The role of theism in science: A short answer for why intelligent design is not science, and why philosophy shouldn’t be taught in high school chemistry classes

August 12, 2008

This will be a short post, and so will confuse the long-winded but short-thought intelligent design advocates, especially those who claim to be philosophers, and especially those who claim to be philosophers of science who can see a role for intelligent design.

A short visit to Telic Thoughts last week produced a revelation that they have a new philosopher who wants to argue that intelligent design “philosophically” could be science, if. I answered that argument at some length, in lay terms, here: “Intelligent Design, a pig that does not fly.”

Dr. Francis Beckwith, at Baylor, appears to have dropped his campaign to teach philosophy in science classes since he rediscovered that God visits the Pope, and since he moved on to more serious philosophical pursuits and away from his practice of confusing people about the law of separation of church and state in America (especially confusing the Texas State Board of Education).  We hope Beckwith sticks with philosophy and stays out of Texas textbooks.

So there was a vacancy in the phalanx of defenders of intelligent design, in the slot reserved for company store philosohers. Dr. Brad Monton volunteered for the job.  Monton has a blog, here. Monton philosophizes at the University of Colorado.

What should be the role of theism in science?  Exactly this:  Theism should encourage scientists to be diligent, to be honest, to ask tough questions, and be kind.  Theism should encourage scientists to be wise stewards of their lab resources and time, and to share the fruits of their work with humanity, for the benefit of all creation (no, not “creationism”).

That’s it.  Honest and thorough, not mean.  Work quickly and true.

If scientists stick to the noble purposes of their work, using these noble methods, we will see a quick death to creationism and intelligent design, which clamor and riot to be included in the science texts though they have not a lick of evidence to support them that is honest, true and nobly gained.

Philosophical debates do not belong in high school science classes, nor middle school or elementary school science classes.  The fun of science, the honest ethics of science, the value of science, and the stuff of science are appropriate topics for those science classes.  Especially school kids should not be encouraged to offer unevidenced, petulent denials of the facts as we know them.  That will only encourage them to become larcenists, disturbed individuals, and Republican state legislators.  Heaven knows we don’t need those.

Wes Elsberry agrees at his blog, The Austringer, but with more felicity:

The issue is not whether science could make progress in spite of re-adoption of 17th century theistic science, but whether theistic science could provide any benefit to the methods of science today. Monton, Plantinga, and the neo-Luddites have not convincingly made that case. Mostly, they haven’t even badly made that case. They seem to assume that science would be better off reverting to 17th century theistic science and become perplexed when scientists disagree with them. We had that debate, we call it “the 19th century”. Nobody has shown that the mostly-theistic body of scientists who decided to eschew supernatural conjectures as part of science were wrong to do so. Mostly, I think, because they were right to do so, and their reasoning still applies today.

Monton seeks a publisher.  I wish he’d seek a course in botany, another in zoology, another in genetics, and one in evolution.  He might find something worth publishing, then.

Philosophically, anything fits in science, if there is evidence to support it, and especially if there is theory that supports it and offers solid explanations that can be relied upon. But we don’t teach philosophy to kids.  We teach the kids the evidence.  Philosophically, any voodoo science could be considered science, if there were evidence to support it.  Philosophically, the FAA should regulate flying pigs that pose a threat to commercial and general aviation.  Pragmatically, however, pigs don’t fly.  In regulation of our air space, and in our science classes, we rely on theory backed by hard evidence.  I wish theists would all agree on that point, and shut up about intelligent design until some institute of discovery actually provides research results that provide evidence that ID is science, rather than philosophy.

See?  I said it would be short.

10 Comments | Accuracy, Creationism, Education, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Politics, Religion, Science, State school boards, Teaching, Voodoo science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

The very secret Darwin letter you never hoped to see

August 11, 2008

You can see it here, at the Sneer Review.

What do you think? Is Darwin outed forever?

Gotta run. Someone is knocking at the door — Mencken’s Ghost, probably.

Could be Ben Stein, I suppose.

Tip of the old scrub brush to Kevin Fisher, Texas Citizens for Science.

Leave a Comment » | Creationism, Darwin, Evolution, History, Hoaxes, Humor, Religion, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Northern Ireland creationists push ID for schools

August 11, 2008

Ireland’s economy makes a bright spot on the Emerald Isle.  Ireland no longer appears the backward, backwater it was for much of the 20th century, producing people angry enough to write fantastically.

Northern Ireland?  How can one small island contain such contradictions?  Today, when religiously-fueled backwardness rears its head, it’s more often from the counties of Northern Ireland, the counties England still rules.  It seems that religionists in the northern counties want to keep their area away from the economic success of the south, fighting against almost all advances in economics, technology, and thinking.

That’s the case with the most recent outbreak of creationist tom foolery.

In a recent eruption, Democratic Unionist Party called for intelligent design to be given equal time in public schools.  Better, one guy says, get rid of evolution in science classes altogether, according to a story in The Irish Times (the good reporting and writing still comes from the southern counties).  Heck, he’d probably be happy to get rid of science classes altogether.

Mervyn Storey, who chairs the Stormont education committee, said his “ideal” would be the removal of evolutionary teaching from the curriculum altogether.

“This is not about removing anything from the classroom, although that would probably be the ideal for me, but this is about us having equality of access to other views as to how the world came into existence and that I think is a very, very important issue for many parents in Northern Ireland.”

Mr Storey has also challenged education minister Caitríona Ruane to apply her principles of “equality” to the issue.

“She tells us she’s all for equality; surely if that is the case, you can’t have one set of interpretations being taught at the expense of others,” he told the Belfast News Letter.

Creationists take a position that even the radical Sinn Fein disavows.  When your advocacy is outside the bounds of the radicals, it’s time to reevaluate.

Northern Ireland is already riven by religiously-driven strife.  Creationism wants to throw gasoline on that fire.  Pray for the peacemakers and scholars to win.

(Full text of The Irish Times story below the fold.)

Read the rest of this entry »

8 Comments | Creationism, Education, Education quality, History, Public education, Religion, Science | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Creationist educational problem

August 10, 2008

Y’all with a smattering of understanding about evolution:  Go to this blog and help straighten out the creationists, will you?

“Creationist medical dilemma” at Unreasonable Faith

This is one of the hottest posts in the WordPress blogging continent at the moment.  Unreasonable Faith posted the old Doonesbury cartoon about the guy whose doctor diagnoses tuberculosis, and then asks the guy whether he’s a creationist before prescribing treatment (if you don’t know the cartoon, go see!).  I don’t think it was intended to attract so much traffic.

In the past three days creationists have moved into the comments section with all manner of creationist misinformation.  Few of the creationists are the hard-shelled, obnoxious type, but they could use some good information on genetics, mutations and evolution rates from someone familiar with the topics.

Leave a Comment » | Creationism, Evolution, Health care, Religion, Science, Voodoo science | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Disaster at Arches National Park

August 10, 2008

Wall Arch, 12th largest, one of the better-known and most-seen natural arches in Arches National Park, Utah, collapsed.

Wall Arch, before and after collapse - National Park Service photos

Wall Arch, before and after collapse – National Park Service photos

“Not being a geologist, I can’t get very technical but it just went kaboom,” [Arches NP] Chief Ranger Denny Ziemann said. “The middle of the arch just collapsed under its own weight. It just happens.”

Wall Arch, located along the popular Devils Garden Trail, was 71 feet tallwide and 33 1/2 feet widetall, ranking it 12th in size among the known arches inside the park. Lewis T. McKinney first reported and named Wall Arch in 1948.

No one reported observing the arch collapse and there were no visitor injuries, the National Park Service said.

Read the report from the Salt Lake Tribune.

Some tourist on Sunday, August 3, or Monday, August 4, got the last photograph of Wall Arch still standing. Was it you? Were you close? Give us a shout in the comments if so.

Other resources:

x

Other blogs and later reports:

30 Comments | Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, geology, History, Natural history, Natural resources, Science, Travel | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

63rd anniversary: Hiroshima, August 6; Nagasaki, August 9

August 9, 2008

63 years ago, U.S. military action brought a quick close to hostilities without an invasion of Japan, with the detonation of two atomic bombs, one over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and one over Nagasaki on August 9.

Daily Yomiuri Online carried a description of memorial events in Hiroshima today, from Yomiuri Shimbun:

NAGASAKI–The Nagasaki municipal government held a ceremony Saturday marking the 63rd anniversary of the atomic bombing of the city, at which participants called for the abolition of all nuclear weapons.

A total of 5,650 A-bomb survivors, representatives of victims’ families from around the nation and Nagasaki citizens participated in the ceremony. Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda also attended the ceremony, which was held in Nagasaki Peace Park near ground zero.

Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue read out the Nagasaki Peace Declaration, which urges the worldwide abolition of nuclear weapons.

“Human beings have no future unless nuclear weapons are eliminated. We shall clearly say no to nuclear weapons,” Taue said.

The ceremony started at 10:40 a.m. Three books listing the names of 3,058 people confirmed to have died as a result of the bombing in the past year were placed inside a memorial box in front of the Peace Statue.

The total number of books listing the names of the deceased is 147, and the number of names is 145,984.

Representatives of surviving victims, bereaved families, the prime minister and Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba placed flowers at the site.

At 11:02 a.m., the time the atomic bomb struck, ceremony participants offered a silent prayer. At the same time, local high school students rang the Bells of Nagasaki.

In the peace declaration, Taue read from an academic paper written by four people, including a former U.S. secretary of state, which promoted a new policy for developing nuclear weapons. The proposal encouraged countries to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The mayor said world nuclear powers “should sincerely fulfill their responsibility of nuclear disarmament,” and urged the government to pass the three nonnuclear principles into law.

This year also marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Takashi Nagai, a medical doctor who helped rescue of victims after the bombing.

The mayor referenced one of the doctor’s remarks, saying: “There are no winners or losers in a war. There is only destruction.”

Shigeko Mori, 72, representing survivors of the bombing, read out an oath for peace that said Japan should promote its Constitution and the three nonnuclear principles to the rest of the world to prevent nuclear proliferation.

Fukuda gave a speech, saying, “Japan should play a responsible role in the international community as a nation cooperating for peace.”

(Aug. 10, 2008)

Other information:

Other related posts at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub:

4 Comments | Atomic Bomb, History, Japan, Manhattan Project, Peace, Politics, Science, Travel, World War II | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

No one believes it. Is it so?

August 9, 2008

One of the great mysteries of history is how an entire nation of people can follow a leader into tragedy — a stupid war, economic morass, cultural suicide, genocide, or other tragedy — without appearing to notice they were going against their national values, against reason, against morality.

I wonder if part of the answer can be found by studying the way our brains perceive things, in particular, the way our brains force us to see things that are not so.

Some things are just so unbelievable, our brains tell us we’re seeing something different, something more believable. Here are two examples, the Charlie Chaplin mask illusion, and the Einstein mask illusion.

Chaplin — you know it’s concave, but the nose sticks out every time:

Einstein — is Big Brother really watching you? What do your eyes say?

Here’s a nasty little kicker: Even when most people know that it’s an illusion, they can’t perceive the illusion-in-action; as Paul Simon wrote, “Still a man sees what he wants to see and he disregards the rest.” See Stephen Fry’s discussion about the illusion from BBC2:

Historical applications

  • CIA chief William Colby was involved in Operation Phoenix during the Vietnam War. When investigations revealed that the operation involved torture, many people refused to believe the U.S. would be involved in torture (good!). And even after he admitted to Congressional committees that he had personally authorized the torture, people had difficulty believing it. David Wise wrote an article about Operation Phoenix for the New York Times Magazine, July 1, 1973: “Not one of Colby’s friends or neighbors, or even his critics on the Hill, would, in their wildest imagination, conceive of Bill Colby attaching electric wires to a man’s genitals and personally turning the crank. “Not Bill Colby… He’s a Princeton man.'”
  • “[T]he Russians are finished. They have nothing left to throw against us,” a confident Adolf Hitler told Gen. Franz Halder in July 1941. Russia mired down the German army, making the phrase “the Eastern Front” a dreaded death sentence in German commands. In the end, it was the Soviet Army that first got to Berlin, and captured Hitler’s command bunker where der Führer had committed suicide a short time before. Adding to the historic irony, twice over: First, Stalin refused to believe his intelligence service reports that the Nazis were massing on the border of Russia, just two years after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which pledged neither nation would invade the other. Second, Hitler’s generals had studied Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812, working to avoid all the mistakes Napoleon made. So sure were the Nazis of their superiority to Napoleon in every way, they invaded Russia on the anniversary of Napoleon’s invasion, June 22, 1941. Great shades of Santayana’s Ghost!
  • Bush administration historians will wonder why Bush was able to do what he did, in the Iraq war and other situations foreign and domestic, with even members of his own party who saw him close up believing he’d do something different. See this story by Ron Susskind, “Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George Bush,” New York Times Magazine, October 17, 2004.
  • The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, based on an incident in the Gulf of Tonkin near Vietnam.  (See also documents from the National Security Agency archives.)
  • Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.

Richard Feynman discussed at length how scientists know their experimental results are accurate, and how to keep science honest. He pointed out that most of the time, errors creep in at the start, and some people just refuse to believe they exist. It is easiest to fool ourselves, Feynman said — and so a good scientist understands that, and protects against self-deception. If only other disciplines could adopt that philosophy, strategy and tactics!

Faith can get us through troubled times, but often gets us into troubled times in the first place.

Do you have other examples of self-delusion by illusionary means?

Tip of the old scrub brush to Vous Pensez.

Leave a Comment » | Brain learning, History, Politics, psychology, Reason, Santayana's ghost, Scams, Science, Science and faith, Vietnam, World War II | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

African nations back off of limited DDT use

August 7, 2008

Anti-DDT business interests appear triumphant, if only temporarily,  in their efforts to stop the use of DDT in the fight against malaria.

ProtectAfrica.com reports use of DDT has been stopped in northern Uganda.  Nine corporations sued to stop the spraying.  New Visions reports a shift to a chemical named ICON for use in Indoor Residual Spraying, designed to protect people against mosquitoes in their homes.

I have links to stories saying Rwanda has abandoned DDT in the past few weeks, but none of the links work.

Meanwhile, from The East African in Nairobi, Kenya, comes the report that Tanzania became the first East African nation in recent years to use DDT for limited, indoor spraying. [But be wary of this source; the article also claims many nations outlawed DDT after 1972; not accurate in Africa, nor most other places.]

There is high irony in businesses opposing the use of DDT when environmental organizations in other nations do not oppose it.

6 Comments | Africa, Agriculture, Business, Business Ethics, DDT, Environmental protection, Health care, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

What is life, anyway?

August 7, 2008

No, this is not some philsophical treatise.  Nature recently published a paper by a French team that discovered a virus that infects another virus.  (You probably don’t have access to Nature either, but keep reading, there is hope.)

Wait a minute:  Are viruses alive? They can’t reproduce on their own, so, some scientists argue, they are not really alive.  Viruses infect living things.  Well, then doesn’t a virus infecting a virus imply the host virus is alive?

What is life?  Do we have to redefine it, once again, again?

It’s turtles, all the way down, for some of us — but you, Dear Reader, should probably read a good description of the paper, over at Living the Scientific Life.

Oh — the name of the new thing?  It’s a satellite virus, sorta, and it looks right, so the team that discovered it calls it “Sputnik.”

2 Comments | Biology, Research, Science | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Thought of the moment: Environmental movement most diverse

August 6, 2008

Environmentalism is the most politically diverse movement in history. Here in the Kingsnorth climate camp, I have met anarchists, communists, socialists, liberals, conservatives and, mostly, pragmatists. I remember sitting in a campaign meeting during the Newbury bypass protests and marvelling at the weirdness of our coalition. In the front row sat the local squirearchy: brigadiers in tweeds and enormous moustaches, titled women in twin sets and headscarves. In the middle were local burghers of all shapes and sizes. At the back sat the scuzziest collection of grunge-skunks I have ever laid eyes on. The audience disagreed about every other subject under the sun – if someone had asked us to decide what day of the week it was, the meeting would had descended into fisticuffs – but everyone there recognised that our quality of life depends on the quality of our surroundings.

The environment is inseparable from social justice. Climate change, for example, is primarily about food and water. It threatens the fresh water supplies required to support human life. As continental interiors dry out and the glaciers feeding many of the rivers used for irrigation disappear, climate change presents the greatest of all threats to the future prospects of the poor. The rich will survive for a few decades at least, as they can use their money to insulate themselves from the effects. The poor are being hammered already.

British ecologist, journalist and activist, George Monbiot (Wikimedia image)

British ecologist, journalist and activist, George Monbiot (Wikimedia image)

Leave a Comment » | Climate change, Environmental justice, Environmental protection, Global warming, History, Politics, Quotes, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Smoke without fire, in California

August 6, 2008

Geology, geography, meteorology, climatology, chemistry — whatever you call it, reality always trumps fiction.

From the headline, “Ventura County hot spot puzzles experts,” I wondered whether a caldera was sending a telegram. Probably not.*

The ground smokes, but there is no fire. Experts’ best guess: Drought causes the ground to dry out, and crack. Petroleum stuff (in gas form) bubbles up from underground, into the cracked earth. Oxygen from the surface mixes deep. Somewhere underground the hydrocarbons meet the oxygen and the resulting combustion heats the ground to 800° Fahrenheit.

It’s a dry land analog of the methane hydrates warming and bubbling up in the ocean. The waste products contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, but so would the emissions if they didn’t burn first.

Cause or effect of climate change? Significant?

*  The Long Valley Caldera is about 300 miles north of Ventura County.  Ventura County itself is not particularly volcanically active, from what I understand.

6 Comments | Climate change, Geography - Physical, geology, Science | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Fred Flintstone waded here: Hoaxsters ready to teach creationism to Texas kids

August 5, 2008

Creationists in Texas claim to have found a stone with footprints of a human and a dinosaur.

No, I’m not kidding.

Hoax

Hoax “dinosaur and human footprints” claimed to be found in the Paluxy River near Glen Rose, Texas.

Could you make this stuff up? Well, yeah, I guess some people think you could. Somebody did make this stuff up.

According to a report in the too-gullible Mineral Wells Index, long-time hoaxster and faux doctorate Carl Baugh’s Creation Evidence Museum announced the rock was found just outside Dinosaur Valley State Park. The area has been the site of more than one creationist hoax since 1960, and was an area rife with hoax dinosaur prints dating back to the 1930s. (See these notes on the warning signs of science hoaxes and history hoaxes.)

The estimated 140-pound stone was recovered in July 2000 from the bank of a creek that feeds the Paluxy River near Glen Rose, Texas, located about 53 miles south of Fort Worth. The find was made just outside Dinosaur Valley State Park, a popular destination for tourists known for its well-preserved dinosaur tracks and other fossils.

The limestone contains two distinct prints – one of a human footprint and one belonging to a dinosaur. The significance of the cement-hard fossil is that it shows the dinosaur print partially over and intersecting the human print.

In other words, the stone’s impressions indicate that the human stepped first, the dinosaur second. If proven genuine, the artifact would provide evidence that man and dinosaur roamed the Earth at the same time, according to those associated with the find and with its safekeeping. It could potentially toss out the window many commonly held scientific theories on evolution and the history of the world.

Except, as you can see, Dear Reader and Viewer, it’s a hoax. No dinosaur has a footprint exactly resembling the print of Fred Flintstone’s pet Dino, as the rock shows; nor do human footprints left in mud look like the print shown.

Dear God, save us from such tom-foolery, please.

To the newspaper’s credit, they consulted with an expert who knows better. The expert gave a conservative, scientific answer, however, when the rock deserved a chorus of derisive hoots:

However, Dr. Phillip Murry, a vertebrate paleontology instructor in the Geoscience department of Tarleton State University at Stephenville, Texas, stated in his response to an interview request: “There has never been a proven association of dinosaur (prints) with human footprints.”

The longtime amateur archeologist who found the fossil thinks that statement is now proven untrue.

“It is unbelievable, that’s what it is,” Alvis Delk, 72, said of what could be not only the find of a lifetime, but of mankind.

Delk is a current Stephenville and former Mineral Wells resident (1950-69) who said he found the rock eight years ago while on a hunt with a friend, James Bishop, also of Stephenville, and friend and current fiancee Elizabeth Harris.

Yes, it’s unbelievable.

For comparison, real hominid footprints look much different — the print below was left in a thin-layer of volcanic ash about 4 million years ago, 61 million years after dinosaurs went extinct, according to timelines corroborated by geologists, paleontologists, astronomers, nuclear physicists and biologists:

Print of a hominid, found at Laetoli, Africa; image from Stanford University

Print of a hominid, found at Laetoli, Tanzania, Africa; image from Stanford University. Photo: J. Reader/SPL

With luck, serious scientists will get a chance to analyze the prints soon, and note that they are hoaxes. If history is any guide, however, Baugh and his comrades will keep the rock from scientific analysis, claiming that scientists refuse to analyze it.

The rock is approximately 30 inches by 24 inches. The human footprint, with a deep big toe impression, measures 11 inches in length. Baugh said the theropod track was made by an Acrocanthosaurus. Baugh said this particular track was likely made by a juvenile Acrocanthosaurus, one he said was probably about 20 feet long, stood about 8 feet tall and walked stooped over, weighing a few tons.

Its tracks common in the Glen Rose area, the Acrocanthosaurus is a dinosaur that many experts believe existed primarily in North America during the mid-Cretaceous Period, approximately 125 million to 100 million years ago.

Baugh said Delk’s discovery casts doubts on that theory. Baugh said he believes both sets of prints were made “within minutes, or no more than hours of each other” about 4,500 years ago, around the time of Noah’s Flood. He said the clay-like material that the human and dinosaur stepped in soon hardened, becoming thick, dense limestone common in North Texas.

He said the human print matches seven others found in the same area, stating the museum has performed excavations since 1982 in the area Baugh has dubbed the “Alvis Delk Cretaceous Footprint” discovery.

This “find” comes as the State Board of Education begins rewriting science standards for Texas schools. The chairman of the SBOE is a committed creationist who publicly says he hopes to get creationism into the standards and textbooks in Texas, miseducating Texas students that creationism has a scientific basis.

Delk’s own daughter, Kristi Delk, is a geology major at Tarleton State University in Stephenville and holds different beliefs from her dad about the creation of Earth and the origins of man.

She said she wants to see data from more tests before jumping to any conclusions.

“I haven’t come to terms with it,” she said. “I am skeptical, actually.”

Listen to your daughter, Mr. Delk.

In a story Texas educators hope to keep completely unrelated to the foot prints hoax, Mineral Wells area schools showed gains in academic achievement on the Texas state test program.

Additional resources:

________________________

Gary Hurd at Stones and Bones, who Is a bit of an expert in this stuff, calls “fake.“

Here is how to fake a patina that will look like this fake fossil: Brush the surface with vinegar, and then sprinkle with baking powder followed by baking soda, and let dry. Repeat until you are happy with the results. This is not the only way, or even the best way. But it is simple, and will fool the average fool. Especially easy if they want to be fooled.

So, having spent a little bit more time on the photo of this fake, I feel that I understand a bit more about how it was produced. A legitimate dinosaur track was found and removed. Incompetent, unprofessional “Cleaning” damaged it. An parital overprint, or simple erosion depression was “improved” by adding “toes.” The faked surfaces were smothed over with a simple kitchen concoction to make a “patina.” Artifact fabricators next bury the fake for a year or two, or they smear it with fertilizer and leave it exposed. This helps weather the object and obscure tool marks.

Did you find this post useful, or entertaining? Vote to share it with others — click the “Digg” button above; list it on Reddit or other services, if you have memberships there. Link to this post from your own blog. Help spread the word this hoax is coming.

Help stamp out hoaxes; run with the word:

Add to FacebookAdd to NewsvineAdd to DiggAdd to Del.icio.usAdd to StumbleuponAdd to RedditAdd to BlinklistAdd to TwitterAdd to TechnoratiAdd to Furl

Save

Save

37 Comments | Accuracy, Bogus history, Creationism, Education, History, Hoaxes, Public education, Religion, Science, Texas, Texas Citizens for Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Montauk “monster?” No, it’s a raccoon

August 5, 2008

Darren Naish at Tetrapod Zoology did the scientific work any RKSI person ought to do, and identified the carcass that washed up on a beach in Montauk, New York, as a poor old raccoon.  (“RKSI?”  Road Kill Scene Investigator — though maybe this should be “Beach Kill.”)

Raccoon, Tennessee Department of Health Photo

Raccoon, Procyon lotor, Tennessee Department of Health photo

Beaches of Montauk, New York, appear to be safe.

Religionists often accuse me of having “faith” in science, and to a small degree that is accurate.  I do have faith that, much of the time, there is a rational explanation for things that at first appear magical, or to verify stories of monsters, goblins, or Republican platform planks.  Naish uses his experience in watching decomposing critters on the beach to show how to identify the creature in Montauk.  This is a powerful demonstration of the power of scientific methods:  Naish worked the issue from 3,470 miles away (about 5,585 km).

With a bit of luck the popularity of this monster story, and the resolution of the mysteries by Naish and other like-minded scientists, might inspire a few people to do the CSI-style thing, to actually study science.  One might study animal anatomy, as Naish has done, or one might apply to the University of Tennessee’s Forensic Anthropology program at the Knoxville campus.

Naish said:

Like all of these sorts of mysteries, this one was fun while it lasted, but the photos that really clinched it for a lot of people weren’t (so far as I can tell) released on the same day as the initial, tantalizing mystery photo (the one shown at the very top). And I don’t mind this sort of thing too much: we get to see a lot of dumbass speculation, sure, but the immense interest that these stories generate show that people – even those not particularly interested in zoology or natural history – have a boundless appetite for mystery animals. If only there were some clever way of better utilizing this fascination.

The truth is out there. Sometimes it helps to have a good university library and some scientific knowledge to flush it out, and flesh it out.  Students, you can become the bearer of answers you seek.

Word of the day:  Taphonomy (beyond the usual, “one more science creationists don’t do”)

Other resources:

Tip of the old scrub brush to Pharyngula, once again (so many tips there, it’s probably soaked).

6 Comments | Accuracy, Geography - Physical, History, Science, Travel | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Blue Collar Scientist, Jeff Medkeff

August 4, 2008

Blue Collar Scientist burst on the blogosphere last December.  News from Pharyngula is that Jeff Medkeff’s liver cancer took him — he died last night.

With luck, someone will be sure his on-line and in-print work is archived.  His voice, his activism, his enthusiasm, his patience and deep knowledge seem irreplaceable.  Scientists and other rational people will have to work much harder to fill in the gaps.

So long, Jeff.

Leave a Comment » | Health care, Point of personal privilege, Science, Weblogs | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

DDT poisoning spreads: Critics Kling to their favorite untruths

August 4, 2008

No, I’m not talking about actual poisoning by the chemical, an organochloride insecticide. I’m talking again about people driven to madness by false claims that DDT will cure malaria, that DDT is banned for use against malaria, and that some few super powerful people, all of them evil environmentalists, are forcing governments, all health workers, and the world’s tobacco companies to stop the use of DDT — ergo, they say, everyone who has died from malaria since [some point in the past that is surely the fault of environmentalists] died due to lack of DDT.

Which makes those people worse murderers than Stalin at least, so the crazies claim.

Here’s the latest fuse that set me off. I’ll analyze it below the fold, after the lecture.

Is it a virus that spreads in late summer? I’ve noted here earlier the tendency of the pro-DDT wackoes to surge out of the woodwork in summer to claim, against the facts, that West Nile virus would be no problem if there were DDT. Mosquitoes that carry West Nile are best killed in as larva, living in water; DDT is not as efficient as other larvacides, particularly when weighed against DDT’s tendency to kill everything that comes in contact with the water and the plants and animals living in and around it.

But watch: Any mention of malaria in the news, and they drop letters to the editors of every weekly newspaper in America, blaming unnamed environmentalists for killing millions in Africa, or Asia, or both. In the Bizarro™ World of DDT advocates, all insect-borne diseases were on the run until Rachel Carson personally padlocked every DDT manufacturer in the world. I have news browsers set to pick up mentions of DDT, and except for the recent surge in news about the band DDT from Russia, every day brings another internet mention of how DDT could have saved the world, if only.

Dear Reader, Dear God, there are several inaccuracies there. It’s curious that some people can get ideas so exactly contrary to the facts, contrary to reality, so often.

Arnold Kling, economist blogging at the Freedom Fund's Library of Economics and Liberty -- in this case, misblogging against science and medicine.

Arnold Kling, economist blogging at the Freedom Fund’s Library of Economics and Liberty — in this case, misblogging against science and medicine.

Wait. What’s this? There’s a trail of misinformation and disinformation we can follow. This livejournal poster links to this Wikipedia article on “seasteading,” and from there to this blog on the value of seasteading, which bases the pie-in-the-sea philosophy on the common, occasionally-but-randomly correct rant against government, based on Arnold Kling’s rant at EconLog.

Have we seen this before? Yes, Dear Reader, we have — and if you look in the comments to Kling’s rant, you’ll see Tim Lambert fiercely shoveling facts to try to put out the fires of ignorance. I even posted there — back in April. The facts, the links, the arguments, are all there, for anyone with half a brain and half a desire to do the right thing and get the facts right.

April to August (misdated September). The nutty DDT advocates are working on a four month cycle. Repeat the falsehoods every four months, three times a year (intentionally or not; some viral marketing works better if it’s not intentional, like the innocent carriers of typhoid who are unaffected by it, don’t mean to spread it around, but breath the pathogen out with every breath).

Blather, don’t bother to rinse, repeat.

It’s time someone wrote a new book on propaganda, warning of its evils.

Read the rest of this entry »

2 Comments | Accuracy, DDT, Politics, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »