Repercussions

Old-timers may recall that there was a little event last year that had a lot of people riled up — there were angry letters to me and my university, with frequent demands for my immediate firing. The university stood up for academic freedom, I’m happy to say, but there was one other concern. A lot of these letters had another kind of threat: they said they were not going to be making donations to UMM. I have several letters where people said that they had been planning to donate sums on the order of a million dollars, but because I was there, the money was going to go somewhere else.

That’s not good to hear. Like most universities, we’re always strapped for cash, and I know we have ambitious plans for building up an endowment. Adding up all these denials of donations, and comparing it to the standard numbers for the year, it looked like we would be getting nothing this year. Actually, it looked like we would be several millions into the negative numbers.

Strangely, though, we just got the figures for charitable donations to UMM, and they’re up 25% over the previous year, at a time when overall donations to the University of Minnesota system are down.

I have to think about this. Either this would have been an even better year for us if I’d kept my mouth shut, with donations up by several hundred percent, or…all those letter writers were lying to us. That couldn’t be, though — they were all such good Catholics.

Before anyone jumps to conclusions, I have absolutely nothing to do with the increase in donations, either. We’ve got a good staff that has been working hard to promote this great little liberal arts college in western Minnesota, and I haven’t been part of it. To be honest, they’d probably rather I wasn’t…

What have you done for science education in your state lately?

One of the big issues in science education is the topic of science standards: each state is supposed to have guidelines for the public school curriculum, which are intended to enforce some uniformity and also make sure that key subjects are covered. These standards are often accompanied by big political fights as the religious right tries, for instance, to get evolution (and sex education, and historical accuracy, and …) expunged from the curriculum. Sometimes they succeed, and sometimes the good guys win.

An article in Evolution: Education and Outreach assesses the current state of state science standards, and one of the things they’ve done is grade each state on their support for evolutionary biology. A centerpiece of the article is this map of science standard scores…how is your state doing?

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(Click for larger image)

Minnesota is doing pretty good. We got dinged for weak coverage of cosmology, and also for the inclusion of some waffly language that was included to appease the creationist lobby. Those are productive suggestions that we can build on for the next round of standards revisions, in a few years. We had our recent infestation of creationist yuckiness (ahh, Cheri Yecke…we do not miss you at all), but we got better. We’ve also built a local advocacy group, Minnesota Citizens for Science Education, that is there to provide support and information in building better standards.

I can’t help but gloat over our neighbor to the east: Wisconsin may have an excellent university system, but their politics have been poison to science education. That may change — they’ve now also got a Wisconsin Citizens for Science group, so maybe someone will be doing some effective lobbying in the future.

I think that’s key: you need activists mobilized to work for improvement, good education doesn’t just poof into existence. The other interesting cases on that map are Kansas and Florida: if you’ve been following this blog for a while, you know that those have been two hotspots for creationist inanity for some time now. So what’s with the perfect As for those states? How can such hotbeds of creationism be scoring so well?

First thing you have to keep in mind is that state science standards just say what should be taught, not necessarily what is taught. States with great standards can still have many teachers who are doing a poor job and not meeting those standards; similarly, there are great teachers in those failing states that go above and beyond to teach evolution well. The standards merely represent what direction the educational authorities in that state want their schools to take. A state with an A standard is declaring that they are aiming high for their students; the F states have essentially announced that they are giving up and diving for the basement.

The other point is that these reflect recent changes: responsible citizens have been stirred up by the crazies infesting their school boards, and are working hard to improve matters. There is hope: there is a clear message being sent to teachers in those states that they must do better. They also have excellent citizen groups organized there — Kansans should join Kansas Citizens for Science, and in Florida, help Florida Citizens for Science.

As for Texas…hoo boy. Texas is a bad story all around. They have some great advocacy groups working there (Texas Citizens for Science and the Texas Freedom Network), but have deep problems. They have a political history of putting the very worst, most unqualified creationist dingleberries in charge — Don McElroy, for instance — which makes progress difficult, and I suspect there is a lot of external pressure on the state, as well. As one of the largest textbook markets, and with a centralized decision-making apparatus for selecting textbooks, they are a major target of all of the creationist organizations; they know that influence in Texas ripples out everywhere else. We can only hope it will turn around soon.

So look at your state. If your standards are good, don’t be complacent: keep them that way, and also work locally to make sure your school districts actually implement them. If your state is shading into the dark grays…look for a state citizens for science group, or if you don’t have one, create one. Write to your representatives and let them know what’s going on; maybe send them a copy of the Mead and Mates paper and shame them a little bit.

Do something, though. It would be nice to see the United States get straight As someday.

Mead LS, Mates A (2009) Why Science Standards are Important to a Strong Science Curriculum and How States Measure Up. Evolution: Education and Outreach 2(3): 359-371.

Zimmer and Carroll say adios to Bloggingheads

I’ve always rather liked Bloggingheads — at least the idea of it, with one-on-one discussions between interesting people. It flops in execution often, since some of the participants wouldn’t recognize reason and evidence if it walked up and slapped them in the face with a large and pungent haddock (the right-winger political discussions are unwatchable, and it’s always had this problem of giving people like Jonah Goldberg a platform), but their Science Saturday has been generally good. I don’t always agree with the people they have on, but at least they’re interesting and provocative. And Sean Carroll and Carl Zimmer have been superstars of the format.

That’s changed lately. First they brought on Paul Nelson and Ron Numbers in a tawdry self-congratulation session that never addressed the Paraceratherium looming over the dialog, Nelson’s insane young earth creationism. Then most recently they brought in Michael Behe, squirrely academic front for the ID creationism movement, and again they let his inanity slide by bringing in a friendly conversationalist, the linguist John McWhorter, who fawned over Behe’s recent bad book.

What is this? Is bloggingheads to become a creationist-friendly site, where crackpots get to play talking head for a while and never risk getting their stupid ideas criticized? This is not good. If they want to bring in creationists, fine…but don’t give them a free pass on their foolishness by pairing them with people who can’t argue with the biology.

There was apparently some restlessness in the ranks of the regulars, and they had a conference call with Robert Wright, the man behind bloggingheads, which did not conclude at all satisfactorily. Now two of the best science people they had on call have declared that they will no longer be contributing.

Sean Carroll says goodbye for good reason.

What I objected to about the creationists was that they were not worthy opponents with whom I disagree; they’re just crackpots. Go to a biology conference, read a biology journal, spend time in a biology department; nobody is arguing about the possibility that an ill-specified supernatural “designer” is interfering at whim with the course of evolution. It’s not a serious idea. It may be out there in the public sphere as an idea that garners attention — but, as we all know, that holds true for all sorts of non-serious ideas. If I’m going to spend an hour of my life listening to two people have a discussion with each other, I want some confidence that they’re both serious people. Likewise, if I’m going to spend my own time and lend my own credibility to such an enterprise, I want to believe that serious discussions between respectable interlocutors are what the site is all about.

Carl Zimmer also departs.

My standard for taking part in any forum about science is pretty simple. All the participants must rely on peer-reviewed science that has direct bearing on the subject at hand, not specious arguments that may sound fancy but are scientifically empty. I believe standards like this one are crucial if we are to have productive discussions about the state of science and its effects on our lives.

This is not Blogginghead’s standard, at least as I understand it now. And so here we must part ways.

This is good, principled action, and it’s exactly what we need to do every time some journalistic enterprise tries to generate a false equivalence between serious science and crackpottery like creationism — shut them out. Say goodbye. Let the credible sources wash their hands of them and move on.

I’m still somewhat sympathetic to the idea of bloggingheads — and David Killoren left a good comment that basically admits that they screwed up — but there has to be a commitment to good science from the top down for it to work. I’m not convinced by the replies Wright has left on those two sites that he has that goal in mind.

Carlos Cerna will someday demand his Ph.D.

When you tie a university to a religious ideology, you create stresses that show that the modern search for knowledge is the antithesis of religious dogma. I keep telling people that science and religion are in opposition, and here’s a perfect example: La Sierra University is a Seventh Day Adventist college. SDAs are fundamentalists and literalists (although, isn’t it strange how different literalist sects all seem to come up with different…ahem…interpretations of the Bible?) who as a point of doctrine believe in a young earth and seven day creation. La Sierra has a biology department, as well as teaching other science disciplines.

Let that sink in. Science departments. Six thousand year old earth.

Does not compute. Error. Abort, retry, fail?

How do they do that? Well, a recent controversy has exposed what goes on there, and as it turns out…they teach pretty good mainstream science. From that story, the faculty in their biology department seem to know what they are doing, and they teach that the earth is 4.5 billion years old, and they go over the evidence for it in considerable detail. The professor who teaches one of the courses seems to be no-nonsense and on the ball.

Bradley says he’s felt no pressure to change anything about his course, and says bluntly that he doesn’t plan to turn his class into a theological seminar, or to present evolutionary theory only to then dismantle it for students. While he’s fine with helping students work through struggles of faith, Bradley says he won’t undercut decades of peer reviewed scientific research in the interest of religious consistency.

“I am not OK with getting up in a science course and saying most science is bullshit,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Seventh Day Advent church and the administrators of the college have a different agenda in mind. They want the scientific evidence taught to the students so they can oppose it, and the whole mission of the college is to eventually lead them back into the worship of dogma and superstition — they are plainly going to undermine the teaching of Bradley and get the students to believe that most science is bullshit.

By June 19, the president of the worldwide church had written a letter affirming the church’s belief in a “literal, recent, six-day creation” and that “the Flood was global in nature.” Jay Paulsen, the church’s president, went on to say that church-sponsored colleges and universities should teach students about evolution, but mindfully steer them back toward the church’s contrary view.

“As part of that exercise [in teaching] you will also expose them to elements and concepts of evolution. That is understood,” he wrote. “As your pastor, however, I appeal to you that when you take your students out on the journey, you bring them safely back home before the day is over. And their home must always be in the world of faith. You owe it to the students, you owe it to God, you owe it to their parents, you owe it to the church, and you owe it to yourself as a believer to safely guide them through difficult moments on their journey.”

Oh, and by the way, you cannot get tenure at La Sierra unless you are a member of the Seventh Day Adventist church. The mind boggles. I know this kind of restriction is fairly common at fundie colleges, but it is such an imposition of ideology on the faculty — it turns academic freedom into a joke.

One thing I cannot understand is how Gary Bradley can stomach investing so much of his career in such a place…but he says he is a practicing Adventist.

This exposure of the slimy underbelly of a religious institution came to light as a consequence of an angry student with a sense of entitlement (I’ve run into a few of those — we have them even at secular universities). He took one of Bradley’s courses which taught the real scientific evidence for the age of the earth, and was expected to understand it and be able to explain it in a five page term paper. He couldn’t. In fact, his paper is more concerned with presenting a superficial discussion of a few dating methods and then bringing up creationist objections to them, contrary to the instructions he was given.

You can read Carlos Cerna’s paper online. It’s not very good; it’s 13 pages long, but the treatment is incredibly shallow, it has only 5 references, all of which are used to weakly bolster contrarian claims, and simply regurgitates (with skeptical caveats) what he was told in class as representations of standard scientific opinion. For that, he got an incredibly generous C. I would have wobbled between outright flunking the kid or giving him a pity D for being able to type up sentences that are mostly grammatically correct.

You can also read the post-grading exchanges between the student and professor. He’s “flabbergasted” that he only got a C. Yeah, I know those students — the ones who think the grade they should get is the one they want, not the one they earned. Bradley’s comments are actually very cogent and helpful; he explains what he expected, and that the included apologetics are inappropriate. Here’s Bradley’s summary; the student was following standard creationist tactics.

As I said, this paper is unacceptable. When I reluctantly agreed that you could insert paragraphs [single paragraphs!] taking issue with the mainstream data I fully expected you to do a good job with that mainstream data. Instead you have largely ignored it and generated yet another creation apologetic piece that “mines quotes” and ignores volumes of data. You can and must do better than this.

It’s a valid criticism. I don’t quite know why an unacceptable paper was given a C, but I know grade inflation is rampant everywhere.

Meanwhile, the Seventh Day Adventists are freaking out, and protesting that kids are actually exposed to good science in the biology program at “their” university, which they think ought to be teaching only the dogma of their religion. If you ask me, their kids look to be getting a far better education than they deserve.

WARNING TO BIOLOGY PROGRAMS EVERYWHERE: The student, Carlos Cerna, has announced his intention to get a Ph.D. in molecular biology. If you take him on, be aware that he’s going to need a lot of remedial instruction, that he has an attitude, and that he probably just wants a degree from your institution so he can use it to peddle creationism to the ignorant. Don’t let him slip through your program without thoroughly grilling him on the basics of biology, or he’s going to bring some shame on your program.

Smarm + Creationist Math = Smath

Which makes this video very, very smathy.

That’s Carl Baugh, by the way, who appears regularly on the Trinity Broadcast Network to teach viewers about creationism. It’s a good program to watch (I do, now and then) if you want to see how flinking bugnuts insane young earth creationists can be.

This particular episode has all the standard tropes. They bring on a guest gomer, and they go on and on about his credentials — this one is a ‘prominent mathematician’ who teaches at a high school and part time at a trade school. They puff him up good; creationists really want the Voice of Authority, which is why so many of them chase after bogus degrees…it’s for the window dressing.

Then they do a lot of mutual backslapping, where they tell each other how skeptical and scientific they are, and in this case, bray about how mathematics is the language of science (which is true) and how they are going to look critically at the actual data using objective mathematics.

Then they “crunch the numbers.” I think that’s creation-speak for “diddle the books.”

All the guy does is plug numbers into the standard formula for compound interest to calculate the expected number of people in populations after a certain period of time. Seriously. I tried it, and got pretty much the same numbers he did. You can play the same game with his Biblical scenario in a little more detail and calculate populations at various times in history: the world population was about 150,000 at the time of Alexander the Great, 600,000 when Jesus was born, 5 billion when I was born. As usually happens with these kinds of bogus calculations, our smath professor needs to use an invalid formula and apply it inappropriately to get numbers that only match at the beginning and end of the time period he is examining, but are so low as to be laughable at the earliest times in his history, and that don’t match up at all over periods where we have good census data.

You might also wonder where he got his growth rate of 0.456%. He made it up. It happens to be the number that, assuming a starting population of 8 4500 years ago, you get a final population of 6.5 billion now.

Leaving death out of his calculations is a tiny omission that makes even that fudged number wrong.

I stand corrected — his growth rate, imaginary as it is, consolidates birth rates minus death rates, so it still works with non-immortals.