Science, Politics & a Bill to Ban ID: Pleased and Angere

Fire Fly · Post by **Fire Fly** » 2006-02-08 12:36pm

As you all know, there clearly is an attack on science, whether people want to believe it or not; the number of irrational people far outnumber the rational. And for those who simply do not care to join in on the discussion, their ambivalence only adds to the ignorance.

It has come to the point where I have become absolutely disgusted with how partisan academia has become in the last few years. As I was reading my school’s newspaper, there was an article in there which describes the efforts of a state congresswoman, who just so happens to be a Democrat, to get a bill passed to ban the discussion of intelligent design or any other ideology in a scientific context from schools.

Many of the local university professors, ranging from philosophy to various scientific backgrounds, have begun voicing their support for it. I was relatively pleased to see such efforts, as there are few other states currently, I believe, who have chosen to stand their grounds from efforts of the religious fundamentalists.

But in the article, there was a short commentary from the Chair of College Republicans at my university, to which she replies (regarding the new bill), “I think it should be up to local school districts to decide what they want to teach in their schools,” and that people should be presented with facts and left to make up their own mind. She adds, “I don’t see the need for the state Legislature to step in on this.”

Well, she must consider herself a fellow scientist, in the context of performing repetitive experiments and correlating data, since she is clearly studying political science. Over the last few years, I’ve grown very irate about how science has developed into party lines: the Democrats support the sciences while the Republicans support the pseudoscience. The Democrats have been the ones largely advocating stem cell research and the Republicans have been largely advocating live-with-the-disease-gift-that-god-gave-you. The Republicans who have switched sides have done it for political reasons or because they have a disease.

Where are the Republicans who think this bull shit needs to stop? Have you all been castrated and turned into eunuchs? Well, I can tell you right now that scientific evidence has shown that castration will lead to lower testosterone levels, which in turn leads to weight problems, heart problems and being a total fucking pussy.

The only reason why these problems have become so much more prevalent in recent years is because the Republicans decided to actively pay lip service to the fundamentalist irrationals. Now that they have projected the Republicans into power, the fundamentalist demands that their balls must be constantly massaged and that their dick must be constantly sucked…or else no more votes for you! If science and math are the way of the future, as Bush purports, start with a presidential proclamation declaring intelligent design to be false, or is he too much of a pussy? I think the lower testosterone level symptoms are already kicking in.

People on my You’re On Notice list:
President Bush
Senator Bill Frist
Senator John McCane
Senator Rick Santorum
Governor Ernie Fletcher, Kentucky
Congressman John Boehner
Congressman Steve Chabot

These are only the ones who I could think off the top of my head, although I’m sure there are more and although I’m sure there are some Democrats in there, the impression I’m getting is Republicans love falsehoods more. I am a tolerant person, but I won’t be tolerant towards a lie and those who support this lie for whatever reason.

AK_Jedi · Post by **AK_Jedi** » 2006-02-08 01:11pm

Your choice in choosing the college republicans chair as a scientist was a poor one. Quite frankly, political science is not a science. As such, she may or may not even know about the scientific method or any fun stuff like that. I'm sure there are republican scientists out there that support creationism, but I have not met any scientists personally who would make that claim.

It bothers me that the republican has become the religious party. While it is true that there are non-religious republicans, most, if not all, of the overtly religious people I know are republican. The problem, IMO, is that the republicans put party unity above almost anything else. Then we get a few crazies in the upper-echelons, and now almost all republicans are taking the crazy's point of view.

Darth Servo · Post by **Darth Servo** » 2006-02-08 01:13pm

OK, so is there a petition for all of us to sign or what? I'll gladly add my name to support the banning of ID.

Post by **Lagmonster** » 2006-02-08 01:25pm

Fire Fly wrote:As you all know, there clearly is an attack on science, whether people want to believe it or not; the number of irrational people far outnumber the rational. And for those who simply do not care to join in on the discussion, their ambivalence only adds to the ignorance.

You sure you're seeing ambivalence where in fact, you're just not seeing the debate being hosted in large public venues?

ID supporters should be shouted down in podunk-town meetings and crackpot radio shows, not nationwide forums, because they don't deserve to make it that far any more than, say, a debate on whether we should acknowledge new age crystal therapy as part of modern medical training. Scientists might seem few and quiet, but no group of well-disciplined and intelligent people are ever in danger of giving intellectual ground to a mob, and even a fundamentalist president can't tell the mainstream international scientific community - which is larger than just the US - what's science or what's right. Granted, America churning out dimwits isn't a good thing, but loons stomping around saying "This is science now!" doesn't drown out the laughter from other nations, the community, and the publication and peer review groups around the world.

Over the last few years, I’ve grown very irate about how science has developed into party lines: the Democrats support the sciences while the Republicans support the pseudoscience. The Democrats have been the ones largely advocating stem cell research and the Republicans have been largely advocating live-with-the-disease-gift-that-god-gave-you. The Republicans who have switched sides have done it for political reasons or because they have a disease.

I'm sure you don't mean that literally, although I know that the stereotypes tend to draw themselves in the US; I have American family who are both historically republican (although even they gave up on Bush 2.0) and scientists who detest ID, as much as I know uneducated Christian liberals up here who don't give a shit about science and think that a religious theory's as good as any.

Fire Fly · Post by **Fire Fly** » 2006-02-08 01:27pm

AK_Jedi wrote:Your choice in choosing the college republicans chair as a scientist was a poor one. Quite frankly, political science is not a science.

Its called sarcasm.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2006-02-08 01:34pm

to get a bill passed to ban the discussion of intelligent design or any other ideology in a scientific context from schools.

This sounds rather vague. Does that mean that they're banning discussion of ID in any form, or that they're simply trying to ban ID from being passed off as a legitimate scientific theory in schools?

Fire Fly · Post by **Fire Fly** » 2006-02-08 01:40pm

Banned to be discussed in a scientific context. The former would be argued as a violation of freedom of speech, or whatever else ID proponents can pull out of their ass.

tharkûn · Post by **tharkûn** » 2006-02-08 01:42pm

This sounds like very bad precedent to set. If the legislature can ban discussion of one topic, what prohibits from banning another? Given as no present legislature can irrevocably bind a a future one, at some point in time the fundies would be able to do the same thing in reverse.

Science curriculum should not not be decided by politicians.

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2006-02-08 01:44pm

Would debunking it be considered "discussion in a scientific context"? What they should be prevented from doing is attempting to teach it to students as legitimate fact.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2006-02-08 01:47pm

tharkûn wrote:This sounds like very bad precedent to set. If the legislature can ban discussion of one topic, what prohibits from banning another? Given as no present legislature can irrevocably bind a a future one, at some point in time the fundies would be able to do the same thing in reverse.

Science curriculum should not not be decided by politicians.

Read the thread again. They're not banning discussion of it. They're banning it from being passed off as a legitimate field of science. Although I do agree that this can be a bad precedent if done poorly. Perhaps a better method would be having science teachers adhere from passing off studies as a legitimate scientific fact unless they've undergone rigorous peer review and are accepted by the majority of the scientific community.

Post by **Simplicius** » 2006-02-08 02:56pm

Addressing the OP:

As far as I know, state legislatures and local groups (school boards, districts, and the like) play the largest role in determining curricula. If the College Republican Chair is conservative in a traditional way, it makes sense for her to argue for reduced state interference, as an expression of the long-running federalism debate on a more local scale.

Of course, she could have been supporting whichever group that would allow schools to teach ID in a scientific context, and would have sided with the state if they had been pushing such a law. In that case, my previous remark is inapplicable. But in general, there are more reasons for any apparent Republican/Democrat divide regarding the teaching of science besides "Republicans either hate science or are ball-less." Assuming for the moment that I am a science-loving traditional conservative, I may have to choose between legislation promoting science education, and favoring local governance over central governance. Which of those principles would win out in the end? That would be up in the air.

Datana · Post by **Datana** » 2006-02-08 03:01pm

Full text of the bill is up at The Panda's Thumb. It's surprisingly short:

SECTION 1. 118.018 of the statutes is created to read:

118.018 Science instruction. The school board shall ensure that any material presented as science within the school curriculum complies with all of the following:

(1) The material is testable as a scientific hypothesis and describes only natural processes.

(2) The material is consistent with any description or definition of science adopted by the National Academy of Sciences.

I agree with tharkûn, however. As well-intentioned as the bill might be, this is still legislating what material can be discussed in science education, and effectively requires verification through a "the NAS says so" filter. I'm not comfortable trusting curriculum to the whims of any single organization.

In addition, this effectively grants the legislature the ability to define what is and isn't science, which is a bad precedent to make -- if they were replaced by fundies tomorrow, they could simply legislate ID/Creationism/Flying Spaghetti Monsterism into place. Science should be defined by scientists.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2006-02-08 03:10pm

Datana wrote:.

In addition, this effectively grants the legislature the ability to define what is and isn't science, which is a bad precedent to make -- if they were replaced by fundies tomorrow, they could simply legislate ID/Creationism/Flying Spaghetti Monsterism into place. Science should be defined by scientists.

Do you realise how stupid this post sounds? You're criticising the legislature for giving power to the NAS, a board ran by scientists, for having authority to define what is and isn't constituted a science. In other words, scientists defining what is a science. Which is exactly what your're wanting. The legislature in this case is merely removing the authority from school boards to decide what they can teach in science classes.

tharkûn · Post by **tharkûn** » 2006-02-08 05:11pm

Read the thread again. They're not banning discussion of it. They're banning it from being passed off as a legitimate field of science. Although I do agree that this can be a bad precedent if done poorly. Perhaps a better method would be having science teachers adhere from passing off studies as a legitimate scientific fact unless they've undergone rigorous peer review and are accepted by the majority of the scientific community.

Yes that would be a better tact. The legislature establishing legal tests for what is and what is not science is a BAD idea.

Do you realise how stupid this post sounds? You're criticising the legislature for giving power to the NAS, a board ran by scientists, for having authority to define what is and isn't constituted a science. In other words, scientists defining what is a science. Which is exactly what your're wanting. The legislature in this case is merely removing the authority from school boards to decide what they can teach in science classes.

The problem is the precedent. The legislature gives it to the NAS this time; that implies that they have the legal authority to define science or least pick a group to do so on their behalf. The next go round might involve fundies picking a different 'scientific' body as gatekeepers. There simply is no way to bind the authority to the NAS en perpetuity, the legislature would always retain the authority to pick somebody else, unless there is something screwy in the state constitution.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2006-02-08 05:16pm

tharkûn wrote: The problem is the precedent. The legislature gives it to the NAS this time; that implies that they have the legal authority to define science or least pick a group to do so on their behalf. The next go round might involve fundies picking a different 'scientific' body as gatekeepers. There simply is no way to bind the authority to the NAS en perpetuity, the legislature would always retain the authority to pick somebody else, unless there is something screwy in the state constitution.

Unless the NAS manages to dissolve completely, I don't see how that could feasibly happen though. As it is, I'd be surprised if anything similar did happen, considering the sheer size of the scientific community.

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2006-02-08 06:21pm

Surely they could allow several organizations to determine what is or isn't science, just as a fail-safe.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2006-02-08 06:24pm

wolveraptor wrote:Surely they could allow several organizations to determine what is or isn't science, just as a fail-safe.

How many such legitimate organisations are there though? Considering that the NAS has a large amount of volunteer experts helping it, this seems a viable method as any.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-02-08 06:30pm

What the legislature should do is simply state that proposals to inject claims, disclaimers, corrections, or any other information into textbooks or science classes should be banned if they do not come from relevant nationally recognized peer-reviewed sources in the appropriate fields. That would shut down the "ID in science class" movement immediately, without the farce of unqualified legislators deciding what is and isn't science.

tharkûn · Post by **tharkûn** » 2006-02-08 06:34pm

Unless the NAS manages to dissolve completely, I don't see how that could feasibly happen though. As it is, I'd be surprised if anything similar did happen, considering the sheer size of the scientific community.

The NAS need not dissolve. The legislature need only find it "partisan" and "not objective" and pick somebody else. Indeed the entire charter of the NAS rests upon a completely mutable executive order which Bush could change via executive fiat tommorrow.

Think for a moment if Bush changed NAS membership rules, essentially making them presidential appointments. Would you still trust the NAS to be the arbitrators of what can and cannot be taught as science?

The legislature should not have the authority to decalre something "not science", period. Anything else is just begging for the fundies to find a loophole and play merry hell with the system.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2006-02-08 07:09pm

tharkûn wrote:

The NAS need not dissolve. The legislature need only find it "partisan" and "not objective" and pick somebody else. Indeed the entire charter of the NAS rests upon a completely mutable executive order which Bush could change via executive fiat tommorrow.

Think for a moment if Bush changed NAS membership rules, essentially making them presidential appointments. Would you still trust the NAS to be the arbitrators of what can and cannot be taught as science?

The legislature should not have the authority to decalre something "not science", period. Anything else is just begging for the fundies to find a loophole and play merry hell with the system.

Maybe handing it exclusively to one group isn't the best idea, but do you have a better solution for preventing schools from deciding what is and isn't science on their own? Because frankly it shouldn't be up to the school boards to do that.

drachefly · Post by **drachefly** » 2006-02-08 07:41pm

DW's post provides the perfect solution. It describes the basic criteria without vesting authority in any one location.

To change that would be basically to say that the general field of scientists isn't qualified to decide what their positions are.

tharkûn · Post by **tharkûn** » 2006-02-09 08:10am

What the legislature should do is simply state that proposals to inject claims, disclaimers, corrections, or any other information into textbooks or science classes should be banned if they do not come from relevant nationally recognized peer-reviewed sources in the appropriate fields. That would shut down the "ID in science class" movement immediately, without the farce of unqualified legislators deciding what is and isn't science.

Depending on how "nationally recognized" is defined in a legal context, this might work. Do recall though that the POTUS has wide ranging powers to grant recognition about various things.

Maybe handing it exclusively to one group isn't the best idea, but do you have a better solution for preventing schools from deciding what is and isn't science on their own? Because frankly it shouldn't be up to the school boards to do that.

Better to have schoolboards dicking it up for only a few communities than to have the government dick it up for everyone.

In any event with some reservations, Mike's is about good as it is going to get. I'd personally go for "no court, legislature, or executive can declare an idea or theory to be (non)scientific through legal fiat as they never had that right to begin with". That would kill every attempt to inject ID into the school system to date and would prevent them from fighting it out at the ballot box or litigating forever in the courts.

To change that would be basically to say that the general field of scientists isn't qualified to decide what their positions are.

You say that as though the US government hasn't done exactly that numerous times.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-02-09 12:41pm

tharkûn wrote:Depending on how "nationally recognized" is defined in a legal context, this might work. Do recall though that the POTUS has wide ranging powers to grant recognition about various things.

True, but he would have start granting accreditation to large numbers of creationist diploma mills as universities in order to generate a plausible peer-review organization to publish these alternate papers, which is much more politically difficult than simply appointing puppets to federal bureaus which are not necessarily supposed to be academic appointments in the first place anyway. It would make accredited American science degrees worthless, and it would create an absolute shitstorm if he started granting accreditation to bogus universities in order to create pseudoscience "peer review" publications.

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2006-02-09 01:49pm

it would create an absolute shitstorm if he started granting accreditation to bogus universities in order to create pseudoscience "peer review" publications.

Would it? Does the American public even know the difference between a real college and a bogus one? They can really only immediately recognize Ivy League schools like Harvard and Stanford and stuff.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2006-02-09 02:07pm

wolveraptor wrote:
it would create an absolute shitstorm if he started granting accreditation to bogus universities in order to create pseudoscience "peer review" publications.
Would it? Does the American public even know the difference between a real college and a bogus one? They can really only immediately recognize Ivy League schools like Harvard and Stanford and stuff.

The general public doesn't have to know the difference. As long as the general scientific community at large is aware and can go to the press to express their outrage over such incidents.

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Science, Politics & a Bill to Ban ID: Pleased and Angere

Science, Politics & a Bill to Ban ID: Pleased and Angere

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