I think the reason science criticism is difficult and rare is that while the scientific establishment is a mess and desperately needs reform it is constantly under siege by parts of the religious establishment.
Is this even true? The most obvious example of “Intelligent Design” is basically a brief footnote to Theory of Evolution stating that “God had something to do with it”, to make it disagree less with other parts of people’s belief network. It doesn’t seem that much worse than similar footnote to the Big Bang Theory nearly every non-atheist holds. It’s silly, but irrelevant.
I suppose Intelligent Design proponents try to portray it as a brief and uncontroversial footnote. But rather transparently it is the next in a long line of attempts to undermine or remove evolution from state biology curricula. This looks like a fight to me. I don’t know what the history would look like if those fighting on behalf of science had been more critical of it but I think the scientific establishment’s status as a credible arbiter of truth is pretty central to the argument that other ‘ways of knowing’ don’t belong in science classes.
It’s silly, but irrelevant.
And it isn’t irrelevant. Part of the what science classes are supposed to do is explain science as a method and perspective for understanding the world. You can’t talk about falsifiability one minute and Intelligent Design the next.
Besides which, focusing on what goes on in public school ignores the large numbers of American children who are schooled at home by parents who teach what religious leaders tell them to.
In any case, it shouldn’t be impossible to reform the scientific establishment while defending it from evangelicals. In fact, one could craft a good argument that a better science would be harder for religious authorities to undermine. But I’d be very wary of underestimating the threat religion poses.
ETA: I’d be interested in skipping this debate and talking more about what a reform of science (or a replacement) would look like.
I suppose Intelligent Design proponents try to portray it as a brief and uncontroversial footnote.
Because that’s what it is. As far as I can tell it was mostly due to overreaction of scientific establishment that baffled the moderately religious (here including even the previous Pope, who didn’t have any problem with evolution as such, only with people using it to oppose their beliefs) have religious nutjobs managed to get the moderates on board and reach so much influence here.
Compare it with the minefield of tribal beliefs textbooks of modern history have to navigate in—you can’t get away with just a few footnotes, nearly every sentence runs risk of gravely offending someone! So they compromised to get the most important bits across.
I don’t this it would be right to ignore this, as this unreasonable siege mentality is a major impediment to fixing science.
I agree that there is a harmful “siege mentality” in the frenzy to defend the theory of Evolution from religiously-motivated challenges. Nevertheless, the main organized proponents of Intelligent Design (the Discovery Institute) are not just trying to add a footnote to the textbooks, have a victory party, and then retire. They have an explicit and not-particularly-concealed plan to overthrow secularism in the US.
But I’m with Jack. Lets not get into a discussion of ID or creationism. I’d like to hear the ideas about reforming science. Incidentally, one important reform is already underway. Open access publishing. Often with watered-down review standards. Einstein’s famous papers on relativity, brownian motion, and the photoelectric effect would be published on arXiv and discussed in the physics blogs even more quickly in the present milieu than the time to get them printed and distributed in the relaxed days of 1905.
A second reform is increased interest in punishing scientific fraud. (The wrist-slap in the Hauser case being an exception, I hope.)
Science reform issues resemble politics while at the same time not mapping onto the traditional ideological spectrum and staying close to our areas of expertise here. Maybe we should try to tackle this before making the jump into politics some people want us to.
As far as I can tell it was mostly due to overreaction of scientific establishment that baffled the moderately religious (here including even the previous Pope, who didn’t have any problem with evolution as such, only with people using it to oppose their beliefs) have religious nutjobs managed to get the moderates on board and reach so much influence here.
I don’t think the religious nutjobs have managed to get the moderates on board. Following the alteration of science curricula by evangelicals the public has consistently elected moderates who then removed ID from classrooms- plausibly this had something to do with science putting up a unified front against ID. I don’t know how we can reliably compare this world to a counter-factual one in which science doesn’t have the siege mentality. But it seems plausible that in such world the position of science would be more precarious.
But the ID issue aside, do you not think that, in general, powerful and influential fundamentalist movements will be bad for science? You’ve got around 40% of the American public that doesn’t believe in evolution (though of course this varies by how the question is asked) and it seems reasonable to believe that the larger that group is the more at risk high school biology curricula is.
I don’t this it would be right to ignore this, as this unreasonable siege mentality is a major impediment to fixing science.
This seems like putting the cart before the horse. Is there even an organized programme for reform around for the establishment to resist? While I think the siege mentality makes people wary of criticizing science I also think there plenty of ways to do so without especially undermining science visa vis religion. I think the successes of the more radical factions of the two American political parties is an illustrative analogy though obviously not the ideal inspiration for science reform.
Is this even true? The most obvious example of “Intelligent Design” is basically a brief footnote to Theory of Evolution stating that “God had something to do with it”, to make it disagree less with other parts of people’s belief network. It doesn’t seem that much worse than similar footnote to the Big Bang Theory nearly every non-atheist holds. It’s silly, but irrelevant.
I don’t see any siege here.
I suppose Intelligent Design proponents try to portray it as a brief and uncontroversial footnote. But rather transparently it is the next in a long line of attempts to undermine or remove evolution from state biology curricula. This looks like a fight to me. I don’t know what the history would look like if those fighting on behalf of science had been more critical of it but I think the scientific establishment’s status as a credible arbiter of truth is pretty central to the argument that other ‘ways of knowing’ don’t belong in science classes.
And it isn’t irrelevant. Part of the what science classes are supposed to do is explain science as a method and perspective for understanding the world. You can’t talk about falsifiability one minute and Intelligent Design the next.
Besides which, focusing on what goes on in public school ignores the large numbers of American children who are schooled at home by parents who teach what religious leaders tell them to.
In any case, it shouldn’t be impossible to reform the scientific establishment while defending it from evangelicals. In fact, one could craft a good argument that a better science would be harder for religious authorities to undermine. But I’d be very wary of underestimating the threat religion poses.
ETA: I’d be interested in skipping this debate and talking more about what a reform of science (or a replacement) would look like.
Because that’s what it is. As far as I can tell it was mostly due to overreaction of scientific establishment that baffled the moderately religious (here including even the previous Pope, who didn’t have any problem with evolution as such, only with people using it to oppose their beliefs) have religious nutjobs managed to get the moderates on board and reach so much influence here.
Compare it with the minefield of tribal beliefs textbooks of modern history have to navigate in—you can’t get away with just a few footnotes, nearly every sentence runs risk of gravely offending someone! So they compromised to get the most important bits across.
I don’t this it would be right to ignore this, as this unreasonable siege mentality is a major impediment to fixing science.
I agree that there is a harmful “siege mentality” in the frenzy to defend the theory of Evolution from religiously-motivated challenges. Nevertheless, the main organized proponents of Intelligent Design (the Discovery Institute) are not just trying to add a footnote to the textbooks, have a victory party, and then retire. They have an explicit and not-particularly-concealed plan to overthrow secularism in the US.
But I’m with Jack. Lets not get into a discussion of ID or creationism. I’d like to hear the ideas about reforming science. Incidentally, one important reform is already underway. Open access publishing. Often with watered-down review standards. Einstein’s famous papers on relativity, brownian motion, and the photoelectric effect would be published on arXiv and discussed in the physics blogs even more quickly in the present milieu than the time to get them printed and distributed in the relaxed days of 1905.
A second reform is increased interest in punishing scientific fraud. (The wrist-slap in the Hauser case being an exception, I hope.)
Science reform issues resemble politics while at the same time not mapping onto the traditional ideological spectrum and staying close to our areas of expertise here. Maybe we should try to tackle this before making the jump into politics some people want us to.
Without having done a ton of research reforming the way science gets funded looks like the most important piece of the puzzle.
I don’t think the religious nutjobs have managed to get the moderates on board. Following the alteration of science curricula by evangelicals the public has consistently elected moderates who then removed ID from classrooms- plausibly this had something to do with science putting up a unified front against ID. I don’t know how we can reliably compare this world to a counter-factual one in which science doesn’t have the siege mentality. But it seems plausible that in such world the position of science would be more precarious.
But the ID issue aside, do you not think that, in general, powerful and influential fundamentalist movements will be bad for science? You’ve got around 40% of the American public that doesn’t believe in evolution (though of course this varies by how the question is asked) and it seems reasonable to believe that the larger that group is the more at risk high school biology curricula is.
This seems like putting the cart before the horse. Is there even an organized programme for reform around for the establishment to resist? While I think the siege mentality makes people wary of criticizing science I also think there plenty of ways to do so without especially undermining science visa vis religion. I think the successes of the more radical factions of the two American political parties is an illustrative analogy though obviously not the ideal inspiration for science reform.