I wrote the majority of this post a couple of years ago, when I had the intention to do a regular “creationist claim” feature, but for some reason never got around to polishing and posting it at the time.

When children wish to wind each other up in an argument, they need look no further than the chant “I know you are, you said you are, but what am I?” It’s a phrase to suit all occasions, and it sounds the death knell for the ailing argument. This week’s “creationist claim” is an example of how creationists (and other pseudoscientists) adopt this chant. The following are from WellingtonGrey.net:

Creationists do not follow the scientific method. The Answers in Genesis “Creation Museum” in Kentucky presents the visitor with a pair of paleontologists: a “creationist” and an “evolutionist”, and tell you that they accept the same data, but simply reach different conclusions based upon it. Paul Taylor of Answers in Genesis UK, in his talk at Skeptics in the Pub a few months ago, told us that the difference between creationism and evolutionism is only that the two set out with different but equally valid assumptions — the evolutionist’s is just that the universe is natural and material; the creationist’s is just that the bible is the literal and infallible word of God. Two equally valid assumptions, I’m sure you’ll agree.

But the idea that creationists are looking at the data — any data — is simply not true. Sometimes good data is discarded; sometimes data is invented; sometimes a piece of data only fits their conclusions because other facts are ignored. Most of the time, however, data is simply irrelevant: creationists are ignorant of the vast majority of the relevant science and evidence, and that doesn’t hinder them in their cause in the slightest. Creationism, it an exercise in spin; the science is irrelevant.

The theory of evolution was discovered in the mid-19th century, when Christianity still permeated to every corner of society, politics and science. Though we had begun the task of filling in those gaps in our knowledge in which God resided — with Copernicus, Newton, et al — God was still the unchallenged creator of everything, especially life, and a literal Genesis was common, even among scientists. Indeed, Darwin was middle-aged before the term “science” became widespread; he would have been more familiar with “natural philosophy” and “natural history”: defined then as the study of God’s handiwork. Men that we now call scientists saw themselves as investigating God’s creation, and many thought it was a simple case of filling in the details of a story summarised in Genesis. When scientists in the 19th century were convinced of the old earth and of evolution, it was despite their prejudices, and not because of them. Upon closing the Origin, Huxley kicked himself for not thinking of such an obvious idea himself: the power of and evidence for the theory was great even then, but the intellectual climate had prevented others from discovering it.

When creationists accuse scientists of bending observations to fit their theories, it suggests that they have an incomplete understanding of the scientific method. Creationists take the data produced by scientists (for they have produced none of their own), and see if they can use it to construct an argument that will convince non-scientists that creationism is scientific. They assume, therefore, that scientists are doing something similar: taking the data they find, shoehorning it into their own explanation of the world, and dressing it up to parade for the public and seek their acceptance.

Needless to say, this is not how science works. Observation is an important part of science, but it is not unfocused observation. It is observation guided by questions specifically designed to test the truth of theories. Scientists do not say “lets go observe the world”, but ask “if I observe this system, what would I expect to find, based on my theory?”, and “what kinds of observations would I not expect to find if my theory is true?” Upon seeking those observations, we discover something about the validity of the theory. Note also that these questions are not “what evidence should I gather to prove my theory right?”, but, “what questions should I ask whose answers could potentially prove my theory wrong?”

The creationist community is relatively homogeneous, consisting primarily of the American evangelical Christianity branch, and the Islamic branch (there are others, but they are not part of the same phenomenon). Their preconceptions are the same, based ultimately upon the same story, invented by Middle-Eastern nomadic herdsmen several thousand years ago; and their methods are the same, based upon faith, authority and revelation. The scientific community is not homogeneous: it includes liberals and conservatives, people of all nations, races and cultures, people with non-religious upbringings, and religious upbringings including Christianity and Islam, but also Hinduism, Buddhism, and many more besides; and its methods are based on questioning, skepticism, and competition to make the big new discoveries. Scientists have their prejudices, but it’s hard to believe that in such a large, diverse and inquisitive group, any particular prejudice could have such a pervasive and long-lasting effect.

Creationist argument is sham science, put on as a PR exercise. It is reminiscent of the cargo cult science of alternative medicine. It is supposed to look like science to those who do not look too closely. There are data used and numbers cited, and these put in the context of an explanation of how and why the world works. But when you look closer, you find that the data are carefully chosen, and the numbers a diversionary tactic. And in place of the scientist’s toolkit — empiricism, rationalism, skepticism, and logic — there is a creationist toolkit: faith, revelation, and spin. And they are so lacking in imagination that whenever this is exposed, they can only chant “I know you are. You said you are. But what am I?”

The main driving force for creationists is not science, but ethics. Their trump card is that “evolution is immoral”: they cite “might makes right” and eugenics, quote Darwin’s supposedly racist terminology in The Origin and Voyage, and put evolution at the centre of Nazi doctrine. Everything from school massacres to teenage pregnancy is blamed on “evolutionization”.^[1] It is not evolution that specifically bothers them; rather, evolution is a prominent representative of all things that aren’t biblically literal. In a world where the bible is not simple, straightforward and inerrant, ethics require rational thought and empirical facts. There are fuzzy lines between right and wrong, and tough choices where the lesser of two evils is difficult to determine. Creationists don’t care about the truth; rather, they are angry that evolution casts doubts on their book of simple rules.

The anti-abortion movement appears convinced that a massive international genocide is occurring. Their argument is that taking a life is murder, and life begins at conception. They are not using “life” in any scientific sense, nor expecting their argument to be taken as a scientific one. To try arguing the matter on scientific grounds is to throw your time away. Try a Socratic session of defining terms and you will be accused of dehumanising through language, in the mould of the Nazi holocaust. Arguments over when consciousness or pain detection begins to develop will persuade nobody, because they rely on the anti-abortionist admitting that life does not have solid boundaries, but has grey areas, in which difficult ethical decisions lie. The argument is not about when life begins, it is about simple rules.

G.K. Chesterton is oft quoted as saying something along the lines of “the problem with not believing in God is not that one believes in nothing, but that one will believe in anything.”^[2] I am not so pessimistic, but it does seem to be true that in the absence of God’s simple rules, people do their best to fill the vacuum. Take the organic food movement. Organic food is quickly rising in popularity in the United Kingdom because it markets itself as tastier and healthier, but most of all because it is ethical: good for the environment, and fair on the producers. Buyers of organic are making the simple rule “organic is ethical”, and delegating the difficult tasks to the producers and guardians of the organic brand. Technically, this may be classed as the fallacy of “appeal to authority”, but in practice it is reasonable, as none of us has time enough to investigate everything in depth ourselves, and so we must delegate at least some of the work to authorities. However, when delegating the task, most people assume that the producers and the guardians of the organic brand will be taking an empirical approach to deciding the most ethical growing practices, and the rules for producing the healthiest, tastiest and most environmentally friendly food. Sadly, they are not. The organic movement has written its own holy book of simple rules and superstition. The empirically determined healthiest and tastiest product is substituted with the most natural product. All chemical pesticides, herbicides, fertilisers and GM are out, while natural equivalents are in: a surrogate in place of improving biodiversity. Instead of developing sensible rules for the use of pharmaceuticals and antibiotics, which farming has traditionally grossly misused, the organic movement dispenses with them in favour of — don’t laugh, animal welfare is at stake here — homeopathy.

In last December’s leader criticising the organic and fair trade movements, The Economist miss the point. Instead of criticising those movements for judging their efficacy by surrogate outcomes and arbitrary rules, they simply list their own alternative surrogate outcomes and arbitrary rules. Both sides are merely providing just-so stories for why their farming methods are better, rather than looking at actual empirical measurements of the true results they want to achieve. Of course, The Economist is not even interested in the same results as the organic and fair trade movements: they are interested in the simple rule of a free market, no ifs and no buts.

Simple minds need simple rules; but intelligent rational people can easily find themselves seduced by them too, if they are not wary. Science has simple rules too, but of a different kind. Science has elegant equations and beautiful theories that make your heart race when their simplicity clicks. Witness Thomas Henry Huxley’s comments on closing The Origin of Species: “Why didn’t I think of that?” The most awesome aspect of evolution is that such simple rules produce the complex wonders of life. Life, when it becomes complex, no longer conforms to any one simple rule. Neither can our lives. In an episode of Father Ted, the senile old drunk Father Jack professes the least understanding, but provokes the most productive thought from others, with his mantra “that would be an ecumenical matter”. If you’re faced with difficult questions or fierce arguments, and in need of a simple rule, I offer you this: “that would be an empirical matter.” And from there, let the wonderful complexity blossom.

References

1. Tom DeLay, quoted in “Evolution Revolution”, PBS.org.
2. Though the American Chesterton Society have trouble verifying the source.

Continue reading at Lay Science…

Continue reading at Lay Science…

Skepticism — the movement and the everyday scientific method — is about vetting the new ideas that want to take up residence in our minds. It’s a critical thinking toolkit that is there to prevent us getting fooled. It’s not cynicism or stubborn disbelief, just a cautious and questioning approach to the claims of others. It’s knowing the fallibility of the human mind; it’s the opposite of gullibility.

The gold standard that a skeptic seeks in an argument is to be able to see and evaluate and understand the original science and data and statistical analyses that supposedly support the claims of that argument’s proponents. But one doesn’t always have the time or expertise to go around making such rigorous examinations of complicated arguments. In those situations it’s common to tentatively accept the conclusions of experts in the field who you believe to have made those rigorous examinations themselves and who you trust to have got those examinations right. Accepting the consensus of the experts without having rigorously examined their evidence yourself is an argument from authority — a “trick”, if you like, but one that is not entirely unacceptable.

But for an issue as important as climate change, where we’re talking about big risks and being asked to make big sacrifices, one wants to make a more rigorous examination of the arguments and evidence and to be more confident about the science than one would for matters of less consequence. But proponents and opponents of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) both claim to have the science and the data and the statistics on their side — they both claim to have applied skepticism and the scientific method — and the lay person perhaps doesn’t have the dozens of hours required to learn the maths and chemistry and physics behind the arguments. All they’re left with is picking the side with the most PhDs in climate-related sciences, right?

But the AGW proponents have one other important thing going for them: even if the skeptical lay person can’t independently evaluate the claims of the proponents, they can easily see the absurdity of the claims of the opponents.

For example, on this week’s Little Atoms, Johnny Ball embarrassed himself with this series of arguments:

1. According to Ball, there is a scientific controversy because: “would you consider a qualified engineer to be a scientist? I think I would, and the majority of engineers don’t believe that we’re changing the climate.^{[citation needed]}” Well, no, engineers are not scientists. Some engineers — a small minority — happen to also be scientists, but engineering is not a science, at least, not in the sense that matters. Many engineers know much about how physics and chemistry work, and most probably know more mathematics than the average scientist. They can apply some scientific facts about the way the world works. But they are not doing science. Science is a body of facts and theories about the way the world works, but far more importantly, it is a way of studying the world. Science is a process and a tool, a method of empiricism, critical thinking and skepticism. Engineering and science share facts about the world, but they are very different processes and very different tools. The two professions think in different ways, and are rarely taught anything about each-other’s way of working.
2. Climate scientists are “cooking the books for grant money”. Yeah. It’s the scam of the century in which tens of thousands of individuals have abandoned their scientific principles to cooperate in successfully defrauding all the governments and funding agencies of the world. Also, did I mention that they are Reptilians? Dudes, have you still not realised how absurd you look making this claim?
3. Ball points out that climate scientists ignore the sun-spots — we keep shouting “sun-spots” and they keep ignoring us! Uh. Except, he forgets that somebody went and invented Google. We can all now google about sun-spots and climate change, see just how climate scientists have ignored them by, er, studying them and incorporating them into their theories and models and papers and reports, and we can read the lay summaries of climatologists and astronomers explaining why sun-spots aren’t — and can’t be — more than a minor detail in climate.
4. Finally, Ball compares climate change “sceptics” to Darwin and Faraday and Copernicus, while climate scientists are like eugenicists: when Darwin proposed evolution, the scientific consensus was against him, and it took a few decades for the rest of the scientific community to catch up. Ball seems to be proposing that, er, climate change scepticism is, uhm, a new science that the rest of the scientific community will catch up with over time. Did he somehow miss the last thirty years of climate scientists slowly convincing the scientific community into consensus?

The lay person can have some confidence that the climate scientists are right about AGW not merely by weighing PhDs and picking the authoritative argument. They just need to look at the sheer amount of money and effort poured into the argument by the denialists, and snigger at how embarrassingly piss-poor are the claims that effort buys. Zombie arguments and absurd conspiracies. The climate scientists might be giving us data and graphs and theories that we couldn’t possibly independently verify, but when the best the denialists can buy is a “rah rah rah look at the sun-spots” and a “help help, we’re being oppressed, like Copernicus”, I know which argument my skeptical mind is more persuaded by.

And this is also why Greenpeace need to shut up and let the grown-ups put the case for AGW.

It’s getting late in the book, and for a while now Darwin has not so much been explaining and testing his theories, as sitting back and letting his theories do some explaining and testing of their own. It seems to require constant repeating that a scientific “theory” is not a “guess”. A “theory” is a general principle which is supported by a significant and diverse body of data and observations, which stands up to testing, which makes predictions which can be shown to be true, and which has explanatory power. The explanatory power of evolution permeates all branches of biology.

The classic line is that evolution turned biology from a “stamp collecting” science into a modern and productive field. Nevertheless, taxonomists have not been dissuaded from their stamp collecting. In chapter 14, though, Darwin did give meaning to many of their practices and trends. Linnaeus, father of the taxonomic system, was found that there were intuitive ways to place species in groups, and that the relationship between those species was somehow something more than just their shared traits. Darwin showed that this was because taxonomy had intuitively developed into grouping species roughly by how closely they are related by descent, and that evolution, by explaining the patterns of descent, thereby explained many of the quirks of taxonomy. “Community of descent is the hidden bond that naturalists have been unconsciously seeking.”

Evolution explains why we see great variation on the same fundamental body plans, and how those slight morphological variations underpin classification. And so evolution explains why, to the naturalist, it feels right to classify a marsupial mouse amongst its fellow marsupials, even though it superficially resembles the placental mouse. And evolution explains large scale trends, such as why some groups contain so many more species or sub-groups than others.

And evolution explains why, even though there are real distinct groups of species and real distinct groups of those groups, the system of calling those groups orders, sub-orders, families, sub-families, and genera is all so arbitrary — the observable divergence of characteristics and the diversification of groups is highly variable depending on the nature of those groups and their situation, and the non-uniform nature of extinction further complicates things. He uses an analogy to the evolution of language, and it is often claimed (though I am not sure whether it is true or a myth) that English has changed and diversified much more rapidly and extensively than French. (And molecular biologists and genomicists will be pleased that this analogy can also incorporate horizontal transfer.)

And evolution explains mimicry: why two butterflies which, based on the finer details of their anatomy and life cycle, should be placed in very distant groups, even though they look so similar that one can not tell them apart while they swarm. These mimics occur when one species has evolved a defense against predation — foul taste, poison, or a sting — and another takes advantage of the predator’s fear of that species, or rather, any individual which looks like it belongs to that species. And evolution explains why the mimic is always the less dominant species in terms of population than the mimicked. And evolution explains why mimicry is so much more common in insects than in other major animal groups.

And evolution explains why such diverse species as the vertebrates share such similar patterns of early development, and why vertebrate body plans are not entirely different from those of other animals. Today we can take this last principle even further: the field of genomics combines evolution with molecular biology to further explain quirks of classification, such as why bacteria are so hard to classify, why traits can stick together, and how we can be sure that all of the groups of life on earth can, ultimately, be classified into one group, related by descent.

Two pages into chapter thirteen we get a fantastic image of Darwin pottering in his conservatory, dipping his duck in various fish tanks. Later on the same page he’s keeping a mug of mud on his desk, pulling out the weeds as they come up. At other points in the book we find him cutting out pictures and counting the plants in his lawn. The Origin is not just Darwin writing down his thoughts after 25 years of thinking about the Galapagos. Darwin made sure his argument was solid, and in science, you find the solid ideas by giving them all a good shake, and seeing which ones fall down under the stress. Darwin made hypotheses about how the world might look if his theory is true, and then took a look to see whether the world cooperates.

Darwin’s theory dictated that all individuals within a species are related by descent; species within a genus similarly related, but more distantly; and so on for all life. Darwin observed that there are many fresh-water aquatic species whose individuals occupy many different ponds or streams. He reasoned that if all individuals of a species are related, there must be some mechanism by which individuals from those fresh-water aquatic species have spread from one pond to another. He made a hypothesis: that eggs from these species might stick to the feet of ducks, and thus spread. And so he found himself dipping ducks feet in tanks, and seeing how long the duck’s feet could remain dry while maintaining their ability to seed a sterile tank with pond life. Nowadays he would probably need institutional ethics review board approval for the use of fowl in laboratory research.

Other great practical work from Darwin includes determining the relative areas of igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks in the United States by cutting up a geological map and weighing the parts; and the time he spent several weeks observing slugs eating weeds (described here by Mike Dunford). And there is one more great experiment that I have heard attributed to Darwin, but for which I can sadly find no credible evidence, and not even at hint in Voyage. The story, told by m’colleague, who in turn has attributed it to a friendly archivist at the Grant Museum of Zoology (UCL), features a young Darwin in the Galapagos spending an afternoon tossing land and marine iguanas into the sea to see how long each could survive in the water. The naive iguanas would inevitably swim straight back to their spot on the shore, never learning to avoid the bastard with the mean overarm who kept throwing them back in. It would be a good experiment to show whether both species could have immigrated to the islands, or only the marine variety.

It’s probably not true. But Darwin was still an ingenious experimentalist.

It’s a right good science fest on Radio 4 at the moment. If you missed it, you must listen to Physics Rocks (available until 17/9). It’s Brian Cox talking to comedians about their enthusiasm for science. It’s a great antidote to some of the neurocidal drivel written by proudly illiterate twats (Brian Cox’s word, not mine) in the less reputable members of our gutter press.

They managed to get several of our favourite themes in the programme, and seemed to be channeling the spirit of Carl Sagan. In a conversation with Alan Alda, the question “what’s the point of the LHC?” was addressed—if the beauty of the universe isn’t enough for you:

We can drive a car without knowing how to take it apart and put it together again. But somebody better know how to put a car together, otherwise we’ll all be back on foot again. Every time we have figured out something basic about nature—discovering the electron, figuring out how radio waves work — we got an advance that has improved life on the planet immeasurably.

In a conversation with Eddie Izzard, the fascinating topic of multiverses came up. Cox suggested that there is a good chance that, while it may not be multiverses, the results of the LHC’s experiments will cast light on something revolutionary—of Copernican proportions. I can see the next chapter in the shrinking-pains of the God-of-the-gaps on the horizon…

In a conversation with Dara O’Brien, the topic somehow turned to CAM:

O’Brien: … cos unlike Deepak Chopra, I know what “quantum” means… it does actually mean something. It doesn’t mean like … ‘I’m not sure where my life is going’.

Cox: Ancient wisdom! It would help me build a better mobile phone!

O’Brien: Oooh. Ancient wisdom, my arse. Stop it, it’s awful… Ancient herbal medicines: we tested them! The ones that worked became just “medicine”. The rest is just a nice bowl of soup and some potpourri… CERN isn’t going to help that either. It’s not like you’re going to find some neat way that it [homeopathy] will — there’s no bow that goes on top of 120 particles to make it all just, you know…

There were two more quotes I just had to share:

• Cox: The LHC will be a candle in the dark, lighting the way to a new and more profound understanding of the universe.
• O’Brien: Physics does not rock. Physics does not have to rock. Physics underpins the very nature of the universe and our understanding of where we are. Just tiny bits of flotsam floating in a much bigger picture

But, really, listen to the whole thing.

“Yes I agree, but this is different. Don’t lump us in with those charlatans!”

Criticise quack miracle cures, irrational superstition, loony pseudoscience, and religion, and you will get in return an example of the comment above. You can see this particularly with Richard Dawkins, due to his high profile. Following The God Delusion and Root Of All Evil he got it from many of the newspaper reviewers and from the “fleas”: “yes, I agree with you on political Islam, American evangelical Christianity, creationism, an interventionist God, Zeus, the virgin birth, and other such obvious nonsense, but my religion is different”. And again following Enemies of Reason: “yes, of course all of that is nonsense, why do you even need to make a programme about it? Nobody takes that nonsense seriously! But [ Ayurvedic medicine / homeopathy / dowsing / ghosts / UFOs / my pet nonsense ] is different, and really is [ supported by evidence / unsuitable for study by double-blind clinical trials / something that scientists might dismiss, but that I know just works ], if only you would keep an open mind!”

I take this as a sign that for most people, the argument is effective: they understand why the scientific approach to understanding the world works, and others fail. The problem is cognitive dissonance: to reconcile this with the fact that they have believed in and invested so much time in some nonsense, they conjure reasons to believe that the argument does not apply to their particular brand of nonsense. It’s not easy to blame people for doing this: after all, we see many very intelligent people doing the same thing. Newton had alchemy, Wallace had spiritualism, Pauling had vitamins. There is a fantastic set of videos of John Maynard Smith on the People’s Archive, in which he talks of how long it took him (and many other scientists, such as JBS Haldane), to escape the grip of soviet-style communism. JMS said: “it’s a reluctance to admit that one has been that wrong — which is a not very honourable attitude.” Something similar to the Soviet treatment of genetics can be seen today with the libertarian treatment of climate change. As Bernard Berenson said: “Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.” And this is why science works: science requires you not to cling on to ideas whose time has passed, but to be the first to try and disprove them.