circularity.
I await your recommended reading list.
I already provided that.
Two points: (a) Scientists can have erroneous explanations about things outside their fields as easily as the lay person can. (b) Scientists within the same field can and do advance different hypotheses, which might have to await further data before any can be falsified. Compare string theory [/sic/] and its rivals.
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“which might have to await further data before any can be falsified.”
So you believe science could explain religion but is waiting for further data. Well, that’s reasonable. I don’t know anyone interested in paying scientists to do that kind of research but much less worthy projects seem to be publicly funded.
Researching my own answers, I found this essay to be brilliant and corresponds closely to my own thinking. Science cannot be brought to bear on religion, but logic can be used.
https://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/GodExist.htm
“Why Science Cannot Address the Existence of God”
Includes topics such as:
The Nature of Complex Reality
“In practical terms, deciding the existence of a god amounts to testing for the existence of some rational and extremely powerful supra-human being or beings. Whether it’s a single infinitely powerful deity, a number of finite but still powerful supernatural beings, or a powerful natural alien civilization, the practical problems of evidence are the same.”
“The Entity need not be infinite or omnipotent, merely far more powerful than we are. The Entity need not act supernaturally, but merely by means of natural laws we have not yet discovered, or technology we have not yet developed.”
Exactly so.
“Why wouldn’t the Entity reveal itself? We can easily think of a host of reasons why an intelligent super-being might conceal its existence or make it non-obvious.”
“The amount of actual information about God in the Bible or the Koran is miniscule. We are told there is a Deity, it makes moral demands on humans, there are consequences for obeying or disobeying those demands, and that’s about it.”
“And even the scanty information we have is subject to gross abuse. The mere belief in the existence of God leads many people to fatalism or to a belief that God will protect them from even the most irresponsible behavior. If God forgives misdeeds, many people take that as license to behave immorally and then perform some superficial act of atonement. If God makes moral demands, we have those who interpret that as a license to impose those demands on others. And everywhere we see the will of God being used as a cover for my will.”
“One possible resolution of the God question that explains all the facts is that God exists;”
“Another possible resolution of the God question that explains all the facts is that God does not exist;”
Fine, if you ignore the physics.
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Oh, please. Centuries before the invention of Christianity, Epicurus made the simple scientific observation that there are no powerful entities with the best interests of humanity at heart. (See his famous Riddle.) Since all the popular gods from that time to this day are claimed to have our best interests at heart, we know they don’t exist.
Or, in modern terms, why doesn’t Jesus ever call 9-1-1? If you saw a priest raping a child in Jesus’s name, you’d call 9-1-1. What’s Jesus’s excuse? Dropped the mobile behind the couch? Too busy helping sports mega millionaires score points? Values the freedom of the priest to rape children over the freedom of the children to not be raped by Jesus’s official representatives? Regardless, Jesus is clearly either impotent or morally incompetent (or both), and therefore not fit to be considered a worthy human role model — let alone any sort of divine authority figure.
b&
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And you forget to mention Shermer’s Law (based on Arthur C Clarcke’s 3rd Law): ‘Any alien advanced enough will be indistinguishable from God”. And any alien coming to us probably would have to be that advanced…
Something tells me those are not independent variables.
Is it more important to you that you hold true to your beliefs of how the world is or should be; or that you revise your beliefs based on observations, even if what you observe conflicts with what you believe?
In either case, what standards do you use to determine the validity of the position you’ve arrived at? How do you know which beliefs are sacrosanct and which observations are trustworthy?
Cheers,
b&
I am afraid their answers would be so ideologically crippled that it would hurt to have to listen to them accommodate the need to retain a voting majority.
I would personally focus my questions on what policies they intend to make rather than what they believe inside their heads. These are politicians, after all; the two things often have very little to do with one another.
Trump: “Let’s build a big beautiful wall around ignorance. It’s going to be the biggest, most beautiful wall you’ll ever see. And the ignorant are going to pay for it. We’re gonna make science great again. I have lots of friends in science. Science is a beautiful place.”
Well LOL at least he’s probably right about being able to get the ignorant to pay for it. “The ignorant” being a much easier group to hornswoggle than “Mexicans.” 🙂
Brilliant. 😀 I can hear him saying it right now.
But that’s the point. You yourself identify a disconnect between their actions and their beliefs. What we want to know is how they determine which beliefs are sacrosanct and what evidence is trustworthy — since that’s exactly what’s going to determine their decisions.
Maybe all their decisions are driven by polling data. But which polls, and why those polls and not some other…?
b&
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What makes you think that? You don’t think there are politicians who think the scientific evidence for climate change is absolutely trustworthy, that yes warming is s happening and US industry is contributing to it, and yet they plan on doing nothing about it because of political expediency and reelection chances? Frankly, I think that probably describes most of them, including most conservatives. There’s a few ‘true deniers,’ sure, but I expect the vast majority believe all the facts and science about climate change that you do, they just disagree with you on what public policy thing to do about it.
Now you’re identifying “political expediency and reelection chances” as the yardstick by which they measure everything. Which, of course, is certainly the case for most politicians.
But don’t you still want to know how the politician determines what is and isn’t politically expedient and what is perceived as likely to affect reelection chances?
b&
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Well I want to know what they’re going to do and (ideally) why they’re going to do it, sure. If that’s what you mean. But I don’t think your abstract questions like “How do you know which beliefs are sacrosanct and which observations are trustworthy?” are going to get me that information. I’m not even sure *I* could give me a satisfactory answer to that question. 🙂
What it will tell you is whether they (publicly) put religious faith ahead of a reasoned evaluation of observation, vice-versa, or are too much of a political animal to give a clear answer.
The phrasing is such that a “person of faith” will recognize it as questioning their commitment to faith and will respond with a reaffirmation of their faith. Somebody in the reality-based community will naturally stress the importance of evidence-driven reasoning. And the politician will mouth platitudes about how big the tent is without ever answering the question (and, indeed, turning the question into an opportunity to bang on some random vaguely-related talking point).
That right there gives you a superlative guide to how the politician is going to approach anything where religion (or other ideology) and reality clash.
Cheers,
b&
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But as I said above, I think the majority of conservatives agree with your reasoned evaluation of observation. They just don’t agree with you about what public policy to enact in response.
It sounds to me, Ben, that you are primarily interested in just doing a litmus test or loyalty test for science acceptance. You’re not trying to evaluate what they will do in office, you want them to stand in public and say “I put science ahead of religion.” Which, IMO, is a lousy test of candidates because it will produce lots of false positives (politicians who would say they put their faith before science, yet they enact good policies) and lots of false negatives (politicians who would say they put science ahead of faith, then enact lousy policies).
Now every voter is different and what you consider important when voting may not be what I consider important. I can only tell you that I’m much more interested in understanding what sort of policies they will enact (more or less health care? Hawk or dove? Increasing or decreasing financial support for sound science education?), and I’m not really interested in whether they, as a personal matter, value their own faith more or less than the scientific method.
Eric,
In principle I agree that all we really need to know is what policies they will attempt to enact, or more generally, what actions they will take. The problem I see is that we are very unlikely to get an honest / accurate / meaningful answer from these candidates on policy questions. The exact same issues you have with Ben’s line of questioning applies to yours. These candidates are going to tell you whatever they think will work to sell themselves.
In general we know what types of policies their administrations would be likely to pursue based merely on what party they are in, regardless of what they may say.
I disagree. The example I used in response to another poster was Sanders vs. Clinton on climate change. They’re in the same party. They’d both answer that they accept the science. Yet the extent to which they’re willing to regulate industry is probably very different. The Clintons are very pro-business, Sanders is not.
I admit that on the GOP side, in this particular election, there may not be that level of distinction. In contrast to the Democrat’s “same ideology, different expected policies”. Cruz vs. Kasich vs. Trump is probably more a case of “different ideologies, same expected policies.”
Clearly, the most important question is the one about the biophyiscal impossibility of perpetual economic growth and what that means for the current sociopolitical system.
Pretty much everything else that concerns a president of the US follows from how we approach that question.
Unfortunately. it is also the least likely question to be seriously addressed…
Perhaps ask: “Does the Earth have an unlimited carrying capacity?” (The likely answer will be something to the effect, “We need a new Green Revolution!”)
A new Green Revolution will not suspend the laws of physics.
[GOP directed] Putting your beliefs aside, do you think that science is good for military research? If so, how do you plan to direct funding for research that would create a genuine disparity between America and the rest of the world’s leading technological advances? [GOP is all over making America better than everyone else…about time they walk the talk.]
Because today, it looks as if the majority of the world has about equal access to the most innovative technologies and the future is likely to have even less disparity between military powers (not that this isn’t a simultaneously good and bad thing).
You are aware that DOD is currently the single largest funder of science in the US and possibly the world, right? And I’m not just talking the applied “make me a better airplane” type stuff, they are a huge funder of basic research. Projected R&D spending for 2016 is $143 Billion for the entire country, all agencies combined, while DOD funding comprises $70 Billion of that. See AAAS’ data for more numbers than you really want.
I am aware of this data, though what I read of the candidates, I do not think they are aware of it.
Also, agencies like DOE and NSF and NIH spread research back into defense even though research is programmatically labeled non-defense.
e.g., Energy is energy. Same stuff can save the planet or blow it up.
Why is the vacuum energy 120 orders of magnitude less than quantum electrodynamics requires it to be?
Observation trumps requirement.
God.
My reason for asking this is because I’d really like to know the answer. 120 is a lot of orders of magnitudes. Something’s wrong.
Where’s Sean Carroll when you need him?
But a little reading suggests to ideas: The prediction is based on some axioms that might well be wrong. QED may be incomplete at this scale.
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I think that’s an extremely bad question to ask, in fact. I presume scientists don’t know the answer – so how is a political candidate supposed to have an opinion on it?
Even if there is an answer, it’s still way too specialised for even a scientifically aware layperson to be expected to know. IMO.
cr
But it might surface a telling “wrong” answer: Any variation of “because God” should show where the candidate stands.
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Whereas the ‘correct’ answer is presumably ‘How the hell should I know?’ It’s also, politically, irrelevant.
It reminds me of those no-win questions sometimes posed to contestants in Miss World etc contests. “What would you do to end world poverty?” All it’s doing, IMO, is testing their ability to wriggle out of an impossible question.
There are much more accessible questions to elicit their god-vs-science views.
cr
My question was something about – considering the decline in our educational system and ranking compared to many other countries, what are your proposals to turn this around. Is not lower state funding and state control over our educational system part of the problem.
Regarding education, I myself would also include the endemic Amuricun anti-intellectualism. (Re: Hofstadter’s “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life” and Jacoby’s “The Age of American Unreason.”)
Is your stupidness a genetic trait or do you have to work at it?
Stupidness is a genetic trait. Consequently it obtains benefits under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and such persons also constitute a Protected Class. Continued disrespect of stupid people is a hate crime.
You’re confusing stupidity with low intelligence. Low intelligence has a strong genetic component; stupidity, otoh, is more a function of lack of curiosity and learning (which aren’t, so far as I know, protected conditions under the ADA).
Plus, mordacious1 clearly meant the question as comic exaggeration.
I trust that pervasive Amuricun willful ignorance will not be found to be a genetic trait.
As referenced by Lawrence Krauss, I think all candidates should take (and have the results published) the periodically-given National Science Foundation U.S. adult science literacy survey, especially the question: “True or False: the Earth goes around the sun and takes a year to do it.”
As I started reading this post the question that popped into my head head was, “Do you believe in science?” and it turns out to be the example of a bad question. Because it contains the word “believe”? I don’t know.
Like the word “theory” it can be purposefully misunderstood, but aside from that peril I don’t know why it’s bad. It seems like a lot of politician don’t believe in science, and if that’s the case I want to know about it because it indicates a bad brain.
Maybe it’s a bad question because no one would answer “no,” which is not helpful. To the climate change deniers I would ask, how is it that you know more about the subject than scientists?
Its a bad question because it can be answered in a meaningless fashion quite easily and it doesn’t tell you anything about the person’s governance. I’m a candidate. I answer “yes, I believe in science.” Have I told you anything useful? With that answer in hand, do you know whether I will support EPA regulation of greenhouse gasses? Do you know if I will increase funding for NIH and NSF or decrease it? Do you know if I will request funding for STEM education? Tell the FBI to stop using questionable forensics techniques? Will I approve more NASA exploratory missions to other planets, or keep them focused on satellite constellations around Earth? Or will I not interfere and let them make the call as to how to spend the money?
See, the answer to your question doesn’t tell you anything about any of those things, or any other science policy issue. That’s why its ‘bad.’ At least IMO; every voter is of course free to value questions differently. But for me, as a voter, a question like yours doesn’t have a lot of decision-making value because I don’t really know what a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer translates into in terms of what the President-hopeful will do.
“yes, I believe in science.”
It’s a litmus test. It’s like getting elected on a platform of “hope and change” without ever once stating what exactly would change or what he was hoping for. It obviously serves a purpose.
It’s a roomful of people nodding to each other saying, “Yes, I believe in science!” or asserting belief in whatever the group leader has decided is important today and the sheep bleat agreement.
Semantically the statement is ridiculous. Science is not a claim to be believed or disbelieved. It is a container word.
A specific claim can be believed or disbelieved; such as a kilogram was defined as the weight of a cube of water with 1/10th meter edges. That’s because there’s 1000 cubic centimeters in that cube, and each cubic centimeter of water is one gram.
The statement “I believe in science” might be a shorthand for “I believe every claim ever made by scientists,” but that invokes faith.
How is it a litmus test? Okay so Cruz, Trump, Kasich, Sanders, and Clinton all answer “yes, I believe in science.” Now what do you do? How has that helped you?
“How is it a litmus test?”
It’s a proxy question. If you believe in science, well then, here is what science says you must do! Insert self-serving prescription here.
Many examples appear on this page. If you have a doubt about New York City being underwater suddenly in a time already past, well, you aren’t just a doubter of a particular scary story, you are denying science, all of it, not just some tiny little part of science in a vast spectrum.
It is used as a weapon and is never a sincere question since the question is silly on its face. As someone else here wrote, “I believe in baptism — I’ve even seen one!” reveals that belief in the *word* is not automatically belief in what the word stands for or even awareness of what the thing to which the word refers.
I believe in unicorns; I have bought several for my daughter. She loves them. On further inspection you realize I mean stuffed toys made to look like what young modern Americans think the word means.
Science exists. I believe in science. Just don’t start asking me a great many questions rooted in science. I’ve long ago forgotten Avogadro’s number and I confuse it with the number of electrons in a Coulomb quite regularly.
But are either of those numbers correct? I have no way of knowing. Electrons go by way too fast for me to count them. So I am confined to accepting those numbers or rejecting them. For the most part it doesn’t really matter. If I were a chemist it would matter about Avogadros number, and as I am an electronics technician a Coulomb is important but its exact number is less important than knowing how it is useful (a Coulomb of electrons will produce one volt in a one Farad capacitor, it is also the measure of electric current — one Coulomb per second is one ampere). Quick check — amazing that I’ve remembered that since it’s been over 30 years.
Long enough to forget that the units are coulomb and farad. 😁 (At least you didn’t say Ampère and Volta!)
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I think you’re being sarcastic, in which case I agree with that sarcasm. People (not necessarily commenters on this site) often leap from “science says X” to “therefore we must do my preferred public policy Y.” Its generally an unfounded and poorly reasoned leap. Climate change is a great example; science can tell us its happening and that human pollution is a major contributor. Science can even tell us that reduction polices A, B, and C will lead to reductions in warming of X, Y, and Z respectively. But science doesn’t tell you which of A, B, or C to choose. And it doesn’t tell you whether you implement A (or your chosen reduction strategy) through war, through treaty, through voluntary efforts, through investing in R&D, etc… Science informs policy (or it should), but it rarely dictates policy.
Actually, most of the science facts presented at the high school level can be readily independently verified from first principles in the high school science lab, and virtually all of them with equipment you can either buy or make from stuff you can buy at your local hardware store. Even Rutherford’s atomic nuclei experiments, Wilkinson cloud chambers, Farnsworth Fusors…all are within reach of the dedicated high school student for a science fair project. And the basic stuff, like gravitation and solar spectroscopy, can be done with what you’ve got in your desk drawer. Every kid in 4-H is overqualified to validate Mendelian inheritance, and you can count chromosomes with a cheap microscope.
Are you going to independently validate the mass of the Higgs? No, of course not. But you could certainly homebrew a cyclotron to verify the basic principles, at which point you could take a tour of the CERN facilities where they’d be overjoyed to show you their scaled-up version of the same thing. The data is freely available for you to check their work.
That’s the great thing about science. We can all independently verify the results, to whatever degree we wish.
Most rational people come to a point where they see that it would take an entirely unrealistic conspiracy for science to be untrustworthy. Yes, the picture is still plenty fuzzy in areas and there may still be some sands here and there that will shift…but there’s so much interlocking and interdependent that there’s just no reasonable alternative. If nuclear physics is off, chemistry is off, biology is off, cosmology is off, and all the rest — and discrepancies in the one would point to errors in the other. But that’s not what we see, outside of the stuff we know we don’t yet fully understand (like dark matter). The fine structure constant, for example, we know is a constant out to the limits of cosmological observation, and that itself incorporates so much directly and indirectly….
Cheers,
b&
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I agree with Eric. It’s not a ‘litmus test’ because it doesn’t provide any information. And, yes, the ‘Do you believe in science’ is a bad question because it equivocates on the verb ‘to believe.’ There was a liberal Christian theologian a generation or so ago–wish I could recall his name–who, when asked if he believed in baptism replied, ‘believe in it! why, I’ve seen one!’
“It’s not a litmus test because it doesn’t provide any information.”
It is *the* litmus test in the cultural war of global warming mitigation.
No not really. As I commented to Ben, its perfectly possible for someone to accept the science of global warming but take the GOP policy position that the government should do little or nothing about it. If you want to know whether a politician will take mitigation efforts, ask them specifically about what mitigation efforts they plan on taking. Don’t just ask if they accept the science behind climate change; that’s a lousy proxy for determining what policies they plan on implementing.
As a real world example, AIUI both Clinton and Sanders have made public comments to the effect that they accept the science. But Sanders is likely to support far more regulation of industry than Clinton. So in the case of these two candidates, the “do you accept the science” question really hasn’t answered the “what do you plan on doing about it” mitigation question.
Since science is based in inquiry, any question is can be considered scientific. Therefore, I would ask “What the fuck is wrong with you?”.
Or alternatively,
“Are you as big a horse’s ass as you appear on TV?”
Some questions I’m playing around with:
1. What are your top 5 research priorities, or alternately the top 5 problems facing the US that you hope that the US scientific research establishment will help you solve?
2. Do you plan on increasing or decreasing funding for the NSF and NIH? If you plan on increasing the funding, where do you expect the money for that increase to come from?
3. What are your two top priorities for NASA missions? Examples of priorities would be things like: developing a US space-delivery vehicle to replace the shuttle, increased human space exploration, greater satellite-based understanding of the Earth and near space, robotic exploration of the outer planets, space-based astronomy, etc.
4. [Standard climate change question. Everyone’s got a version; asking about it is boringly predictable but still an important question]
5. How – if at all – does your administration plan on supporting STEM education at the Elementary, High School, and collegiate levels? Please describe specific policy changes you would make from what we do today or any new programs you hope to put in place.
These are really good questions. I would add…
Are there any big science programs or facilities that you envision can provide major benefit to the advancement of science for all humankind? [e.g., Manhattan Project for Climate Change]
I don’t think “believe” is the appropriate word to use in a phrase like “I believe in evolution (or science),” as it puts evolution and/or science on a par with religion or the tooth fairy; i.e. something for which there is no supporting evidence. I’m really surprised to see this phrase used here. Someone’s getting sloppy.
Try “The evidence supports the theory of evolution and/or science,” or at the very least, “I believe the evidence supports the theory of evolution.” Add, if you like, “I have seen no evidence which supports a belief in unicorns, the tooth fairy, or any sort of god.”
Oh please, can we put aside the subtleties of proper word choice here? These are laypeople, not philosophers of science or PhDs in physics. If they say ‘believe’, take it as it is intended – a communication that they accept the method and results of science as credible – and leave it at that.
Actually, it’s a good way to phrase the question: The really good answer would be, “No.”
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“a communication that they accept the method and results of science as credible”
Exactly; all of science, every word spoken by anyone claiming to be a scientist. That is what “I believe in science” must mean.
It is necessarily an expression of faith since no human knows all science in order to declare belief in all of it. This is a religious tactic, you must accept all of Catholicism even if some bits do not seem proper, rational, truthful, or even moral.
A more carefully worded response is “I accept the results of scientific experiments properly conducted and reported.”
« A more carefully worded response is “I accept the results of scientific experiments properly conducted and reported.” »
That’s not a significant improvement on eric’s original, “they accept the method and results of science as credible” In fact, his is superior.
Accepting the methods of science /means/ that experiments are properly conducted and reported — and repeatedly and independently verified (which is why there are two different experiments at the LHC – more would be better, but there are financial and engineering limits).
What eric said certainly /does not/ imply the credulousness that you think (or at least state) that it does.
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Many religionists argue that science is no less a belief system than is religion and has no claim to truth beyond one’s own urge to believe. I’ve seen them quoted, with accompanying ridicule, on this very blog site.
To say “I believe in science” gives great support to their argument, and if you say it to one of these people, or write it where they’ll find it, you’ll wind up having to argue your way out of your own statement.
It’s better to say what you actually mean in the first place.
I agree with eric there. ‘Believe’ is commonly used to indicate a degree of confidence or agreement, it doesn’t need to imply blind faith, much as the Goddists would love to claim that it does.
I believe my car will (probably) start tomorrow morning – though I wouldn’t drop dead of surprise if it doesn’t. (That’s based on experience and observation).
cr
I don’t look to politicians to ‘know’ science or understand it. They just need to get out of its way and allow it to progress. We need the separation of science, religion and politics.
I think that we can demand a certain level of scientific literacy from our politicians (globally).
And the we can demand a higher bar for higher office. A president or prime minister needs to be able to understand when scientific findings are credible, and should legitimately shape public policy, and when they’re not, and shouldn’t.
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“We need the separation of science, religion and politics.”
That we do, but science needs money and lots of it and thus is beholding to politics. Politics, in turn, needs votes and thus is beholding to religion; apart from the obvious likelihood that politians are sometimes religious.
So scratch that thinking. There is no separation.
I’d ask the candidates what they intend to to to ensure better vaccination covering. I am saddened when I hear about an epidemic of measles or another vaccine-preventable disease in the USA, just because authorities are too shy with the antivaxer simpletons.
That’s a good subject for a question. You could probably double it up with some not-so-subtle aside intended to identify the anti-vaxxers. Something like this:
Do you believe the current HHS vaccine schedule for children is safe and effective? How – if at all – does your administration plan on increasing the number of families and children that take all recommended vaccines?
Yes that would be a good question.
And: “do you support HPV vaccination in prepubescent girls?”
And: “…. prepubescent boys?”
It would not only give some insight, but decide my vote (if I were a USA citizen).
Luckily, here in the Cape the roll-out has begun, albeit only for girls…
Maya, I checked the linked website today and didn’t see your question. In fact from my brief scan of the list of proposed questions it appears you may be the first one who has thought to ask about vaccination! But its an important topic, so I strongly encourage you to add it. (Or some version of it; there are directions they want you to follow for how to parse your entries).
Thank you! I had forgotten to go from here to the actual site. I’ve just checked, there is now a question (by Shawn Otto) about vaccination in line with our ideas.
“What do you accept as a reasonable determination of the age of the earth? And why?
That’s precious. Elect the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces of the United States because his idea of the age of the Earth conforms to yours.
Well, I’ve seen sillier reasons for choosing a president.
If the person in question thinks that the Earth is several thousand years old, said person is also quite likely to think that Jesus wants him to bring about Armageddon in order to end the earth real soon. So, yeah…kinda important for somebody in command of a military trivially capable of ending human civilization several times over.
b&
>
First of all, Michael 2, to my ears your commentaries are a bit too supercilious for the amount of evidenced argument they contain. Second, the age of the earth is not a matter of opinion: a young earth creationist is willfully ignorant beyond the margins of agree/disagree. So, yes, asking Douglas E.’s question is not only appropriate but necessary.
In addition to affirming Ben’s and Robert’s remarks, I would add that it is not about the answer conforming to my idea of the age of the earth, but rather accepts what the data indicate. If the candidate is a YEC, it would suggest to me that they are less than capable of absorbing and rationally analyzing data re issues ranging from national security to climate change to the economy to scientific priorities. Said candidate could possibly compartmentalize their thinking such that they believe the earth is 6000 years old still be functional in other arenas – but no – I don’t want a Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces who is completely wrong regarding a such a vast array of scientific evidence. And generally snittiness does not play well at WEIT.
+1
cr
I really wish we would stop asking if people believe in various scientific theories, like evolution or climate change. The question should be phrased as, “do you accept the scientific consensus on the validity of evolution, climate change, etc.
Not a science question, but proof that Twitter is worth it just for @WernerTwertzog
Campaigning for the presidency involves so many acts of radical dishonesty that no serious Christian would consider it, only hypocrites.
I’m guessing that Cruz is as serious as a heart attack about his Christianity and I know he would be the last choice for the job of president that I can think of. Nearly any lawyer is qualified for the dishonesty you state. Congress is full of them.
“The science community fully believes in evolution, yet certain religious persons refute the evidence. Do you believe in evolution, or do you believe the scientific community (composed of our nation’s top scientists) to be wrong.?”
The word “refute” here would be better replaced by the term “reject”.
You’re right. Not just better, but necessary– to ‘refute’ means to “prove to be false”, so the premise of the question as written is that evolution is false. This is surely not what the questioner intended.
I might be mistaken, but I think the incumbent would pass, but very few of the wannabes would. Possibly Sanders?
All speculation:
Clinton probably does not have a clue would probably not do very well, but not disastrously so.
Trump clearly has not got a clue, but he would accept science in some cases, somewhat irratically.
Cruz is deeply anti-science and would fail dismally (may I reiterate here that i find Cruz even more, much more, scary than Trump?).
These questions should be asked and answered. I’m less sure than Jerry that the impact on voter’s choices will be closes to zero (yes, I know, at my work they call me ‘The Optimist’)
If you want to see the sorts of answers you’ll probably get, its worth scanning Obama’s and Romney’s 2012 answers.
In hindsight, its a shame they didn’t ask these questions earlier, before the primaries had ended. Then we could’ve had Hilary Clinton’s answers on file. 🙂
Truly this, not questions of character, honesty, morality, or leadership are what matters most. How awful would it be to elect a man who did not even know atomic theory. Some dunderhead like Jefferson or Madison.
There’s a next-level false dichotomy for you. Jefferson and Madison were able to accomplish what they did because they were products of — and major contributors to — the Enlightenment, highly conversant with the advances in the science of their time. They could not have been more different from candidates today who are willfully ignorant (or worse, in denial due to religious superstition) of scientific consensus like atomic theory.
Or maybe you think Jefferson should have been excluded from holding high office on the “character question,” because he was banging Sally Hemings?
The implicit premise of the question is that detailed knowledge of science is required for a president. FDR had none, Hoover had a great deal.
I reject the premise. Questions like “do you accept the scientific consensus on …” are not science questions at all, as a grade 9 student can answer yes and a
PhD like Behe can answer no. Behe knows more science than anyone in grade 9 and likely more than most readers here, but suffers other problems.
A level of scientific literacy requisite for the appointing of well-qualified scientific advisers and to the evaluating of the substance of their advice is a necessary, but by no means sufficient, qualification for functioning adequately as president of the United States.
Other factors being equal, the greater the level of scientific literacy a president has, the better.
I somewhat agree with you and somewhat don’t. I focus on asking what sorts of policies they intend to implement rather than what they believe because I agree that a candidate’s science literacy doesn’t really tell you much about whether they will be a good executive or what policies they will push. That’s the agreement.
But you seem to think that asking science policy questions is useless because you equate that with asking about science literacy. They’re not equivalent. I certainly think it’s valuable to ask about a candidate’s position on ‘sciency’ policy questions, like: whether they intend to regulate pollution, whether they intend to support comprehensive sex ed and child vaccination, whether NIH or NSF or NASA funding will be a priority of their administration, and so on.
How much should the government spend on scientific research, and what are your science spending priorities?
Hmm, I see that Eric has already posed these sorts of questions above, and much better than I did.
While obvious, the question about evolution can serve as a touchstone, deceptively simple yet revealing (if answered honestly) much about a candidate’s psychology and epistemology — like asking a Boomer to name his or her favorite Beatle.
“like asking a Boomer to name his or her favorite Beatle.”
I wonder how much of my psychology you can infer from me not having a favorite Beatle.
Enough to know that I wouldn’t want to get stuck with your album collection — or probably to vote for you for president, either.
😀
Should we label foods containing DNA in them?
“Should we label foods containing DNA in them?”
I am not going to but I don’t mind you doing it.
How much of that DNA stuff you figure food’s got in it?
Clever! I think you caught Michael 2.
Heh. On that note let’s bring in the oldie but goodie: do you plan on regulating the amount of dihydrogen oxide allowed in our drinking water?
Ah. This is obviously one of those sneaky questions designed to test their language ability. ‘containing’ … ‘in them’ is a tautology and ungrammatical. It would be interesting to see if they spot it.
😉
cr
Fifty years ago, our nation’s unified mission was to reach the moon. Recently, President Obama, in a “moonshot”-style statement, declared that we will end cancer. Why is addressing global warming, and its lethal consequences, not as engaging as either of these projects?
What is the Rayleigh-Ritz formula?
What is the atomic weight of neon?
Of what degree is the stress tensor in a cantilever beam?
These are all science questions. None are relevant. “Will you spend money on X” is not a science question. It is relevant but no more relevant if X is some pet field of research than many other topics.
“Do you believe in science?”
I think this very broad question is *perfect*. Any answer, save a flippant dismissal, forces one to take an epistemological stance: Can humans figure things understand and improve? But then again, politicians’ motives will probably interfere with beauty of the question. A serious, well thought out answer could require a multi-hour response.
AAAS is unusual in that it asks candidates to answer in paragraph format (not multiple choice and not sound byte), precisely so that the candidates can give serious, nuanced, well thought out answers. I believe they give the campaigns a few weeks to answer, too, so ‘multi-hour’ is not a problem either.
But you’re still unlikely to get what you want out of the question. Sure they might tell you their personal epistemological position. But far more likely, you’re going to get an answer like “my administration greatly values the contributions of science, and we plan on supporting STEM education as well as increased funding for scientific research.”
Moving beyond the science questions, I wonder why we have so few scientists in elected office. Plenty of lawyers. Business people. Some doctors even.
Is there a single scientist in the U.S. Congress right now?
Carl Kruse
Rush Holt is a PhD physicist and was a university professor before going into Congress. He was an elected representative for 16 years, 1999-2015. He chose not to run for reelection in 2014 (after losing a primary race for the Senate seat). He’s now CEO of AAAS.
But he is probably “the exception that proves the rule” in this case. The fact that only one name springs to mind supports your point that there are few scientists in elected office.
Make a case, based on science, to sway/counter the following groups:
a) anti-vaxxers
b) anti-abortionists
c) anti-contraceptive folks
d) parents relying on primarily homeopathy to treat ill children
e) parents refusing life-saving procedures for their children
If human beings came from apes, why are there still Republicans?
😀
Somebody’s got to go around and clean up the apeshit (and to perform all the other jobs only the lowly Delta and Epsilon castes are fit for in Brave New World).
Sub
(It annoys me that I DO in fact remember Avogadro’s # as 6.02 X 10^23, when I’ve had no use for said constant in 20+ years. Would prefer that my memory made room for more important things.)
Reminds me of Sherlock Holmes, who didn’t wish to know that the earth went round the sun, because he wanted to leave room for more important knowledge.
It annoys me that I remember that factoid about Sherlock Holmes, as I surely should leave room for more important things….
cr
Too true:-)
It also demonstrates one of the significant flaws in the Holmes character, and is an indication that the author isn’t nearly as intelligent as the character is supposed to be.
In this particular instance…once you understand the geometry of the Solar System, it becomes trivial to visualize the change in Sun angles with time of day and season, and it becomes obvious that the precise position of the Sun in the sky can be related to an exact time and day of year, depending on the resolution of your measurement. The potential forensic significance of such a thing should be equally obvious.
Now, Holmes might never have come across a case in which such knowledge would be useful. But the truly intelligent have no trouble accumulating such facts simply because they’re fascinating…and then drawing upon them in events where they prove useful.
And, sure, you could probably get a general idea of the fact from primitive models of the Solar System, including epicycles…but Holmes’s indifference suggests he wouldn’t know the difference between an epicycle and a velocycle. And, even if he did, it’s vital to be able to estimate the complexity of the problem. If you think you need to go to the epicycle theory to get your answer, you may well rightly conclude that, yes, you could get it, but it’d take longer than you have; if you instead know the reality of the Solar System geometry, it’s much less of a big deal.
Cheers,
b&
>
Uh-oh, I really set something off with that throwaway Holmes reference, didn’t I? [g]
Not that I necessarily agree with Sherlock…
cr
Do you think that ancient holy books
A) subject to wildly different interpretations,
B) whose explanations for natural, if not historical, events are long debunked, and
C) thought by most educated minds, to be of allegorical or philosophical content at best,
should even be considered in the policy making process over scientific evidence – evidence peer-reviewed, confirmed by multiple disciplines, often for decades – and if so, why?
My current favourite:
What is the most important reason for basic research in science to exist?
(My US friends: feel free to borrow that one.)
What is the difference between a theory, a hypothesis and sheer confabulation?
Name three things you don’t know in thirty seconds.
WT
Why does Homo sapiens still exist?