I love Jon Stewart’s work on The Daily Show, which manages to be consistently fresh and intelligent. Their segment on the Large Hadron Collider was sheer brilliance, and I’ve often said that between Stewart and Stephen Colbert, Comedy Central is the best place to go to hear insights from real working scientists on TV these days.
Which is why it was so crushing to listen to this interview he did with Marilynne Robinson, a leader among the movement to reconcile science and religion. I didn’t agree with much of what Robinson said, but then again I didn’t really expect to. Nor did I expect Stewart to challenge her in any way; a “why just can’t we all get along” perspective is very consistent with his way of thinking. But I admit I was hoping he would not misrepresent modern science as thoroughly and lazily as he managed to do here. (It’s a 2010 interview, brought to my attention by Scott Derrickson’s Twitter feed; apologies if these complaints were hashed out elsewhere two years ago.)
| The Daily Show with Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Marilynne Robinson | ||||
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If you skip ahead to 2:50, here’s what Stewart has to say:
I’ve always been fascinated that, the more you delve into science, the more it appears to rely on faith. You know, when they start to speak about the universe they say, well, actually, most of the universe is antimatter. Oh, really, where’s that? Well, you can’t see it. [Robinson: “Yes, exactly.”] Well, where is it? It’s there. Can you measure it? We’re working on it. And it’s a very similar argument to someone who would say God created everything. Well where is he? He’s there. And I’m always struck by the similarity of the arguments at their core.
Obviously he means something like “dark matter,” not “antimatter,” but that’s a minor mixup of jargon. Much worse is that he clearly has absolutely no idea why we believe in dark matter — what the actual evidence for it is in real data. He betrays no understanding that we know how much dark matter there is, have ongoing strategies for detecting it, and spend a lot of time coming up with alternatives and testing them against the data. What kind of misguided “faith” would lead people to believe in dark matter, of all things? (The underlying problem with appeals to faith is that they cannot explain why we should have faith in one set of beliefs rather than some other set … but that’s an argument for a different day.)
In reality, the more you delve into science, the less it appears to rely on faith. When it comes to modern biology there are large parts I accept because of the testimony of experts; but when it comes to physics I actually understand the evidence behind it. There are certainly some good philosophical issues about what assumptions science must make to get off the ground: does it presume naturalism, can it address miracles, does it admit nomological facts, are there a priori truths about the physical world, can it deal with unobservable things? But Stewart isn’t engaging any of these issues; he’s just taking lazy swipes at parts of science he doesn’t understand, which he therefore feels justified in equating with faith. If believers in God spent a tiny fraction of the time that modern cosmologists spend trying to invent alternatives to their favorite ideas and testing them against evidence … well let’s just say the world would be a very different place.
For which I blame us, at least as much as I blame him. Stewart is obviously a smart guy who likes science and is interested in it, and frequently has scientists on his show. And yet, we have clearly completely failed to communicate the reasons why we scientists believe in apparently spooky-sounding things like dark matter.
“Science communication” is a many-faceted thing, and all of its facets are important. We need to do better getting K-12 students excited by science and grounded in the basics. We need to do better educating college students about how the world works, since they’re going to be running it soon. We need to do better in helping policymakers understand the science behind their decisions. We need to do better at encouraging and enabling a lifelong interest in science among the general public. And we clearly need to do a much better job at clearly conveying the foundations of our practice to interested non-specialists. There’s a strong temptation to emphasize the weird and bizarre things that we discover, because after all the natural world is full of surprises. But if we don’t at the same time do a good job at explaining why we believe the bizarre things, it will come back and bite us eventually.
Ive alsways been disappointed with Stewart’s stance on science, physics in particular. If you read Wikipedia apparently he had a strained relationship with his father, who was a physics professor. Perhaps not unrelated?
People who think that science requires faith misunderstand science. Great blog.
People who think that science is directly opposite of faith, that one cannot exist without another misunderstand science. Even more so when staunch atheist scientists conveniently ignore the scientific contributions by religious people.
Cheers,
Yeh.
This was like pulling an old band aid off. Completely necessary but still unpleasant. Glad to know this about Jon Stewart. I still love the guy and politics is his strong point. I need to keep that in mind.
He and Morgan Freeman expressed similar uninformed opinions about scientists’ attitudes towards god when Freeman was on the show (starting at 3.45):
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-june-2-2010/morgan-freeman
Arthur C. Clarke said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I submit that the same is true of science. There is a point, and that point has LONG passed, where the frontiers of science are so far beyond what we are required to learn in grade school that the two positions can no longer communicate. It is like two sufficiently distant points in the Universe, the distance between which is expanding at such a rate that in order to communicate, the transmissions would have to move faster than the speed of light.
To a certain extent, then, we have to introduce faith, but a different sort of faith from the one referenced by clergymembers regarding religion. In religion, we are told that God has a reason, even if we do not understand it. This is true for everyone; the priest is as in the dark about why God wants young children to get cancer and die painfully, or why a tsunami kills thousands of people, as everyone else, and must simply take it on faith that God has a plan.
Scientific faith is the belief that 1) there is an understandable path from the basic science that we learn in school to the latest theories, and 2) that a person of adequate intelligence can follow this path to an understanding of these theories and any new hypotheses being examined and tested in any particular field. We also have to accept that unless we are willing to undertake the study required to develop the intellectual tools to follow that path, that we won’t be able to do so. Writers of popular science can give us a glimpse, but in the end, most of us will get hung up on the math.
We have that faith for many other things. I cannot do a spin kick, but I have faith that if I studied martial arts for a long time, that I could learn, as can anyone without physical disabilities, and some who have them. I cannot read Arabic, but I have faith that if I applied myself for the requisite amount of time that I could. I may not have the innate talent to earn a black belt or to translate at a speed that would permit me to be a professional translator, but the understanding is available for those who would apply themselves. Most physicists aren’t Dirac, either.
And perhaps then we need to teach that in school as part of the science curriculum. What you have here is Gerber’s. The meat is very far out of reach, but you can get there. And if you aren’t willing to devote your life to getting there, then you do need to take on faith the pronouncements of those who have done so.
@Yeh, your comment makes no sense.
Why should atheists change their mind if they observe a scientific contribution from a religious person.
Josef Mengele arguably ‘contributed’ to science but does that mean it is therefore logical to follow the tenets of Nazism?
You can understand science and make contributions while living under the delusion of religion. There’s nothing to say science will cure you of your lifelong dogmatic beliefs.
A solution to these problems is teaching not just science at school, but science methods. And I don’t mean doing this as a part of science classes, but as its own topic (and making it *more* compulsory that actual science classes). Science methods are more important for a student to know than the science itself. I can reconcile myself with people leaving high-school not knowing a lot of science (mostly just because it is impossible to teach the totality of what science has found out about the world), but because facts gained through science will impact their lives they need to know how those facts were obtained, so that they can know what to trust and what not to.
By science methods I should clarify that I’m not just meaning the ideas of null hypotheses, falsification, Bayesian reasoning, confidence intervals etc, but (most importantly) exactly what you write about in this post. That is, the “try absolutely everything else that could possibly work and see if it does work better than the current paradigm” method of science. Nobody stresses this enough about how scientists work and if the public understood it then many issues science faces would be smaller problems.
Jon Stewart wouldn’t say science is based on faith and that we believe in dark matter through faith because he would understand that we believe it because absolutely nothing else we try works to fit the data and dark matter does.
Climate change would be less of an issue because people would understand that climate scientists would love to find out that global warming wasn’t occurring. The scientist who discovered why global warming wasn’t occurring would become a legend in the field. The problem is, every climate scientist is looking for possible new ideas and none of the “global warming isn’t occurring” ideas work.
The same is true with evolution. If the public understood how hard scientists try to find alternatives before a model becomes universally accepted, they would understand why universally accepted models are so overwhelmingly likely to be reality.
*Edit*
This would also help with the people outside science who believe they’ve proven Einstein wrong, etc. If they knew how many different ways in which scientists try to extend general relativity and how many of these methods just don’t work they would be less inclined to disbelieve the scientist who tells them they’re own method doesn’t work. Every single physicist would kill to be the one who proved general relativity wrong… it just hasn’t stopped working yet, nor has a better working model been formed.
Scientists need to recognise their own religious tendencies. They may not believe in traditional gods but to believe they have no gods at all would be supreme delusion.
It does seem funny that belief in God requires nothing but faith, but when you say that Dark Matter exists, theists won’t believe you unless you present a mountain of evidence for it.
No wonder that the globe at the beginning of every of Jon Stewart’s shows spins clockwise, which is the wrong way.
I understand your point, but also give some benefit to Stewart. If you read anything about string theory, explaining everything with thing that we still don’t discover, that interact in ways that we are not able to detect and that we can’t measure…well, I have to realize that is something more closer to “believe” than to “well, let’s measure…”….
Yeh: You fail to see that they are scientific comtributions and not religious contributions to science. Science is not faith. For most it is trust in an authority who relies on evidence.
What a bizarre thing for Stewart to say. That is exactly the opposite of how science works. Like somehow the scientists pulled dark matter out of a hat as an explanation to everything they can’t explain? Ridiculous.
Let’s be honest, what Stewart should have said is:
“If you explore the current scientific literature coming out, some of it claims that the best explanations for various issues in physics is ‘Hey there must be extra dimensions’ or ‘Hey there must be supersymmetric particles’ but you will also note a fraction of these same papers are devoted to explaining why we don’t see these things now by making the dimensions too small or the masses of superpartners too large… but these same physicists talk like they believe they are really there… I mean ‘how could you not believe in something so mathematically elegant?’ they will ask.”
Let’s not pretend there aren’t papers being written and peer reviewed every day by scientists that explain phenomena using stuff that has never been observed with modern experiments despite nobel attempts to do so where these same scientists *believe* at least on some level their unobserved explanations are really right still either because of mathematical aesthetics or whatever…
And I know you will say “but in principle these are testable” which is true but given the absence of evidence let’s not kid ourselves into suggesting the scientists maintaining they believe these theories are true aren’t in fact operating on *some* level of faith. They are.
suribe: String theory is a bad example, as there are lots of physicists who write it off as unscientific nonsense for that very reason. There’s no evidence for it, no means of observing or measuring the “strings,” no nothing. The most that can be said for it is that it looks good on paper.
Wonder why you haven’t been invited on the show? (Or maybe you have and it didn’t work out.) I’ve seen NDT and Randall on there – you would be a excellent subject IMHO.
Let’s be completely fair to Stewart. He’s not a scientist. He doesn’t even play one on TV. He’s a comedian, a clown playing to the gallery. If he fails to express a lack of knowledge regarding the difference between science and faith it’s because he hasn’t been taught the difference. Those of us who are science educators have only ourselves to blame.
Stewart doesn’t come across as a man of faith or as an unreasonable man. So maybe he needs a Phil Plait, Neil deGrasse Tyson or even some obscure nobody like me to come on his show and present the other side of this.
The main thing I would say to him is that science isn’t a mindset that says, “This is the way things are!” I would tell him that it’s a method of investigating the universe and saying, “This is the way things seem to be. This is what we observe and how we interpret those observations… but we might be wrong. Let’s find out.”
The major difference between faith and science is that when presented with evidence that indicates our position has been wrong is that in science, we use it as a stepping off point to further investigation. With faith, it only causes us to further entrench ourselves into what we already believe to be true. One only needs to look at biological evolution and modern cosmology to see this in action.
I think part of the problem is simply using imprecise language whose meaning may be very different in a different context. If you say “we have a theory that explains matter in terms of quarks, leptons, etc… and it does a very good job based on our tests so far”, you’re purely within the realm of science. If you say “protons are made of quarks”, you ARE taking a lot on faith. It’s just that the “faith” is in a very complete, detailed, and well tested explanation. But you can’t claim to actually know how the world works without going beyond the pure scientific method which really can’t do better than “this is the best explanation we have at the moment”
So I’ve often told people that we “take things on faith”, but that’s not the same as saying that we have no particular reason to believe it and we simply believe it because we like it or someone says it’s true. But we often don’t have direct evidence, or we believe that something exists based on equations that explain some phenomenon (perhaps amazingly well), but which we can’t “prove” are real. So I think it’s a perfectly fair thing to say, but it has the unfortunate drawback that in the context of “religion v. science”, it can be easily misinterpreted.
fraac: some scientists believe in one or various gods. Others don’t. To assume that all scientists MUST have some sort of god is the true delusion here.
Did it ever occure to “scientists” on this little blog that Jon Stewart is just a comedian? A very good one, but still a comedian rather than a scientist. Critical thinking is dead. Even among the scientific community.
It’s kind of cool to see you posting this, Sean, because I said pretty much the exact same thing on my own blog (http://www.ellipsix.net/blog/2010/07/bad-science-on-the-daily-show.html) back when the interview originally aired. I definitely agree that we don’t do a good enough job of educating people as to why scientists stand by certain conclusions, but it doesn’t help that in some cases scientists tend to get carried away and start assuming a level of truth that isn’t justifiable. It’s a lot like what Joseph Smidt said a few comments up. (Incidentally, it amazes me that you manage to get so many insightful comments here)
Of course, The Daily Show kind of redeemed themselves in my eyes by doing an entire physics-themed episode with Lisa Randall the following year (Oct 26 2011). Perhaps they’re a little more scientifically savvy now than they were in 2010.
Apart from anything else, I really think the distinction that Stewart is failing to make here is that, whatever assumptions are made, Science as a practice makes an earnest attempt to correct itself. The concept of peer review is certainly not perfect (viz. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/science/rise-in-scientific-journal-retractions-prompts-calls-for-reform.html?pagewanted=1) but it seems to be the best we have now. Religious belief only changes, if at all, as a result of shifts in cultural trends and other historical and/or political factors. A church will not change doctrine because another church reads their holy book and points out all the errors, inconsistencies and potential biases.
So, I think Stewart’s point is partially well-taken, insofar as a lot of us non-experts will trust a scientist’s assertions superficially; but I don’t think we take this “Because I said so” argument to the same extent that most people of faith seem to. Plus, I was under the impression that most working scientists *liked* being questioned and proven wrong. Remember that whole “FTL Neutrino” thing? How many religions have claimed to have witnessed a miracle and asked sincerely for investigation and refutation?
I remember watching that interview in 2010, and it was painful.
To give Stewart the benefit of the doubt, I thought that he may have been trying to make the interviewee’s point for her because the interview was going so poorly. Robinson seemed unable to even state a coherent position let alone defend one, so Stewart switched to helping her instead of challenging her.
That said, his short monologue on science did come out really dumb.
This is one of the reasons why I think the word “believe” should be stricken from every non-believer’s vocabulary (or, at least, used as little as possible).
I don’t “believe” in evolution. I don’t “believe” in dark matter or dark energy. I don’t “believe” in quantum mechanics. I accept that these are the best descriptions that we have in the appropriate fields of scientific inquiry. I accept it based on my minuscule understanding of the science (I’m not a scientist) coupled with the testimony (based on observed phenomena) of a consensus of people who understand it far better than I do.
Maybe if we stopped saying we believe in these things, and use words like “accept” or “think”, we could distance ourselves from the “why can’t we all just get along?” crowd.
Not that I don’t want to get along with people, but there are certain times the line needs to be drawn in the intellectual sand.