Lone Star Science

Well, it don't surprise me none that all of the candidates for Lt. Gov. of Texas wants to teach creationism in schools.  This is a special brand of ignorance that doesn't see any difference between what science knows and what they believe, and no matter what, they want their beliefs to be taught as truth  in public schools even though this is only one of many religious truths.  This means that in teaching creationism the state becomes a de facto promoter of the Christian religion, a constitutional no-no.  And no matter what they really think, none of these politicians want to chance any nuanced position no matter how many times creationism has been ruled a purely religious idea. It's not that creationism or its offspring intelligent design are wrong, it's that they are useless.  You can't use them to do science, which also reflects how badly science is being taught, and this is the all important criterion of science: theories must be useful. As my colleague notes: "Evolution isn’t politics, it’s science. And science is a reflection of our attempts to understand how the Universe works. Evolution isn’t a guess, or a cynical move to promote atheism, or whatever feverishly imagined bugaboo flies around in the heads of these four men." Unfortunately such ignorance far from being a deal breaker, this is how you get elected in Texas, and in a number of other states too. It's no wonder that "red states" are leading education in the USA into further decline.

Flat Earthers & debating creationists

Here's a link to a nice little historical video about flat-earthers of the 1800s and attempts to rationally, scientifically demonstrate that the Earth was a globe.  Part of this episode involved Alfred Russel Wallace, he of natural selection fame (or not, if you've never heard of him), and an simple, but elegant demonstration of the Earth's curvature.  Using a straight, "flat" canal, Wallace put poles on bridges each measured to a precise height above the water.  Then backing off to the next bridge, he set up a telescope at the same height, leveled it, and observed the poles. Although all were the same height above the water, the top of each successively more distant pole was below the top of the previous pole, as predicted, and the only conclusion that could be reached is that the "flat" canal was on a curved surface.  Of course it's the only conclusion a rational person could reach, and Wallace's demonstration settled nothing and led to Wallace's severe harrassment by his adversary.  The video concludes that there is nothing to be gained by debating or trying to reason or demonstrate science to people dedicated to creationism either.  It's a nice video.
HT to Aron Ra.

Hysterical distinction of historical science

Do you know the difference between “historical” and “observational”/experimental science?  Well, it makes a big difference to creationists!   You see in an effort to discredit the fossil record and all of geology, it is necessary to make a big distinction (link to discussion at National Center for Science Education) that doesn't exist.  The assumption here is that you can only know something if it was directly observed.  Amazing!  Creationist students are being taught to ask science teachers “How do you know?  Were you there?”  Without direct observation, you cannot know something.  Think about how much knowledge that rules out.  Inference is just so much wishful thinking.  This is a made up distinction that is just plain silly.  Creationist also made up the distinction between “microevolution” and “macroevolution” because it has become basically impossible to argue that “microevolution” doesn’t happen.  No such distinction is made in biology, but what do you expect?  These people don’t know science and they don’t want to know science.  It further demonstrates that creationism is actually know-nothing-ism. 

How to determine science textbook content in Texas

Just recently TPP wrote about efforts to alterscience textbooks in Texas.  Here’s a comment from one of the people, Karen Beathard, who was appointed to the panel to review the content of science textbooks.  "Creation science based on biblical principles should be incorporated into every biology book."  Well, that’s clear enough.  To Karen the Bible is authoritative, but in science?  Does she care to explain?  “Any statements made were my own personal beliefs.”  Now isn’t that the way to determine the content of science textbooks?  You can see what expertise Karen brings to the textbook panel discussion.  Dear Karen, what makes your own personal beliefs so extra special that they should be presented to every student in Texas?  Does everybody get to have their personal beliefs taught as science?  How about math?  Do you have any personal beliefs about the value of Pi?  The Bible does say that King Solomon had a vase whose circumference was exactly three times its diameter, so on biblical principles pi = 3.  Yes, it’s just an endless non-repeating set of decimals dropped off, so what does it matter?  Once again, like creationism, it just isn’t wrong, it’s useless. 

Texas and textbooks

Oh, Texas, don’t ever…evolve

By Cuttlefish

The bible is my textbook;
It’s the only one I need
It’s got all the information
That a person ought to read
Any open-minded scientist
Would certainly concede
It’s a better book than Darwin’s is, by far!

It’s the universe’s history—
All several thousand years—
And it shows how evolution’s
Not as strong as it appears
(Cos it’s atheistic scientists
Just covering their fears);
God created things exactly as they are

So it’s time to put the bible
Into all our Texas schools!
It’s against the constitution,
But they always say, of rules,
That they’re there for us to break them,
So watch out, you godless fools
We will have our way, through providence divine!

Yes, we’ll earn our reputation
As a stubborn, backward state
Though it’s really not the people,
It’s the board that guards the gate
So the people watch in horror
As creationists debate…

See, it’s what you call intelligent design.
________________
Once again the science textbook debate focuses on Texas.  Some Texans want science textbooks to be written in such a manner that children can decide for themselves if evolution is a valid explanation or not, as if the experts really don’t know, and kids could think so critically.  The critics of science don’t want textbooks to say that anything is known; they want analysis, they want science evaluated, as if this never happens in science itself.  Said one textbook evaluator (from the Huffpo), “I’m just looking for evolution to be presented honestly and not be given a materialistic slant that’s not warranted by the evidence”.  That’s quite a statement.  Science is operationally “materialistic”, that is science acts as if the supernatural doesn’t exist, and given the evidence that’s a reasonable enough position, but science operates this way because no one has yet been able to figure out how to do science any other way.  In other words materialistic science works.   There are no examples, no studies, no breakthroughs, no advances in knowledge, in medicine, in agriculture that have used a non-materialistic, let’s call it magical, approach.  So this fellow thinks a materialistic approach that works is a “slant” and he prefers that be balanced by a magical approach, and for the purpose of enhancing science education.  How ironic then that this fellow thinks evolution is not being presented honestly, although certainly in textbooks the presentation is often overly simplistic, and over the years no one has been more critical of how science is presented in textbooks thanTPP.  Of course, that statement is meant to sound reasonable, like who can argue with balance, analysis, honesty, and evidence?  When you dig deeper you find out that critics of evolution don’t want evidence to be presented if they don’t like its implications.  After all you hear over and over and over again that the fossil record doesn’t support an evolutionary explanation, which is so totally at odds with what you actually know, which means that a subtle dishonesty is being presented here where you make the skeptics, real scientists, sound dogmatic, while the religiously dogmatic are made to sound reasonable, as if by magic reversing their true positions.  Yea, Texas! Oh, wait, isn't that Ted's state? 

Botany confernence symposium generating more PR for Louisiana

Oh, gosh!  OK, it's just the Huffington Post, but it's more real good PR for Louisiana and its Governor Bobby Jindal.  Here's the link to what the HuffPo had to say about the symposium "Yes, Bobby, Evolution is True".  Quite a few highly complementary comments follow the article.  But what else is there to say?  Oh, yes, one commenter brought up the old "it's only a theory, not a fact" objection to evolution.  Well, many, many parts of the theory of evolution are facts, i.e., natural selection, and so on, and evolution works.  We use evolution in agriculture and medicine; stop and think about why you need a new flu shot each year.  There is no creationist/ID medicine or agriculture because it's a useless idea.  So we have a scientific explanation that works supported by lots of evidence, and a religiously based explanation with no supporting evidence that doesn't work, and then we get politicians that want us to spend time on the latter at the expense of the former.  How great is that for science education?  TPP is having some fun here at the meetings with all his colleagues.

Uh,oh! Botanists laugh at LA legislators who don't like evolution

Well, it just couldn't be helped.  For no particular reasons that TPP can see, a symposium entitled, "Yes, Bobby, Evolution is true" at our annual ongoing botanical meetings in New Orleans attracted some attention:  Now why would evolution be controversial?  Bobby got an invitation, to attend although his spokesperson said they didn't know about that.  But hey, a governor at a botanical meeting - aint' gunna happen.  Here's what the Times Picayune had to say.  Well, the college student presenter Zach Kopplin, just put up videos of LA legislators in action: defending witch doctors, carping about people with all those little letters after their names (like PhD) telling you what to do, and the like, and yep, a national audience of scientists laughed.  Now of course, this is quite unfair.  Similar videos of our own state (and federal) legislators in action would also elicit laughter, and are there any that wouldn't?  Now what all this was about is a LA law that basically permits teachers to introduce creationism and intelligent design into science classes.  The code phrases are "academic freedom" and "critical thinking".  In and of themselves these are good things, but when used as a smoke screen for pseudoscience, us professional science educators just can't be quiet.  So, yes, Bobby, people from across the nation laughed at you.  How's that work for your aspirations on a national level?  Still want the GnOPe to stop being the party of stupid?  Well, you signed the bill. 

A fool's bet

A creationist kinesiologist named Mastropaolo  is getting his 15 minutes of fame by publically challenging “evolutionists” to bet $10,000 with him that they can’t disprove Genesis, and a hand picked superior court judge gets to decide.  This is almost criminally stupid.  His challenge is based on the false premise that an either-or dichotomy exists, i.e.,  if not evolution, then Genesis.  But if not evolution, why not Valhalla or the Dream time?   Now there’s a reason that we don’t take our scientific findings to court; judges don’t know squat about science and are no better than anyone else at deciding what data means or why it is critical.  The whole legal concept of evidence is quite different from evidence in science.  Might as well challenge this guy to prove that the Norse gods don’t exist, especially on next Thors’day.   Now of course the whole purpose of this exercise is so he can crow about how no one took him up on his challenge, a result that clearly demonstrates the vacuity of science.   Alfred Russel Wallace, the British naturalist that independently thought of the idea of natural selection, got sucked into a similar challenge to prove that the surface of the Earth wasn’t flat.  Wallace had a clever idea.  He knew of a straight canal with series of bridges in a row.  He affixed a stick to each bridge the exact same height above the level surface of the water.  Then backing off one more bridge, Wallace set up a telescope, and voila, the top of each successively further stick was slightly lower than the previous showing that the surface of the "flat" canal was curved by a measurable amount.  Independent witnesses concluded that Wallace had demonstrated that the surface of the Earth was not flat, but the challenger claimed he could see nothing in the telescope and wouldn’t pay up.  And similar blind justice is just what our kinesiologist wants as well; nothing you can say or demonstrate scientifically will disprove anything about Genesis.  And who cares? The bet is  just setting up a straw man so it can be knocked down.  Science has pretty high standards of evidence, and you don’t get to ignore any of it.  If you don’t like an explanation, you must propose a different one that accounts for everything.  This is too tough a game for Mastropaolo, so he wants a different playing field, one that isn’t used in science because rigging the game is the only way he will play, and this tells you all you need to know about him.   

Bad day for biology teachers

Yesterday seems to have been a horrible, terrible, no good, very bad day for a couple of biology teachers. However, in only one of the two events was what they taught relevant. A biology teacher here in Lincolnland admits that he was teaching creationism in his high school biology class, but odds are the school board will tell him to never ever do it again and he'll continue teaching a horrid version of biology, rolling his eyes whenever mentioning that some biologists actually think something as bereft of evidence and as improbable as evolution could be true, teaching that will do more harm than the blatant creationism that any half intelligent high school student can see clear through. Please, please, please, let him not be a graduate of our university. Of course there'll be the usual "evolution is just as much of a religion" comments, but creationism isn't just wrong, it's useless; you can't use it to do science, and that's lost on all the critics of science. In Kentucky a female biology teacher was caught messing around with a high school student in a car. Scheesh! Get a motel room. No dobut about it, she'll be fired, and in all probability she was the better of the two at teaching biology. Maybe she graduated from Northwestern?