Don’t answer that. But just in case you can at least tolerate listening to me, I’m interviewed on NSTA’s Lab Out Loud podcast.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Don’t answer that. But just in case you can at least tolerate listening to me, I’m interviewed on NSTA’s Lab Out Loud podcast.
I just learned that Jacob Bronowski would be a century old today. I wonder how many readers here know anything about the man? Many people will praise the impact Carl Sagan had on people with his program, Cosmos, way back in the 1980s, but I have to say that Bronowski’s Ascent of Man was much, much better, and far more influential on me, at least. It’s a program that PBS ought to bring back — thoughtful, deep, and intellectually enriching.
The testimonial above opens with a great quote from the man:
The great poem and the deep theorem are new to every reader and yet are his own experience because he recreates them. They are the marks of unity in variety; and in the instant when the mind seizes this for itself in art or in science, the heart misses a beat.
And really, that’s what it was all about: there aren’t non-overlapping domains, there aren’t two cultures, there’s only the breadth and depth of the human mind.
I thought it might be useful for the readers of Pharyngula to get my sense of the Colbert show experience.
Being a scientist on the show carries with it some challenges. We need to convey facts of science correctly and do so in a way reveals how fun our science is to do and to think about. We need to educate, enlighten, and excite. The challenge is we need to do this in 5 minutes with Stephen Colbert sitting across the table. To make matters worse, the show does not tell you the tack Colbert is going to take in advance, largely because so much of what he does is ad lib.
Because of this, I was terrified when I received the invitation last Fri. I took a few hours to accept, largely because I needed a family conference on the strike. Once I came to terms with my decision (the readers do a good in the commentary on the various issues that swirled for us), I began to prepare for the interview.
How did I prepare for the Colbert interview? In watching successful science interviews (of which there are a number of real good examples to emulate) I saw some general patterns to a successful visit. It also definitely appears that Colbert likes scientists and he want them to be able to tell their story.
The best answers I saw responded to Colbert’s questions with a sentence that captured the essence of the science in an entertaining way. So, the day of my interview I came up with a number such answers for the questions I thought I’d get. For the most part, I prepared with answers defending evolution vs. other non-scientific approaches.
I was pretty nervous before the interview, so much so that I didn’t sleep much the night before. And, as it turned out, my predictions about Colbert’s questions were largely wrong– Colbert didn’t even touch creationism and did a number of riffs on things that weren’t even in the book (like the final questions). I was aided, though, by the experience of preparing my answers. It exercised my brain in a way that allowed me to respond to the questions he really asked.
In thinking about the experience a few days later I have one thought on language. As scientists we are very used to using language with a great deal of precision (note the string in the commentary on common ancestry, group inclusion, etc.). The challenge is adapting our highly precise vocabulary to the demands of a five minute performance on a show which is fundamentally not about science. It is a tough tightrope to walk to balance between language that is both engaging and precise. I had mixed success, but that has to be our aspiration for these kinds of experiences.
You can ask the question, a valid one, why bother with these kinds shows? If it is so difficult, and the conceptual and linguistic apparatus of science doesn’t easily conform to this venue, why do it? For me the answer is that we need to make science part of the public conversation. We live in a society where Britany Spears latest foible gets more ink than Mello and Fire’s 2006 Nobel discovery of RNAi– a breakthrough on a little worm that will likely lead to treatments of many diseases. Something is wrong here.
Thanks for your comments and criticisms and I hope my personal experience gives some perspective.
Neil Shubin
It’s a good thing that Minnesota Atheists are making an effort to get on the radio. Have you ever looked at the Christian talk radio programming in your area? It’s like a black hole of rampaging stupid, so awfully banal and inane that it’s terrifying. I was just sent the program guide for our major Minneapolis Christian talk station — KKMS, AM980 — and it offers a rather creepy view of their perspective. There are some surprises, though. Guess what venue the big time Intelligent Design creationists use to spread their ideas?
Tuesday
3:00 Hour – “The KKMS Ministry of the Month” – Dr. John MacArthur, Host of the Grace to You Radio Program will tell us about the history of his ministry and how we can be praying for him as we celebrate the KKMS Ministry of the Month.4:00 Hour – “Understanding the End Times” – R. Paul Stevens, Professor of Martketplace Theology and Leadership at Regent College will walk us through a Bible study he has written that explores the end times and offer some points to consider when studying this topic.
5:00 Hour – “The Creation Museum” – Ken Ham, Founder and President of Answers in Genesis will give us details on how many people have attended the new Creation Museum in Cincinnati, OH so far and how what they’ve seen and experienced there has impacted them.
Wednesday:
3:00 Hour – “Understanding the Times” – Jan Markell, Founder of Olive Tree Ministries
4:00 Hour – “Great Getaways” – Jeanie Johnston, Heartland Tours and Travel Group Sales Director
5:00 Hour – “12 Great Choices Mom’s Make” – Robin Chaddock, Teacher and AuthorThursday:
3:00 Hour – “Responding to Atheists” – Becky Garrison, Senior Contributing Editor for The Wittenburg Door Magazine
5:00 Hour – “Ministering Through Music” – David Olson, Worship Leader for The Gathering at Wooddale ChurchFriday:
3:00 Hour – “The Limits of Darwinism” – Dr. Michael Behe, Professor of Biological Sciences at Lehigh University
4:00 Hour – “The KKMS Church of the Week” – Pastor Tim Skramstad, Pastor of Living Word Lutheran Church in Eagan, MN
5:00 Hour – “Movie Reviews” – Linda Thomas, Twin Cities Film CriticMonday:
3:00 Hour – “The KKMS Church of the Week” – TBA
4:00 Hour – “Terrorism, Christianity and Football” – Jason Elam, Kicker for the Denver Broncos and Steve Yohn, Youth for Christ Videographer
5:00 Hour – “Facts about Intelligent Design” – William A. Dembski, Research Professor in Philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
I’m tempted to listen in on a few of those segments, although honestly, the limited exposure to this kind of crap I’ve had in the past does not benefit my blood pressure, and it really ought to be the obligation of non-atheist moderate Christians to be putting these kooks’ feet to the fire. Not that they will.
By the way, their site has an online poll to see who their listeners would vote for in the presidential election — Huckabee, of course, has an overwhelming lead, while Clinton, of course, is dead last. I urge you all to really screw with their heads and go vote.
If you really want to screw with their heads, though, listen to them or your local Christian talk station and call in … and be polite, rational, and undeluded.
I listened in for a few minutes — and managed to catch the hosts complaining that we were “ruining their poll” and “running up the votes”. They also said they thought about mentioning the url to this article, but … you little savages used naughty language. Now go wash your mouths out with soap and sit in the corner until you repent.
Has everyone else heard of the Secret Science Club, though? It sounds a bit like Cafe Scientififique, but with a New York attitude — you lucky New Yorkers ought to go (it’s a bit far for this lucky Minnesotan to make the commute).
It’s got a good writeup in the Gothamist, too. And a nice logo.
People had some peculiar ideas in 1932. Try reading this wonderfully detailed diagram of evolution (if you’ve got the bandwidth, download the 3212×8748 pixel version).
The vertical axis makes sense: it’s a logarithmic scale of geologic time. It’s not quite right, since it has life arising about 1.6 billion years ago, when we now have good evidence that that occurred more than twice that long ago. I’m not going to complain about that — science does march onwards, and it probably represents the best estimates of that time.
The horizontal scale is a real problem, and is revealing something about early attitudes towards evolution. It’s completely unlabeled and poorly explained. Each of the bands of color is, apparently, a lineage; in the excerpt from the beginning of the histomap below, the light green are the bacteria, the dark green are the chlorophyllic plants, the yellow are the porifera, etc.
The extent of each lineage along the horizontal axis is drawn with some care, but it’s meaningless. The legend says, “The horizontal width of any strip at any time suggests in a general way the relative dominance of that type of life at that time.” It’s got the Porifera as the bulk of chart 900 million years ago, for example, with plants and bacteria as a narrow strip, tiny in proportion. It doesn’t even make sense to talk about “dominance” in these terms, and obviously there is no way to measure this.
Another problem with this particular rendering of evolutionary history is that almost every band arises independently from a spot on the left border. Read it literally, and this is a chart of sequential creation, with no detectable relationship between most lineages.
The absurdity grows increasingly apparent as we read down the chart. Here’s the bottom of the histomap; the modern era is completely dominated by the bloated bands of humans to a ridiculous degree.
The yellow (of course!) bands on the left are the Chinese and Japanese — the map is broken down by human races and nationalities by this point — the orange are the Russians, and that broad pink grouping near the middle are the Americans on the left, the English on the right, and a narrower lighter pink swath separating them representing Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, and South Africans. Then the Germans in blue, the Latins in light green, etc. If you look way, way over on the right, you’ll find those unimportant bacteria, plants, insects, and mammals as teeny-tiny little ribbons which together compose about as much relative importance as the Greeks and Italians.
The focus of the entire chart is on two trivial and poorly defined entities: human “races” and “dominance”, with evolution as only a badly represented premise. All that impressed me is how badly it is done.
The creator, John B. Sparks, seems to have done a lot of this kind of visualization work. He also did histomaps of world history, religion, and who knows what else. The world history map seems to be uncritically praised, but what little I’ve seen of it looks like more of the same — charts with the author’s subjective impressions of importance illustrated over time. I don’t get it. They look utterly useless to me, except as pointless accumulations of words and a false representation of a few events in time. Oh, and as a historical curiosity. I hope no one is trying to learn history or science from these things.
While I’m here in San Diego, I’ll also be giving a talk/hosting a discussion at the Scripps Institute on Friday at 3:00. The title is:
Sharing science: education, activism, and advocacy
I’m planning on telling the attendees the secret to getting a million visits per month to their blogs. No, actually — I’m going to discuss and justify diverse approaches to getting the public engaged in science issues, and I plan to mention both what I consider to be successes (but which may not change the wider conversations) and failures (which even so are of value). And it’s open to the public! Come on down to Vaughn 100 on the Scripps Institution of Oceanograph (map), and join in the conversation.
Tonight’s the night for the inaugural meeting of Café Scientifique-Morris for the 2007-2008 school year. The topic is:
Food or Fuel? A simple multi-scale integrated analysis of agroecosystems
It will be presented by Abdullah Jaradat of the North Central Soil Conservation Research Lab; I suspect he’ll be talking about their research into newer, better crops for the production of energy. It should be good, come on down to the Common Cup Coffeehouse at 6!
Unfortunately, this will be one I have to miss. I have to catch a plane to San Diego for the Beyond Belief conference (perhaps I shall be live-blogging it tomorrow…or perhaps I’ll be too busy and you’ll have to wait for my summary in the evening). Instead of me doing the introductions, the delightful MC Skatje will be hosting tonight’s event, which will improve it immensely.
Dave Munger has been spearheading a useful tool: Blogging on Peer-Reviewed Research, an aggregator and set of icons to be used on blog posts that are summaries of actual, genuine, peer-reviewed research. Read the guidelines; the idea is that when you see the icon, you’ll know that the blog article is something more than an opinion piece, but is specifically an attempt to explain some specific technical research papers for the general reader.
This is not just an effort for those of us at scienceblogs.com — if you are an unaffiliated science person who explains research to the citizenry, use the icons. It’ll help people recognize what you are doing, and when the aggregator is in place (I think the plan is to get it done in the next month or so) it will help readers find you.
Florida Ciizens for Science reports that their brand new state science standards are available for comment. That means you can click over there and make suggestions, even if you aren’t a Florida educator (they do ask for your connection, so don’t worry that the creationist mob can just descend on this poor document and taint it). Make good, productive, constructive suggestions, and help the kids of Florida.
I haven’t gone through it carefully yet, but my general impression is that the evolution standards are broad, but good; on the other hand, the organismal biology standards read like a med school prep course, and don’t say much about the concepts of physiology. So they’re not bad, but they could use some improvement…so help them out!
