Here's a piece on
Ars Technica (via
Hit & Run) about Conservadepia's head-in-the-sand approach to any scientific evidence which contradicts their own hackish, ignorant world view.
Normally I wouldn't bother to comment on something like this. The creationist tactic of shoving their fingers in their ears and screaming "Teh evil heathen scientists is trying to fools us with their tricky maths and 'speriments" is just so wearying. But I feel I must weigh in because I personally know that the target of their latest tirade,
Richard Lenski, is a good scientist, doing good work.
One of the problems with research into evolution is that it almost always happens very slowly and when it does happens relatively quickly it catches us by surprise, so it can be difficult to gather really good numeric data. To counter this Lensky and colleagues at MSU have been evolving strains of E. coli for, I believe, upwards of 30,000 generations now. I like this approach, I like the philosophy behind it, I like what they do. All around thumbs up.
I met Lensky when I interviewed with an MSU CS prof,
Charles Ofria, who collaborates extensively with Lensky. While Lensky et al. are observing tens of thousands of generations of bacteria over a few years (which is still astonishingly fast, compared to the pace of most life on Earth), Ofria and his team are whipping through ten thousand generations of simulated organisms over a long weekend. Obviously there are plenty of simplifying assumptions needed for this
in silico work, but on the other hand it gives you a complete record of the genome of every individual which ever "lived," which is, shall we say, pretty handy. I think it's just a phenomenal job of incorporating computational techniques into the traditional experiment-and-observe scientific method. This is truly good science.
On the other side of this debate we have some lunatic lawyer (Andy Schlafly) who's convinced everyone who doesn't wave the banner of his favorite -Ism is a fraud and a cheat and a liar. He had, by the way, not yet read the paper he was so vociferously objecting to at the time of his complaints. (Didn't this guy ever learn the first lesson of seminar classes: if you have not read the paper, do not say anything more committal than "hmmmm, yes, the author made some interesting points.") Needless to say, I trust him ever so much less than Lensky on this matter.
Particularly infuriating is Schlafly's "I pay my taxes!" gambit (i.e. the idea that all publicly funded research should be open to extra scrutiny from any taxpayer that gets a chip on their shoulder). This always drives me insane. Military hardware is tax-payer funded. That doesn't mean I can pop the hood of an Abrams tank if I wave a copy of my 1040 at the MPs. I can't just grab some donuts from the police head quarters break room because they were purchased with tax dollars.
Obviously, openness is critical to scientific inquiry. I am skeptical of any researchers who guard their data and methods too closely. But Lensky published his findings in a
top notch journal and released them to the public, which pretty much fulfills the requirements of the any federal grant to make your findings public as a condition of receiving the King's shilling. Those are the rules of the game. If you keep your findings too private, your grants get cut off (or you don't win awards in the next round of funding). Indignant citizens don't get to parade around the internet claiming that they're taxpayers, dammit, and they want some answers from a private person who's already fulfilled his side of a contract with the State. How open scientists should be is a difficult question, and not one that is likely to be resolved soon. But it is obvious to me that Lensky has been plenty public enough to satisfy any reasonable ethical complaints on those grounds.
Finally, this story really rubs me the wrong way because these creationist goons give Christian scientists* a bad name. During said interview at MSU I had to answer questions along the lines of "You went to Notre Dame, huh? They're Christian, huh? Does that mean that you/they deny evolution?" First of all, I think they had a sub-par understanding of the sociocultural differences between Catholicism and Protestantism. But putting that aside, do you know how it feels to be a respected student, with a science degree from a respected research university, and be asked that? They were tactful about it, but they might as well have said "Are you as willfully ignorant as all those obnoxious Jeebus-lovers we see on TV? You're not
one of them, are you?" And you know what? I don't blame them one bit for asking. I think I handled the question very well, and certainly to their satisfaction, but I despise the fact that it came up just because there are droves of empty-headed ideologues praying to (sort of) the same Great Sky Father as the founders of the university I attended did.
Seriously, creationists, you have lost this fight. You make everyone remotely or superficially similar to you look like idiots whenever you open your traps. Give it up. Find another issue. Go have a nice bongo circle with all the
bald, pony-tailed hippies who believe in crystal skulls and commiserate with them about how the scientific community just doesn't understand your overwhelming piles of pure speculation and wishful thinking.
* Scientists who are also Christian, not Mary Baker Eddy-style Christian Scientists.
Thoughts on last Friday's The Hold Steady concert:
