bLogodaedaly: science

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Age of Endarkenment

David Colquhoun addresses the problem of intellectual dishonesty and fuzzy illogic in a Guardian Unlimited article entitled the age of endarkenment.

The past 30 years or so have been an age of endarkenment. It has been a period in which truth ceased to matter very much, and dogma and irrationality became once more respectable.

Colquhoun is author of the Improbable Science blog in which he expands upon his exposition of the reasons that we should be concerned about the "New Credulity.":

This matters when people delude themselves into believing that we could be endangered at 45 minutes' notice by non-existent weapons of mass destruction. . .
It matters when people are deluded into thinking that they will be rewarded in paradise for killing themselves and others. It matters when bishops attribute floods to a deity whose evident vengefulness and malevolence leave one reeling. And it matters when science teachers start to believe that the Earth was created 6,000 years ago.

In nations that value education and intellectuals, politicians who live down to the "average guy" image are not elected to the most powerful executive positions. As the world has recognized with disdain, Giorgio, purchased Ivy League degree or not, would not have appealed to voters in nations that respect merit. More particularly, Giorgio would not have appealed a second time to voters who were able to detect executive deceptions.

LAME thinking

"In this Misinformation Explosion Age, people are increasingly unaware that lay opinion, particularly biased opinion, carries no real authority about the natural world whenever lay opinion runs counter to established scientific knowledge. Let's designate such people, Laypersons of the Misinformation Explosion, or LAMEs.

Not only do LAMEs form illogical opinions on the basis of too little information, they form mistaken opinions on the basis of deliberate or ignorant misinformation pasted across the Internet. LAMEs are particularly credulous in the face of emotionally appealing rhetoric, and this is particularly apparent in relation to the ridiculous creation vs evolution debate, which really ought not to be a debate at all since only the scientific explanation is empirically supported."

This concept, of course, is connected to Denialism.

St. Elsewhere: The Problem with Polemics .

Misleading Pseudoscience for Dummies

Pseudoscience masquerades as science, usually to promote some commercial scam or to promote religious beliefs for which there is not, nor ever will be, supportive evidence.

The subject matter of pseudoscientific claims ranges from astrology and the occult to anti-science, religiously motivated falsehoods.

Talking or writing about science is not science. Criticizing or critiquing science is not science. Elaborating mumbo-jumbo about supposed medical treatments without clinical testing is not science. Concocting falsehoods designed to protect unjustified belief in disproved Special Creation is definitely not science.

In order to ignorantly support illogical, indoctrinated religious mythology, creationists deny scientific knowledge, attack a straw man version of science, and falsify science as lie-oramas in the Fiction Lie-See-Um, or spout Misleading Pseudoscience for Dummies on junk tanks. " Creationism has been discredited, however, by indisputable physical evidence – carbon dating, for example."[SW]

External : Science Week editorials : Creationism vs. Sanity : SCIENCE POLICY: ON THE TEACHING OF PSEUDOSCIENCE :

NOMA

NOMA, for non-overlapping magisteria, represented Stephen Jay Gould's now unpopular suggestion, in Rock of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life, of assuming an inextricable separation between science and religion.

Gould proposed that science, which dealt solely with the physical or empirical magisterium, was totally distinct from religion, which was confined to questions of ultimate meaning and moral value. In essence, NOMA incorporated the harmony seeking suggestion that never the twain should meet.

The term magisterium describes a domain of understanding in which only one form of investigation or teaching possesses the appropriate tools for meaningful discourse and resolution. The notion of NOMA protects religion from scientific scrutiny even though 'scientific' claims including genesis, floods, and miracles are described in the Bible.

Gould's suggestion has been criticized by evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion, and by philosopher of science as applied to evolutionary biology, Michael Ruse.

Obviously, things cannot be quite this simple. Even if one ignores what Ian Barbour has shown us in a helpful taxonomy, namely that Gould's NOMA is not the only possible stance on the science/religion relationship, the Gouldian separation ploy requires some further work. Prima facie, Genesis does tell us things which conflict with science - six days of creation, humans last, world-wide flood, tower of Babel, and so forth. If you are to insist that there is no conflict - and, in respects, I am happy to go along with Gould on this - then you have got to work to show that Genesis properly understood and science properly understood do not conflict. Prima facie conflict is no more than that -- prima facie -- and not definitive. ¬ Michael Ruse, Review of Stephen Jay Gould's "Rocks of Ages"

YEC yuck

"There is no polite way to say this: people who resist scientific explanations
for natural phenomena such as the age of the earth and the fact of evolution are
guilty of childish thinking."

~ Sharon Begley in So That's Why Evolution is in Trouble!

Git of the Gaps

"The history of science shows us that patching the gaps in our knowledge with
miracles creates a path that leads only to perpetual ignorance."

~ Jerry Coyne, The Great Mutator, in The New Republic

Vocal Atheism

If you have ever wondered by appeasement "framing" is an ineffectual policy or why vocal atheism (environmentalism, humanism, secularism, whatever) is essential, PZ has an eloquent answer for you:

"What it does mean is that at least some of us are obligated to stand against the tide of garbage and fight it. We have to be loud and we have to be vocal and we can't afford to just shrug our shoulders and let it all pass. If we accept the idea that we're wasting our time criticizing patent idiots, then we might as well retire silently with folded hands and let the liars and scoundrels and frauds and kooks continue their campaigns unhindered. It's really worked well for us so far, hasn't it?" ¬ PZ Myers.

Anti-Anti-Medical-Progress

"Once upon a time, scientific advance was slapped upon the stall from which the customer did or did not pick it up; nobody, it was then understood, would be forced to avail himself of X-ray or penicillin, just as nobody will ever be forced to accept an organ transplant. The escalating danger, however, is that your choice and mine may be stripped from us by the mindless fervour of those whose own choice is already guaranteed: you don't want a pig's heart because it's yucky? Fine. Go ahead. Die. See if I care."

¬ Carol Sarler in Don't let science fall foul of the yuck factor