Blogging Science

Why Science Blogging Matters

Here are the screencast versions of my talk

To Begin, what is a weblog?

A weblog, web log or simply a blog, is a web application which contains periodic time-stamped posts on a common webpage. These posts are often but not necessarily in reverse chronological order. Such a website would typically be accessible to any Internet user. (source)

In the best of circumstances, a blog is like a conversation. It allows readers to comment and it also brings in other articles and bloggers by linking to them. Many blogs also contain links to other blogs the author reads, giving readers an idea of the community in which the blogger situates him or herself.

Audience and Blogs

A useful way to think about audience is to realize that the audience is a lay audience--the general public. (See thoughts from March 4's brown bag on communicating with the media.) It is also often audiences with agendas and axes to grind and who can talk back either via e-mail or through commenting, both a good thing and a bad thing.

The Politicization of Science:

Mainstream media lacks the space and time to fully discuss the science behind these issues.
Some mainstream media outlets are bringing out their op-ed writers to deal with these issues rather than science writers.

Graph of these trends--from Blog Pulse

Intelligent Design

Example 1:

From the Washington Post

The intelligent-design folks say theirs is not a religious doctrine. They may be lying, and are just softening up the teaching of evolution for an eventual pro-Genesis assault. But they passed one of my tests. They answered Gould's favorite question: If you are real scientists, then what evidence would disprove your hypothesis? West indicated that any discovery of precursors of the animal body plans that appeared in the Cambrian period 500 million years ago would cast doubt on the thesis that those plans, in defiance of Darwin, evolved without a universal common ancestor.

Refutations:

Baloney. There is no evidence for ID creationism, and it has already failed the stated test. To mention one example: choanoflagellates, single-celled organisms that carry many of the complex signalling molecules we metazoans use to regulate our patterns of development. The molecular evidence is also clear and indicates a prolonged period of evolution of the genes we consider the hallmark of multicellular animals that preceded the Cambrian. We have evidence that complex lifeforms did not just poof into existence a half-billion years ago. Common descent is one of the facts of evolution.

Myers also notes that the only source consulted was a member of the Discovery Institute, an organization pushing for the teaching of Intelligent Design in the schools.

--PZ Myers, Pharyngula

Mathews swallowed that one hook, line, and sinker, and probably ate the fishing pole for good measure. There is no way that finding precursors of animal body plans could falsify the idea that some Intelligent Designer designed some feature of living things at some unspecified point in time. Once again, this is an argument against evolution, not evidence for ID. The argument could be wrong, but it wouldn’t mean that ID was wrong. In fact, at least one leading ID advocate, Michael Behe, believes that the evidence supports universal common ancestry. For some strange reason, the evidence for common ancestry hasn’t falsified ID according to Michael Behe, even though it would according to John West. Start to see the problem?

--Steve Reuland, Panda's Thumb

Defense:

Matthews returned to say he was shocked by how many people disagreed with him. His final point and take-home message:

many e-mailers (a generous estimate would be about 30 percent) agreed with me, and they had had the same idea long before I did.

Not even a majority, but teaching Intelligent Design would be a good idea because 30% of his e-mailers agree with him. He even admitted that he could only find 2 teachers who would support his idea while working on the article.

Example 2:

From The New York Times (BMC access only)

The strong appearance of design allows a disarmingly simple argument: if it looks, walks and quacks like a duck, then, absent compelling evidence to the contrary, we have warrant to conclude it's a duck. Design should not be overlooked simply because it's so obvious.

Still, some critics claim that science by definition can't accept design, while others argue that science should keep looking for another explanation in case one is out there. But we can't settle questions about reality with definitions, nor does it seem useful to search relentlessly for a non-design explanation of Mount Rushmore. Besides, whatever special restrictions scientists adopt for themselves don't bind the public, which polls show, overwhelmingly, and sensibly, thinks that life was designed. And so do many scientists who see roles for both the messiness of evolution and the elegance of design.

Refutation:

From Reason:

Intelligent design theorists and their claims to scientific legitimacy aside, the only reason the vast majority of people who want intelligent design taught in high school want it is because they believe it will undercut the corrosive effects of evolutionary biology on the religious beliefs of their children. They don't know and couldn't care less about the scientific details of the evolution of blood cascades—they just want Darwinism kept away from their kids.

. . .

So what to do? It is not the role of public schools to confirm the religious beliefs of their students. Parents who want their children to benefit from the latest findings of science would reasonably be irked if evolutionary biology were expunged from the public school curriculum. There is another way around this conundrum. Get rid of public schools. Give parents vouchers and let them choose the schools to which to send their children. Fundamentalists can send their kids to schools that teach that the earth was created on Sunday, October 23, 4004 BC. Science geeks can send their kids to technoschools that teach them how to splice genes to make purple mice. This proposal lowers political and social conflict, and eventually those made fitter in the struggle for life by better education will win. At least that's my theory.

From Pharyngula:

Look at what he is doing: he is simply declaring that there is no convincing explanation in biology that doesn't require intelligent design, therefore Intelligent Design creationism is true. But thousands of biologists think the large body of evidence in the scientific literature is convincing! Behe doesn't get to just wave his hands and have all the evidence for evolutionary biology magically disappear; he is trusting that his audience, lacking any knowledge of biology, will simply believe him.

From Panda's Thumb:

If schools taught beliefs in proportion to what the polls say people believe, (1) that would pretty much defeat the purpose of education, and (2) we’d have to give good chunks of time to UFOs, homeopathy, psychics, and all of the other forms of pseudoscience that do well in polls.

The Politics of Science

From Powerline:

Under leftist logic, the fact that one of us doesn't believe a piece of scientific orthodoxy demonstrates, what, that our attacks on liberal political orthodoxies, falsehoods, and forgeries shouldn't be taken seriously? If a majority of scientists disagree with Rocket Man about Darwin, then he must be wrong not only about Darwin, but about Rather.

P.Z. Myers responds:

They don't understand how their opinion of evolution is relevant to any assessment of their political stance. There is a sense in which that is correct—if someone honestly says they don't know enough of the scientific story to be able to judge, I think that would actually speak well of their ability to evaluate evidence. That is not what Hindrocket did, however. He pompously claimed that "the empirical foundations of Darwinism have crumbled under attack by a new generation of biologists, especially microbiologists." Either he knows better, and he's lying, or he's completely ignorant of what biologists say, and he shouldn't be pretending to have knowledge he lacks. Either way, he's demonstrating a disgraceful lack of respect for the evidence, and that does call his judgment into question. If I, who have never cracked a lawbook in my life, were to try to tell lawyers how to practice law, and made egregious errors of fact in my claim and even mangled the vocabulary, there'd be no hesitation about deservedly calling me a fool, an idiot, a pretentious poseur…so I'm returning the favor here. Hindrocket doesn't know biology, period. He's a fool, an idiot, and a pretentious poseur for acting as if he does.