Suzan does a mini- Monckton

The journalist Suzan Mazur seems to be taking a leaf out of Christopher Monckton’s silly book.

A while back I reviewed Suzan Mazur’s book The Altenberg 16: An Exposé of the Evolution Industry (see Self-exposure – a journalist out of depth). I didn’t like it. My conclusion was that she had no real knowledge of evolutionary science. She approached the issue like a political journalist, believing the worst of the scientists she interviewed and thinking she had a “story” when she didn’t. The title of the book says it all. As does the fact that it was promoted by intelligent design/creationist websites and blogs.

Since then Mazur has had a few other digs at scientists particularly on the issue of peer review (see The Peer Review Prison). It is just so easy to get quotes from disgruntled authors to support a conspiracy theory of the “scientific establishment” censoring honest scientific work and new ideas. Nothing new there. And it is not honest reporting.

Now she has been called out by the scientist/philosopher Massimo Pigluicci. He described his experience with her work on The Altenberg 16 in his recent book Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk.* The discrepancy between the material he provided in his interview and the article she wrote allowed, according the Pigluicci, “a rare glimpse from the inside of a journalist’s behaviour once she thought (mistakenly) that she was on to something big.” Pigluicci said it revealed “how thin the boundary is between not only science and pseudoscience, but journalism and pseudo-journalism.”

This didn’t please Mazur at all. And like a mini-Monckton she climbed out of her tree, attacked Pigluicci, his employer (Lehman College) and Publisher (University of Chicago press). She describes Pigluicci’s comments as a “malicious attack,” “twisted,”  disingenuous” and “libelous trash.” She questions whether Pigluicci “is competent to teach with regard to moral and ethics at Lehman College.”

And she demands that the publishers removed Pigliucci’s book from circulation, cancel scheduled readings and “advise Massimo Pigluicci to cease and desist from further derogatory public statements with regard to me and my work.”

This is the sort of thing we have come to expect from lord Christopher Monckton when his claims are subjected to calm, reason, scientific critique (see Support John Abraham against Monckton’s bullying).

Two weeks after making her demands the University of Chicago Press and their legal counsel have advised Mazur they stand by  Massimo Pigliucci, won’t be removing his  book from circulation or stop public readings from it. Se has released the letter she sent to the publishers (see Pigliucci Deceit Drags Publisher Into Big Muddy) but no copy of their response.

Strangely, this little storm in a teacup was reported, as far as I can find, only at New Zealand’s Scoop (which was also involved in publishing her book).

*See Pseudoscience and anti-science nonsense for a review of Pigluicci’s book Nonsense on Stilts

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Evolution of gods, morals and violence

Book review: In the Name of God: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Ethics and Violence by John Teehan.

Price: US$16.47; NZ$39.97

Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell (May 3, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1405183810
ISBN-13: 978-1405183819

“In the Name of God is an excellent popular presentation of the scientific understanding of the origins of religion and morality. It also examines the origins of religious violence and opens a discussion on the way humanity may reduce these problems.

Some people will find it controversial. But not because some trends in evolutionary psychology have discredited themselves with extravagant claims. In this case the controversy will be because, as Teehan puts it, “this view of human nature – the very idea that there might be a human nature – smacks up against some strongly held political, moral, religious, and ideological positions.”

However, the time is right. “It is only within the last few decades that we have developed the tools that can give us a fair chance of setting out a scientific account of religious origins. In fact, I believe we are living in the midst of perhaps the greatest period of intellectual discovery in the history of religious studies.” One could say the same about the scientific study of human morality.

Is and ought

I have been watching some of the videos from the Edge seminar THE NEW SCIENCE OF MORALITY. There will eventually be about 10 hours of talks and discussions posted on the Edge site. From the few presentations I have seen so far this looks to have been a fascinating seminar.

Partly because the science is relatively new – but also because there has been a lot of progress made. However, there are of course areas which promote intense discussion. I get the impression, for example, that several of the participants wish to challenge to dogma that one can’t determine an ought from an is. It’s going to be interesting to see that debate played out.

WEIRD culture and reasoning

Jonathon Haidt

Jonathon Haidt was the first speaker and made some interesting points about the relevance of a science centred largely around specialists from advanced western countries. He is using the acronym WIERD for the orientation around cultures in the Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. This analysis comes from a recent paper The weirdest people in the world ? by J Henrich, SJ Heine and A Norenzayan. Those authors say “we need to be less cavalier in addressing questions of human nature, on the basis of data drawn from this particularly thin and rather unusual slice of humanity.”

Haidt also discusses some fallacies about human reasoning. “The puzzle is, why are humans so amazingly bad at reasoning in some contexts, and so amazingly good in others?” Again he refers to a recent paper by Mercier and Sperber – Why do humans reason ? Arguments for an argumentative theory. This is an interesting paper discussing human problems like confirmation bias, the human problem of search for evidence to support an preconceived conclusion.

Obviously both these problems are very relevant to a seminar like this. Go to the Edge site for a video of Jonothan’s presentation or download and audio file (MP3 Audio Download — Jonathan Haidt Talk).

Sam Harris and a role for science

As Sam Harris was one of the participants the seminar will surely have also discussed his ideas on the role of science in determining right and wrong. He presented these ideas in two recent lectures and they resulted in a lot of discussion, and controversy, on a number of scientific blogs (see Can science answer moral questions? and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrA-8rTxXf0).

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• The new science of morality (openparachute.wordpress.com)

The new science of morality

Edge's John Brockman and the nine speakers in the New Science of Morality Seminar

This last week saw the latest Edge Seminar – The New Science of Morality – held in the US. (see Edge: THE NEW SCIENCE OF MORALITY).

This looks fascinating.  Nine leading researchers in the field gave presentations. Short abstracts are on the Edge site together with videos of the presentations. Transcripts of the presentations will be on line soon.

Morality is an area which religion has tried to ring fence, to claim a special role. But, as with anything else the “god did it” approach gets nowhere. Now the field is being actively researched and there is progress.

The nine researchers who gave presentations were Roy Baumeister, Paul Bloom, Joshua D. Greene, Jonathan Haidt, Sam Harris, Marc D. Hauser, Joshua Knobe, Elizabeth Phelps, David Pizarro.

There is information on the work and background of these researchers below the fold:

Science, faith and limits of knowledge

Occasionally we have debates here about the “limits of science,” “other ways of knowing,” and the old “scientism” label. Recently these issues have received a bit of coverage in  a series of articles at the Guardian.

These have been responses to the question Can Science Explain Everything?

Ever decreasing limits

I really like two of the responding articles. Adam Rutherford, who is an editor at the science journal Nature, wrote Ever-increasing circles of science. His conclusions are summarised in the sentence: “The domain of knowledge amenable to science has only ever changed in one direction: at the expense of all others.”

“Science may not tell us much about history, or aesthetics, or metaphysics. But to underestimate the boundaries of what it can say is a fallacy committed only by those who misunderstand or deny the power of the scientific method. When the comedian Dara O’Briain hears the facile maxim “science doesn’t know everything” his response is, of course it doesn’t, otherwise it would stop. As a way of knowing, there are limits to what science can reveal, but those limits are ever decreasing. Is there a sensible reason why it can’t tell us about love, or psychology, or God or the composition of quarks? Abso-bloody-lutely not.”

If you are not familiar with Dara O’Briain or his work have a look at the video clips in Get in the sack! Really great

Sue Blackmore, whose research interests include memes, evolutionary theory, consciousness, and meditation, produced Science explains, not describes

She says: “The experience of consciousness seems incommunicable and ineffable. Yet science can hope to explain how it arises.” She justifies this by arguing:

“Science can (potentially at least) explain everything because its ways of trying to understand the universe by asking questions of it should not leave any areas off-limits. The methods of openness, inquiry, curiosity, theory building, hypothesis testing and so on can be adapted and developed to explore and try to explain anything.”

As her title implies she concludes:

“conscious experiences may remain ineffable even when science thoroughly understands how and why. In this case I would be right in my intuition that science cannot describe everything but may well be able to explain that which it cannot describe.”

Finally I came across similar sympathies in the article Science and Faith at the blog cgranade::streams. The author Chris Granade, a Canadian Ph.D. student,  concludes:

“Why should we mistake the limits of our current methods as being intrinsic properties of the world itself? That seems like the ultimate leap of faith. To hold some phenomenon to be permanently beyond the realm of understanding, regardless of how much humanity grows (or how much our post-human descendants grow), is to take an unpalatable amount on faith.”

I like it!

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Liability of scientific denialism to political conservativism

I have often thought that political conservatives who promote climate change denial are cutting off their nose to spite their face. Sure, I can understand why conservatives may be opposed to collective action required to deal with the problem of global warming. Or at least some of the political and economic measures that have been discussed. But if they are serious about their political and ideological stance, and their desire to promote it, they should be in there debating the adaption and mitigation procedures that have been advanced. Or advancing some of their own.

Instead, they choose to leave themselves “outside the tent pissing in,” when they avoid the political process taking place and instead claim there is no need.

Evolution and the Holocaust

A remarkably similar title to Darwin's classic

These sometimes get linked because they both have their deniers. I am ignoring those silly people who actually blame the holocaust on Darwin.  Here I want to compare them as phenomena supported by immense amounts of converging evidence.

In “The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution”, Richard Dawkins compared the denial of evolution to the denial of the history of the Roman civilisation. There is good evidence for both and yet some people seem to think it is OK to deny evolutionary science while accepting the existence of the Roman civilisation.

Same with the Holocaust. As Dawkins pointed out the evidence for evolution is as good as, if not better, than that for the holocaust. But there are still people who accept the Holocaust as a fact while denying evolution. ( actually I did come across someone the other day who disagreed with Dawkins because while he found the evidence for evolution convincing nhe denied the evidence for the Holocaust. Almost a mirror image).

Life on the building site

I am in a bit of a holding pattern at the moment.

However, came across this recently so thought I would share it.

If only!

(Thanks to DrPetra)

Theological critiques of billboards required

Don Quixote and Sancho Panza prepare to charge

The atheist billboards which went up in three New Zealand cities recently have provoked some interest. Most of it has been quietly positive.

However, there are the critics. Inevitably there are those who criticise the weakness of the slogans. Lindsay Perigo had a slightly humourous article on this (see SOLO-NZ Press Release: Memo to NZ Atheists—Grow a Pair!). He said:

Support John Abraham against Monckton’s bullying

Six weeks ago I posted a slideshow of a talk by John Abrahm’s (see Don’t trust Monckton!).

It was a calm and objective investigation into the claims made by Christopher Monckton in one of his lectures. If you didn’t watch it I highly recommend you do so.

Trouble is, Monckton is not used to such exchanges and has climbed out of his tree. His has written a 99 page “rejection” of Abraham’s talk and sent threatening letters to both Abraham and his employers (University of St Thomas, Minnesota). Asking for the presentation to be removed form the web site and demanding money – which has all the implication of possible legal action.

Now he is further organising his minions via climate change denier blogs to send similar letters to  the University of St Thomas.

Monckton can’t be allowed to succeed in this campaign. I has all the earmarks of those campaigns by Stalinists against dissident Russian scientists, or the German Nazis against Jewish scientists.

It is important that supporters of science make the university aware that this sort of bullying is just not acceptable.

Gareth at Hot Topic is organising a way for you to make your support for Abraham known. Just leave your name on a comment at his post Support John Abraham. He will ensure these messages of support get to Abraham’s employers.

Effectively Gareth is asking us to support the statement:

We the undersigned offer unreserved support for John Abraham and St. Thomas University in the matter of complaints made to them by Christopher Monckton. Professor Abraham provided an important public service by showing in detail Monckton’s misrepresentation of the science of climate, and we applaud him for that effort, and St. Thomas University for making his presentation available to the world.

UPDATE 10:30 am, July 16: I am heartened at the huge support Abraham is getting – currently over 630 people have added teir names to Gareth’s post at Hot Topic (Support John Abraham). In contrast Mockton provides copies of three (3) letters sent to the University of St Thomas as a result of his campaign (see Letters to Father Dease in support of Monckton). Some of Monckton’s supporters are starting to question his wisdon in this attack and threat of legal action.

I believe it important that everyone who is concerned with protecting science from this sort of censorship add their names to the list at Hot Topic. Unfortunately science employers can sometimes be influence by threats of legal action to employ self censorship. However if the University is aware that there is a groundswell of public support for both them and Abraham I am confident they will not give in.

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