Tag: P. Z. Myers

Darwinius: what’s at issue?

May 21, 2009 • 3:10 pm

by Greg Mayer

I’m leaving in a few days for Costa Rica, and Jerry is back, so this will be my last post on Darwinius, at least for awhile. At least three different issues have been debated in the blogosphere concerning “Ida“: 1) What are her phylogenetic relationships; 2) Was the media campaign excessive; and 3) Has the name been published?

Darwinius on toast1) What are her phylogenetic relationships? This is the most important one, because it is, as John Maynard Smith once put it, about the world, and not about names. Is Darwinius close to the common ancestor of monkeys, apes, and men, or is it a member of the group that includes lemurs and lorises? The question has been raised and discussed most forcefully by Brian Switek at Laelaps, who thinks the evidence presented for relationship to monkeys and apes is weak. To my mind (and I’m not a specialist in primates or even mammals), he’s got a strong point, and we can look forward to a publication by Brian (or some other critic) on this issue.

2) Was the media campaign excessive? The short answer is yes. I expressed some uneasiness over the media campaign here at WEIT, and many others have documented the extravagant claims and consequent media misunderstandings further. See especially what Carl Zimmer had at the Loom, Brian at Laelaps, and PZ Myers at Pharyngula. But by far the best (or at least funniest) take on this was Ed Yong’s satirical evisceration of the inflated media campaign at Not Exactly Rocket Science, from which I have been kindly permitted to reproduce the by now iconic “Darwinius on Toast” above. There are many unresolved questions concerning how to present science to the public, and differing views concerning how aggressive a media campaign should be, but this one was at least one step beyond.

3) Has the name been published? This is the most technical issue, and is about names (rather than the world), but it’s attracted the most attention. See the posts here at WEIT, the Loom (and here), the Lancelet, and Laelaps, including the ensuing commentary by, among others, Henry Gee, Martin Brazeau, and Larry Witmer. There are several issues, and I’ll treat them very briefly (since this is a blog post, and not a paper in the Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature!).  For reference, The International Code is online here.

3a) Has the name Darwinius masillae been published (in the sense of the Code) in Plosone? No. Many people have noted that Art. 8.6 requires non-paper works to be deposited in 5 major libraries, and that a statement to this effect must be included in the paper. No such statement is in the paper. More importantly, although it has been noted in only one comment I’ve seen, Art. 9 goes on to specify that nothing distributed by the web counts as being published. The non-paper works envisioned in Art. 8 are things like CDs, not web postings. So, the various remedies proposed, such as reposting on Plosone with the requisite statement, would not work. To be published, a non-Web work must be made: paper, CD, DVD (the latter two requiring the fulfillment of the 5 major libraries rule), or something else which satisfies Arts. 8 and 9.

3ai) Can the name be made available by publishing a short paper (on paper) with a bibliographic reference to the Plosone posting? No, because availability by bibliographic reference must be by reference to a published work (Art. 13.1.2), and anything on the Web is not published (Art. 9.8).

3b) Has the name been published elsewhere? I hope not, but fear it may have been. I pointed out that the various newspaper articles may count as publication, because they meet the various criteria for publication (obtainability, simultaneity, etc.; Art. 8), and also contain 1) the name, and 2) are “accompanied by a description or definition that states in words characters that are purported to differentiate the taxon” (Art. 13.11), and even follow Recommendation 13A: “a summary of the characters that differentiate the new nominal taxon from related or similar taxa.” Many newspaper articles, in addition to a general description, included explicit differentia– incisors, grooming toes– from related taxa, thus providing a diagnosis.

3bi) Can newspapers provide a public and permanent scientific record? In my post, I considered that the newspaper articles might be discounted, because perhaps they had not been issued “for the purpose of providing a public and permanent scientific record” (Art. 8.1.1). Some commenters have taken the position that this is self-evidently the case, but it’s not crystal clear to me.  The Code has always been loath to mandate specific formats of publication, specifying rather general properties (availability, simultaneity, identity, etc.) that a variety of formats might fulfill.  Historically, a huge variety of things have counted as publications (although no newspaper examples come to mind). Some newspapers have science sections, some are “papers of record”; I think the spirit of the Code is to approach each case on its individual merits. That is why the Code urges authors and editors to avoid anything that might make the situation murky, but it does so through recommendations (see my previous post for the specific recommendations).

3bii) Doesn’t the Code try to avoid “accidental” publication? Yes it does, as several commentators have pointed out. It has added meeting and symposium abstracts to the list of formats that are not permissible (Art. 9.9) to help avoid what the Code calls “unintentional publication”; but newspapers, as such, are not mentioned. The Code also now requires that the intention to establish a new name be explicit (Art. 16.1). This article is intended to prevent new names, especially a replacement name (nomen novum) to be introduced without mention, en passant if you will. Unfortunately, the newspaper articles make it absolutely clear that a new nominal taxon has been discovered and is being given a new name, and that this is the intention of the authors (on which, see next paragraph).  The Daily Mail article even uses the word “christened”. The Code urges authors to use “sp. nov.” or some other appropriate indication (Rec. 16A), but, again, does not require it. The Code recommends that any appearance of a new name in a work prior to its intended publication be accompanied by a disclaimer, making the new name unavailable (Art. 8.2 and Rec. 8D). The Daily Mail article contains the phrase “a scientific study to be published”: this might be taken to be such a disclaimer, and while it’s not as clear as one might want, it’s perhaps the most straightforward way of discounting the Daily Mail article. Such phrases may (or may not) appear in the other newspaper articles.

3biii) If it has been published elsewhere, who is the author of the name? The Code provides that when it is clear from the contents of a publication that the name and the conditions that make it available other than publication (i.e. the description or diagnosis) are the work of a person(s) other than the author of the publication, then the author of the name is the other person (Art. 50.1.1). In this case, the newspaper articles make clear that the name and its description were provided by someone else, many mentioning Jorn Hurum and Phil Gingerich. They (or whoever is mentioned in the earliest article published) are thus the authors.  This is a good thing, because it gives credit to at least some of the people actually involved in the work. The newspaper reporter would not be the author of the name.

To summarize the question of publication, the name has not been published in Plosone, but it may have been published in a newspaper. I hope the latter is not the case, and perhaps the Commission could issue a clarifying opinion (following an appropriate application) on the status of names published in newspapers (the problem may be distinguishing newspapers from newsletters from cheaply printed bulletins, and so on).

There are some other issues that have been discussed– the merits of paper vs. the web, the nature of peer review– but these go well beyond the particulars of Darwinius, although it might provide a case study for some of these issues. But one of the take home lessons here is that the recommendations of the Code should be taken to heart, and authors and editors should ensure that works affecting nomenclature are “self-evidently published within the meaning of the Code“(Rec. 8B), and that new names should not appear in works prior to their intended publication, or, if they do, they should “contain a disclaimer (see Article 8.2), so that new names published for the first time therein do not enter zoological nomenclature unintentionally and pre-empt intended publication in another work” (Rec. 8D).

Update. While I was writing this, Carl Zimmer got a reply from the Executive Secretary of the ICZN. She confirms that posting on Plosone does not make a name nomenclaturally available. The issue of the newspaper publication was not addressed; I’m not sure if Carl asked about this. I’m leaning myself toward the idea that inclusion of the statement that the study is going to appear somewhere else could be construed as a disclaimer, thus avoiding newspaper publication of the name (I’m still not sure that all newspaper articles included such a statement).

Update 2. Carl Zimmer at the Loom has a nice account of the PR run-up to the press conference, which he titles “Science Held Hostage“. And, also from Carl, Plosone has today printed a 50 copy paper edition. If we can dismiss the newspaper versions (which, as I indicate in my first update, I think we can because they can be plausibly interpreted to have a disclaimer), then the name is now published with the intended authorship; the date of publication is 21 May 2009 (not 19 May, which is when it was posted to the web). Carl also succinctly explains why the nomenclatural rules are necessary:

To those not steeped in species, genera, suborders and suprafamilies, all of these bylaws and codes may trigger vertigo. But keeping the world’s biodiversity in order is not for the faint of heart. With 1.8 million species on the books, and tens of thousands of new ones being added every year, taxonomists need an intricate set of rules to keep it all straight. The fact that taxonomists share a set of rules, no matter how intricate, was one of the great advances in the history of biology.

Child doomed by religious faith

May 9, 2009 • 10:33 am

With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil — that takes religion.

–Steven Weinberg


No conflict between science and religion, you say?  Have a look at this article from the Minneapolist StarTribune.  Thirteen-year old Daniel Hauser, whose parents are Catholics but adhere to the healing practices of “the Nemenhah religious group” (this appears to be a Native American religion that believes in spiritual and herbal healing) decided that he didn’t want treatment for his Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Instead, he wants herbal treatments, and his parents are supporting him.  With chemotherapy, the cure rate is very high; doctors say that without it his survival probability is 5%.

The Hausers are in court:

Colleen and Anthony Hauser are in a legal battle with Brown County, where authorities are accusing the parents of child neglect and endangerment. After Daniel stopped chemotherapy after a single treatment, opting instead for “alternative medicines,” child protection workers went to court requesting custody.

Doctors had recommended six chemo treatments, followed by radiation. Dr. Bruce Bostrom, a pediatric oncologist at Childrens Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota and Daniel’s treating physician, on Friday estimated the risk of death from forgoing treatment at about 95 percent. And he testified that Daniel’s tumor had grown since he underwent one chemotherapy treatment in February.

“What is the ultimate outcome of that process?” Tom Sinas, an attorney for the guardian ad litem, asked of the tumor’s growth.

“Death,” Bostrom replied.

The StarTribune report goes on:

The Hausers declined to speak to reporters after Friday’s court session. But Dan Zwakman, a member of the Nemenhah religious group to which they belong, acted as the family spokesman. He argued that this is a case about religious freedom, noting that the group’s motto is “our religion is our medicine.”

. . . Earlier in the day, Dr. Bruce Bostrom of Children’s Hospitals and Clinics, who first diagnosed the cancer when the boy arrived at a Minneapolis emergency room in January, said Daniel has a 95 percent chance of survival if he receives chemotherapy.

Bostrom also said he believes Daniel does not fully understand his condition.

“I think that he understands that he was sick,” Bostrom testified. “He doesn’t understand that the Hodgkin’s is what’s making him sick, and he was led to believe that the chemotherapy was making him sick, when the exact opposite was true.”

“Religious freedom” is not the freedom to kill a child through withholding science-based medicine.  A 13-year-old child, perhaps brainwashed by his parents, simply cannot make this decision for himself.   This is a life-or-death conflict between science, which can save the child, and religion, which is killing him.   No conflict here? What would Francis Collins say?

(Thanks to P. Z. Myers at Pharyngula for calling this to my attention.  He has a post on this incident.)

P. Z. Myers goes after Templeton

May 8, 2009 • 6:54 am

He must have a long spoon that must eat with the devil.

—Shakespeare, Comedy of Errors


Over at Pharyngula, the indefatigable P. Z. has a thoughtful post about whether scientists should take money from The Templeton Foundation.

. . . How about an institution that hands out large grants with the expectation that the work will help reconcile science and religion, or that it will actually find evidence of a deity?

I’d class that with my third group, the funding source that wants a particular conclusion and can’t be trusted to be scrupulous about following the evidence where ever it may lead. They have an agenda, and it is one of the most corrupting and untrustworthy causes of all, religion. They already know the answer, and they only want to pay for results that can be interpreted to bolster their unsupportable claims. Even if they are not asking that anyone fake evidence, we know that any line of inquiry that leads away from their desired answer will be abandoned, even if it is leading to the right answer. They are antithetical to good science.

Such an organization exists: the Templeton Foundation. And, boy are they loaded, with a massive endowment and the willingness to throw large sums of money around. Scarily huge sums — the kind of money that will tempt even the most principled scientist to compromise a little bit. . .

. . .

Templeton is wily, though. They don’t make suggestions quite that blatant. Instead, they hand out money to scientists who they already know are sympathetic to their aims, who also want to see god in the universe. They also offer grants to scientific conferences, saying in essence, “Please include a discussion of the place of faith in science…you don’t have to agree with it, but you must be aware that it is important to many people,” and organizers take the money. They go to science magazines (like Seed) and buy ad space, just like Bio-Rad or Tanqueray Gin, and push their philosophy as if it belongs there. They blur the edges everywhere they can.

The devil’s seduction techniques are devious and subtle, but there’s no hiding what he ultimately wants. . . .

And, to my delight, P. Z. agrees with my decision to pass up on speaking at The World Science Festival because it is partly supported by Templeton.  Most of my atheistic colleagues are all in favor of speaking at this conference, using it as a platform to denounce accommodationism.  It’s nice to see that somebody at least understands why a scientist wouldn’t want to lend his/her name to a Templeton-funded endeavor.

The dust settles (a little) at Panda’s Thumb

April 28, 2009 • 6:33 am

Over at Panda’s Thumb, Richard Hoppe has had second thoughts about his rather strong post attacking P. Z. Myers and myself for criticizing scientific organiations like the AAAS and NCSE for their accommodationist stance toward faith and science.  (See also P. Z.’s reply.)  Hoppe still asserts that the NCSE is acting appropriately when pointing out that many religious people and ministers see no conflict between the two magisteria:

That is, NCSE is not an association of scientists, but of an array of people with different professions and beliefs. Moreover, it is not a science advocacy group as such, but rather is a group that has as its goal the defense of the teaching of evolution in the public schools. And that defense is necessarily heavily political.

That means that its tactics are in part determined by those of the opposition, the creationists who would turn public school science classes into an opportunity to teach religiously-based creation stories. As a consequence, it has to take into account that opposition and its main arguments, so as to appropriately arm those “parents and concerned citizens.”

The creationist assault on public education has two main prongs. One is to attack, misrepresent, and distort the science, and NCSE has a wealth of resources for blunting that attack. To give but one example, it has an excellent counter to Jonathan Wells’ “Ten questions to ask your biology teacher about evolution.” The responses are brief, to the point, and effective: I’ve used them.

The second main prong of the creationist assault is to equate evolution with atheism. That is a ubiquitous theme from the whole range of creationists, from Kent Hovind’s ravings to the Disco ‘Tute’s anti-naturalism Wedge document. I hear it, every one of us working with local and state boards of education hears it. It’s in the creationist mailers, it’s in their pamphlets, and it’s in their public statements to school boards.

And NCSE completely appropriately provides information to “parents and concerned citizens” about that issue. It completely appropriately points out that there are believers – self identified Christians – who accept that evolution has occurred (it’s a fact) and that the modern theory of evolution is the best available naturalistic explanation of that fact. Moreover, NCSE completely appropriately points to religious organizations that have stated that they accept that.

One cannot argue that pointing to the existence of people and organizations that contradict a main prong of the creationist attack on public school education constitutes an “endorsement.” It’s merely pointing to a fact. This is what NCSE says about it in the introduction to its Science and Religion section:

Can I both accept what science teaches and engage in religious belief and practice? This is a complex issue, but theologians, clergy, and members of many religious traditions have concluded that the answer is, unequivocally, yes.

That’s true, a plain fact, and useful for folks in the field to be able to support via the religious organizations and individuals identified by NCSE.

Agreed, but it’s also a plain fact that many “theologians, clergy, and members of many religious traditions have concluded that the answer is, unequivocally, NO.”  But you won’t find this “plain fact” anywhere in the NCSE’s literature.  And although evolution doesn’t lead straight to atheism for everybody, we ALL know that many people have lost their faith after studying evolutionary biology. And there are good reasons for this.  It is simply disingenuous, in my opinion, to pretend that this isn’t true.  I get emails from people every day telling me how they lost their faith after studying evolution (and it doesn’t bother them).  What a breath of fresh air it would be to have somebody admit this hidden truth!

Anyway, Hoppe, after rumination, decides that P. Z. and I were right on one issue:

NOMA is a mistake

Coyne is right in one respect, and I withdraw my wholesale rejection of his argument. I think (writing now as a Life Member) that NCSE has recently made a mistake in going beyond simply pointing to individuals and organizations who have somehow reconciled their science and religious beliefs to counter the creationist equation of evolution with atheism. In the essays by Peter M. J. Hess that apparently are the basis of the NCSE Faith Project, there is an endorsement of a particular view of the relationship, an adaptation of Gould’s Nonoverlapping magisteria with a dose of complementarian thinking. Hess writes

Theologians from many traditions hold that science and religion occupy different spheres of knowledge. Science asks questions such as “What is it?” “How does it happen?” “By what processes?” In contrast, religion asks questions such as “What is life’s meaning?” “What is my purpose?” “Is the world of value?” These are complementary       rather than conflicting perspectives.

And later, in a linked section titled “God and Religion,” he writes

The question “Do you believe in creation or evolution?” has the same problem. Like color and shape, “creation” and “evolution” do not occupy competing categories, but are complementary ways of looking at the universe.

And later in that same section:

Can I accept evolution as the most compelling explanation for biological diversity, and yet also accept the idea that God works through evolution? Certainly.

Hess has here argued for a complementarian view of the relation between religious belief and evolution that is very similar to Gould’s NOMA, which is also a view that is clearly visible in the writings of people like Denis Lamoureax, a self-identified evangelical Christian and “evolutionary creationist.” Lamoureax writes

In understanding origins, evolutionary creation proposes a mutually exclusive yet complementary relationship between science and Scripture. This position asserts that God reveals through both nature and the Bible, and it respects the limits and differences of each revelation. Science discovers how the Creator made the world, while    Scripture offers the ultimate meaning of the creation. Together these revelations from God’s Works and Words complement each other in providing a complete view of origins.

NOMA redux.

In its Faith Project, then, I think that NCSE has gone beyond its remit and past where it can be effective. I now think – in agreement with Coyne, PZ, and others – that it should back off from describing particular ways of reconciling science and religion. Pointing to religious people and organizations who have made their peace with science and evolution is appropriate, but going past that to describing particular ways of making that peace is a mistake. NCSE ought not wade into theological swamps.

So yeah, I was wrong to overstate my case. Sorry, folks. 🙂

Well, Mr. Hoppe, you are a gentleman and a scholar.  Thanks for the clarification.

My view on the NCSE, AAAS, and NAS remains the same:  leave all religion, atheism, and issues of compatibility out of it (except to show how the facts of evolution are incompatible with creationism).  When dealing with issues of compatibility, this simple statement should suffice:

If you want to know how to reconcile the fact of evolution with your religious faith (or the faith of others), please consult your minister, rabbi, or spiritual counselor.


P. Z. gets a column, and more on what counts as evidence for evolution

April 16, 2009 • 9:54 am

P. Z. Myers, the beloved (and also despiséd) author of the popular science blog Pharyngula, has started producing a column on the Guardian website.  His first column is on asymmetry in animals — in particular the gene nodal, which sets up directional (left-right) asymmetries in animals.  P. Z. points out recent research (reference below) showing that snails, who have directionally coiled shells, lose the directionality when nodal is inactivated.   The asymmetry of the human body is also generated in ways similar to that of snails, and again nodal plays a key role.  The gene is somehow involved in determining the directionality of the way cilia (small hairs) beat in the early embryo, which sets up a concentration gradient that can make an embryo left- or right-handed.

I’ve always been fascinated by directional asymmetries — those traits that occur on a consistent side (right or left) in a species.  These include the side of the body that harbors the narwhal’s tusk. and our own internal organs. Other such traits include the direction in which the ears of an owl are turned, and what side of its body a flounder comes to rest on when it changes into a bottom-dweller.  Directional asymmetries are not rare in animals. But how are they formed? How does a gene “know” it’s on the right or the left?  The finding that the direction of cilia movement can tell a gene which side it’s on goes a long way to solving this question, but still leaves open the final question:  why do cilia spin in a given direction? How do they know whether to go clockwise or counterclockwise?  This may, ultimately, reside in the asymmetry of molecules that make up cilia.

At any rate, P. Z.’s column is good, but his explanation of nodal on Pharyngula is even better.  P. Z. has a real talent for explaining science clearly and engagingly, and too often this is overlooked by the hordes of people who visit his blog for the controversy, atheism, and trenchant attacks on religion.  (One thing I’ve found from writing this blog is that visits are much more numerous when I’m attacking something than when I’m talking about science, a fact that’s a little bit sad.)
But the point I wanted to make relates to an earlier post I made about what counts as evidence for evolution.  P. Z.’s  elegant description of how nodal works was hijacked by the Guardian editors by putting it under the title:

Lopsided gene that proves

humans are distant cousins

of the humble snail

A gene shared by birds, fish, reptiles, people – and snails – reveals the fundamental relatedness of all living creatures

Well, we already knew, of course, that we were distant cousins of the humble snail.   We don’t need nodal to tell us that.  And the observation that the gene has similar functions in humans and snails is not, to me, dispositive evidence that humans and snails are related. After all, creationists could always say, “Well of course the gene does the same thing in humans and snails! That’s just the way the Creator decided to make asymmetries!  It doesn’t say anything about common ancestry.”  As I’ve mentioned before, the fact that related creatures use similar genes to do similar things does not count as strong evidence for evolution as opposed to a creationist/intelligent-design alternative.  We might as well say that snails have a gene producing cytochrome c as part of their metabolic pathway, and proclaim that this “proves that humans are distant cousins of the humble snail.”  We share hundreds of genes with the humble snail.

The choice of what to emphasize in a headline is the editors’, not P. Z.’s. And I suppose anything touting evolution is a good thing for readers.  Still, the Guardian editors should realize that hundreds and hundreds of genes already testify to common ancestry — if you choose to use genic similarity as evidence.  I prefer to look at dead genes that are active in relatives as far stronger evidence for evolution against the creationist alternative.

Anyway, congrats to P. Z. for his new gig and a good inaugural column.

Reference: Grande, C., and N. H. Patel. 2009. Nodal signalling is involved in left–right asymmetry in snails. Nature 457:1008-1011.

Russell Blackford goes after faith/science compatibility

March 31, 2009 • 5:48 am

In a really nice essay on his blog “Metamagician and the Hellfire Club”, Australian writer Russell Blackford discusses the issue of the compatibility between science and faith and how that has become the official position of bodies like The National Academy of Sciences (a tip of the hat to PZ at Pharyngula for calling this to our attention). Blackford’s essay is a sarcastic take on an earlier post by Matt Nisbet (a professor of communication at American University who writes the blog “Framing Science”); Nisbet went after Richard Dawkins and the New Atheists for needlessly placing science and religion in opposition.

Blackford puts Nisbet in a full nelson:

. . . Nisbet elaborates how the National Academy of Science (NAS) and related bodies in the US used market research to decide what messages to present to the American public. Having researched the issue, with focus groups and a survey of course, the NAS decided to announce that religion and science are compatible.

Clearly, this is how you do it. For example, it would be wrong to check whether any particular religions or sects make claims that are inconsistent with robust, well-corroborated scientific findings. That’s obviously irrelevant. Furthermore, it would be quite wrong to consider any more (shall we say?) philosophical issues. For example, might there be an argument that even some of the more moderate versions of Abrahamic monotheism include doctrines that are in tension with the emerging image of the world offered by science? How well does the idea of a loving and providential deity square with the millions of years of suffering produced by the slow processes of biological evolution?

You and I might not expect the NAS to take a stand on questions like that. We might think that the compatibility of science with religion would be a matter of some legitimate controversy. If we thought like that – silly us – we might then think it inappropriate for bodies such as the NAS to adopt a position one way or the other. After all, we’d say, philosophers of religion disagree among themselves on this, as do individual scientists, so why is it appropriate for a professional body to take a stand? But we’d be wrong. Obviously the issue can be settled by sufficiently well-planned market research involving focus groups, surveys, etc. In this case, the research told the NAS that they should present material to the public that included “a prominent three page special color section that features testimonials from religious scientists, religious leaders and official church position statements, all endorsing the view that religion and evolution are compatible.” Yay!

This is how to settle a philosophical debate! . . .

So there we have it. When the NAS takes a stance on a highly controversial issue in philosophy of religion, based on market research suggesting that this will help make science appear more acceptable to the American public, that is ethical behaviour. It is certainly not, as you and I might have thought, a meretricious exercise in intellectual dishonesty. But when Dawkins presents his sincerely-held views, relying partly (though by no means entirely) on arguments from his own area of scientific expertise, that is an unethical exercise in denigrating social groups and, yes, in Giving Resonance (don’t worry too much what that expression might actually mean) to the paranoid fantasy, er narrative, “that the scientific establishment has an anti-religion agenda”. Never mind that Dawkins has never made such a claim; one must always be very careful not to go around Giving Resonance.

Another post critical of Nisbet’s stance can be found at the blog Entertaining Research.

Religious scientists and liberal theologians can tout the compatibility of faith and science until they’re blue in the faith [typo: I meant “blue in the face” but I’ll leave the Freudian slip], but in so doing they are seeing a world that they would like to inhabit, not the world they do inhabit. As I said in my New Republic essay on compatibility,

a true harmony between science and religion requireseither doing away with most people’s religion and replacing it with a watered down deism, or polluting science with unnecessary, untestable, and unreasonable spiritual claims.. . . The reason that many liberal theologians see religion and evolution as harmonious is that they espouse a theology not only alien but unrecognizable as religion to most Americans.

Faith, as it is practiced by many, many people, is simply incompatible with science. It doesn’t solve the problem to tell them to put their beliefs in line with science.

Hijinks in Texas!

March 26, 2009 • 1:33 pm

Most of you know that there’s a crucial battle going on in Texas about science education in the public schools.  The school board (which is loaded with social conservatives and at least three unashamed creationists) and the state legislature are trying to water down the teaching of evolution by:

1.  Demanding that teachers expose students to the “strengths and weaknesses” of scientific theories (as we all know, this is a transparent attempt to drag in the discredited creationist/intelligent design criticisms of evolution),

2.  Teaching about “the insufficiency of natural selection to explain the complexity of cells.” (Lord have mercy–this is right out of the Behe handbook!), and

3. Teaching about “the insufficiency of common ancestry to explain the sudden appearance, stasis and sequential nature of groups in the fossil record”  (see below).

It’s hard to believe this is really going on in modern America, but it is.  The Guardian asked me to write an op-ed piece about the issues, which I have you can find here.  An excerpt:

Creationism in the classroom

Evolution is a scientific fact – except, perhaps, in Texas, where the school board is trying to cast doubt on it

Imagine that your state legislature has decided to revamp the way that health and medicine are taught in public schools. To do this, they must tackle the “germ theory of disease“, the idea that infectious disease is caused by microorganisms such as viruses and bacteria. The legislature, noting that this idea has many vocal opponents, declares that it is “only a theory”. Many people, for instance, think that Aids has nothing to do with viruses, but is the byproduct of a dissipated life. Christian Scientists believe that disease results from sin and ignorance, spiritual healers implicate disturbed auras and shamans cite demonic possession.

In light of this “controversy”, the legislature sets up a school board that includes not only doctors, but also shamans, faith healers and, for good measure a few “psychic surgeons” who pretend to extract veal cutlets from patients’ intact bodies. Taking account of these diverse views, the board recommends that from now on all teaching of modern medicine must be accompanied by a discussion of its weaknesses, including the “evidence” that Aids results from drug use and malnutrition, as well as from impure thoughts and evil spirits. And our failure to understand the complexities of chronic fatigue syndrome might be seen as reflecting its causation by an inscrutable and supernatural designer.

You would rightly be furious if all this happened. After all, the “germ theory” of disease is more than just a theory – it’s a fact. Like all scientific theories, it might be wrong, but in this case that chance is roughly zero. That is because the germ theory works. Antibiotic and antiviral drugs really do cure diseases, while spiritual healing does not. Only an idiot, you’d say, would try to tamper with medical education in this way.

But this is precisely what is happening in Texas with respect to another well-established theory of biology: evolution. . . .

. . . What’s next? Since there are many who deny the Holocaust, can we expect legislation requiring history classes to discuss the “strengths and weaknesses” of the idea that Nazis persecuted Jews? Should we teach our children astrology in their psychology classes as an alternative theory of human behaviour? And, given the number of shamans in the world, shouldn’t their views be represented in medical schools?

Our children will face enormous challenges when they grow up: global warming, depletion of fossil fuels, overpopulation, epidemic disease. There is no better way to prepare their generation than to teach them how to distinguish fact from mythology, and to encourage them to have good reasons for what they believe.

How sad that in the 21st century the Texas legislature proposes the exact opposite, indoctrinating our children with false ideas based squarely on religious dogma. Can’t we just let our kids learn real science?

One of the most bizarre aspects of this whole mess is that the head of the Texas Board of Education, appointed by the governor, is one Don McLeroy, a young-earth creationist whose day job is dentistry. McLeroy is also a born-again Christian and a Sunday school teacher.  (For the usual pungent comment on this guy, see P. Z. Myers’s take on Pharyngula.)    Yesterday, McLeroy wrote a bizarre Op-Ed piece in the Austin Statesman making his case for teaching the “problems” with evolution.  It seems to boil down to– of all things– stasis in the fossil record:

Stephen Jay Gould stated: “The great majority of species do not show any appreciable evolutionary change at all. [This is called ‘stasis.’] These species appear … without obvious ancestors in the underlying beds, are stable once established and disappear higher up without leaving any descendants.”

“…but stasis is data…”

Once we have our observations, we can make a hypothesis. The controversial evolution hypothesis is that all life is descended from a common ancestor by unguided natural processes. How well does this hypothesis explain the data? A new curriculum standard asks Texas students to look into this question. It states: “The student is expected to analyze and evaluate the sufficiency or insufficiency of common ancestry to explain the sudden appearance, stasis, and sequential nature of groups in the fossil record.” It should not raise any objections from those who say evolution has no weaknesses; they claim it is unquestionably true.

And the standard is not religious but does raise a problem for the evolution hypothesis in that stasis is the opposite of evolution, and “stasis is data.”

This is sheer sophistry based on an out-of-context quotation.  Gould, of course, was a firm believer in evolution, something that Dr. McLeroy conveniently forgets to mention.  And Gould never saw punctuated equilibrium as incompatible with neoDarwinism. He raged at creationists who used punctuated equilibrium to their advantage.   And you don’t have to be an Einstein to realize that the theory of evolution does not demand that every species must evolve all of the time!  Further, how does McLeroy deal with the many examples of real transitional fossils, and the many cases of palpable evolutionary change within fossil lineages (many described in WEIT)?  He doesn’t tell us.

This would all be comical if it didn’t have enormous repercussions for public education in this country.  Texas is of course one of the nation’s biggest consumers of public-school textbooks, and, to maximize sales,  publishers tend to bring their texts in line with the strictest state requirements.  This means that what happens in Texas may affect science education throughout the country.  And so the circus continues.

Fortunately, the National Center for Science Education is down in Texas in force, fighting hard for evolution at the school board hearings.  I have just heard from Genie Scott, and I hope she won’t mind if I quote a bit of her on-the-spot report.   It looks as if things are going fairly well:

But the good news is that 45 minutes ago +/-, an amendment to reinsert S&W [“strengths and weaknesses] failed on a tie 7:7 vote. One of the moderates is away taking care of a sick husband, so we don’t have a majority. But the moderates hung in there, and there was not a majority voting for the restoration of the old language.

We have several bad amendments to go, but that is the truly big victory that if we had lost, we would have been in very bad shape. But other bad stuff needs to go.

If anybody can get rid of the other “bad stuff,” it’s Genie & Co.  Keep your fingers crossed!