Greetings to all,
Well this is my first ever post so please be gentle....
I have recently finished a wonderful book by Ben Goldacre called (brilliantly) Bad Science. It has some great chapters regarding pseudoscience and its portrayal by the media, however it has really got me thinking....
Ive had some great conversations regarding the dumbing down of our society, but i still cant work out why this has happened. Why is it cool to seemingly appear ignorant about anything remotely scientific or technical? Is it because people have almost become afraid of Science? I think i may have found one of the reasons...
I remember an incident from early in my career. I was confronted by a technical question by the management and when I sought assistance from my supervisor, he responded "just baffle him with science......" Good answer! But jokes aside, he was on to something.
Science is continually manipulated and distorted in the Media to give credibility to an idea or product. Just watch an advert for any anti-ageing "serum" or read some of the evidence on the efficacy of these products. You will soon find yourself lost in a torrent of pseudo scientific babble, designed purely to make the reader feel somehow unqualified and prevent any consumer daring to question the evidence. However this practice seems to be spreading to other areas and it undermines the value of real Scientific Evidence. Its awful that people are somehow made to feel stupid by this, as it just pushes Science away, something that only men in white coats should dabble with, but it need not be like this!
Science has helped us shape and understand the world around us, its importance to us should never be cheapened or underestimated. I'm not suggesting that we all take an interest in Quantum Mechanics (but then again, why not?) but it is approachable on many levels and for all abilities and ages. I was delighted (and slightly amused!) when my five year old daughter returned home from school announcing that she had learnt about a chap named Charles Darwin, who sailed to the Galapagos Islands on a ship with a beagle looking for monkeys..... mistakes aside she is now hooked on the subject! Scientific enthusiasm spreads so lets all get involved and end this apathy towards scientific understanding.
Thanks...Si
Tuesday 14 April 2009
Friday 10 April 2009
Examine the evidence!
"To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree"
This quote is from Charles Darwin, the man who first put forward the theory of evolution through natural selection. So there we have it, the theory of evolution is so weak that even Darwin himself didn't believe it! And the eye is just one of a number of complex organisms that evolution has utterly failed to account for.
Or has it? I am sure that many people are very familiar with the misquoting of Charles Darwin because it is a famous example of a quotation presented as a fragment and completely out of context - or quote mining as it is often known. The section quoted above is regularly presented as an argument against evolution. Even to someone unfamiliar with natural selection this should immediately arouse suspicions, could Darwin really have doubted the theory which he spent much of his life tirelessly devoted to? To set the record straight, Darwin immediately went on to say:
"Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real."
In fact Darwin was boldly addressing some of the more weighty challenges to his theory in a whole chapter of The Origin of Species entitled "Difficulties on theory". This is an obvious example and one that has been addressed by many people in many books, websites and articles - but I use it again here because it gives us a clear example of a common tactic used by those seeking to distort the truth. Furthermore, when the truth is being blatantly corrupted I feel inexorably drawn to highlight this disturbing trend.
The anti-evolution literature is full of quotations such as these which are taken out of context to encourage the view that most scientists do not accept evolution. What is being preyed on here is the worrying tendency to accept what we read without subjecting it to careful analysis. We must not accept anything solely on authority alone, the scientific method gives us a much better way – obtain the data and examine the evidence. I believe that accepting personal comments and statements without a measured consideration can be particularly dangerous (and this does not apply only to scientific matters).
Let's examine a hypothetical quote. Imagine that you read in a magazine that Dr Smith has stated "Anyone who believes that Archaeopteryx displays bird-like characteristics is very badly deluded". Clearly Dr Smith doesn't think Archaeopteryx qualifies as a transitional fossil form, but what evidence has he used to justify his assertion? Whatever he has used to make his decision, it hasn't been provided to the reader. In considering this statement I would search for the evidence regarding Archaeopteryx for myself and form a conclusion based on this data.
So much that is written about key scientific ideas fails to present any evidence whatsoever, and where it does it is often only snippets or second hand information. What I strongly encourage is to double check facts, read the source material, look up quotations and examine views attributed to people against their life's work and not by a one liner presented in a magazine column. I should add the caveat that I am not encouraging skepticism to the point of impracticality, there are of course authors and specialised publications in which the information has already undergone a degree of scrutiny.
I passionately believe that science is the search for truth. Learning to carefully examine the information we are presented with is vitally important. We should approach the data we receive with a good dose of skepticism and with our critical and rational thinking fully engaged. What I want to highlight here is that there is a lot of bad science out there which is masquerading as science. Furthermore, and this is particularly the case when it comes to evolution, there is an agenda to deceive in order to encourage opposition to the very best that science has to offer. Indeed, I urge you to remain skeptical when reading this and seek to find out the truth for yourself.
I have found the study of science to be enlightening far beyond anything I could have imagined. The evidence is there for you to find and examine for yourself. We don't have to accept the theory of evolution, plate tectonics or gravity just because someone told us to, we can investigate and examine the evidence and see for ourselves what the scientific community are so keen for us to understand. Open the door and step out on to the journey of scientific understanding, you will be swept off your feet with fascination, and perhaps onwards to new scientific discoveries that will make the wonders of the natural world a little bit clearer for us all.
Many thanks for reading - Dominic.
This quote is from Charles Darwin, the man who first put forward the theory of evolution through natural selection. So there we have it, the theory of evolution is so weak that even Darwin himself didn't believe it! And the eye is just one of a number of complex organisms that evolution has utterly failed to account for.
Or has it? I am sure that many people are very familiar with the misquoting of Charles Darwin because it is a famous example of a quotation presented as a fragment and completely out of context - or quote mining as it is often known. The section quoted above is regularly presented as an argument against evolution. Even to someone unfamiliar with natural selection this should immediately arouse suspicions, could Darwin really have doubted the theory which he spent much of his life tirelessly devoted to? To set the record straight, Darwin immediately went on to say:
"Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real."
In fact Darwin was boldly addressing some of the more weighty challenges to his theory in a whole chapter of The Origin of Species entitled "Difficulties on theory". This is an obvious example and one that has been addressed by many people in many books, websites and articles - but I use it again here because it gives us a clear example of a common tactic used by those seeking to distort the truth. Furthermore, when the truth is being blatantly corrupted I feel inexorably drawn to highlight this disturbing trend.
The anti-evolution literature is full of quotations such as these which are taken out of context to encourage the view that most scientists do not accept evolution. What is being preyed on here is the worrying tendency to accept what we read without subjecting it to careful analysis. We must not accept anything solely on authority alone, the scientific method gives us a much better way – obtain the data and examine the evidence. I believe that accepting personal comments and statements without a measured consideration can be particularly dangerous (and this does not apply only to scientific matters).
Let's examine a hypothetical quote. Imagine that you read in a magazine that Dr Smith has stated "Anyone who believes that Archaeopteryx displays bird-like characteristics is very badly deluded". Clearly Dr Smith doesn't think Archaeopteryx qualifies as a transitional fossil form, but what evidence has he used to justify his assertion? Whatever he has used to make his decision, it hasn't been provided to the reader. In considering this statement I would search for the evidence regarding Archaeopteryx for myself and form a conclusion based on this data.
So much that is written about key scientific ideas fails to present any evidence whatsoever, and where it does it is often only snippets or second hand information. What I strongly encourage is to double check facts, read the source material, look up quotations and examine views attributed to people against their life's work and not by a one liner presented in a magazine column. I should add the caveat that I am not encouraging skepticism to the point of impracticality, there are of course authors and specialised publications in which the information has already undergone a degree of scrutiny.
I passionately believe that science is the search for truth. Learning to carefully examine the information we are presented with is vitally important. We should approach the data we receive with a good dose of skepticism and with our critical and rational thinking fully engaged. What I want to highlight here is that there is a lot of bad science out there which is masquerading as science. Furthermore, and this is particularly the case when it comes to evolution, there is an agenda to deceive in order to encourage opposition to the very best that science has to offer. Indeed, I urge you to remain skeptical when reading this and seek to find out the truth for yourself.
I have found the study of science to be enlightening far beyond anything I could have imagined. The evidence is there for you to find and examine for yourself. We don't have to accept the theory of evolution, plate tectonics or gravity just because someone told us to, we can investigate and examine the evidence and see for ourselves what the scientific community are so keen for us to understand. Open the door and step out on to the journey of scientific understanding, you will be swept off your feet with fascination, and perhaps onwards to new scientific discoveries that will make the wonders of the natural world a little bit clearer for us all.
Many thanks for reading - Dominic.
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