Pharyngula

Posted by: RobertDW | September 9, 2009 5:34 PM

Carl Sagan was undeniably involved in "converting" tens of thousands, at least. Especially impressionable teenagers who became fascinated with space and science (like I was at the time).

OTH, those people would probably still have been "converted" anyway. Speaking from experience again, it was almost certainly inevitable that I personally would have become fascinated with science and space. In fact, I started reading Sagan's books because of that embryonic fascination.

Posted by: MadScientist | September 9, 2009 5:42 PM

"... and filter the voice of science to remove any rough edges."

Huh. I didn't know science had any smooth edges. Taking off the rough edges would reduce science to a putrid puddle of crap. It's bad enough that many journal articles waffle and rehash basic stuff published before; what can "taking off the rough edges" do other than bloat things further and add nothing useful or even interesting? Furthermore, how can science function if beholden to goddamned superstitious sensitivities? I'm kept away from politicians because I don't waste time and get straight to the point when asked a question - so there are intermediaries who won't say things like "that's a load of crap and here's why" and I really don't know why people play such silly games. I also don't play things up to seem more important than they are or try to hide problems - so I guess when I discuss things it doesn't sound as wonderful as what the guy in a $20,000 suit is saying, but in that case I'd say the sensible thing to do is get rid of the suits, not hire a spindoctor. We need a campaign for higher unemployment among spindoctors, not a campaign to turn scientists into bullshit artists.

Posted by: Shaun Fletcher | September 9, 2009 5:45 PM

What a fantastic article..

Blogs and the like are in fact a great potential tool, and yes, much more than blogs are needed, and much more than blogs will come.. PZ will write many successful books in his lifetime (even if he doesnt know it yet), and look at Richard for crying out loud!

I once had a conversation (more like an argument, he was a passionate guy) with my boss at the time, a very prominent UK auditory scientist who was telling me, convincingly and thoroughly, how utterly wrongheaded the then loud public chatter about hearing therapy development and its impact on the 'deaf community' was. My response in the end was 'Dont tell ME, I work here and get it, tell everyone else. Get out there and get on the radio, write a letter to the times, whatever, and give them the nearly irrefutable argument you just gave me!'

Its the ones who know what they are talking about and are going to go out there, say their damned piece themselves and the devil with framers and PR gurus who will make a difference. It is always them who have made a difference and always will be them who will.

Posted by: MK | September 9, 2009 5:57 PM

What is it with the PR people taking on scientists?

Posted by: Brian | September 9, 2009 6:03 PM

Wow, PZ: You and Phil Plait are making a very similar point at about the same time for very different reasons. Such a strange convergence....

Posted by: Comrade PhysioProf | September 9, 2009 6:09 PM

It's worth pointing out that Colquhoun is a bit of a crank when it comes to organizational structure. For example, he believes that all university administrators are nefarious and useless. I guess you could call him an academic anarchist. He sees everything through the lens of "little guy battling evil faceless large organization".

He is, however, an outstanding physiologist.

Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites | September 9, 2009 6:16 PM

Do they truly think that a little more Tyson on Nova will outlast, outshout and outshine professional manipulators such as Tom Cruise and Jenny McCarthy?

There's no need to. You see, Tom Cruise and Jenny McCarthy are loud and mean (see Cruise vs. Brooke Shields RE: postpartum depression treatment and Jenny McCarthy vs. anybody who hasn't endured the terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible anguish of raising a no longer Crystal autistic child), therefore they hold absolutely no truck with the general populace whatsoever. Nobody likes loud or argumentative people (PZ's not loud; but he's argumentative enough to make up for the lack of volume), and nobody listens to them. M&K have effectively argued the woo-Meisters out of existence. Neat-o!

Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites | September 9, 2009 6:31 PM

Off topic, but since is current news: a plane was hijacked in Mexico today. The hijackers seem to be religious looneys. According to a Mexican newspaper (http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/625427.html), the hijacker was walking the aisle of the plane with a Bible on a hand, and babbling about an earthquake that will occur this month in Mexico City.

Google says the situation was resolved without bloodshed, I'm happy to say. It's probably premature to call religio-terrorism at this point, but wouldn't it be sort of delicious if the FAA's response to this is to limit all carry-on bibles to no more than 100 pages?

Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings | September 9, 2009 6:43 PM

@MadScientist, #4,

It's not just science that has rough edges. Life has rough edges. And pointy bits. And dirty stuff.

I think people want their life to be easy and safe, not rough and dangerous as life really is. I think what M&K are getting at is that science should be open and inviting to everyone, rather than just open and inviting to those who know how to apply the scientific method.

The problem is, science is vicious. People just can't throw out an idea without cringing in anticipation of strong attack. Every new concept, new explanation is subjected the the harshest possible criticisms and review. Only those ideas strong enough to sustain actual intelligent, antagonistic attention survive.

And that ain't pretty. It's sometimes like a polite shark attack.

The biggest flaw to M&K's approach is that, by its very nature, science does not coddle inferior ideas or intellect. Most people aren't ready for that.

Posted by: MikeM | September 9, 2009 6:55 PM

I apologize for the O/T, but NASA released new Hubble images today.

Wow.

A few examples here.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | September 9, 2009 7:12 PM

Don't be dissing M&K. If they're good enough the Kwok they're good enough for the Kwok.

Posted by: Margaret | September 9, 2009 7:39 PM

MadScientist - love it.

Posted by: kamaka | September 9, 2009 7:47 PM

NASA released new Hubble images today.

Wow.

The Cone Nebula looks like god!

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | September 9, 2009 8:08 PM

hubblesite.org has hundreds of Hubble pictures. This one, NGC 3314, a pair of colliding galaxies, is my present wallpaper.

Posted by: John Morales | September 9, 2009 8:20 PM

Oops, left the URL out. Just Google it, you'll see.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | September 9, 2009 8:24 PM

Blast that Hubble Telescope. Too many pretty and spectacular pictures. Makes it hard to choose one. *grumble* ;)

Posted by: Geoffrey | September 9, 2009 8:45 PM

Is that damned survey still up? 16 million votes. I think it's been borked already.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | September 9, 2009 8:57 PM

Kevin (nyc), PZ has declared that poll thoroughly trashed and no longer of interest. Don't mention it again.

Posted by: chrisD | September 9, 2009 9:00 PM

Oh, and follow the link to the Canis Major Dwarf for even more galactic 'collision' goodness!

I find the descriptions of what is going on in these photographs often almost as exhilarating as the pictures themselves. That we are able to know with certainty many of the immense interactions of things several thousand orders of magnitude larger than us leaves me with a numinous-esque feeling. It's as close to a religious experience as I've ever known. Being based upon reality makes it even better.

Posted by: Pygmy Loris | September 9, 2009 9:26 PM

Tis Himself,

Perhaps we should launch a pre-emptive strike against those reckless Andromedans. We should send our fiercest people to fight back against the galactic horde.

I think Dick Cheney would be the perfect person to lead the Milky Way into battle. In fact, I think he's scary enough that we can send him out on his own.

It won't actually help anything, but then I won't have to see the ridiculous crap that comes out of his mouth anymore :)

Posted by: stogoe | September 9, 2009 10:36 PM

It's dead, Jim. Let it rest in peace.

Posted by: John Morales | September 9, 2009 10:57 PM

tmaxPA, I think I read it when you linked to it at the time.

I've just loaded it, it's not been removed.

Note it's dated Sun Jul 12, 2009.

Posted by: Azkyroth | September 9, 2009 11:20 PM

And think of the money you'd save for doing science if the PR people were just fired.

And start with the ineffective ones. Like Mooney and Kirshenbaum.

Posted by: LuisR | September 9, 2009 11:38 PM

"Wake me up when a creationist says something intelligent."

Why exactly do you want to beat Rip van Winkle in a sleeping contest?

Posted by: David Colquhoun | September 10, 2009 2:03 AM

Comrade PhysioProf

Hey there at the back Pay attention please

You say that

"he believes that all university administrators are nefarious and useless"

I have never said anything remotely like that, neither do I believe it. Good administrators, of whom I have known many. are essential to oil the wheels of the academic machine.

It's true that I'm less than delighted by the seemingly unstoppable expansion of HR departments, and I did rather prefer them when they restricted themselves to helping sort out the payroll. Now that they often seem to regard themselves as my manager, not my helper, it seems to me that they have become too big for their boots. They should restrict themselves to things they know about, and that doesn't include science. Neither do I like it when they tell me what "tone of voice" to use (having just discovered your blog, I'd imagine you wouldn't be happy with that either). The only time that I got mildly incandescent was when I discovered that HR were imposing on postdocs, real neurobollocks in the form of Brain Gym and NLP. They are so ill-informed about science that they really seemed to believe that this would help the careers of postdocs, and you can't get much more out of touch than that. It isn't "nefarious", though, but more a matter of not knowing your own limitations.

Posted by: David Colquhoun | September 10, 2009 5:49 AM

@ SC,OM

hmm I see. The text is centred in IE but left justified in Firefox (and in Dreamweaver). I wish they'd make them both interpret html in the same way. Fixed it now anyway.

You could also look at the original in the BMJ, at http://bit.ly/1cRk2T

And why the huff? The review was in a UK journal, but M&K consider only the US problems so seems fair to mention that.

Posted by: Sigmund | September 10, 2009 7:03 AM

David @54,
Mooney has had the issue of US science pointed out to him on numerous occasions. Indeed the big break between his former incarnation and the new pod-Mooney was marked by an attack on Richard Dawkins outspoken messages. The idea that this sort of talk is fine outside the US doesn't seem to register with him and given the number of occasions he's heard complaints from us non-Americans I can only assume that he's purposefully being deaf on the issue.
Being accomodationist in terms of science and fundamentalist-lite religion may be a practical and pragmatic approach in the US but it would be disastrous in Europe.

Posted by: defective robot | September 10, 2009 10:31 AM

creationist @ #123:

I can see that you and I must define faith differently.

There is blind faith, which is what I think you must be referencing, correct me if I'm wrong. There is also faith which is based on good reason to believe.

Will the sun rise tomorrow? Of course it will because it always does. We've never seen it do otherwise so we have faith the earth will continue to spin and we will see the sun shine again. It is well grounded in reason.

Can you explain to me again abiogenesis? To account for the theory of evolution, this had to have happened, correct? Why do you have faith in this?

Your arguments have been parsed by others already, but since your questions were directed at my original post I figured I'd go ahead and answer myself as well.

Our personal definitions of faith are, I think, actually more than just semantics, and I think should be examined. I define faith as accepting that which reason does not inform. In other words, faith is blind, which is why I didn't myself use the overwrought phrase "blind faith."

Thus, I do not have faith that the earth will keep spinning, I have an understanding of why it will. My understanding is grounded in reason and knowledge, not in a blind adherence to someone else's word. Which is not to say that we don't all at some time accept on trust the statements or observations of others, but, as is the case with evolution, those statements and observations have been so carefully disseminated and tested by so many people over so long a period of time that acceptance of them as fact is reasonable and logical. That there are "holes" in the theory is irrelevant, and the constant creationist refrain of "it's only a theory" only serves to illustrate an ignorance of the real definition of the word "theory."

And no, I can't explain abiogenesis, because 1) I myself am not a scientist, and 2) because all of the scientists here have themselves admitted that they can't explain it (even Dawkins has stated on many occasions that he can't). But your question brings up a point, namely that science itself needs to be clearly defined. It's a common and ridiculous argument that science can't be trusted because it's conclusions are constantly changing. But that is the point of science! Science is a process, not a conclusion, and when new information is learned the conclusions are adjusted to fit the new data. Science, therefore, cannot be static, or it wouldn't be science (it'd be religion).

Science looks for answers, but it's unreasonable to set a time frame for finding them, so the fact that nobody can yet define abiogeneisis is not a failure of science. But the impatience that drives people to essentially invent an answer in the absence of data is, to me, an intellectual failure.

In short, "God did it" is a lazy answer.

Posted by: SC, OM | September 10, 2009 10:54 AM

hmm I see. The text is centred in IE but left justified in Firefox (and in Dreamweaver). I wish they'd make them both interpret html in the same way. Fixed it now anyway.

You could also look at the original in the BMJ, at http://bit.ly/1cRk2T

Thanks!

And why the huff? The review was in a UK journal, but M&K consider only the US problems so seems fair to mention that.

Not a genuine huff, as John Morales has noted. What you say is completely true,* and I agree that it was fair (important, for that matter) to mention it. I also knew that was what you meant by "American through and through." It just had a ring at first of "representative of American books" or "expressive of American culture." We have enough to be ashamed of without having this tripe seen as emblematic!

:):):):):):):):)

*By the way, I came across a misplaced copy (apparently intentionally shelved there for some reason) while looking in the US Colonial History section of the bookstore. Had a little time, and read almost the entire thing in one standing right there in the store. That's how insubstantial it is.

Posted by: David Colquhoun | September 11, 2009 4:57 AM

SC, OM
Sorry if I misunderstood your huff. I see now that I could have phrased it better. When I said "American through and through" all I meant was that the book talked about science communication and understanding only in the coxtext of the situation in the USA. I certainly didn't mean that M&K was "representative of American books". Perish the thought.

I have always been struck by the extent to which my friends in the USA, mostly in universities, think very much like people in similar jobs everywhere. But having just spent 30 minutes composing an answer to a US conservative who commented on my blog (that's a first) I realise once again the rather frightening extent of polarisation in US opinio. US responses to HallOfRecord, at http://www.dcscience.net/?p=2165&cpage=1#comment-4152 would be interesting to see.

Posted by: Ophelia Benson | September 12, 2009 1:45 PM

I realise once again the rather frightening extent of polarisation in US opinion.

Yes...Imagine having to live in amongst it!