The Disco Institute has a new hack

And following the lead of all past hires by that eminent institute of advanced ideology, Ann Gauger doesn’t understand biology or logic. She does have a Ph.D. in a relevant field, but it just goes to show that having a degree doesn’t mean you necessarily understand science. I will look forward to further examples of poor reasoning from yet another incompetent in Seattle.

By the way, she also hails from my old hometown of Kent, Washington…a completely meaningless coincidence that still manages to embarrass me.

Unscientific America: still useless

Mooney is at it again, scrabbling madly to refute my criticisms. It’s another ho-hum effort.

He claims he did spend some effort criticizing the overt anti-science forces in our country — only it was in his previous book, not this one. No, that doesn’t rebut me at all: in a book that purports to be discussing problems and solutions to the science and society divide, there ought to be some effort made to prioritizing the issues, even if it means revisiting points made in other books. Unfortunately, the message here is that we have three problems: the bumbling scientists who don’t know how to communicate, and the malicious atheists, who are hurting the cause of science education, and the sell-out media. You don’t just get to pretend that your readers have all read your other books.

He then compounds the problem by answering my accusation that he did not deal with the root causes of the problem by simply saying “did too”. Maybe he doesn’t think religion is as serious a problem as I do…but judging this book by its content, he apparently doesn’t think it has anything to do with the unusual American disregard for science.

Further handwaving ensues in his defense of the media. Apparently, his own words that label factual accuracy as “mere”, is taken out of context — which he justifies by pointing out a comment by Dawkins that the natural world is fascinating, and doesn’t need human drama. As I said before, accuracy is not the enemy of drama, so this is a silly and pointless argument. Sure, make fun, entertaining, exciting movies. They just don’t need to be imbecilic to be good.

Ah, but the real kicker here, the one that clearly is annoying Mooney most, is my accusation of uselessness against his book, that it offers no solutions at all. He says there are, there are! He says it several times, in several ways!

There are solutions in each chapter of the main body of the book, broken down by sector-politics, media, entertainment, religion. And then there is the grand solution in Chapter 10-which emerged from our collaboration, and which we don’t think either of us would have come up with on our own. So far as we know, it really is new in its particular way of analyzing the academic pipeline and finding, in it, a solution to our problems at the science-society interface.

Alas, if you read his rebuttal, he won’t actually tell you what those solutions, or even that Grand Solution, are. It’s very strange; it’s as if he’s afraid that if he even briefly summarizes what his proposals are, you won’t need to buy his book, so they’ve got to be kept secret. His book is apparently like an M. Night Shyamalan movie — if you’re told what the little twist is before you go to see it, all you’ve got left is a rather slow moving, boring story that is plodding tediously towards the big reveal. Come on, grow up. If it’s a substantial idea, it’s the explanation and the details that make your book worth reading, not the one-liner gloss on your solution. You can give it away, it really won’t hurt your book sales. And if it does, that suggests right there that you aren’t offering much.

Well, I’m going to do it. I’m going to spill the beans. I am going to give you the Grand Solution that Mooney and Kirshenbaum present in chapter 10, the one that is so new that neither of them could have come up with it on their own.

Here it is. Ready?

Here’s a summary of chapter 10: seven pages laying out the many problems that face people who want to pursue a career in science, from uninspiring teachers in grade school to the fierce competition for university positions. All true, of course, nothing at all novel here. What is their solution, presented in the final three pages? Create more well-rounded scientists, more Renaissance scientists, more scientists with specific training in communications skills, so that when they don’t manage to land that academic position, they’re still prepared to go out into society and act as ambassadors for science.

Really, that’s it. All of it. That’s their solution.

How nice.

I’m all for it. I teach at a small liberal arts college, and there’s absolutely nothing new at all in the sentiment expressed by Mooney and Kirshenbaum. It’s actually something of a letdown and rather dismaying that they think it “really is new in its particular way of analyzing the academic pipeline”. Excuse me for being thoroughly un-dazzled, but I think they could have talked to any of a few hundred thousand academics and they would have told them the same thing.

It’s also a little insulting.

You know, the majority of my cohort that entered graduate school with me are not currently employed in academic positions. Mooney and Kirshenbaum know this, they outlined the general state of affairs in the first 7/10ths of this chapter. Yet, somehow, they aren’t sitting around panhandling for Thunderbird money down at the bus station — they are gainfully employed, and they are already smart, well-educated people with considerable depth and breadth to their knowledge and marketable skills, and no, none of them (as far as I know) are now anti-science cranks out there fighting the system. They already are ambassadors for science in our culture. They vote for pro-science candidates, they support public schools, and some of them even have jobs in government, industry, and communications where they are working in their own way to better the country…and many of them are certainly more effective at what they do than I am.

It’s very strange. Mooney and Kirshenbaum say their “solution” will “alleviate pressure by opening new pathways for pent-up scientific talent to filter out into society.” I had no idea that post-docs and graduate students who left the academic track were “pent-up” somewhere! I do hope someone lets them out of their cage soon.

Now there really is a problem, that all of you readers who have gone through grad school know. There is a lot of social pressure that is piled up on you to reinforce the notion of a hierarchy of science careers. The very topmost rung is the research professor at a Research I university, getting big grants and running a big lab with a team of grad students and post-docs; anything less is regarded as something of a failure. It can make it very hard to move on to something like these Renaissance jobs Mooney and Kirshenbaum want to promote. You can also see that same attitude resounding throughout the comment threads on their own site, where being, for instance, a teaching professor at a small liberal arts college or, oh no, a mere popularizer of science are the marks of a lesser being.

I think it would be absolutely wonderful if science students could also value the noble profession of teaching, or think that communicating well was a most excellent and useful skill that they could acquire by writing and speaking throughout graduate school. Or if they felt empowered to use their knowledge for public outreach in film-making, or in working as an activist for environmental causes, or finding a job in the pharmaceutical industry that would help establish new medicines. I know I felt that way, as did enough of my peers who went on to such professions. However, nothing in their book explains how to make such an attitude occur more frequently, or even why we should expect a major change in the culture if something that is already happening, Ph.D. students finding work outside of academia narrowly defined, should continue to happen.

So, bottom line, still useless. The fact that Mooney seems so determined to hide his Grand Solution from public attention testifies to the fact that he’s offering some mighty thin gruel in his book.

Oh, but I should mention where Mooney shines, just to be fair. He’s written a rather shallow book with negligible substance, but he has managed to get articles in Salon that tells us we need to “figure out where the real blocks to accepting science are” (but fails to tell us what they are) and another in Newsweek that claims that atheists are “hurting their own cause”. Perhaps self-promotion ought to be high on the list of their proposed Renaissance curriculum.

I find it appropriate to read about this on Fox News

The military has plans for a new kind of drone robot that will wander the wastelands of future battlefields, scooping up organic debris — such as dead bodies — and burning them to fuel their advance. The call it an EATR: Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot.

It’s kind of sweet, in a morbid way. It recycles! It uses renewable energy! Put a gun on it, and it could even harvest its own fuel as it mows its way through the enemy’s cities!

To be perfectly fair, though, the company building it doesn’t talk about using bodies for energy, but is more about generic biomass. Bodies are probably messy and inefficient compared to hunks of wood or corn stubble. It’s Fox News that emphasized the corpse-eating idea, which somehow seems like just the kind of thing Fox would find copacetic.

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.