At the bottom of Card's article there was a place to leave comments, so I decided to do so. It's a message board on his website. I posted a message to begin this thread and the reaction of one of his acolytes was quite ridiculous. He tried two claims to explain away the absurd claim Card made. Here's the first:
Card is saying that these "Darwinists" aren't explaining the flaws in a way that is accessible to non-scientists, not that no one has taken the time to explain the flaws at all.
Utter nonsense. Every single link I gave in my previous post was written for a non-scientific audience. They are written on exactly the same level that the popular works of ID advocates are written. I'm not a scientist and I have no difficulty understanding them. If Card can't understand them, that certainly indicates that he has no business writing about this subject. And here's the second claim:
He's also clearly definied Darwinists, and it's a much smaller group then everyone.
First of all, the notion that he has "clearly defined Darwinists" is absurd. He uses that label, but nowhere does he define them except with these false strawman characteristics he foists upon a group he nowhere identifies. Card doesn't name a single one of these "Darwinists" who, in his universe, "refuse to even try" to explain the flaws in ID arguments and rely solely on appeals to authority instead. They appear to be a figment of his imagination.
The closest our correspondent comes to defining them is when he agrees with another commenter's statement that by "Darwinists" Card means "bad scientists". But if this is the correct interpretation of Card's words, think about how that changes his argument to something even more absurd. His argument becomes essentially this:
The irony is that there are plenty of bad scientists who are perfectly good writers, capable of explaining the science to us well enough to show us the flaws in the Designists' arguments. The fact that they refuse even to try to explain is, again, a confession that they don't have an answer. And never mind that lots of good scientists who are perfectly good writers have taken the time to write hundreds of articles and books explaining the flaws in the ID arguments; they don't matter at all. Irreducible complexity is true because bad scientists that I can't name by name don't explain those flaws to us, only the good scientists do.
That has the potential to move Card's claim from the "dishonest" or "ignorant" category into the "monumentally pointless and idiotic" category. Not exactly a step in the right direction, and certainly not enough to salvage the credibility that his ridiculous claims on this subject have destroyed.
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Card does make one important point: scientists as a group are not terribly adept at educating the general public about evolution; many scientists shrug this off simply because they don't realize the extent of the problem. As a group we need to do a much better job of presenting evolution to the public.
I once read an anecdote on a skeptics' message board about someone who very politely informed a customer at a drug store who was buying homeopathic remedies that they've never been shown to be effective in any scientific study. What he got was an angry towering rant about "materialism" that went from how "materialists" refuse to admit that there is any "mystery in the universe" all the way to how science is destroying nature and killing whales and causing global warming by refusing to live "in harmony with nature" and how homeopathy means "in harmony with nature" and blah blah blah...
It's more about vague emotionally driven reaction than specifics. Card doesn't care what a fitness gradient is, or what the various mechanisms of adaptation are, or what the specifics of the fossil record are. He doesn't even really care about Behe's specific arguments. What he cares about is that Behe is standing in the way of what he sees as the bulldozer of science that's destroying the old forest of mystery and creation. He sees that as good, and so he's sympathetic. This causes him to feel that Behe is "explaining things" while the scientists are "obstructing." The whole thing is emotion-driven.
I think that beneath the surface of this particular rant, as well as beneath the surface of a lot of the rest of the anti-evolution movement, lies the same form of reactionary romanticism that lies behind the lady in the drug store that blew her top about homeopathy.
BTW, your previous post about this inspired a blog post here (posting it cause trackback didn't work):
http://www.greythumb.org/blog/index.php?/archives/67-What-is-an-expert…
That guy your were arguing with on the forum (javelin) is a condescending little snot. If he ever behaved like that in face-to-face arguments, he runs a high risk of getting a punch in the face from someone.
As a group we need to do a much better job of presenting evolution to the public.
This sort of depends on which "we" you're talking about--scientists, or defenders of good science. If the former, then I'd have to disagree with you, on the grounds that we shouldn't conflate science and public relations (the way, for example, the ID movement has). If the latter, then I'd wholeheartedly agree. I don't see anything particularly wrong with scientists spending their time on research and publications for the scientific community, and letting other people handle the "educating the public" bit (unless of course they're interested in/good at the rhetorical part, in which case, more power to them). We could certainly use more people who fall into the knowledgeable-about-scientific-matters-but-also-able-to-communicate-effectively category. And of course strengthening science education, or at least protecting it from the attacks of the pseudoscience mongers, would go a long way towards increasing the general public's knowledge.
Of course, this isn't helped when the ID-ers (soon to be IE-ers - 'Intelligent Evolution') are continually attacking evolution and trying to have it removed from the classroom, leading many teachers to simply skip over evolution to avoid the hassle that ensues.
Scientists are struggling to simply keep teaching evolution at the present level in public schools, never mind expanding the teaching to other areas.
This isn't just a problem for evolution; many areas of science and even science itself to a certain extent seem to be increasingly under siege.
It certainly is possible to write about science in such a way that non-scientists can understand. However, it can be tedious trying to provide all the necessary background explanations without sounding condescending or overly dumbing down the material. This, of course, is what makes it difficult when arguing the soundbites regurgitated by the ID crowd. And even when done well (as by Stephen J. Gould in his Natural History columns of recent memory), some people still refuse to pay attention--they know those damned evilutionists are trying to bring them to Satan and there is no communication possible. But perhaps it's worth the effort for the sake of those who are willing to listen.
I have to disagree with Urizen's points.
First, a century, or certainly a half-century, of "science education" has gotten us to the current situation. Check out the NSF website for its lastest annual survey of U.S. science illiteracy. Simply reloading and refiring the science education weapon is more of the same. And the major trend driving education in the near term, standard-testing-based comparison shopping, is going in the opposite direction. A major part of the problem is science education has failed when it comes to the general population.
Second, while I agree wholeheartedly that only scientists who are talented communicators should be in the political arena, there's another way one can understand, " As a group we need to do a much better job of presenting evolution to the public." All scientist should take responsibility for getting evolutionary biology into the business of psychomarketing the truth. There are many ways to do this, such as monetary contributions and other fundraising, activism within professional organizations, and generally advocating a rationale for science getting more serious about public communication.
I.D.'s interests, and that of those supporting it, will eventually lead them to go after the funding sources for the scientific research behind evolutionary science. And this same part of our culture has problems with much of contemporary science, so large swaths of scientific research are at risk. I'm betting that in the next 10 years there will be a well-funded, national campaign to eradicate tenure at U.S. universities. This is all about psychomarketing applied to politics, and everybody on the side of science needs to work at getting science into the same game.
First, a century, or certainly a half-century, of "science education" has gotten us to the current situation.
I'm not entirely sure what the disagreement is here; I'm not advocating the status quo, but rather a strengthening of science education, which involves not only defending it from attacks on specific scientific stances, but also offering a better and more consistent explanation of how the scientific process works and why it is valuable as a source of knowledge (more valuable than, say, arbitrary faith-based declarations about "the way things are"). Also, I think it's a mistake to place the entirety of the blame on the doorstep of science education, when a variety of other factors--student apathy (yes, this is partially an institutional problem, but not entirely), politicization, opposition to good science from the fundamentalist right--also affect things negatively.
I.D.'s interests, and that of those supporting it, will eventually lead them to go after the funding sources for the scientific research behind evolutionary science. And this same part of our culture has problems with much of contemporary science, so large swaths of scientific research are at risk.
As you point out, this isn't just an issue for evolutionary biology--nor is it exclusively an issue for science education. The matter at hand is a larger and more fundamental one, namely the politicization of institutions over which politics shouldn't hold such sway (and of course I include religious dogma under this same 'politics' heading, given how inseparable the two have become in recent years).
My overall point is this. Fixing these institutional problems via public action, marketing, etc. is not the exclusive responsibility of the scientific community. It is just as much the responsibility of those of us not directly involved in scientific research, especially those who have a knack for expressing complex theory in a more palatable form. I don't think we're really in disagreement here, except that what you claim as the scientific community's responsibility is something I consider to be everyone's responsibility. Research scientists are certainly in a position of having considerably more background knowledge and more awareness of current happenings in science, but that doesn't mean the onus is on them to do all of the work of defending science. The things you cite as potential contributions--monetary contributions, fundraising, activism, general science advocacy--are things with which we can (and should) all get involved. Yes, the anti-science crowd will go and have gone after funding, but that's all the more reason for the rest of us to speak up.
It would be convenient if scientists were better at marketing their ideas to laypeople, but that doesn't mean the burden should fall exclusively on them to do so. It's not as if they have an overabundance of free time as it is, and personally I'd rather have them devoting their time to what they're good at; the rest of us should be stepping up and taking some of the pressure off.
Urizen.
You're right, we don't have any disagreement. I shouldn't have confined my thinking to the scientific community, nor assumed posters were largely scientists. After all, I'm not one either.
After all, I'm not one either.
Nor I, for that matter. Laypeople pride! Or something like that.