more intelligent design, plus michael crichton bashing!

Salon.com has a lengthy article discussing the latest skirmish in the evolution vs. creationism battle in educational districts. You have to click-through a brief ad to read the whole thing, but it's worth reading.

Fundamentally, the problem is summarized by this excerpt:

This past December, Republican strategist Jack Burkman appeared on MSNBC's "Scarborough Country" to back creationism in terms of populist democracy. "Why should the state and the federal government have a monopoly on defining what constitutes science?" he asked. "I see no problem with presenting a creationist view in the schools, given that 70 percent of Americans want that. The law should reflect democratic desires. It should reflect public desires."

Of course, public desires don't determine the physical facts of the world. "The best argument that the creationists have got is that it's only fair to teach both sides," Matzke said. "The problem with that argument is that science is not a democracy and a lot of times there aren't two correct sides. There are people who believe that the sun goes around the earth. They're called geocentrists. That doesn't mean we should teach that."

In other words, there is a common misperception that all opinions and ideas are equal. Every issue has multiple equivalent viewpoints.

This is utter horseshit. Wishing won't make it so. You can close your eyes and pretend the world works differently, but that has nothing to do with whether bacteria cause disease, it will not make the universe 6000 years old, and it will not make evolution false. Some opinions are, in fact, just wrong. In the words of Scott (Dilbert) Adams, "Since when did ignorance become a point of view?"

This "balanced treatment" stuff is a crock. We might discuss the flat earthers in historical context, but we don't give their views equal weight in a science classroom. Because they are wrong. Like it or not, evolution is as true as gravity.

Science works because it ultimately rejects concepts that do not accurately describe the data. Yes, science is a human interpretation of the world, but it makes an attempt at predicting future events rather than just wishing things were so.

And now the Michael Crichton bashing!

Also of note on Salon.com is an interview with Jared Diamond. Diamond is a brilliant scientist, and an uncommon writer. His writings are universally reviled by right-wing reactionaries who deride anyone who disagrees with them as tree-worshipping Liberal weenies. Which should be enough of a reason for anyone with half a brain to want to read them.

To facilitate the Michael Chrichton bashing, an excerpt from the interview with Jared Diamond:

Have you heard of Michael Crichton's new book, "State of Fear," and its premise that a bunch of environmentalists are upset that their cause isn't getting the attention it deserves so they go around staging environmental disasters? Crichton has said publicly, as well as in his heavily footnoted book, that global warming is bunk -- which would be laughable were not the print run of his book one and a half million copies.

Everything you say is true. There are a couple of things to be added to it. One is that my previous book, "Guns, Germs, and Steel," has sold more copies than Michael Crichton's one and a half million, so I think my new book will get to more readers. And the other thing is that Michael Crichton is a very skilled writer of fiction. And fiction is, by definition, the telling of stories that are untrue. He's very good at that. And I'm a writer of nonfiction, which aims to be the telling of stories that are true.

Except Crichton thinks he's a scientist. He thinks he can interpret extremely complex climatological data using sophisticated statistical techniques better than the world's brightest and most highly-trained climatologists. Crichton thinks the world's brightest and most highly-trained climatologists are so crippled by unstated political motives that they are, in effect, lying about the data. Either overtly, or without even knowing it. They don't know how to interpret their own data.

But not Michael Crichton. He knows better than all of those guys. He is, after all, a medical doctor. He's much smarter than those scientists, who just have PhDs.

No doubt his ideas on climatology will have as much effect as "Jurassic Park" has had on genetic research. Useful as a plot device, but of no actual scientific value. Just because he's rich and thinks he's smart doesn't make him right.