Doonesbury hits one out of the park today—don’t trust science, it’s just too controversial.
I like the definition: situational science is about respecting both sides of a scientific argument, not just the one supported by facts. The Discovery Institute ought to etch that on their front door, filigreed in gold.
Isn’t this an old repeat?
Not that it’s a bad thing – Doonesbury tends to display the most pithy strips multiple times for greatest effect.
I definitely remember this one! (Sadly, some things never seem to change…)
Ah, yes, an oldie but goodie. (I’m pretty sure it’s a repeat.)
Not only a repeat for Doonesbury, but a repeat for Pharyngula as well ;)
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/03/situational_science.php
Good stuff, though.
I’m am so tired of that “teach the controversy” line. It’s time liberalism and science brought some of the tenets of capitalist competition into debate, and started winning the verbal boxing matches. It’s time to tell the public who’s really lost the game and is now whining that they’ve been left out of the party. No more of this even-handed foot shuffling and allowing patently cromagnonic mental spew to pollute peoples’ minds.
Stupidity needs to be hit where it hurts: square in the face.
Dang, I’m just getting old. I thought it looked familiar…
Ah, but ‘liberalism’ has traditionally been quite hostile to capitalism – not just its inevitable negative effects, or the problems that can arise when it’s not applied properly, but the basic concept itself.
If you self-identify as a Leftist, you’re going to have to embrace the strengths of selection and competition. Sadly, I don’t think this is likely – it seems incompatible with the designs of the most Lefty governments and societies.
…except that this, Caledonian, confuses once again “is” with “ought”.
We don’t feel any compulsion to “embrace the strength of selection and competition” in medicine; why should economy be any different?
Hilarious! Thanks for posting it. It is my first time seeing it.
I don’t know if this is a repeat too but they also covered the topic yesterday.
Caledonian: “Ah, but ‘liberalism’ has traditionally been quite hostile to capitalism – not just its inevitable negative effects, or the problems that can arise when it’s not applied properly, but the basic concept itself…”
Well I’m certainly more liberal-minded than just about any conservative, but I have no problem with properly-regulated competition. I am not particularly sympathetic to monopolies however, and I tend to root for the underdog. For example, though I agree that Intel has great products, I typically root for AMD or IBM in the marketplace.
I accept that capitalism is not perfect; no human solution ever has been. But I’m not so blind a liberal to think that what is currently the best economic system around can be supplanted by older ideas that have fallen away over history. I am one willing to live within that system and see it regulated where appropriate, and left alone where appropriate. Now there is where the 2 parties split of course, but being a person of reasonable mind, I can accept when a conservative says leave it alone in specific situations where that should be the case. I will however side with a liberal where they find fault with massive multi-nationals that price fix, among other abuses.
As for identifying myself as “leftist”, I would say no I do not consider myself that in anything approaching a pure sense, unless you compare me to the current crop of conservatives out there. In that case, anything sane is “leftist” by their standards.
When I use the word “liberal”, I focus on its historical meaning with respect to this country and progressivism in general. Liberalism here used to even include tenets of the conservative party. However that is no longer the case, since we have modern-day Whig-Tories pledging allegiance to a singular king-like figure, and denouncing with a generalized scope anyone who steps out of line with the selected line of thought. Personally, I seek the intellectual values of the Enlightenment, merged with a modern economic capitalist system that produced the American Golden Age (1940s-60s).
I realize I am in the minority these days, but that’s the mold I come from based on my upbringing from parents that lived in those decades, and thus the model I envision as appropriate for this country. for both the “common” man, and the “business” man.
This is a funny strip, but I’m not sure I agree 100% with its point.
Here’s the sense in which I think it is a good idea to “teach the controversy”. Even if science has a monopoly on truth, and there is no real controversy within science about an issue (as is the case with evolution), science teachers should not be in the business of indoctrination and authority. It is in fact incredibly important that students be taught that there is controversy in the world and how scientists answer their critics. Isn’t that exactly what PZ does here? A huge amount of his time is spent tearing apart creationist arguments, and in detailing the evidence for various scientific conclusions.
If I ran a school, I would want students to be aware of controversy where it exists and of the arguments from all sides and have the ability to make up their own minds. I prefer a Socratic questioning model of education than a model where an instructor is an unquestioned and unquestioning authority figure.
Of course you don’t want to spend so much time on the controversy that you don’t have time for the actual content of science, but I believe the skills of analysis of argument and debate are just as important to learn, if not more so, than the facts of biology.
mtraven,
I don’t think anyone is saying that students should not be “taught that there is controversy in the world,” including controversy over evolution. But the appropriate place for such topics is social studies classes or comparative religion classes or somesuch. Not science classes. I agree that some discussion of the merits of the scientific method and rational inquiry more broadly is appropriate in science classes, but their primary purpose is to teach students the “actual content” of science. Teachers are authority figures, and all teaching is in some sense “indoctrination.” I don’t see how it could be otherwise, really.
I always get a giggle when Americans, particularly “conservatives” get on about liberals and liberalism. From what I have seen, you could drop the average American liberal into any other country and that person would be considered a right-wing nutter.
Still, each little liberal step probably helps.
Mtraven said: If I ran a school, I would want students to be aware of controversy where it exists and of the arguments from all sides and have the ability to make up their own minds.
Students lack the knowledge to make up their own minds, that’s what they are in school to acquire. There is not enough time in the school day to teach them all the mainstream course material, so there is hardly time to waste addressing arguments and views known to be bogus. Every single fact they learn has some group out there that opposes it. Do you really want to waste what little time they have to learn physics introducing them to the guy who thinks Einstein was a dunce?
This doesn’t mean the teacher has to be treated as some sort of unquestioned authority. That’s a straw man no one is suggesting. If a student has questions about the subject matter in any class, within the scope of the class, he ought to ask it, and the teacher should answer. With regard to creationism, at most in science class, it ought to get the same converage afforded Lamarkianism: as part of the history of flawed theories, warranting a brief description and little else. Spend the other 95% of the class teaching them what they ought to know, rather than what they shouldn’t.
My pal, VastLeft, of VastLeftWingConspiracy blog and CorrenteWire, has invented a word to cover this subject:
Equivalation–the assigning of equal weight to both sides of an issue, despite one side having no validity. Examples: Evolution vs creationism/ID; truth/fact vs neocon “talking points”.
So elegant!
How come any side, trial lawyers especially, can always find a scientific whore to back them up. Tobacco, environmental poisoning, you name it, there is always a scientist for hire.
If you are trying to say there is not massive fraud in science, you are a liar.
It would be wonderful to teach both sides of the controversy in Freshman English. Hense hwen u start tu teach grammer and speling, u wuld haf to point owt the difurent posibilities.
O what glorious scholars such a system would produce.
Evolving Squid,
You are right. Liberalism in its classical sense is a much broader umbrella than republicans would lead just about anyone to believe. Their own liberal traits evinced by past republican greats such as Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower, and even some of Nixon’s policies (though not a great man), should be an obvious sign that at one time they used their skulls well.
IMO it’s the current breed of conervatism that is worst for not only this country but this world, for obvious reasons. Conservatives today love to herald the level of atrocities under Communist regimes in other parts of the world as overwhelming proof that conservatism is the light at the end of the dark tunnel of slippery liberal slopes. I have seen a few conservatives revel in front of me, smiles aglow on their faces, in the figures of millions starving and dying under Communist policies, and that as bad as Hitler was, he massacred fewer people in the 20th century than Communism did. Yes, perverse reasoning to be sure, but there you have it.
But what they forget (or conveniently neglect to recall) is, just about every civilization preceding the Englightenment, and even at present, was based on some sort of religious rigor and its enforcement on the populace. Conservatives now never bring up the fact that England ripped itself apart over religion (the same religion that republicans in this country insist saves America from the fires of hell), that the same occurred in Russia, and countless other places, all because a god or a man was given divine status, thus inherently dividing cultures, causing very bloody wars, and instituting government-mandated oppression by whoever held the throne or seat of power in any given country. If Communism has killed millions, religion has killed at least as many over centuries of human history (as opposed to Communism, which has only really been around for the last 100-150 years).
And this does not take into account right-wing fascist states of the recent past such as Italy, Germany, Spain, and hard-right movements in countries like Austria, that, whether or not they are based on religion, have and still do oppress major segments of populations, and enforce torture and brutal forms of punishment and death on dissenters. And this is to say nothing of right-wing death squads and military coups in South America…
Point is, conservatism has a lot to answer for and resolve itself – let alone prove – before liberalism is to kneel down before it.
That’s exaggerated. Many would find themselves in the left half of the conservative party.
What do you mean? Austrofascism (1934 — 1938)? That was a classic fascist government, not just “a hard-right movement”.
That’s exaggerated. Many would find themselves in the left half of the conservative party.
What do you mean? Austrofascism (1934 — 1938)? That was a classic fascist government, not just “a hard-right movement”.
There are two contrasting models of education (to radically simplify things): the conduit model, where the instructor is pumping knowledge into the heads of the student, and the constructivist model, where the student is actively engaged in building up their mental model of the world, using the instructor as a resource.
The conduit model is our default model, but it’s not very attractive either as a realistic description of how learning occurs, or a prescription for effective teaching.
Constructivist approaches allow controversies to be converted into teaching tools. If some student wants to know how come we believe the earth is several billion years old rather than 6000, they should be able to follow the chains of evidence and reasoning used to support that fact, rather than being told “because science says so”. They need to be able to make up their own minds, how to weigh arguments, how to decide who to trust. I’d rather we taught those skills (the mental toolbox of the radical skeptic) than any particular scientific theory.