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Unscientific America

Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum’s Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future is a worthwhile survey of the cultural, academic, entertainment, and political aspects of science in America, and how they all contribute to the steady decline of science primacy in our country. Mooney and Kirshenbaum’s writing benefits from their immersion in the Science Blogging culture, where they are on the frontlines of the debate about how to best communicate science and bring it into the public eye (Note: Because I’m already tired of writing the names “Mooney and Kirshenbaum,” I will heretofore refer to them as “the authors” or “Moonenbaum.”). Moonenbaum does well in expanding the scope of their book to include, not just the division between the scientifically literate and illiterate, but the divide between experts in specialized fields of science, and the differences of opinion between scientists concerning what is acceptable science coverage in the media.

For instance, the author’s mention Larry Moran of The Sandwalk blog, who I have mocked in the past with a great deal of emotional immaturity and who argues that it is fine for science journalism to die because he thinks it error-ridden and worthless. At the 2007 Science Blogging Conference I saw him take some representatives of the Science News Hour to task for not knowing the journal sources backing up the stories they were covering. Dr. Moran is pedantic and elitist, which is fine for a professor, who must guard the gates of his academic profession to make sure only those who will contribute to its integrity get in. There is a place for his writing, which takes the media to task for calling a fossil a “missing link” when the term is silly, for running a sensationalist article title that misrepresents the science content, and that science media outlets and even journals all pretty much FAIL.

Of course, if we got rid of all these aspects of popular science journalism, there would be no need for science sections in newspapers, documentary channels on cable tv, or ideonexuses (ideonexi?) on the Internet. This site thrives on “Gee Whiz” 30-seconds-or-less science news. I get enough hardcore science at work, and I want foo-foo science when I get home. Carl Sagan, Moonenbaum aptly notes, was the greatest foo-foo science popularizer of them all (I think their term was “Science Ambassador” or “Proponent”), and he was skewered by the scientific community for bringing science to the everyday person:

…Sagan was punished by the scientific community for his public endeavors… Harvard University denied him tenure. Nobel laureate Harold Urey, a chemist who had previously served as one of Sagan’s mentors, helped quash his chances with a nasty letter objecting to Sagan’s budding media and outreach efforts.

This is so tragic considering Sagan delivered that unique sense of wonder to the masses that comes from understanding the world a little better. Even if some of the details are out of context, we’re still benefiting from it. So I’m with Sagan and Moonenbaum in that I don’t want science news to die. I want people tuning into science programs all day long, science radio while they work, I want them talking science at the coffee shops like they did during the Enlightenment. I don’t care if they’re getting the details wrong or are talking about some discovery out of context or over-emphasizing the significance of a finding that really isn’t a big deal. I want people rejoicing in science daily, appreciating it the way they appreciate reality television shows or summer blockbusters.

So when Moonenbaum takes on science in Hollywood films, I was surprised to find myself falling on the side of being a little more lenient in my appraisals. For instance, the authors take the film The Core to task for its admittedly ridiculous premise, but ignore the fact that all of the film’s heroes were scientists, and that the film’s climax involved a physics solution scientists should appreciate. John Rogers, one of the six screenwriters on the film, explained his intent:

When I came on, I set out to make one of the 50’s/60’s “science hero” movies that inspired me to go into physics (it was those movies and Lucifer’s Hammer actually, that led me to my field). I probably should have told Paramount that’s what I was up to, but it’s more likely for the best they had no idea what I was up tp. The Core is an explicit rejection of the “scientists bad, blue collar/soldier boys good” ethos that seems to have taken over current cinematic science fiction… If one kid sees physicists saving the day with wave-interference formulas fer chrissake, as in our big finale, and thinks it’s cool, we did okay. [sic]

No matter what you think of The Core as a film, it did kick off an epic debate between David Brin and John Rogers about communicating science in film and the originality of ideas in Hollywood. Just like even though it misrepresented black holes, blood boiling in a vacuum, and the destructive force of supernovas, the new Star Trek was still a movie that made scientists the heroes. I got a near-sexual chill down my spine from the scene where Kirk tells Captain Pike, “I read your thesis.” Anything that provokes discussion about science is a good thing in my book.

I challenge any scientist to write an even halfway decent Science Fiction story with rock-solid science. I don’t care if the author spends an dissertation-length exposition on astrobiology explaining the metabolism of silicon-based extraterrestrials, I guarantee you a physics scientist is going to write a blog post making fun of the alien’s mode of space travel. This is exactly the reason why author Jo Walton quickly abandoned her attempts to write science fiction, because building a plausible SF world involves too much research and too much explaining details within details. Screw it, was her conclusion, it’s easier to write fantasy. That’s a writer scared off to the dark side by scientists the same way my gaggle of Dungeons and Dragons geeks will scared away the girls.

The point is that science fiction movies, even bad science fiction movies, provide teachable moments, a way to ride a little bit of science education onto a blockbuster movie’s coat tails. Moonenbaum points out how Phil Plait regularly does this on his Bad Astronomy blog (referenced in the above ST link), and he does it well, acknowledging that no science fiction story is going to get it all right and that storytelling trumps realism… until doing so violates the audience’s suspension of disbelief. Then they should be properly flamed, like 10,000 BC or Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

Science Debate 2008

The topic of flaming brings me to Moonenbaum’s research on science in politics, where they have much to be proud of through their involvement with Science Debate 2008, a movement that continues to be active (and a movement of which the Larry Moran’s of the world disapprove). They note how politicians are actually afraid to debate science because they don’t want to appear ignorant on the subject. Surveying the blogosphere’s opinions of politicians, how could they win? Even if they answered 90 percent of questions thoughtfully, they’d get burned for the one fact they got wrong.

But consider the alternative:

Representative Vernon Ehlers (R-MI), one of three physicists in Congress, describes having to rush to the floor to prevent fellow members from killing science programs they haven’t understood–assuming, for instance, that “game theory” research involves sports.

Scientists would rather abandon the control of public policy to this kind of ignorance rather than engage in public debate? If scientists represent the truth, what do they have to lose? As we can see in the author’s example, we have everything to lose by not debating.

Overall, Mooney and Kirshenbaum’s book is a fantastic survey of the many dimensions to consider when tackling the issue of waning interest in science for Americans. My concern for Unscientific America is that the book has a narrow audience. Non-scientists will pass it by, while scientists appear apathetic. I greatly appreciated the book despite much of it being old-news to me, and hope to see more books tackling the issue of bringing science back to the forefront of American imaginations once again.

Additional Thought

This is outrageous. I can’t believe that, with the house passing the Climate Change Bill on Friday, which will seek to curb CO₂ emissions, it has just come out that the EPA crushed a dissenting report on the supposed dangers of “Global Warming.” The report, titled Proposed NCEE Comments on Draft Technical Support Document for Endangerment Analysis for Greenhouse Gas Emissions under the Clean Air Act (PDF), contains a full 98 double-spaced, 12-point-font pages minus 13 blank pages of scathing evidence disproving Global Warming. As we can clearly see from this selection of internal e-mails exchanged on the matter, the EPA suppressed this report, which could have extended debate on the Climate Change Bill, and by extension, inaction on Climate Change, just a little bit longer.

From the e-mails we can see the EPA had concerns about the report’s references, which one of the author’s, Alan Carlin, attempted to mitigate:

The authorship is clearly indicated on the last page. Actually, much of the non-observable material (ie. statements that do not involve interpretation of existing data) is actually in peer-reviewed literature somewhere and I have tried to reference everything.

If the fascist overlords at the EPA had only bothered to actually look at the report, they would have found references to the illustrious Friends of Science (FoS), who, thanks to massive funding from our paternal benefactors in the oil industry, is able to provide completely unbiased reporting on how wrong wrong wrong scientists are about Global Warming, especially about any attempt to get people to stop consuming so much oil. Compare this to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), who must serve everyone in the world, making them far more biased in their findings. FoS only has to answer to one organization, IPCC has to answer to everyone; if we count the oil industry as one person, as American Corporate law does, then the IPCC is 6.9 Billion times as biased as the FoS.

Additionally, the report references the blog What’s Up With That?, which argues that this is all because of fluctuations in the Sun, and also counts as a peer-reviewed journal, since it is a journaling medium and the commenters are peers because they have the same lack of credentials as the blog’s author. Even more additionally, the author’s reference Theodore Landscheidt, who’s research has attributed the recent warming trend to solar cycles, and whose breakthrough work in the field of Astrology determined that the rise of Hitler and Stalin were also the result of a “fractal pattern in the Sun’s dynamics.” How many astrologers does the IPCC reference? Zero. Zilch. Nada. None. That’s because they are fascists just like Hitler, who, unlike Hitler, don’t consult astrologers, palm and tea leaf readers in making their predictions. Buncha Jerks.

But let’s just deal with facts by themselves, which is the best evidence for why Global Warming is a sham. As we can see in the below graphic, which the report references with an APA citation that reads: “Source?”¹ and is referenced in numerous articles all over the Interwebs (See here, here, and here.), we can see a clear cooling trend over the last decade:

Global Cooling Graph

While many websites refer to this data as “a decade,”² this report exhibits a sophisticated level of scientific scrupulosity by referring to the dataset as “the 2000s,” which, as everyone knows, does not include the year 2000 itself, because we start counting at the number 1, not 0, and does not include the year 2001 just because. Meanwhile, the enviro-psychos try to swamp ordinary Americans with their cherry-picked data, just like how they cherry-picked the data to include the last 150 years of temperature measurements to show a warming trend. You can clearly see just how the enviro-fanatics are trying to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes by overloading them with data in the below graph:

Warming Trend Based on Cherry-Picked Data

I’ve highlighted the selection of data showing the 2002 to 2008 measurements, which clearly shows a cooling trend. 2000 and 2001 are highlighted blue. Academics and bookworm losers who want us to include those two years are trying to manipulate the data to show a warming trend because they’re so dishonest and stuff:

Global Warming Detail

But you know what? Our data comes from the article Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley in Volume 37, No.3 publication of Physics & Society, July 2008, a peer-reviewed journal. Got that? All you science-focused, enviro-fascists can suck it. Although Alan Carlin wasn’t able to find the peer-reviewed journal sources, I was, and the journal even mentions just how peer-reviewed this article is in bright red text just above its title³:

This article has not undergone any scientific peer review. Its conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community. The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article’s conclusions.

Isn’t that just like the oppressive elitist Academic regime to write something so hurtful? Academia likes to pick on people who are different. That kid who used to beat you up on the playground and kick sand in your face at the beach? He grew up to be a climate scientist. Are we going to let these eggheads dictate American public policy? Or are we going to stand up to them, do what’s right, and base public policy on emotive appeals, logical fallacies, and a complete lack of empirical evidence?

¹ See page 53 of the PDF.

² Some of you may wonder why a decade of global cooling evidence only includes 6.5 years of data. That’s just because some of you don’t understand basic math and the concept of rounding. People who use this graph are applying the technique of rounding to the number of years of data so that it simplifies to the nearest whole number power of ten, and thus, 6.5 years becomes 10 years so that the average American, who doesn’t understand the immense complexity of decimal places one’s places

³ In all fairness, the final version of the publication had much less damning language; although, it said essentially the same thing.

Note: For a legitimate and more mature debunking of this absolute joke of a report, please see RealClimate’s article Bubkes.

Eastern Newt

The Virginia Living Museum, like zoos and other natural history museums, recreates many different ecological niches indoors, where visitors can get up close and admire the biology in detail. There’s a sense of wonder in admiring the uniqueness of life without it being able to run away and hide.

Hermit Crab

As nice as it is taking in these details, there’s still nothing like encountering life outside, in its natural environment. There’s a little jump in your heart when you catch a glimpse of something scurrying away or diving below the surface. Seeing life in a museum or zoo is fascinating, seeing it in the natural world is exciting.

Check out the complete flickr set here and here.

The profundity of the film Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen has left my mind swirling with deep, philosophical, scientific, and political questions. Maybe someone could help me with them:

What was the sociological explanation for incredibly-advanced extraterrestrials adopting stereotypical “gansta” lingo as their primary means of social discourse, as we saw with the twin robots Skids and Mudflap? Was their emotional immaturity, juvenile taunting, violent behavior, big ears, lips, and gold teeth the result of adopting the “gansta” persona, or are robots with these personality and physical characteristics drawn to humanity’s “thug” lifestyle? One measure of this might be to find out if these twin robots, who dwarf the human race with their awesome technological superiority, were illiterate before or after they started using vulgarities and threatening to “Bust a cap in that ass.”

Skids and Mudflap, Gangsta Robots

Rush Limbaugh has been very fond of bringing science fiction writer Michael Crighton on his show in the past to debunk Global Warming. The author’s chief credential is writing a book about the Sierra Club funding ecoterrorists to build a weather-changing machine to destroy the world. Will Limbaugh have director Michael Bay on his show soon to debunk Obama’s foreign policy, which, in the film, included attempting to appease the evil Decepticons through diplomacy? Will Obama’s “Soft on Decepticons” fictional stance provide fuel for Faux News commentators and his Republican detractors in 2012?

What kind of treaty does the United States have with the Chinese government allowing our soldier to battle evil robots on their territory? Or do the Chinese let American soldiers blow up blocks and blocks worth of their city-streets because they are overwhelmed by our sheer awesomeness? The fact that there were no Chinese officials overseeing combat operations would support the latter hypothesis. Is there any friction resulting from the fact that all transformers turn into American-made cars that could translate into trade restrictions? Or are the Chinese relying on the collapse of the American auto-industry to take care of the Earth’s transformer infestation?

I have many many other questions about the film, like the fact that transformers appear to reproduce asexually, but will hump someone’s leg as a sign of affection. Is that a “When in Rome” sort of thing? As the film was a three-hour long Army commercial, will the American armed forces start giving away transformers toys to further incentivize new recruits? What cultural attributes would a Toyota Prius take on if it was a transformer? Or does the Prius have too much dignity for that?

For better or worse, it is the nature of intellectuals to be independent in thought and action. Since the Enlightenment, when coffee-fueled intellectual discussions kicked off an age of accelerating advances in science and technology, academics and geeks have slowly fragmented from being united under the big tent of rationality into tribes that are less effective as political and cultural influences. While America is seeing the influence of science and rationality wane in general, those who subscribe to scientific thought grow more fractionalized.

It all started with The Enlightenment¹, that period of time around about 1600 to 1900, when reason overcame religion as the dominant authority in public life. America’s founders were scholars of the Enlightenment, as is anyone who believes in science and rationality. Many of America’s founders were also Deists, believing in god(s), but that the supernatural thing(s) did not interfere with human life and that our purpose can be determined purely through the study of the natural world.

This principle of relying strictly on the observable, measurable, and reproducible aspects of the world to define reality comes out most strongly in the philosophy of empiricism, with all scientists being empiricists, asserting that our only source of knowledge in life is experience. This is different from naturalism, which does not appear to rule out other ways of knowing, but also emphasizes understanding through observations of the natural world. At the empirical extreme is scientism², which maintains that the absolute best means of understanding reality is through science.

This shared emphasis on observable reality as the best means to find truth is what gives way to principle of political Secularism, which prohibits factoring supernatural speculations into the reasoning behind public policies. In theological dimensions, scientifically minded people express these values in atheism, the belief that there is no supernatural force behind the natural world or influencing human life, and agnosticism, which takes no stance on religious possibilities at all. More recently has emerged the concept of ionian enchantment, which focuses on the sense of wonder that comes from understanding the unification of the sciences, and spiritual naturalism, which is similar to agnosticism, but takes the position that we should actively rejoice in the natural world.

In the realm of ethics, the loss of religion is seen in traditional thought as leaving us bereft of a reason for moral living. In response, Humanism, the philosophy of being good to one another for its own sake, emerged. Secular Humanism was a response to Humanism, because of the many branches that were emerging specific to different religions, such as Christian or Jewish Humanism. The American Humanist Association represents the secular branch of this philosophy.

There are the many other variations on these themes. Ockhamism, based on Ockham’s Razor, Pastafarianism, from the cult of the Flying Spaghetti Monster–a satire on other religious faiths, and Skepticism, which focuses on disproving religious systems of belief and modern-day pseudo-science. This does not take into account the many divisions between realms of scientific inquiry, like biology, chemistry, physics, and others at the top, each with their own highly-specialized sub-domains, like microbiology, organic chemistry, and quantum physics, with terminology so specialized that even the branches of the sciences are having difficulty communicating with each other.

Then there are the myriad organizations attempting to represent these innumerable communities. Originally the Federation of American Scientists was prominent, with the very important primary goal of monitoring the world’s nuclear capabilities. The Union of Concerned Scientists takes a more generalist approach, including many environmental and scientific integrity lobbying efforts. While my new favorite Science Debate 2008 has become a powerful active political force, with the basic goal of bring science into public political discourse.

Despite the differences between all of the above listed organizations, philosophical and ontological schools of thought, and attitudes with which they approach reality, we all subscribe to a testable and rational understanding of the Cosmos. We believe in education, human improvability, and that arguments derived from our shared, observable reality should shape public policy. Because of the complex nature of reality, there will always be quibbles and differing understandings of what opinions we develop from it. These quibbles build walls between the sciences and but also make their members stronger in their specializations and more effective within their domains.

¹ Actually, it all started with Greek philosophy, but all that died out in the Dark Ages.

² Not to be confused with the pejorative Scientific imperialism.