Unfortunately, I won’t be appearing on Bloggingheads.tv any more. And it is unfortunate — I had some great times there, and there’s an enormous amount to like about the site. So I thought I should explain my reasons.
A few weeks ago we were a bit startled to find a “Science Saturday” episode of BH.tv featuring Paul Nelson, an honest-to-God young-Earth creationist. Not really what most of us like to think of as “science.” So there were emails back and forth trying to figure out what went on. David Killoren, who is the person in charge of the Science Saturday dialogues, is an extremely reasonable guy; we had slightly different perspectives on the matter, but in the end he appreciated the discomfort of the scientists, and we agreed to classify that dialogue as a “failed experiment,” not something that would be a regular feature.
So last week we were startled once again, this time by the sight of a dialogue between John McWhorter and Michael Behe. Behe, some of you undoubtedly know, is a leading proponent of Intelligent Design, and chief promulgator of the idea of “irreducible complexity.” The idea is that you can just look at something and know it was “designed,” because changing any bit of it would render the thing useless — so it couldn’t have arisen via a series of incremental steps that were all individually beneficial to the purpose of the object. The classic example was a mousetrap — until someone shows how a mousetrap is, in fact, reducibly complex. Then you change your choice of classic example. Behe had his butt handed to him during his testimony at the Kitzmiller vs. Dover trial over teaching intelligent design in schools; but embarrassment is not an arrow in the ID quiver, and he hasn’t been keeping quiet since then.
John McWhorter is not a biologist — he’s apparently a linguist, who writes a lot about race. In any event, the dialogue was hardly a grilling — McWhorter’s opening words are:
Michael Behe, I am so glad to meet you, and thank you for agreeing to do this. This is one of the rare times that I have initiated a Bloggingheads pairing, and it’s because I just read your book The Edge of Evolution from 2007, and I found it absolutely shattering. I mean, this is a very important book, and yet I sense, from the reputation or the reception of your book from ten-plus years ago, Darwin’s Black Box, that it may be hard to get a lot of people to understand why the book is so important.
I couldn’t listen to too much after that. McWhorter goes on to explain that he doesn’t see how skunks could have evolved, and what more evidence do you need than that? (Another proof that belongs in the list, as Jeff Harvey points out: “A linguist doesn’t understand skunks. Therefore, God exists.”) Those of us who have participated in Bloggingheads dialogues before have come to expect a slightly more elevated brand of discourse than this.
Then, to make things more bizarre, the dialogue suddenly disappeared from the site. I still have very little understanding why that happened. The reason given was that it was removed at McWhorter’s behest, because he didn’t think it represented him, Behe, or BH.tv very well. I’m sure that is the reason it was removed, although I have no idea what McWhorter was thinking — either when he proposed the dialogue, or while he was doing it, or when he asked that it be taken down. Certainly none of we scientists who were disturbed that the dialogue existed in the first place ever asked that it be removed. That feeds right into the persecution complex of the creationists, who like nothing more than to complain about how they are oppressed by the system. And, on cue, Behe popped up to compare Bloggingheads to Stalinist Russia. But now the dialogue is back up again — so I suppose old comrades can be rehabilitated, after all.
But, while none of the scientists involved with BH.tv was calling for the dialogue to be removed, we were a little perturbed at the appearance of an ID proponent so quickly after we thought we understood that the previous example had been judged a failed experiment. So more emails went back and forth, and this morning we had a conference call with Bob Wright, founder of BH.tv. To be honest, I went in expecting to exchange a few formalities and clear the air and we could all get on with our lives; but by the time it was over we agreed that we were disagreeing, and personally I didn’t want to be associated with the site any more. I don’t want to speak for anyone else; I know that Carl Zimmer was also very bothered by the whole thing, hopefully he will chime in.
It’s important to understand exactly what the objections are. (Again, speaking only for myself; others may object on different grounds.) It’s too easy to guess at what someone else is thinking, then argue against that, rather than work to understand where they are coming from. I tried to lay out my own thinking in the Grid of Disputation post. Namely: if BH.tv has something unique and special going for it, it’s the idea that it’s not just a shouting match, or mindless entertainment. It’s a place we can go to hear people with very different perspectives talk about issues about which they may strongly disagree, but with a presumption that both people are worth listening to. If the issue at hand is one with which I’m sufficiently familiar, I can judge for myself whether I think the speakers are respectable; but if it’s not, I have to go by my experience with other dialogues on the site.
What I objected to about the creationists was that they were not worthy opponents with whom I disagree; they’re just crackpots. Go to a biology conference, read a biology journal, spend time in a biology department; nobody is arguing about the possibility that an ill-specified supernatural “designer” is interfering at whim with the course of evolution. It’s not a serious idea. It may be out there in the public sphere as an idea that garners attention — but, as we all know, that holds true for all sorts of non-serious ideas. If I’m going to spend an hour of my life listening to two people have a discussion with each other, I want some confidence that they’re both serious people. Likewise, if I’m going to spend my own time and lend my own credibility to such an enterprise, I want to believe that serious discussions between respectable interlocutors are what the site is all about.
Here’s the distinction I want to draw, which might admittedly be a very fine line. If someone wants to talk about ID as a socio/religio/political phenomenon worth of study by anthropologists and sociologists, that’s fine. (Presumably the right people to have that discussion are anthropologists or sociologists or historians/philosophers of science, not biochemists who have wandered into looney land.) If someone wants to talk to someone who believes in ID about something that person has respectable thoughts about, that would also be fine with me. If you want to talk to a theologian about theology, or a politician about politics, or an artist about art, the fact that such a person has ID sympathies doesn’t bother me in the least.
But if you present a discussion about the scientific merits of ID, with someone who actually believes that such merits exist — then you are wasting my time and giving up on the goal of having a worthwhile intellectual discussion. Which is fine, if that’s what you want to do. But it’s not an endeavor with which I want to be associated. At the end of our conversations, I understood that my opinions about these matters were very different from those of the powers that be at BH.tv.
I understand that there are considerations that go beyond high-falutin’ concerns of intellectual respectability. There is a business model to consider, and one wants to maintain the viability of the enterprise while also having some sort of standards, and that can be a very difficult compromise to negotiate. Bob suggested the analogy of a TV network — would you refuse to be interviewed by a certain network until they would guarantee to never interview a creationist? (No.) But to me, the case of BH.tv is much more analogous to a particular TV show than to an entire network — it’s NOVA, not PBS, and the different dialogues are like different episodes. There is a certain common identity to things that BH.tv does, in a way that simply isn’t comparable to the wide portfolio of a TV network. Appearing for an hour-long dialogue creates connection with a brand in a way that being interviewed for 30 seconds on a TV news spot simply does not. If there were a TV show that wanted me on, but I had doubts about their seriousness, I would certainly decline (and I have).
And heck, we all have a business model. I’d like to sell some books, and I was really looking forward to doing a BH.tv dialogue with George Johnson when my book came out — it would have been a lot of fun, and perhaps even educational. But at the end of the day, I’m in charge of defending my own integrity; life is short, and I have to focus on efforts I can get completely behind without feeling compromised.
Having said all that, I’m very happy to admit that there’s nothing cut-and-dried about any of these issues, and I have a great deal of sympathy for anyone who feels differently and wants to continue contributing to BH.tv. The site provides a lot of high-quality intellectual food for thought, and I wish it well into the future. These decisions are necessarily personal. A few years ago I declined an invitation to a conference sponsored by the Templeton foundation, because I didn’t want to be seen as supporting (even indirectly) their attempts to blur the lines between science and religion. But even at the time I admitted that it wasn’t an easy choice, and couldn’t blame anyone who decided to go. Subsequently, I’ve participated in a number of things — the World Science Festival, the Foundational Questions Institute, and BH.tv itself — that receive money from Templeton. To me, there is a difference between taking the money directly, and having it “laundered” through an organization that I think is otherwise worthwhile. Not everyone agrees; Harry Kroto has expressed deep disappointment that I would sully myself in this manner. And that’s understandable, too; we all have to look at ourselves in the mirror each morning.
So, on we go, weaving our own uncertain ways through the briars of temptation and the unclear paths of right and wrong. Or something like that. I have no doubt that BH.tv will continue to put up a lot of good stuff, and that they’ll find plenty of good scientists to take my place; meanwhile, I’ll continue to argue for increasing the emphasis on good-faith discourse between respectable opponents, and mourn the prevalence of crackpots and food fights. Keep hope alive!
Update: Bob Wright has left a comment here. (See also a comment by David Killoren here.) And at some point soon, a more official BH.tv editorial policy will appear here.
Bob is unhappy that I left out some of the points he made in our conversation, which is somewhat reflective of the fact that we were talking past each other. I was not looking for a “pledge” of anything at all. Rather, I was hoping — and completely expecting — to hear a statement somewhat along these lines: “Of course we all agree that when someone listens to a dialogue on BH.tv, they have a reasonable expectation that both speakers are non-crackpots.” But I don’t think we do agree on that. I am personally not interested in interrogating crackpots to understand their motives; they get more than enough attention as it is, and I’m more interested in discussions between reasonable people. That’s why, unlike some of the commenters, I wouldn’t feel especially different if it had been an expert biologist interrogating a creationist. Different folks have different feelings about this, and that’s why it’s good that we have a big internet.
Hey Sean,
Do you have a replacement outreach activity of similar scope, or will you be doing less public communication due to this decision?
mvantony @67 & Joe G @ 69:
The issue lies in framing it as science. Theological debates on their own merit are all well and good. But the mendacity lies in trying to shoehorn it into science, which is precisely what ID tries to pass itself off as, and what Behe is attempting to do. Both of the episodes of bloggingheads in question were ‘aired’ on ‘Science Saturday.’ And by having qualified scientists such as Dawkins, Carroll, Coyne, et al., debate them on an equal footing, it implies that there is some scientific merit in the ID position to which a response is needed, which there is not. And until they produce testable and falsifiable hypotheses and publish their work, which they have not done, it is not science.
One of the issues is that the dishonest rhetorical tricks and easily-repeated soundbites used in rapid succession can catch an intellectually honest scientist off-guard, if they are not familiar with the canards. The rapid-fired disinformation can take so long to address that the creationist can end up appearing better than the scientist, as while the scientist painstakingly refutes each point, in the next response, the creationist simply ignores the refutations and moves on with more nonsense. This lends perceived credibility to their position to a lay audience.
Eugenie Scott wrote on this issue over a decade ago:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/debating/globetrotters.html
Lab Lemming, I have hopes to publish a popular book on the arrow of time.
I understand Sean’s issues but would offer the following caveat.
I am not a scientist by degree but I am one by the work I do. The work I do is trying to remove dams or at least secure some sense of temporarily survivable conditions at dams for fish like Atlantic salmon, shad, eels and alewives in New England rivers so these species will not go extinct. This work requires that I am completely versed in every aspect of the life history of these fish, the impacts by dams on these fish, the entire history of human interactions with these fish, and the entire panoply of laws affecting these fish. I am always facing a phalanx of extremely well paid lawyers and consultants hired by the dam owner to refute any and every thing I say in a regulatory proceeding. In this context, peer review is a walk in the park.
Ultimately, as in the Dover case, all disputes between science and non-science end up in court. The preferable route, as any lawyer will tell you, would be to defuse such issues before they ever get to court. Dover only got to court because scientists were busy being scientists and not able to pay close attention to what the kooks were doing. Which is entirely understandable. But Behe and his cohorts know that scientists are too busy being scientists to put out every brush fire they aspire to set. Which is why they aspire to set so many brush fires.
In my little field of science, dam removal, you encounter many people who will boldly assert that if you remove a dam, the river will go dry and all the fish will die. As nonsensical as these claims are, not confronting them is much worse than confronting them. You just have to do it, as wacky and non-productive as it might seem to be at the moment. These folks have a specific goal and they intend to win. In my profession, I want to get a dam removed so I can restore a river. The victory or defeat is real and tangible. If I lose, a river dies. If I win, a river lives. This is science not-in-the-abstract. It is science with a purpose. If I don’t win my little debate with these kooks, my kids and grandkids will have to live with a dead river and wonder why I did nothing to stop it.
My attitude when engaging in a public debate with a typical “the river will dry up” kook is that, on average, I will win over at least a few people from “their side” and there is no way that anyone on “my side” is going to be swayed by anything they say. So, in the end, just by showing up and speaking to these kooks is always a win — and it may be a very big win. The more you engage these kooks and their sycophants, the bigger the win, because most of them are deeply skeptical of this stuff to begin with. Because it makes no sense.
Not that boycotts lack tactical negotiating value.
I am sure Discovery can set up a Blogging head format quite easily to cater to it’s site menu specializations for topics as a sideline for the blogs who are participating?
I look forward to the Arrow of Time book:)
Doug,
Your take on all this is well taken. Though, I would suggest that what you are dealing with when faced with opposition is simple lack of knowledge about what is going on. What Sean and others are faced with is certainly that… and then some!
The “then some” being religious convictions. That’s some seriously powerful stuff. They are not just lacking in the knowledge of evolutionary biology but they have an emotional religious stake as well. I don’t think the “win-over” rate is nearly what you think it would be in this case.
Just some thoughts.
Science is done in academia, not in public. Why isn’t Behe fighting for his ideas at academic conferences and in anonymous peer review instead of relying on appealing to the layman? Using the word coward is such projection…
So, instead of going on Bloggingheads and refuting poor arguments you quit. Well that makes sense. Seems to me that’s about as good as me refusing to appear in the New York Times because I don’t agree with their editorial stance.
My comment at 3quarks:
I wish Sean Carroll and Carl Zimmer would reconsider. First, because it is very damaging to bloggingheads.tv. And second, because the issues raised by the intelligent design controversy are too interesting to non-scientists to simply ignore.
For example, the notion of “intelligent design” implies intentionality, a subjective state of consciousness and control. But intentionality by definition is just the sort of thing that can never be established by science no matter how long the odds of something happening by chance (long odds being what the notion of irreducible complexity really comes down to).
Consider current cosmology, Sean Carroll’s specialty. At the present time it looks like the chance of a universe with intelligent life in it is vanishingly small, as in one in a zillion. Physicists hope one day to reduce those odds but in the meantime they do not speculate about intelligent design. For a scientist life may be a miracle — ie, an extraordinary coincidence –but it still happened by chance. All they want to do is to try to calculate the odds.
Ideas about meaning and purpose, beauty and justice, are about subjective states of feeling. Science, by definition, limits itself to what is objective.
Does this mean that beauty and justice, meaning and purpose are stupid, pre-scientific concepts that we could just as well do without? Of course not. They have served us well in the past and will never go away.
Likewise for faith in the idea that there is a moral order in the universe.
These are gut instincts and, as such, are an important part of what it means to be human. I doubt many scientists would entirely disagree.
So I guess what I am trying to say is that it would be preferable for guys like Carroll and Zimmer to make these distinctions rather than walking away from the forum. They need to educate the public about what science is and is not.
Sean, I have to say that I can’t tell whether your goal here is to preserve your integrity, attempt to silence further dissent, or merely to take your bat and go home. Certainly what you have done doesn’t further the cause of driving a stake through the heart of a particularly nasty idea.
Look, it’s really unfortunate, but the simple fact is that a majority or significant plurality of Americans believe in some flavor of creationism. As a science educator, I’d think that you would view that with alarm, since creationism is a mighty fine way to turn a lot of otherwise intelligent young people away from science–biological or otherwise. (Seen one self-organizing system, seen ’em all. If you stop believing in one, you kinda have to stop believing in the others, don’t you?)
The problem is that creationism has a bunch of nice, simple, intuitive ideas associated with it. Lots of time and energy has been spent honing the marketing messages for those ideas. Evolution is not exactly intuitive, however beautiful it is once you really get it. The only way to do away with creationism is to spend as much time refuting it as the creationists have spent marketing it.
You can’t refute creationism by excluding its proponents, crackpots or no. You can’t refute it by waving your arms and refusing to engage in the debate, however much you wish that the debate wasn’t necessary. It **is** necessary, and the removal of your voice from this aspect of the debate is regrettable. The only way to deal with this is to give creationist proponents a nice big, fat, fair forum, with able opponents, and beat them like a drum, over and over, until the arguments are so finely honed and so accessible that popular media think that they can be fed to their audiences without causing them to change the channel.
You’re good at this sort of thing. Distasteful though it may be, I’d hope that you’d respect creationism enough to view it as a genuine threat, and that you’d devote some amount of energy to reducing or eliminating that threat. Excluding yourself from a forum because of a whiff of something that you disapprove of sends exactly the wrong message.
On the flip side, creationism will never be accepted by the scientific community by refusing to take part in the peer review process, by not fighting for the ideas in academia – and creationists will continue to draw the ire of scientists by subverting the scientific process in order to proselytise their beliefs.
Why should scientists give creationists the air of legitimacy by playing in the public forum treating them as “equals”, as opposed to just dismissing the claims in the proper and popular channels? Does Behe really need to be debated just so his ideas can be defeated? Of course not. His ideas are defeated by scientists working through scientific channels and popular media without even having to face him in person. By debating, all it does it make it seem like there’s a serious disagreement.
Creationists use the public platforms to gain legitimacy in the eyes of the layman. It’s systematically dishonest and the opposite of science. So why should scientists reward such behaviour when the creationists aren’t playing by the rules?
TheRadicalModerate
I suggest a reading of Orwell’s essay for you, The Politics of Language (1946). Here’s why: instead of formulating your point like this :
Say it as it really is:
And actually, you find the answer is a good deal less straightforward.
There may be a few die-hard creationists who change their minds if they hear more about science – though I suspect this is a vanishingly small number compared to those who will never do so.
The truth is, as with racism and homophobia and many other insulated, ‘intuitive’ beliefs, those who believe in them simply die out over time. The next generation see these beliefs as irrelevant and increasingly bizarre (it’s occurring now among the younger Amish, who question where exactly the bible mentions hooks not zippers on clothing etc).
Giving scientific credence to rubbish is something we in the UK got badly wrong in the 1970s. When Uri Geller first appeared, his cheap magic would have got little attention – except that a ‘scientist’ appeared on a mainstream tv show with him, said psychokinesis was a valid phenomenon, and suddenly Geller’s woo was centre stage for years and years.
All it took was one scientist to give him that crucial break; the world has been slightly worse for it ever since. Is the rubbish spouted by creationists and theists any different? I suggest we learn from previous examples and refuse to give equal space to such garbage.
“Diavlog the controversy!”
No thanks. Kudos to Sean and Carl.
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It is important to avoid giving the veneer of respectability to crackpot ideas like Intelligent Design Creationism. It is also important to refute such nonsense at least as publicly as it is supported. Perhaps as a complement to Science Saturday, BHTV could institute Woo Wednesday, where cranks like Behe and Dembski can make their case so long as they are willing to answer the questions of a real scientist with a background in the relevant disciplines.
Something tells me that none of the IDCists would go for that format. They want respect but don’t want to earn it.
Sean, I have a great deal of sympathy for your well-reasoned and well-written position. As one already said: if it helps you to look at yourself in the mirror, it’s the right choice.
Thanks for taking this stand.
The fundamental problem is actually a failing educational system which causes some sizeable fraction to be scientic illiterate and effectively cut off from the body of scientific knowledge which has refuted creationism.
People like Behe are not the fundamental problem. Consider e.g. Holocaust deniers. There are quite a few of such people, but because we teach history in schools, most people are not susceptible to Neo-Nazi propaganda. Most lay persons know enough about history to see for themselves that Holocaust deniers are wrong. This would be different if we had the same attititude toward teaching history in primary and secondary school as we have about teaching science.
The history curriculum is not determined by considering what the practical use of knowledge about history is. We don’t stop teaching history just because for most jobs you don’t need to know anything about it.We don’t say that if you want to learn about history you can study it at university. But in case of science, these are the arguments that are used to argue against science education in primary and secondary school. As a result we teach only the very elementary basics of math, physics and other sciences in high school.
Keep in mind the wider context of this whole controversy: how to teach the biological sciences in public schools in a society that mandates universal education. If it weren’t for that nobody would give a damn about it, or at least very few.
Hence the real audience here is the general public. In this context to compare the advocates of intelligent design to homophobes, Holocaust deniers, and the like is downright wrong as well as tactically misguided. The argument is not between atheists and materialists vs. those who believe in God and the supernatural. It is about the limitations of science, the sorts of questions that in principle science can and cannot answer, nothing more. It is obvious that ID’ers do not understand these limitations. Unhappily it appears that a lot of scientists don’t either. Hatred and intellectual contempt have absolutely no place in this controversy.
Way late, and wishy-washy, but here’s a manual TrackBack ping.
Seriously, Chad, this was like two days ago. You call yourself a blogger?
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Mike Barnes–
That would be great if creationism were only believed by the middle aged and elderly, but this survey shows that 43% of 18 to 29 year-olds believe that “God created human beings in present form.” If you’re going to wait for them to die, you’re going to be waiting a long time.
Kel–
The problem is that this isn’t a scientific issue; it’s a political and cultural issue. It affects attitudes toward science. It affects how many kids are predisposed toward scientific careers. It affects public policy toward medical and biological research. This is a mistake that scientists make over and over and over again. You don’t win political arguments solely with reason. You win them through relentless engagement with your opponents and by slowly changing public perceptions of the issue. Every time you disengage–however high-minded your reasons or however correct your arguments–you lose.
Creationism can’t be lent legitimacy–it already has legitimacy. It needs to be actively de-legitimized. That can’t happen when smart, authoritative people walk away from the issue.
Again, there are better ways of going about this. Debate only serves to give a legitimate platform to those who don’t deserve it. Recently I decided to explore the issue, and it’s amazing reading about the scientists who give a take-down of everything the creationist says only to see the creationist being patted on the back for “standing up to the big bad Darwinist”. I’m not saying to abandon talking to the public, to try and sell evolution. I just don’t think it a good idea to engage them in a format that suits rhetoric over fact and gives a platform of legitimacy.
Again, I’m not advocating sitting in the ivory towers of academia and lamenting why the culture is slipping away. I’m just saying that it serves no useful purpose to debate creationists because it gives them that legitimacy. People actually see these debates as arguing over general controversies, isn’t there a problem in the US even among those who accept evolution to “teach both sides?” There aren’t two sides to this, and each time one engages in debates as equals it feeds the perception that there is equality in ideas.
Again, I’ll state that debating is a bad format. It serves the creationist to no end, and feeds the perception that there is genuine controversy.
As I read all the previous comments I must admit that I am very naive concerning the activity of Darwinists, Evolutionists, Naturalists or whatever you call yourselves. Which is why I have trouble understanding such horrific remarks concerning any religious group in America. I still believe in the idea of live and let live. If any of you want to believe in the tooth fairy it is fine with me.
It seems to me those of you who are scientifically capable of explaining why your theory is right and why another’s theory is wrong is a good thing. For example; Instead of making hateful remarks just explain why Dr Behe’s ideas on the number of mutations associated with malaria is wrong and explain why your ideas are more correct. Personally, I would be most interested in hearing or reading any critique of the ideas found in his book “The Edge of Evolution”. I did note that several writers tried to do a critique but were not well versed in probability and mutational science and their theories were easily found wanting.
I would also like to hear some debate on the idea of specific, functional, informational codes found in the living cell. Most of what I read says that Darwin’s believers are unable to explain how such information, found in DNA, RNA, mRNA, tRNA, nucleotides, codons, proteins and the like, evolved into a living cell. From what evolutionary process does the information come and how did it get into the first cell.
I have a background in engineering and mathematics as well computer programing and would find such information very interesting. In all the above comments written, there is a lot of vitriol but no helpful data. While all this may be old hat to some of you, I personally am unable to find an Evolutionary author with a reasonable explanation for its source.
I did watch the debate with Dr Behe and enjoyed it. I really don’t understand why everyone is so upset. Is there something that most of you find fearful and I just don’t understand. You can use the debate as a tool to get your opposing scientific ideas out to the public at large. The idea that Dawkins will not engage in a debate with any scientist having an opposing point of view should be viewed for what it is. He obviously feels incompetent, incapable or is very shy. He certainly has strong opinions after writing so many books and should be proud to show people just how smart he is.