Chris Mooney gave a talk in Seattle, and you know who else is up there in my home town: the Discovery Institute. They tried to go on the offensive and sic their version of an attack dog on him…which was, amusingly enough, Casey Luskin. This is the kind of attack dog that goes “yap-yap-yap-yap-yap-yap-yap,” though, and annoys you by peeing on your shoes. His initial volley was this:
Why do so many people eagerly listen to a journalist with neither scientific nor legal training discuss a complex scientific and legal issue like intelligent design?
It is awkwardly ironic for an unqualified stooge of the Discovery Institute to question anyone’s credentials; if we start down that path, it’s going to lead to pointing out that very, very few of the people at that institute have any credentials in biology at all, and that maybe we should wonder why anyone should listen to a collection of ideologues with degrees in philosophy and law and theology when they pontificate on science (although, to give the other side of the argument, one of their favorite people, Ann Coulter, thinks “biologists are barely scientists,” so maybe they think the dearth of fellows with training in evolution is a plus).
But I’m not going to go down that path. I don’t think the formal credentials are as important as that gang of poseurs and con-men would like to believe.
Mooney seems to have chewed out Luskin a bit at his talk, and now Luskin has put up a longer whine about the credentials issue:
Chris Mooney asked me if a person has to have a degree in a subject in order to write a book about it. After thinking about it more, I firmly convinced the answer is no. If Chris Mooney so desires, he can write a book about whatever he wants. I even praised him in our personal dialogue, saying that he clearly is an intelligent person and I was extremely impressed with the broad range of issues and topics he writes about. I also conceded that he probably knows much more about some of these subjects than I do. (Yet as I will document in my response, his characterization of intelligent design is completely flawed.)
But this isn’t about an attack upon Chris, and the question I asked in the press release was not aimed at Chris. It was aimed at those who listen to him. The interesting point has nothing to do with Chris Mooney. The interesting point has to do with the scientific community, academia, the intelligentsia, and many in the media who have overwhelmingly embraced him and his words about intelligent design.
Chris Mooney has every right to write a book and talk about whatever he wants. That’s what journalists do, and that’s not an interesting point. The interesting point is how many academics and well-credentialed members of the intelligentsia crave his words about intelligent design, despite the fact that he has no formal credentials in neither science nor law. As a sneak preview of what is in my rebuttal to Chris, I answer that question posed above with another question:
Is it perhaps because Mr. Mooney tells ID-critics in academia exactly what they want to hear, even if it isn’t true?
Explaining why much of what Mr. Mooney writes about intelligent design isn’t true is what the balance of my response is devoted to. It isn’t devoted to attacking Chris Mooney personally.
Teaching gives a person some perspective on this. Every year, we get a crop of bright, interested, thinking students who lack any kind of degree. I’ve found children in grade school who show a solid natural understanding of the scientific method—who are willing to ask questions and follow through to good answers without bias. You don’t need a formal degree to be able to understand and use science. It may take considerable detailed training to pursue research in a field (which Mooney is not presuming to do), but being able to assess and accurately evaluate evidence? That takes intelligence and discipline, not a set of letters after your name.
The reason ID critics will listen to Mooney is that he’s smart and he demonstrates a willingness to present the evidence honestly. We can read his work and see that he isn’t making outrageous errors; he doesn’t give us cause to distrust him, and his work reveals the basis of his conclusions and allows us to see the chain of logic and see whether his interpretations are reasonable. That’s what I’m looking for, not just whether he’s got the right degree. It also helps that we can compare his discussion of scientific subjects with what those scientists with the degrees say, and see that he isn’t contradicting them.
On the other hand, take a look at representatives of the Discovery Institute…such as, say, Casey Luskin. I just put up a repost of a critique of one of Luskin’s analyses of science. It isn’t just wrong. It’s stupidly wrong. He makes serious errors in basic genetics of a kind that I don’t excuse in students who take my genetics classes, and he compounds the problem with an obtuse insistence that he knows the genetics better than Ken Miller, who wrote a textbook that summarizes that same material. He mangles arguments and misrepresents quotes from the scientific literature. He fails the exam—he babbles ignorantly at length on subjects that anyone with a familiarity with genetics can immediately and unambiguously identify as obfuscation.
If Chris Mooney had done something like that in his book, we wouldn’t trust him. That he can write competently on general subjects in science is what tells us he is worth reading.
People like Casey Luskin, or Jonathan Wells, or Tom Bethell, on the other hand, promptly expose their ignorance in their writings. Their degrees or lack thereof also don’t matter in our judgment of their work—we can spot the phonies easily enough.
“despite the fact that he has no formal credentials in neither science nor law”
huh?
It is absolutely amazing to see how people can lecture others and even be patronizing on subjects where they don’t even have the slightest idea…
Great post, professor. Question: I would really need to brush up my genetics. But do the balanced transpositions, as you point out, have an association with the Down Syndrome phenotype?(As such giving rise to the “familial Down Syndrome”).
Sorry, I meant this for the previous thread.
It’s absolutely amazing how people so often wail on about someone’s credentials in one field or another, I find that it’s usually a sure-sign they have no argument to speak of. It’s really just a super-cheap version of argumentum ad hominum that’s become very popular in an intellectual that places a very high importance on academics.
I have zero credentials in biology to speak of, or anywhere for that matter. You don’t need that to critique to claims of people like the Disco Inst. staff, all you need is a little discipline and a decent BS detector.
That the ID-iots should start talking about credentials, shows that they have no knowledge of the history of thought at all….
It was Socrates who showed that just “being an expert” was not enough, by tying the supposed experts in knots in public, by asking carefully structured questions.
Science is built on these foundations, along with (the imprtant bit that Socrates didn’t have) not just observation, but experiment and feedback.
What is now called pragmatism ….
So, you don’t need to be an “expert”, but you do need a trained mind (as PZ says), and you do need to consider the thought/hypothesis/experiment/observation/results mutual feedback that constitutes the theory and practice of sciance.
My training is in Physics/Engineering, but I can still blow away the ID-iots, because of the mrthods/training listed above.
Pathetic, isn’t it?
What I want to know, is why people STIL fall for it….
< < What I want to know, is why people STIL fall for it....>>
Rationality hardly comes into it. There are three kinds of people: those who seek the truth as revealed by a higher authority; those who seek the truth as defined by rational enquiry; and the vast majority, who believe whatever they find convenient.
Unless the public consciousness, the Zeitgeist, turns back towards science, rationality will stay in decline.
PZ wrote:
I believe the phrase you’re looking for is, “This isn’t right. This isn’t even wrong.” Wolfgang Pauli.
Y knw, th lttl lp dg Lskn sr hs y ll n dthr.
PZ, ds rntng n ths st rlly mk p fr drth f pblctns n yr prt nd hvng t lv n Mrrs?
“Ya know, the little lap dog Luskin sure has you all in a dither.
“PZ, does ranting on this site really make up for a dearth of publications on your part and having to live in Morris?
“Posted by: Francis | September 16, 2006 07:54 AM”
– No the phrase you are looking for is “All a-titter.”
Listen, Luskin is right about Mooney. Anyone can write a book about anything, and if they can find a publisher more power to them. The point that he is missing is that there is no guarantee that by publishing, one will be taken seriously. Sorry, Casey, you are missing part of the equation.
“despite the fact that he has no formal credentials in neither science nor law”
huh?
Well, everyone knows when you get into court it is crap shoot, Lawyers can argue black is white, so the best qualification you can have to try and confuse people in the face of obvious evidence is a law degree, highly essential for creationists.
My guess is that working scientists are very grateful to Mooney for doing somthing that needs to be done which either they don’t have time to do, or don’t want to do. A lot of the scientists I’ve known seemed to be putting in 60+ hour weeks, and a lot of them gto into science specifically because its definiteness allowed them to escape from the messiness of politics and such.
PZ has a reputation for sharpness, but other scientists I’ve known wouldn’t be as tactful as him in dealing with the Discovery Institute people.
Francis is a little bitch. Is that the DI equivalent of a zinger?
I thought Luskin made a good point. Why exactly should laymen take seriously the DI’s political pundits, untrained in science and uninformed in biology, when they contradict trained, practicing, expert biologists?
I don’t know why he thought it was worth making that point about Chris Mooney and the people–experts in biology, even–who take him seriously, though.
We have a person on the one hand (Mooney) who makes the effort to learn science and dialogue with professionsls. On the other hand we have people (Mooney, Coulter) who know little science but desire to pitch dogma to scientists.
The reason the Disco Institute is not densely populated by scientists is because Intelligent Design is rhetoric, not science. That’s why lawyers are so prominent there. Further evidence of the true value they place on scientific credentials is also evident in the scientific research they conduct and publish.
PZ,
Thanks for this. Listen, Luskin’s “credentialist” argument is probably even weaker than anyone here has yet recognized. If we were act like good Kantians and generalize his argument into a universal law, that would mean that journalism in this country would cease to exist, save in the few cases where journalists happen to have advanced degrees in the subjects they’re reporting on. Virtually all writing of nonfiction books by journalists would also come to an end.
So, we should now insist that Luskin apply his argument with the utmost consistency: I.e., he should criticize any journalist who contacts the Discovery Institute to write on this stuff *except* for those journalists who happen to have advanced degrees in science/law.
That should lead to great media/Discovery Institute relations.
In the words of the immortal Bob Dylan, you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Oddly enough though, there seem to be a lot of ID weathermen (David Heddle is a good example) who know which way the wind is blowing and then report otherwise.
“There are three kinds of people: those who seek the truth as revealed by a higher authority; those who seek the truth as defined by rational enquiry; and the vast majority, who believe whatever they find convenient.”
Wilkins has an interesting take on this when contrasting the last group’s (really all group’s) “bounded rationality” against the ideal “maximal coherency” rationality. ( http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2006/09/why_are_creationists_creationi_1.php ) But an individual’s rationality doesn’t equal a view’s rationality, nor does it guarantee the later.
“Francis is a little bitch.”
Yes, a little yap dog.
Luskin seems to think highly of Pharyngula though:
“Paul Z. Myers seems to agree with Forrest: when commenting on Crocker’s situation on his popular blog, Myers wrote, “Heck yeah-Caroline Crocker should have been fired,”” ( http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=1095 )
I think credentials are a useful heuristic if you want to *know* something but don’t have a yen to master the arguments–which for most of us is most of the time. That is, “What do the experts say?” is the right question if you want to know something about a fact in some domain of knowledge where expert consensus is clear.
For instance, I know the orbit of Mars has a semi-major axis of about 1.5 AU because that’s what experts say it is, and my knowledge of that is justified on purely on that basis. (I don’t need to know how to calculate it using Kepler’s Laws.)
Conversely, if some crank is suggesting facts counter to the expert consensus (“Kepler’s laws are bunk–and don’t you know that Mars orbits the Earth?”), I think it’s enough in the way of a response to say, “What are your credentials?” Chances are, he won’t have any, and you will have forestalled having to endure further nonsense.
Unfortunately, as with others of the simple-minded cohort, Luskin adopts this rhetorical move as a general strategy, far outside the conditions that otherwise make it licit.
That’s alright, Casey–we understand.
Side note: Apologies to PZ for using an example from (of all things) astronomy.
I wonder if he would raise the same question at a talk by…. oh, for instance…. Lee Strobel?
People like Casey Luskin, or Jonathan Wells, or Tom Bethell, on the other hand, promptly expose their ignorance in their writings. Their degrees or lack thereof also don’t matter in our judgment of their work–we can spot the phonies easily enough.
That’s true but: These ID jerk-offs aren’t trying to convince scientists; that’s a lost cause. They’re trying to convince people who don’t know squat about science–and ultimately, to undermine our education system.
And to do that, they lie about scientists. They work on convincing the rubes that evolution vs ID is a matter of serious debate among scientists who aren’t paid to put lipstick on their pig.
And when that doesn’t float, they insult they scientists’ intelligence and intellectual integrity by saying rhat we don’t “get” ID because we just hear . . . exactly what they want to hear. (Thus flattering the rubes at our expense, thereby upping the odds that the IDers will be believed, because the rubes are hearing something they want to hear–that they’re smarter about science than are scientists.)
They’re not bad scientists–to say so implies that, on some level, they are scientists. They’re the opposite of scientists–they’re impediments to science, slanderers of science. They’re to science what Jews for Jesus are to Jews–devoted to destroying their subject while hiding under its mantle.
I sure hope PZ’s anti religious rants help him feel better about his dearth of scientific publications or living in Morris.
Um. What I’m about to write is a little strong for me, but after mulling it over, I don’t see how I can do less.
Anti-Atheist, the following things appear to be true about you:
1) You’e not so brave. PZ Myers lives in the public eye (as do I), while you use a pseudonym. If you had PZ’s courage, you would identify yourself.
2) You’re not that forthright. PZ Myers doesn’t hesitate to explain what he finds objectionable, while you mutter vaguely about ‘anti-religous rants.’ If you find his views objectionable, you should tell us why.
3) You’re not that strong. PZ Myers, to my knowledge, has never stooped to dismissing anyone’s views here on the basis of their record of publication, but in any case such ad hominemns are irrelevant.
After all, the esteem to which I hold Myers is due to his very public participation on behalf of science education. I mean, forget the ideology, this blog is awesome. A week doesn’t go by when I don’t read a helpful breakdown of cutting-edge science that I can understand without having a Ph.d in embryology. Do *you* have a track record of doing work in the sciences, in the public eye, that matters to people? Oh, wait, I forgot….you’re not that brave.
Bottom line: This believer is not impressed. To identify yourself as an ‘anti-atheist’ doesn’t really tell us anything about your beliefs: it only tells us who you want to attack. If you were really a believer, you would stand up and say so, say what you believe, say who you *really* are and not engage in ad hominem arguments. From where I sit, ‘anti-atheism’ could just as well mean ‘anti-science’ since science, properly speaking, is an entirely atheistic enterprise.
Sincerely…Scott
>>Francis
>>The Anti-Atheist
Same troll using a 4chan joke, and that’s being charitable.
Keep up the good work, Prof. Myers.
Err, not that it’s completely relevant, but doesn’t Mooney have a degree in physics? It was a science, last time I checked.
“despite the fact that he has no formal credentials in neither science nor law”
In English, doesn’t that mean he has formal credentials in both science and law?
“God of the gaps” arguments are “complex”? Since when?
I sure hope PZ’s anti religious rants help him feel better about his dearth of scientific publications or living in Morris.
Would you like to share with us YOUR scientific credentials, where your position is, and what your list of scientific publications is?
Holy Groundhog –
“It doesn’t matter but PZ’s publication record is awful. Really, it doesn’t matter. See how awful it is. Honest, it doesn’t matter. Well, I’ll let you decide. Notice how awful it is?”
Is that what you are trying to say?
Luskin makes a big deal about “credentials” but ironically, sceince may be the academic area where credentials matter the least.
As Richard Feynman once pointed out, it is the idea and argument that matter, not the person behind it.
The ultimate judge of an idea is not the credentialed authority sitting in the ivy tower, but nature itself.
Formal scientific training certainly helps, but it is not necessary. Just look at the case of someone like Thomas Edison.
Err, not that it’s completely relevant, but doesn’t Mooney have a degree in physics?
No, he has a B.A. in English.
Chomsky once noted that he had given many talks on mathematical aspects of language to audiences of mathematicians, and never once had his lack of mathematical credentials been brought up. All they cared about was the quality of his ideas. He compared this to the numerous times his lack of a political science ph.d. has been used as a reason to dismiss his political views. His conclusion, as I recall, was, the less actual content there is to a field, the more important credentials become.
Of course if Mooney *did* have credentials in science, they would probably attack him for being biased because of it… it certainly happens on the climate arguements side
Casey Luskin: “Why do so many people eagerly listen to a journalist with neither scientific nor legal training discuss a complex scientific and legal issue like intelligent design?”
Hear hear! I’ve always wondered why people pay any attention to Denyse O’Leary. I mean, she’s got an English degree, which means she’s thoroughly disqualified from talking about ID, since an English degree is neither the scientific or legal training necessary to discuss this extraordinarily complex issue.
Tom Morris, you make a good, however cynical, point. If Luskin wants to rant about Mooney not having a science or legal degree, then why isn’t he ranting about people on his side of the fence not having the appropriate degrees?
I’m taking sides here with Mooney, Myers, et al.
I’ve heard the arguments posed by the religious Right that God put all the “evidence” of evolution out there to tempt those who would not believe in the Word. It’s like separating the wheat from the chaff.
Excuse me? As a parent, should I then be tempting my children to go astray and make fools of themselves, deliberately misleading them so that at some opportune moment I can then show them the error of their ways (how magnanimous of me to be such a forgiving person), or do I give them all the tools and evidence they need to make proper decisions in life, to facilitate their development, and to nourish their love of life?
Is it proper to embarrass a young student with temptations to fail?
As a believer in a higher power, I cannot impose upon that power such stupidity.
Jake,
This might also be because his mathematical linguistics work was using math to address linguistics, not make profound statements about math. His political writings, on the other hand, very definitely are trying to say something profound about political science; they might be quite a revelation to a sophomore but I can see where actual political scientists might not think he was in their league.