Burned out on the bickering among the pro-science forces?

Then you need to turn to the non-scientists for some refreshing expressions of unity. Or not.

A New Age magazine in Minnesota is under new management, and the editor wants to exercise some “quality control”: astrology, fairies, life-force energy, and spiritual quests are OK. Channeling and paganism are out. This has annoyed the so-open-minded-their-brains-have-fallen-out crowd.

Other New Age leaders are appalled.

“He is excluding channeling? Yikes. Or pagans? He should not be doing that,” said Kathy McGee, editor of the Washington-state-based magazine New Age Retailer.

“New Age is an umbrella term encompassing anything on a spiritual path — Bigfoot, Jesus, Buddha. Even worshipping a frog is sort of OK,” McGee said.

She said New Age thinking is all-or-nothing — you either have an open mind to all beliefs, or you don’t. It is wrong for anyone to pick which beliefs are acceptable.

“You don’t want to say, ‘This is OK, and this is not,’ ” McGee said. “There is nothing we would exclude. We are about goodwill to men.”

Her definition, then, puts Bigfoot believers shoulder-to-shoulder beside organic farmers. Along with channeling, she includes the Fair Trade movement, which promotes products that benefit Third World farmers.

Wait a minute…worshipping a frog is sort of OK? Only “sort of”? I am offended. Why is she belittling the faith of frog-worshippers all around the world?

The rest of the story has some interesting information about the cracks in the New Age universe. Organic farmers would rather not be associated with fairies. Chiropractors really hate it — one says, “That New Age connection should not be made. I cannot see how anyone can put chiropractic care and Bigfoot together.” To which I can only reply, well, what if Bigfoot has an aching back, huh? He’s bipedal, he’s probably got the same difficulties we do.

By the way, one psychic also joyfully reports that the poor economy is helping her business.

Coyne on Unscientific America

An important tip to book authors who want to decry the ability of others to engage a consensus: don’t alienate the literate, thinking part of your readership yourself. Mooney and Kirshenbaum make much of the fact that those wicked “New Atheists” are going to drive away support for science, a fact not in evidence, but they seem oblivious to the fact that their recommendation to hush up a significant element of the public voice of science is going to alienate us, and it’s working to bite them in the ass right now. In other words, Jerry Coyne’s review of their book is online.

I’ll start with my overall opinion of the book, which is that it is confused, tendentious, evanescent, and preachy.  It is a blog post blown up to book length.  Yes, there are some useful parts, in particular the emphasis on science communication and the need to reward those who are good at it. But these solutions are hardly new; indeed, I could find little in Unscientific America that has not been said, at length, elsewhere. And what is new—the accusation that scientists, in particular atheist-scientists, are largely responsible for scientific illiteracy—is asserted without proof.

I am still endlessly amazed at how proponents of congenial communication, like Mooney and Nisbet, manage to so consistently piss off the targets of their discussions while trying to appease the people who care least about good science.

Why do they hate the manimal?

It’s happening again. The Republicans are tilting at one of their favorite windmills, the mad scientists’ dream of creating an unholy union between beast and human to produce a slave race of soulless monsters. They have introduced legislation to ban human-animal hybrids. And it’s even bipartisan! They’ve got 19 Rethuglicans, like Sam Brownback, the ignoramus from Kansas:

What was once only science fiction is now becoming a reality, and we need to ensure that experimentation and subsequent ramifications do not outpace ethical discussion and societal decisions. History does not look kindly on those who violate the dignity of the human person.

And they’ve also got 1 Dimocrat, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana:

Here in the United States, we simply cannot open the door to the unethical blending of humans and animals, which the British government seems intent on doing. It creates an unnatural species and is a clear line we cannot cross.

One teensy little problem: these clowns do not understand the science. We actually aren’t planning to creating a slave-race of beast-men; the technology isn’t there, for one thing, and for another, that’s really not at all an interesting goal. No one is planning on operating on any human persons, or even violating them; the focus is all on cells and molecules. This is routine stuff. In one hand, you’ve got a dish full of human cells — it doesn’t talk, it can’t sign a consent form even if it had the capacity to understand one — and you want to know what makes them tick. In the other hand, you’ve got a collection of hard-won tools you’ve gathered from work in mice or worms or flies; interesting vectors, genes that act as indicators or switches, ways to basically reach into a cell and toggle states. Scientists have had these for years, and we’ve regularly used these tools to manipulate cells and puzzle out what happens.

Another example: we want to know what genes on different human chromosomes do, but it is highly unethical to do random mutagenesis on human gametes, bring them together, and then raise up the fetus in a volunteer’s womb to find out what interesting ways it might go kablooiee. One technique that has been used is to make mouse-human hybrid cells: use a little ethylene glycol to weaken the cell membranes, push a mouse cell next to a human cell, and presto, they fuse. They then recover and go through cell divisions, and the hybrid cell begins to lose pieces of the unnatural excess of chromosomes it’s got. You can then screen the resultant cells and correlate the presence or absence of gene products with the presence or absence of specific human chromosomes.

I know. It sounds so nefarious.

One more example: scientists have made transgenic pigs carrying five human genes. The idea is to create animals that can be a source for xenografts — transplanted organs — in humans with a reduced level of rejection. These pigs would become illegal under the Brownback bill, because they mingle a blessedly human H-transferase gene with pig cells. This is not to argue that there are no ethical considerations in these kinds of experiments, since there certainly are: we can argue about the ethics of creating species of pigs with the specialized purpose of providing organs for human use (it’s about as great a moral dilemma as raising pigs for meat), and there’s also the concern that hybrid pigs will also be dangerous incubators for training viruses to respond to human epitopes. But the ethical debates aren’t the domain of crude science-fiction versions of the science that these clueless lawmakers think them to be.

I’d like Brownback to answer a simple question. Does putting the human insulin or growth factor gene into E. coli violate the dignity of the human person? If it does, he’s suggesting shutting down a good chunk of the pharmaceutical industry. And Ms Landrieu: what is an “unnatural species”? If they’re unnatural and we can’t cross that line, then we certainly don’t need legislation to enforce it.

I don’t know why she bothered to complain about the British government, unless she’s using just plain old conservative xenophobia to stir up votes. American scientists have been using hybrid cells and have been introducing cross-species genes into cells for a long, long time now.

Promises, promises

There are rumors whispering about on the scienceblogs grapevine that there may — I emphasize may — be some brief downtime of the site on Wednesday, while the techies do some magic and switch us to some better performing hardware. We hope. If I were a man of faith, I’d be praying, but as it is, I’m too smart to think that would do any good.

Unscientific America, the gift that keeps on giving

Mooney and Kirshenbaum have been so stung by my criticisms of their book that they have launched a multi-part rebuttal to my review. Here’s my reply to their reply.

  1. We didn’t get personal, and we didn’t attack atheism in general! Hmmm. Here’s a sampling of what they do say: “Myers’ actions were incredibly destructive and unnecessary”. I “set the cause backward”. New Atheists believe that “religious faith should not be benignly tolerated”. The “New Atheists” are “nasty bullying”. They’re “shrill”. In last year’s voting for best science blog, I was the “devil’s choice”. Blogging brings out the “loud, angry, nasty, and profanity-spewing minority”. When he refers to Pharyngula, he refers to it as a “science” blog — in quotes. It’s the “most alienating” of the blogs.

    Sure, you can call it just “criticism”. But the peculiarity here is that the only people he targets are me particularly, and “New Atheists” in general. If you’re making an objective case for a genuine problem, just hammering on one example is peculiar. If I’m representative, you’d think he’d marshal lots of examples; if I’m an outlier, he’s building a case on an exception. Which is it?

    But the biggest problem here is the uselessness of the critique, that word I used before to summarize his whole book. He provides no solutions in chapter 8, other than a general complaint that the “New Atheists” are bad. What does he propose to do about Pharyngula? Shut it down? Others will take its place. He doesn’t seem capable of recognizing that it is popular because it fills a popular niche.

  2. Myers doesn’t grasp our point about Pluto! This is true. I don’t. I spelled out my complaints about this section in my previous review.

    Well, Chris and Sheril, what should the astronomers have done? Should they have had a binding referendum delivered to the public to get their say? Are there other scientific matters that should be decided by popular vote? (Let’s put the truth of evolutionary biology up for decision in a poll!) Should scientists take the time to explain with a little wit and humor and sound scientific reasoning why they made that decision? If so, they missed the boat: they should read Neil deGrasse Tyson’s The Pluto Files for exactly that. How about some discussion about exactly why they think that failed?

    Those questions have been ignored. The Pluto section of the book is available online, go ahead and look. You won’t find them saying anything about what ought to be done in the future, or where the astronomers went wrong. Again, useless.

  3. Myers fails to say what the point of the whole book was! Exactly. What is it? I said the first chapter was symptomatic, and it was. Mooney and Kirshenbaum grumble about those insensitive scientists and those uppity atheists, but their proposals are either absent or so general as to be pointless, like…let’s give more media training to scientists! I agree that would be a good idea, but it’s not going to resolve any of the issues they are so bitter about.

    Do they really think that will address their complaints? I’ve had no media training at all. Imagine how nuts it would drive Mooney if I were slick and polished and skilled at using a variety of media, because it wouldn’t change my message at all!

  4. Richard Dawkins is no Carl Sagan! Nope, he’s different. Woo hoo. So? That’s just the thing: we are not going to clone Carl Sagan, or raise him as a zombie. What we’re going to have is a collection of voices: a Dawkins, an Attenborough, a Tyson, a Suzuki, a Miller, and many others, all with different tones, different emphases. My objection here is that instead of diversity, Mooney and Kirshenbaum appear to want only one voice, and it’s got to be one that is conciliatory and deferential to religion and the public opinion in general.

Once again, I am unimpressed — they seem to think that I am a significant problem here, which misses the point. They’re supposedly writing about an American problem of a lack of scientific literacy. If they think I’m the root (or perhaps, the flower, even) of the problem, you can tell that they’re going off on the wrong track already.

But most importantly, they don’t answer the questions about the substance of their book. What next? Where are the answers in their book? If they really want to dig into the substance of the solutions they provide, they should try answering Ophelia Benson’s questions. I predict he won’t even try; they’re much harder.

Ultimately, this whole exchange illustrates the failure of Mooney/Kirshenbaum’s arguments. The demotion of Pluto, the rise of the “New Atheism”, PZ Myers, and blogging are all recent phenomena — they do not deal with the causes of the disconnect between society and science, and treating them is a distraction from dealing with the real problems. This book is more like a collection of poor rationalizations for complaining about stuff they don’t like than a serious and scholarly attempt to address a significant social problem. To useless, I must also add the adjective lightweight.

(I do have to wonder if they are going to feel compelled to make a reply to my reply to their reply to my review. And how are they going to cope with other critical reviews that will be coming down the pipeline? This could get fun!)

The Ultimate Proof of Creation!

We’re in big trouble on our trip to the Creation “Museum”, people. We’re going on 7 August, and on that very same day, they are planning to present…

THE ULTIMATE PROOF OF CREATION!!!

What is the Ultimate Proof of Creation, you might ask?

There is a defense for creation that is powerful, conclusive, and has no true rebuttal. As such, it is an irrefutable argument–an “ultimate proof” of the Christian worldview. This presentation will equip you to engage an unbeliever, even a staunch atheist, using proven techniques.

Holy crap! It’s a trap! I’m going to be bringing along a whole mob of young atheists from the Secular Student Alliance, and this speaker, Jason Lisle, is going to be like Darth Vader among the younglings. I might be able to put up a fight against Emperor Ham, just like Samuel Jackson, but then his apprentice will show up and zap, blam, zowee, I’ll be chopped up and blown out a window. We’re doomed. DOOOOOOOMED.

At least I insist on being informed before going to my ignominious fate. The first chapter of the Ultimate Proof of Creation is available online, so I read it cautiously, fearing that I would see science demolished with an irrefutable argument.

Wait a minute.

This thing is complete garbage. It’s the same old routine that Answers in Genesis always trots out: “We’re using the same evidence,” they say, “only we’re just interpreting it differently. We’re just as sciencey as you are!” Only they aren’t. They’re leaving out all the evidence that contradicts their views, and twisting the bits they want in inappropriate ways. And then they make stuff up! Here’s an approach I’ve been seeing a lot from creationists lately: they invent scientific “laws” and then declare that evolution is unscientific because it violates those “laws”. The most common one is the so-called “law of biogenesis” that dictates that life can only come from other life, but here’s a pair that Lisle pulls out of his butt:

  1. There is no known law of nature, no known process, and no
    known sequence of events that can cause information to originate by itself in matter.

  2. When its progress along the chain of transmission events is
    traced backward, every piece of information leads to a mental
    source, the mind of the sender.

These are quite simply false. Chance can generate new information in genetics, so we know the first law is bogus, and since we can trace a useful piece of genetic information back to unguided mutations, we know the second is yet more baloney.

I don’t think I’m too worried about the Ultimate Proof of Creation anymore. I suspect it is going to be more like this.

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