Category: science literacy

The University of Edinburgh and the John Templeton Foundation royally screw up evolution and science (and tell arrant lies) in an online course

March 25, 2018 • 9:00 am

Reader Simon sent me this video, which is a short (8-minute) lecture that’s apparently part of an online Coursera course on Science and Philosophy sponsored by the University of Edinburgh, the EIDYN Research Center run by Edinburgh’s Department of Philosophy, and the John Templeton Foundation. The presenter of this talk on creationism and evolutionary biology, S. Orestis Palermos, is a lecturer in philosophy at Cardiff University (also identified as a “research explorer” at Edinburgh).

If you had any pretense that Templeton is in favor of rigorous science, it will be dispelled by this video, which argues that science, like religion, is based on faith, and that evolution is merely an ad hoc rationalization of observations that is not science because it can’t make predictions. It’s also ineffably sad that the University of Edinburgh is sponsoring this nonsense.

I’ve put a transcript of the video below (also prepared by Simon), with the really bad parts in bold; and I’ve added some comments. What we see here is the pernicious influence of postmodernism on science: a claim that science gives us no objective truth because it’s based on faith. This is rotten philosophy and is also either clueless or deliberately duplicitous. Palermos doesn’t deserve the monicker of “philosopher”—not if that monicker requires one to be rational. In this video Palermos acts like Ray Comfort with a Ph.D.: a distorter and outright liar in service not of Jesus, but of postmodernism and perhaps faitheism.

Click on the screenshot below to go to the short lecture, and be prepared to gnash your teeth!

Simon’s transcript (indented; my own comments are flush left):

The final lecture of the free online course science and philosophy is dedicated to the topic, evolutionary biology and creationism science or pseudoscience. This lecture focuses on the same scientific status of evolutionary biology and genetics.

Within western society, there is a tendency to raise science to a special epistemic status. Science is always taken to be better than fairy tales, myths, and of course, religion. If a claim is supposed to be scientific, then it is supposed to constitute some kind of absolute truth that will always be true and which is impossible to deny. So for example, many times, in order to support a claim, we say that this is a fact that is scientifically proven.

No scientist would make the claim that science gives us “absolute truth”; and we use the word “proven” not in the sense of “absolute unchanging truth” but, “supported by evidence so strong that you could bet your house on it.” For Palermos to make his claim means that he has no understanding of how science is done or how we should regard scientific “truth.” That disqualifies him from the outset to give this lecture.  But let’s proceed:

But is this attitude towards science correct? What if science is not the kind of secure, absolute knowledge that scientists make it out to be, and which most of us accept unreflectively? And if science can be questioned, then how does it compare with other predictive and explanatory devices like myths and religion?

A particularly, interesting case in point is whether creationism should be taught alongside evolutionary biology as part of the standard curriculum in the schools in the United States of America.

The standard approach to this long-standing debate is to claim that evolutionary biology as opposed to creationism is scientific. Therefore, we have a good reason to teach the one but not the latter. Evolutionary biology is science, creationism is pseudoscience, and obviously we should always prefer disciplines that are scientific.

However, upon further reflection it is not quite obvious whether this claim is actually valid. For the second half of the 20th century, the best philosophers of science, philosophers like Sir Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend, attempted to explain what science consists in and how it differs from myths and religion. And no matter how hard they tried, eventually, the debate died out their realization that science, much like religion, requires faith.  To choose one scientific theory over another, is simply a matter of aesthetics in the hope that this theory and all to the other is going to work out.

Here we have another lie. I’m not that familiar with Lakatos or Feyerabend’s views, but I doubt that any of them would equate the epistemic status of science with that of religion. Popper, for sure, saw evolution as a historical science, and one that produced the best understanding we have of the natural world. He also rejected creationism, although he did see natural selection—only one aspect of evolutionary theory—as hard to test). See here for a refutation of Palermos’s distortions about Popper. And if Kuhn put creationism on an equal footing with religion, with the choice simply “a matter of aesthetics”, I’m not aware of it. Readers with philosophical expertise might weigh in here.

But clearly it’s not “aesthetics” to regard evolution as a much better explanation of the data than creationism. We have reliable ways of dating the Earth and its fossils, and we have observations that comport fully with evolutionary theory but not with creationism (biogeography, dead genes in the genome, vestigial organs, and so on). And yes, evolutionary theory makes predictions. One, that marsupial fossils would be found in Antarctica, since the group crossed that continent when it still linked South America to Antarctica, was verified within the last two decades. We’ve predicted that transitional forms existed—transitions between fish and amphibians, reptiles and mammals, and reptiles and birds—that were later found. Even Darwin predicted in The Descent of Man that humans evolved in Africa, and from other apes. That prediction didn’t begin to be verified until the early 20th century, long after Darwin had passed away. Much real-time evidence, as well as historical evidence and both predictions and “retrodictions” (observations that, in retrospect, make sense in light of evolution but not creationism) are detailed in my book Why Evolution is True. 

To reject the historical evidence of fossils, vestigial organs, and biogeography, as not constituting “real” evidence is another misunderstanding of science. Much of physics, and nearly all of cosmology, rests on historical observation and reconstruction. So is human history itself! Is it an “aesthetic preference” to think that Julius Caesar really lived when all we have left are traces of his existence—his writings, those of his contemporaries, statues, coins, and so on? The notion that history can’t buttress empirical theories is a fantasy promulgated by the likes of Ray Comfort. It shouldn’t be shoved down the throats of students by a misguided professor of philosophy. But on with this dreadful “lecture”:

But there is no way to disprove or prove in theory. And since there is no way to prove it or disprove it, then there is no point where it becomes irrational for a scientist to stay with a failing theory.

It’s just a lie to say that we cannot adjudicate the likelihood of evolution versus creationism from data (I reject the term “prove”) as a way of getting better and better explanations for our universe. Yes, there is a point where it’s irrational for a scientist to stay with a failing theory like creationism. And that is when the data are so strong against it that you’d be a fool (or a religious believer) to maintain what is palpably false.

But wait! There’s more!

So, the best example of this is the case of heliocentricism. Heliocentricism was first put forward about 2,000 years ago. And for about 1,600 years, it was a failing theory. However, at some point, Kepler and Galileo decided to take it up. And even though it was failing for 1,600 years, they managed to convert it in a very successful theory. The choice, however, to do so, was not because the theory was a good one—since obviously it was failing for a long time—but simply because they liked it and for some reason they had faith in it. So scientists choose to stay, we the few, simply because they have faith in it. So both science and religion seem to require faith, which means that it is not so easy to distinguish between creationism and evolutionary biology.

Kepler and Galileo “converted” heliocentrism to a good explanation because of OBSERVATIONS, you moron! It was not because they had “faith” that the Sun was the locus of the solar system.

Instead of writing a lot here, just read my essay in Slate, “No faith in science“, which dispels the canard that science requires some religious-like “faith.”

Moreover, even by the most rigorous standards for distinguishing between science and pseudoscience, what is known as Imre Lakatos’s sophisticated falsification, it was seen that evolutionary biology in creationism and actually, on a path. So, creationism may not be scientific but then again, neither is evolutionary biology, which  appears unable to predict anything but only provides an explanation for the phenomena after the fact have taken place. Parenthetically, this is what is known within philosophy as an ad hoc hypothesis. To introduce an explanation in a hypothesis, only in order to explain something that is already known. And not to provide an explanation or a prediction for something new. And most philosophers of sciences agree that introducing such ad hoc hypotheses within science should always be avoided because it turns a scientific theory into pseudoscience.

This is again a twofold lie: the claim that historical data cannot constitute support for a theory, or help us distinguish between theories, as well as the claim that “evolutionary biology is unable to predict anything.” I’d add here that although creationism has been falsified by many lines of evidence, evolution could have been falsified by observations like 400-million-year-old mammal fossils, an absence of genetic variation in species, or adaptations in one species which are useful only for a different species. But the falsifying observations haven’t been made. As I say in WEIT, “Despite a million chances to be wrong, evolution always comes up right. That’s as close as we can get to a scientific truth.”

Let’s get to the end of this pack of Palermos’s lies and distortions:

However, both evolutionary biology and creationism are guilty of introducing side ad hoc hypothesis. And so it would seem that neither is scientific.

Now, add to this the fact that genetics, which is a special discipline of evolutionary biology, is facing a number of anomalies. Like any other discipline in the past, in any other scientific field, [it] is most likely to change in the future. It becomes even less obvious why evolutionary biology and genetics should be taught in schools as scientifically proven theories but reject creationism as being pseudo-scientific.

Ah, now we hear that Palermos also claims that genetics isn’t really science. I’m not sure what “anomalies” he’s talking about (Epigenetic modification of DNA? Horizontal movement of genes?), but if genetics weren’t science, we have a lot of valuable and useful data that suddenly acquire the epistemic status of Mormonism. That’s just garbage—and it’s lying to the students of this course.

So this lecture delivered by professor of philosophy and theology Cornel Carnihim from the University of Nottingham, will go over some of themes in an accessible and captivating way.

The lecture purposely avoids to put forward any conclusion but it raises a number of interesting questions. Does the epistemic polity between creationism and evolutionary biology mean that neither of them should be taught as part of the standard curriculum? Or should we teach both, but with intellectually honest attitude that neither is quite scientific? And then, does this mean that we trust and pursue both to the same extent? Or should we invest our efforts to develop the most plausible hypothesis in a way that will finally make it stand out from religion?

Isn’t it better to be honest about the status of our best scientific theories, such that future students can know their limits and attempt to improve them, rather than dogmatically believing that they amount to proven knowledge when in fact, they’re far from it?

Isn’t it better to be intellectually honest about why virtually all scientists rejection creationism and accept evolution—a stand based on evidence—than to push postmodernism on a credulous group of students by equating religious faith with scientific confidence?

Shame on the John Templeton Foundation, and shame on the University of Edinburgh, for presenting these lies and distortions in a lecture on evolutionary biology! And Templeton, if you’re listening, how dare you fund a program that fundamentally misrepresents the nature of science? If you claim you’re promoting science in your program funding, you’re also undercutting the claim with junk lectures like this. And that is why no scientist should be taking money from the John Templeton Foundation.

As for the University of Edinburgh, they’ve got some housecleaning to do.

Cox interviews Attenborough on Darwin (and other interviews)

February 19, 2018 • 7:45 am

by Matthew Cobb

My friend and colleague Professor Brian Cox is not only a Professor of Physics at the University of Manchester, he is also Professor for Public Engagement in Science at the Royal Society in London. As part of this, he decided to interview a number of Fellows of the Royal Society about their scientific heroes, in a series called People of Science. These brief interviews are informal,  insightful and fascinating. The one that will probably interest readers most is the one with David Attenborough, on Darwin. Here it is, it’s only 5 minutes long:

 

[Gratuitous comment by JAC: I have one beef with what Sir David says about The Origin at 3:50:

“What is marvelous about it is that anybody can read any page and it makes absolute sense. It’s not full of jargon; it’s full of argument and observation.”

True, it’s full of argument and observation, and Darwin generally avoids jargon. But it’s simply not true that anybody can read any page and make sense of it. Sometimes it’s hard going, even for a biologist. For those who believe Sir David’s words, I challenge you to read the chapter on “Hybridism”. My students often objected to my requiring them to read it because they weren’t used to the dense Victorian prose. (Eventually I gave up and went to the “abridged” Origin. That, too, was a failure.)  I should know, because I’ve read the book a gazillion times and the margins are full of question marks. Here’s my copy of the first edition, dog-eared, taped together, and covered with scrawls. Now that the pages have started falling out, I’ll have to retire it.  If you haven’t read this book, you can’t consider yourself educated!]

Back to Matthew:

Readers might also like this interview with Sir David Spiegelhalter about the work of amateur mathematician Thomas Bayes and of statistician Ronald Fisher (includes some practical experimentation!):

This one is about Alexander Fleming, and is with Brian’s fellow Manchester graduate, Dame Sally Davies, England’s Chief Medical Officer (to do with public health):

The other three interviews are developmental psychologist Uta Frith discussing Alice Lee (no, you haven’t heard of Lee), author Bill Bryson (yes, he is an FRS, or an honorary one, anyway) on Benjamin Franklin and President of the Institute of Physics Professor Julia Higgins on Michael Faraday.

The interviews all take place in the library in the Royal Society’s home on Carlton House Terrace in London (you’ll notice a bust of Darwin in the background). Until 1939, the building was the German Embassy, before being closed for obvious reasons. In a nice twist, when General de Gaulle came to London in June 1940 following the fall of France, the Free French, as they became known, had their headquarters at the other end of the terrace. The Royal Society moved in there after the end of the war.

Bill Nye excoriated for attending State of the Union address with Trump’s proposed NASA chief

February 1, 2018 • 10:15 am

I’ve made no secret about my lack of affection for Bill “The Science Guy” Nye.  Although at one time he may have been a great promoter of science for kids, he seems unable to survive out of the limelight. The result is that he’s engaging in all sorts of activities to keep himself in the public eye: debating Ken Ham about evolution, popping up at events like the Reason Rally (where he refused to sign my book for charity), and starring in his misnamed television show, “Bill Nye Saves the World.” It also rankles me that he pretends to be a scientist but he’s really not: he was an engineer at one time, but he hasn’t even done that for 32 years.  I don’t care if science popularizers have science degrees so long as they can present the material cogently and engagingly, but I do mind when they pretend to be scientists.

The last straw was the incursion of politics into his science show, which proved horribly cringeworthy. Behold “My vagina has its own voice”, followed by “Ice cream sexuality”:

 

I can’t imagine Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, or Richard Dawkins presenting any of those videos, which aren’t even science but ideology.

There are many other reasons I dislike Nye, but this will suffice. Others, of course, disagree, and love the laterally compressed man with the bow tie. Many of them were turned on to science by Nye when they were kids, and I can’t fault that. All I know is the man I see today, and he makes the soles of my shoes curl up.

This week, however, Nye decided to attend Trump’s State of the Union Address, which was fine, but what rankled people is that he went with Republican congressman Jim Bridenstine. Trump proposed Bridenstine as the new director of NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), but the nomination has been held up because Bridensteine is unqualified, not having a science degree (though he’s a pilot and was director of the Tulsa Air and Space Museum), and, most important, he won’t say openly that human activity is the major cause of global warming. When examined in a confirmation hearing, Bridenstine admitted that global warming was in part anthropogenic, but wouldn’t say that human activity is the main cause.

To many that is heresy, but I think that a partial admission is a step in the right direction for the man, though of course he may have been lying. I don’t think he should be confirmed, for he’s simply unqualified, but in the end his failure to fully sign on to what is seen as settled science will probably be the main factor blocking his nomination. After all, most of Trump’s nominees are unqualified!

What bothered people a lot was that Nye went to the State of the Union as Bridenstine’s guest, which apparently they saw as Nye’s endorsement not only of Bridenstine’s views and Trump’s policies, but also, by proxy, of xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny, racism, ableism, and yes, anti-science. No matter that Nye accepts and speaks about the dangers of anthropogenic global warming, or that he dissociated himself from Bridenstine’s and Trump’s political views. As the New York Post reports:

“I will attend the State of the Union as a guest of Congressman Jim Bridenstine — nominee for NASA Administrator — who extended me an invitation in my role as CEO of The Planetary Society,” the science educator and engineer tweeted Monday night.

“While the Congressman and I disagree on a great many issues — we share a deep respect for NASA and its achievements and a strong interest in the future of space exploration,” he wrote.

“My attendance tomorrow should not be interpreted as an endorsement of this administration, or of Congressman Bridenstine’s nomination, or seen as an acceptance of the recent attacks on science and the scientific community,” he continued.

I don’t have a beef with Nye going to the speech with Bridenstine; I have a beef with him constantly pushing himself into the limelight, and he’ll do it in any way he can. I object to Nye’s rampant careerism, not to his politics. In this case, though, his self-promotion required him to go with a Republican.

Many others took issue with that, though, and pushback against Nye’s attendance was reported and/or promulgated by many places, including Salon, Geekwire, and CNN. The only temperate voice was reported at Geekwire:

The Planetary Society’s Casey Dreier volleyed back, saying that it’s important to acknowledge Bridenstine’s shift toward the mainstream on climate science.

“If pro-science activists want to see their policies succeed, by definition they will have to gain new supporters, and in so doing they will have to change people’s minds — and embrace it when it happens,” he wrote.

Nye is the CEO of The Planetary Society: one of the reasons he’s associating himself with the NASA mission.

But three other groups spoke out loudly against Nye’s actions.  An online petition by Climate Hawks Vote, which says what’s below, has gathered more than 35,000 signatures:

President Donald Trump is a bigoted climate denier. So is Congressman Jim Bridenstine (R-OK), Trump’s embattled nominee for NASA Administrator. So why is Bill Nye “very pleased” to be Bridenstine’s guest at Trump’s first State of the Union address?

Bill, please be the Science Guy, not the Bigoted Climate Denial Guy. Cancel your plans to attend Trump’s State of the Union as Rep. Bridenstine’s guest.

You can be “very pleased” to be someone’s guest without endorsing Bridenstine’s policies, and Nye explicitly said he didn’t, and has emphasized human-caused global warming constantly.

More pushback at Climate Truth.org, with an article called “Tell Bill Nye: Don’t provide cover to Trump’s climate denier appointee” (their emphasis):

Bill Nye has been a stalwart voice against the Trump administration’s climate denial in the past year. Meanwhile, Jim Bridenstine is exactly the opposite: a climate denying, fossil fuel-funded politician who has no business running NASA. As a member of Congress from Oklahoma, Bridenstine has already racked up $170,000 in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry. Even though he refutes the science of climate change and has no scientific background, he just moved one step closer to becoming the head of NASA.

NASA performs critical climate science research, and if the Senate confirms Bridenstine’s nomination he could work with Trump to end NASA’s earth science missions, and ground essential research satellites. With his controversial nomination heading soon to the Senate floor, Bill Nye’s tacit endorsement could be just what Bridenstine needs to get enough votes to be confirmed. We have to stop this in its tracks.

Tell Bill Nye today: Don’t support the Trump administration’s disastrous climate denial agenda by attending the State of the Union as Jim Bridenstine’s guest.

And the most vociferous pushback came from a group of 500 women scientists on a Scientific American blog, in a piece called “Bill Nye does not speak for us and he does not speak for science”. Two excerpts:

As scientists, we cannot stand by while Nye lends our community’s credibility to a man who would undermine the United States’ most prominent science agency. And we cannot stand by while Nye uses his public persona as a science entertainer to support an administration that is expressly xenophobic, homophobic, misogynistic, racist, ableist, and anti-science.

Scientists are people, and in today’s society, it is impossible to separate science at major agencies like NASA from other pressing issues like racism, bigotry, and misogyny. Addressing these issues should be a priority, not only to strengthen our own scientific community, but to better serve the public that often funds our work. Rather than wield his public persona to bring attention to the need for science-informed policy, Bill Nye has chosen to excuse Rep. Bridenstine’s anti-science record and his stance on civil rights, and to implicitly support a stance that would diminish the agency’s work studying our own planet and its changing climate. Exploring other worlds and studying other planets, while dismissing the overwhelming scientific evidence of climate change and its damage to our own planet isn’t just dangerous, it’s foolish and self-defeating.

Further, from his position of privilege and public popularity, Bill Nye is acting on the scientific community’s behalf, but without our approval.

That seems over the top to me, for Nye surely doesn’t endorse xenophobia, homophobia, and that whole slate of sins; in fact, he’s disavowed much of this (see above). Even though the videos about are cringeworthy, they nevertheless do attack homophobia and misogyny. So Nye’s supposed “implicit” support for these things has been rejected explicitly. I also question whether science at NASA, or anyplace else, cannot be separated from identity politics. There’s no logical connection between the two, except that most scientists are liberals, and most liberals don’t endorse homophobia, xenophibia, et al. Finally, does Nye need anyone’s approval to appear at the State of the Union message? He was not acting on the scientific community’s behalf, but on his own behalf.

There’s this, too:

The true shame is that Bill Nye remains the popular face of science because he keeps himself in the public eye. To be sure, increasing the visibility of scientists in the popular media is important to strengthening public support for science, but Nye’s TV persona has perpetuated the harmful stereotype that scientists are nerdy, combative white men in lab coats—a stereotype that does not comport with our lived experience as women in STEM. And he continues to wield his power recklessly, even after his recent endeavors in debate and politics have backfired spectacularly.

In 2014, he attempted to debate creationist Ken Ham—against the judgment of evolution experts—which only served to allow Ham to raise the funds needed to build an evangelical theme park that spreads misinformation about human evolution. Similarly, Nye repeatedly agreed to televised debates with non-scientist climate deniers, contributing to the false perception that researchers still disagree about basic climate science. And when Bill Nye went on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show to “debate” climate change in 2017, his appearance was used to spread misinformation to Fox viewers and fundraise for anti-climate initiatives.

There’s a bit of truth here, because Nye does “keep himself in the public eye”. More important, I too won’t debate creationists because it gives them credibility—but that’s not the only reason. Other reasons include creationists’ “Gish galloping” in these debates, and because rhetoric in a live debate is not, I think, the best way to let the public issues. But I don’t mind if some other folks debate creationists, so long as they’re prepared and know what they’re doing. But surely going on television and pushing for recognition of global warming is a good thing: we can’t always avoid our opponents, and sometimes debates, with the proper science advocates, can be useful.

I’ll leave you to judge for yourself whether Nye perpetuates stereotypes of science. If he does, people like Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is black and doesn’t wear a lab coat, must dispel them.

In the end, the way to make your point in this case is not to demonize Nye, but to defeat Bridenstine’s nomination. (His nomination seems  a lost cause anyway.) Write to your senators and representatives! Write to the White House! This may seem like bawling up a drainpipe, but if that doesn’t do anything, surely calling out Nye will do even less.

I find myself in a strange position defending Bill Nye, as I don’t like him, don’t admire him, and don’t think he’s doing much for science. But I simply can’t get worked up about him going to the State of the Union address with a Republican nominee, especially when Nye has explicitly disavowed Bridenstine’s views on climate change.

h/t: Tom

Americans want science done, but can’t name any scientists or places where science is done

January 11, 2018 • 12:00 pm

A poll conducted last year and just now released by Research!America and Zogby Analytics (full results here; Zogby summary here) shows how abysmally ignorant Americans are about science, even though they trust scientists and think scientific research is important.  Here, for example, are some statistics and graphs:

Fewer than 1 in 5 Americans can name a single living scientist, while 81% are stymied. Moreover, some of the living scientists named are either science popularizers and not scientists (e.g., Bill Nye), used to be scientists but are now science popularizers (Neil deGrasse Tyson, who hasn’t published a paper in ten years), or have long ago stopped doing science (J. D. Watson). Look and weep:

I’m not a sports fan, but I can name a lot of athletes (living and inactive or active)—even though I’m a scientist! I can also name entertainers! What is going on here?

Further, only a third of Americans can name any institution (including companies and universities), where “medical or health research is conducted”.  People should know that virtually every large university, including state universities, have people doing such research. Look and weep:

 

 

Only one out of five Americans know that medical research is conducted in all 50 states. 29% say “nope”, and half of them say they’re “not sure”. Look and weep:

Despite this, 80% (43% + 37%) of Americans think that the President should assign a high priority to putting health research and innovation to work.  Clearly, Americans don’t know scientists or where science is done, but they seem to think that high-priority science involves “health research”, despite the fact that many medical advances come out of pure “non-health” research and that the intellectual benefits of science go beyond simply improving the health of Americans.

There are other results as well, including that more Americans have a “lot” of confidence in the military (37%) than in scientific institutions (25%). That disturbs me; what would engender such a low level of confidence in scientific institutions? (If you add up “a lot” and “some”, the military comes up with 75%, science with 71%.) But most Americans still consider scientists—as opposed to “health care professionals”, journalists, or “elected officials”—to be the most trustworthy spokespeople for science:

Well, to a scientist this is all pretty depressing. I guess that since most people are more interested in sports and entertainment than science, and see only the spokespeople for science in the media, it’s no surprise that they can’t name anybody other than popularizes and spokespeople. What frightens me is that only one in five Americans can name a single scientist. I’m sure a lot higher percentage of them can name an athlete or an entertainer.  And why don’t Americans know that virtually every decent university, including the state universities of all 50 states, are sites for scientific and health-related research? Do they have no idea where research is done?

My own popularization of science involves teaching people about evolution, but it doesn’t tell people where research is done or name many scientists. I’m torn between adding snippets of that to some talks, or leaving it alone because I’m already speaking to people who know this.  But I still think that the 19% figure is abysmal and embarrassing to Americans. Should we worry about it? If so, what should we do?

 

SciBabe, paid by Splenda, touts its product

January 6, 2018 • 12:00 pm

Yvette d’Entremont writes about popular science, especially consumer scams and misconceptions, on her website SciBabe. Her site’s bio notes that she has bachelor’s degrees in theater and chemistry from Emanuel College in Boston, a masters degree in forensic science with a concentration in biological criminalistics from Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England, and worked eight years as an analytical chemist.  Most of her stuff appears to be good and constitutes worthy debunking of fads of issues like the supposed “dangers” of GM food and the touted benefits of jade vagina eggs.  A few years ago I wrote a controversial post criticizing her and other women’s use of sex to sell science, concluding that the advantages of popularizing science were offset by the use of female pulchritude and dirty jokes, which, to me, seemed to contribute to the objectification of women. As I recall, d’Entremont responded sharply to what I said, and possibly will to this post as well.

I note all this here because I’m not on a vendetta against d’Entremont, but  want to criticize another aspect of her blogging in this post, one that I see an unalloyed problem: her writing of science posts showing that a product is safe to use at the same time she’s being paid and sponsored by the company who makes that product. I’m referring to Splenda, an artificial sweetener that I myself use when trying to lose weight. Splenda is largely sucralose, a sugar substitute that isn’t broken down and metabolized by the body, so it contributes fewer calories than sugar. Because of added “bulking agents”, a packet of Splenda actually has 3.4 calories, or 31% of the calories of a single packet of sugar, which itself has 10.8 calories). But the fact that there are fewer than 5 calories per “serving” of Splenda means it can legally be labeled as “zero calories”. (I’d prefer that it be labelled more honestly: something like “69% fewer calories than sugar.”)

Splenda also appears to not cause dental caries or have any injurious effects on diabetics.  I like it because it tastes pretty close to sugar and because research shows that it’s safe, but it wasn’t until today that I found out it’s not really a “zero” calorie product”. At any rate, I was reading one of d’Entremont’s posts on Splenda (she has at least two, here and here, both of which tout the product’s safety), and saw the the following:

So let’s talk about it. I’ve partnered with Splenda to try to combat some of the more pervasive myths about low calorie sweeteners like sucralose that I see every day on social media. And I see them on my timeline or in my inbox every day. Are they causing weight gain? Are they causing stomach pains?

Are they safe?

Aware of how this “partnering” looks, she uses some of her trademarked snark to defuse the issue:

. . . Before every single shill accusation shows up, yes, let’s just get this out of the way. Indeed, I’m working with Splenda and these are all things I never would have said otherwise. I’m kicking my heels up on a desk made of fossilized unicorns wearing a coat made of Dalmatians, sipping a martini made from the tears of my enemies. Specifically Gwyneth Paltrow…. Wait, we collected that fluid from a jade egg, you say? Goddamnit.

…Or more accurately I really like Splenda because it’s safe for everyone, it bakes well (which is important for someone like me who loves to bake), and if this is something that you like the taste of in your diet, you deserve to understand why the science says it’s safe.

There’s a bit of error in her characterization of the product’s “zero calorie” reputation, though:

The amount of calories in a daily iced coffee I would have needed for how sweet I like my coffee? 60 (four raw sugar packets). For the record, I now take mine with three Splenda and one raw sugar – just 15 calories, if it’s a day when I skip the cream,

Well, no, for that implies there truly are no calories in Splenda, so that she can claim that a single packet of raw sugar plus three of Splenda has exactly one-fourth the calories of four raw sugar packets. In fact, it has 25.2 calories (15 + 3 X [3.4]), or 68% more calories than she represents. She concludes:

Or more accurately I really like Splenda because it’s safe for everyone, it bakes well (which is important for someone like me who loves to bake), and if this is something that you like the taste of in your diet, you deserve to understand why the science says it’s safe. Over the coming months, I want to address all the questions and concerns that people have had about Splenda and low calorie sweeteners in general. It’s a field where chemiphobia has run rampant, leading to incorrect assumptions about diets, calories, and health.

So have you heard some crazy things on the internet about Splenda? Comment. Email. Ask, but don’t let it go unchecked without asking, and I will do my damndest to answer with evidence.  I’m not going to find any random paper to support my positions. I’ll hunt for quality evidence and papers that come from the most reputable resources possible. I wouldn’t expect you to trust your health to anything less.

Her sponsorship is noted by the product’s own publicity blog, Splenda living:

Working with two content creators – Yvette d’Entremont, a scientist also known as SciBabe and the parody ecard platform Someecards, we at SPLENDA® Brand will be introducing digital and social content with one goal: to empower fans of the SPLENDA® Brand to take an active role in busting myths about sucralose. We also created a unique hashtag to help you identify this content on social media: #DebunktheJunk. The content will be available beginning today at www.Someecards.com/Splenda and on SciBabe.com/debunkthejunk It will continue to be released in the months to come so be sure to stay tuned for additional information and resources that help you debunk junk science!

These content partners were specifically selected because they have expertise in translating what can often be complicated concepts into understandable, relatable terms, and they are supporters of the brand’s passion for discerning good science from junk science. Additionally, they are SPLENDA® Brand fans.

So we have someone who’s paid by the makers of a product telling us good things about the product.  To me, this represents a perceived conflict of interest that should not exist in a science popularizer.

Now note that I am not accusing d’Entremont of distorting the science about Splenda because she’s sponsored by the product. In fact, I don’t think that’s the case. Although there appears to be an error in the product’s favor in her calculations, I think that comes simply from her accepting its characterization a “zero calorie” product.  As far as I know, d’Entremont has otherwise accurately represented the qualities and usefulness of the sweetener, and in both of her posts (the latest last November) she notes that she’s sponsored by Splenda. She’s also written other posts and articles defending the safety of non-Splenda sweeteners.

To my mind, it’s simply not good for one’s reputation as an objective science popularizer to create the appearance of a conflict of interest. Would I take money from Splenda and at the same time write articles telling everyone how safe it was, even if I believed it? Nope—not a chance. d’Entremont, if she responds to this, will undoubtedly say that she believes in Splenda, and that their sponsorship doesn’t have an iota of influence on what she says or the topics she writes about. And that may be true. But there is a reason why politicians and the like are supposed put their financial investments in a blind trust when in office—to prevent the appearance of a conflict of interest. When people like Hillary Clinton take money for their foundation from foreign donors while they’re in government, that’s a problem, but of course they always say, like everyone who takes dough and then does something to help the donor, “I was not influenced by the money.”

Sometimes that’s true, but it’s best to avoid the problem entirely by not creating the appearance of a conflict. In the case of d’Entremont, I’d recommend that she either ditch the Splenda sponsorship or stop writing about it. (For the good of the public, I’d recommend she do the former. For her own financial good, perhaps the latter is preferable.) I realize that science popularizers have a tough time making a buck unless they’re someone like Neil deGrasse Tyson, but one’s reputation for objectivity seems to me too precious to sully with the appearance of a conflict like this one.

Finally, I’d recommend reading her articles in general, especially if you’re interested in product scams and popular misconceptions about products. She has a recent piece in Cosmopolitan on the stupidity of colon “cleanses” and “juicing” that should be read by the large number of people who practice this worthless cleansing in the hopes it will “detox” them.

This is science, Bill Nye?

April 24, 2017 • 12:00 pm

It’s no secret that I am not a big fan of Bill Nye, regarding him as a buffoon who will engage in any shenanigans that keep him in the public eye and help him retain the fame he desires—fame accrued as “The Science Guy”. I never saw the old show, and realize that many people liked it and it seemed to promote good science to kids; but his activities since I became aware of him have largely caused me embarrassment since he’s supposed to represent and burnish my own profession of science.

Well, Nye has a new show humbly called “Bill Nye Saves the World“, which apparently still has the goal of promoting science.

Here’s a new video from the show. Featuring comedian and actor Rachel Bloom singing “My vagina has its own voice,” it’s an arrant travesty:

Seriously, “butt stuff”? Now this may be social justice stuff, but it ain’t science—not even if you construe it as promoting a “spectrum of sexuality,” which is misleading because most people bunch at either end of the “spectrum.” In fact, I’m not sure what this is doing on a science show. It’s not even funny,

Nye, of course, was one of the honorary chairs of the March for Science, and this shows why I wasn’t keen on that choice. Defend this travesty if you want, but I’ll never admit it promotes anything but ideology. What’s next, Bill?:

“Do it before the paparazzi:
for the sake of Science, punch a Nazi!”

Scientific American uncritically blurbs flawed study making students think science and religion are compatible

April 14, 2017 • 3:30 pm

My big objection to science aggregation sites like Science Daily is that they don’t really do honest, critical reporting, but mostly parrot the bulletins issued by university public relations departments. The result is that readers get one-sided puffery of new results and no critical analysis. Science journalists often depend on such sources and, often lacking science training themselves, simply regurgitate the PR to the public. That leads to debacles like those “cephalopods can change their RNA to make themselves smarter” articles, every one of which was grossly distorted (I haven’t had time while traveling to discuss this at all, but I’ll tell you not to believe the press’s account).

But it’s worse when venues like Scientific American do the same thing. This happened when the magazine just wrote a short piece about a study by M. Elizabeth Barnes, James Elser, and Sara E. Brownell published in a recent issue of The American Biology Teacher.  The Barnes et al. paper describes a two-week module inflicted on college students at Arizona State University with the explicit aim of convincing students that evolution and religion are compatible. At the end, they surveyed the students about how they felt about the issue. As SA notes, the module seems to have “worked”:

On topics ranging from astrophysics to public health, rejections of scientific consensus can prove quite inflexible when bolstered by religious doctrine. But
 a new approach to teaching evolutionary biology appears to ease such tensions. It involves airing perceived conflicts between religion and evolution in the classroom rather than simply presenting a mountain of evidence for evolution. Such a curriculum could help biologists (most of whom claim to hold no religious beliefs) more effectively prepare students (most of whom profess belief in God) to meet the nation’s growing need for scientists and technologists.

Surveys filled out by 60 students before and after the module revealed that the number of students who perceived a sense of a conflict between religion and evolution at the start was cut in half by the end. . .
“If we encourage national policy documents that promote these teaching practices,” says study co-author Elizabeth Barnes of Arizona State, “perhaps we can increase acceptance of evolution among our students, future teachers and future political leaders.”

Perhaps, but I doubt it, as there’s no indication that the study actually promoted acceptance of evolution, and it also involved teaching a particular theological point of view in a public university, which violates the First Amendment. As I wrote in my own analysis of this study posted here in February, the work of Barnes et al. has conceptual and scientific problems:

My objection to this study is that it was tendentious, didn’t look at the effect of the mirror-image study, used small samples, and, most important, took a particular theological point of view, pushing it on students in a public (state) university. This module requires a special interpretation of religion—one saying that it is not at all in conflict with evolution. Yet many religionists feel otherwise.

In other words, the instructors, in a well-meaning attempt to get people to accept evolution, are propagandizing the students with theological views. That’s clear since they trotted in a religious scientist and let the students read accommodationist literature while denying them arguments about the incompatibility of faith and evolution, which I see as powerful. (Why else are most scientists nonreligious—far more so than the general public?) By pushing a particular view of theology on the students, I see the experiment as a First Amendment violation. Would it be any better if the professor propagandized the students with a view that science and religion are incompatible? For that, at least, is a philosophical rather than a theological view. But if they did that, they’d be excoriated. Such is the eagerness of Americans to “respect” faith—the tendency to believe without evidence.

But in my own view, they should leave the accommodationism or anti-accommodationism out of public school classes. Just teach the damn science, and let the students work out the issues themselves. To do otherwise is to push a certain view of religion on them, one that should be left to parents, private discussion, or preachers. The authors of this paper are going the route of Elaine Ecklund at Rice, who has devoted her career to accommodationism. It’s not a pretty endeavor. And it’s injurious because it lets the students retain their view that faith, belief without evidence, is a valid way to accept religious claims.

But my main issue with the Scientific American piece is this: why didn’t they do any critical analysis of the study rather than just parroting the results promulgated by the authors and by the Arizona State PR office? Why did they quote just the author and not critics like me? Here, at least, Scientific American is acting like Science Daily.

h/t: Roberto