Conservapedia author debates science with scientist

[wautd]

PZ Meyers has been covering this for a bit. Round 3 has started - Conservopedia is going to try to sue and get the lab closed down on the basis that it was funded with tax payer money but is refusing to disclose the data to tax payers.

I don't think I need to point out how terrifying the idea that some fundies can close down any lab that puts out information they disagree with is.

Where did you found that? Maybe my google-fu is weak, but I can only find the first 2 letters + replies

[Alyrium Denryle]

The talkback page on Conservapedia's hosting of the exchange is painful.

I'll say. Look at this gem:

Atheists cannot practice science; the need to 'prove' and 'justify' their terrible howling void of non-belief means that they can only practice pseudo-science.

I find it hard to believe that someone actually wrote that without it being some kind of horrible attempt at humor.

Wow... that is funny considering the little fact that 93% of the national academy of science rejects any kind of deity...

[CaptJodan]

Wow... that is funny considering the little fact that 93% of the national academy of science rejects any kind of deity...

That's the atheist conspiracy at work there, though. The atheists have infiltrated and are now in control of science, peddling their pseudo-scientific nonsense.

[Darth Raptor]

They should SO turn the samples over to Conservapedia. God, can you imagine the bumbling?

[The Vortex Empire]

Atheists cannot practice science; the need to 'prove' and 'justify' their terrible howling void of non-belief means that they can only practice pseudo-science.

I find it hard to believe that someone actually wrote that without it being some kind of horrible attempt at humor.

How the hell does that even make sense? Proving and justifying stuff is pseudoscience? What?

[Ender]

PZ Meyers has been covering this for a bit. Round 3 has started - Conservopedia is going to try to sue and get the lab closed down on the basis that it was funded with tax payer money but is refusing to disclose the data to tax payers.

I don't think I need to point out how terrifying the idea that some fundies can close down any lab that puts out information they disagree with is.

Where did you found that? Maybe my google-fu is weak, but I can only find the first 2 letters + replies

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/


Check the archives, it is somewhere in the posts about it.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I would actually argue that science shouldn't be so open to the public; I sometimes wonder if science blogs are a good thing. When you have scientists critiquing technical papers in the open, especially hot topic issues like climate change, ignorant people (especially the media) will pick up on it and skew the critique into a "science fails" headline or for some other ulteriorly motivated political reason. All papers will have something to be criticized about but those who don't know better will interpret those criticisms to fit their own ideology. In fact, this happened recently:

While I understand your point, I feel that the equally dangerous "Ivory Tower" mindset will crop up instead, whereby scientists are considered to be those elitist snobs who hide away in labs and don't discuss their ideas with the plebes, because they r teh dumb.

I'm quite happy to have studies like this put out in public and often read science blogs, like RealClimate, where a wealth of knowledge can be found in the comments from other interested parties too. It beats me having to use my library at work to peruse journals and you get a wider audience.

You will always get ignorant people, hell, most of the populace likely can't recall basic high school grade science any more. They have no say in the important matters, but so long as a good education system is in place to elucidate these ideas to people and get them to eventually understand, it should remain to be the case that we have more open science, not closed.

And don't forget, there are plenty of other trained professionals who just don't get it, no matter their credentials i.e. Dr. Behe.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I would actually argue that science shouldn't be so open to the public; I sometimes wonder if science blogs are a good thing. When you have scientists critiquing technical papers in the open, especially hot topic issues like climate change, ignorant people (especially the media) will pick up on it and skew the critique into a "science fails" headline or for some other ulteriorly motivated political reason. All papers will have something to be criticized about but those who don't know better will interpret those criticisms to fit their own ideology. In fact, this happened recently:

While I understand your point, I feel that the equally dangerous "Ivory Tower" mindset will crop up instead, whereby scientists are considered to be those elitist snobs who hide away in labs and don't discuss their ideas with the plebes, because they r teh dumb.

I'm quite happy to have studies like this put out in public and often read science blogs, like RealClimate, where a wealth of knowledge can be found in the comments from other interested parties too. It beats me having to use my library at work to peruse journals and you get a wider audience.

You will always get ignorant people, hell, most of the populace likely can't recall basic high school grade science any more. They have no say in the important matters, but so long as a good education system is in place to elucidate these ideas to people and get them to eventually understand, it should remain to be the case that we have more open science, not closed.

And don't forget, there are plenty of other trained professionals who just don't get it, no matter their credentials i.e. Dr. Behe.

Frankly I wish there was a way to retroactively strip someone of their Ph.D without opening up a huge can of worms. The man lacks an understanding of his own damn field that makes me sad. He has not published an actual paper in years, he is dead weight.

[Imperial Overlord]

Frankly I wish there was a way to retroactively strip someone of their Ph.D without opening up a huge can of worms. The man lacks an understanding of his own damn field that makes me sad. He has not published an actual paper in years, he is dead weight.

And his entire community of former peers knows that. He has destroyed his own reputation and career.

[bobalot]

Never understood the skepticism that much of the public has for science, when it is responsible for fantastic quality of life they have.

[sketerpot]

Never understood the skepticism that much of the public has for science, when it is responsible for fantastic quality of life they have.

There are a lot of reasons. I'd say that most of them fall into two big categories: left-wing and right-wing.

Right-wing antiscience is nasty stuff. You have some people who are against science because they're against environmentalism, and more who attack science because of religious issues. Some people are pissed that science tells us how embryos form because they want life to begin when the man sticks his penis in a woman. Many (most?) creationists are so deluded that their beliefs require them to assume the existance of a vast conspiracy encompassing almost every scientist in the world for the past 150 years or so, motivated by atheism and being horrible people. And a scientific worldview is based on evidence, thus necessarily placing it in opposition to faith-based thinking. Is it any wonder that a lot of conservatives are against science?

On the left, there are similarly pernicious views. Some attacks on science come from the squishier "social sciences", claiming that science is purely a social artifact with no connection to reality or some stupid shit like that. Remember that nutter who thinks that computational fluid dynamics is difficult because there aren't enough holistic-minded women applying their magical menstrual-fluid powers to the problem? That's a fringe case, but a pretty good illustrative example of the kind of fuzzy-thinking-wrapped-in-fancy-wording common in attacks on science from the more academic part of the left.

There are also a lot of people who believe in various paranormal woo-woo crap that can't stand up to even the most cursory scientific investigation. Suppose that you're a dowser who "can" find water underground. This is easy enough to test: just have someone bury several barrels under the ground, one of them filled with water. Then find the barrel with water in it. Repeat until your success is statistically significant. But of course you would fail, and then you'd have two choices: either abandon your wacky belief (not bloody likely) or start attacking science. The paranormal and New Age people are attacking science because either their claims are nonsense or science doesn't work. So they'll come out with stuff about how scientists are all so "closed minded", and how scientists are trying to reduce everything to experiment and atoms and reality and facts, and how that is somehow bad.

There's a distressing commonality between the various kinds of attacks on science. They usually assume that scientists are narrow-minded space aliens in lab coats, not real people. Or they assume that scientists are deluded fools (who are also narrow-minded space aliens in lab coats). I get the feeling that most of these people have never actually met a scientist.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

There's a distressing commonality between the various kinds of attacks on science. They usually assume that scientists are narrow-minded space aliens in lab coats, not real people. Or they assume that scientists are deluded fools (who are also narrow-minded space aliens in lab coats). I get the feeling that most of these people have never actually met a scientist.

I think it also boils down to the fact that many of these people don't understand Science very well and are suspicious of anyone who claims to understand it. This "anti-elitist" attitude, coupled with the unwillingness to understand and accept, simply leads to a lot of nonsense.