Phil Plait ditches bloggingheads, too!

This is not good for bloggingheads: that makes the third high profile science blogger to announce their rejection of bloggingheads, after Sean Carroll and Carl Zimmer. Phil would be #4, except I realize I was rather ambiguous about it when I mentioned it before.

So, just to clarify, NO, I won’t be conversing on bloggingheads in the future…which I regret, since I think the site had some real potential.

Several of the commenters on Phil’s site do not think it is a good idea, because lunacy like creationism ought to be confronted whenever we can do so. I agree! The problem with bloggingheads wasn’t simply that creationists were given a venue — it was that creationists were given a venue without voices opposing their ideas. It was setting up crackpots with softball interviews that made them look reasonable, because their peculiar ideas were never confronted. That’s what has to be rejected, not the idea of arguing with bad ideas (although Sean Carroll makes a good case that some ideas are so bad they don’t even deserve debate), but a site that promised discussion yet became open mic night for loons.

Most excellent news from Wyoming

I reported a while back that the University of Wyoming geology museum was in danger of extinction: it has been pulled back from the brink by a generous private donation of over half a million dollars, with matching funds from the state. I don’t like to see significant public institutions’ survival depending on the whim of individuals, but we take what we can get, and are grateful for it.

Here Comes Science!

I got a letter from John F — you know, John Flansburgh, of They Might Be Giants — and he says, “We’ve got this new album coming out that you might like, want me to send you a copy?”, and so I nonchalantly type back, “Sure, here’s my address,” which was really hard to do when you understand that I was dancing jigglety-pigglety in my chair, pumping my fists in the air, and shouting “WOO-HOO!” at the same time. It would have been impossible except for my blogging superpowers. (Oh, yeah…I’m a TMBG fanboi.)

I got the album Here Comes Science the other day, and it is fabulous. It’s kids’ music, so it’s catchy and a teeny-tiny bit didactic, but don’t let that put you off — I’ve loaded it onto my iPod and am enjoying it all the time. It’s also contains a CD and a DVD: each song also has an animated cartoon to go with it. They’re great and enthusiastic songs — my favorites so far are “I am a paleontologist” and “Science is real”.

You should buy it. It’ll be available next week, or you can always stop by my house and I’ll put the DVD up on the big screen and we can all rock out in my living room — I’ll push all the furniture to the side so we can all dance. Or if you’re cheap and don’t like me, you can subscribe to the TMBG podcast on iTunes: they’re going to release a song a week.

Can’t wait? You can get a look at “Science is Real” right now.

I should warn you, though, it’s controversial. Yeah, right. Look at the comments on Amazon. The song “Science is Real” contains these lyrics:

I like the stories
About angels, unicorns and elves
Now I like the stories
As much as anybody else
But when I’m seeking knowledge
Either simple or abstract
The facts are with science
The facts are with science

This has prompted a few comments.

I love TMBG more than anybody, but was it really necessary to take a pot-shot at religion?

This guy must be one of those thin-skinned elf worshippers.

As a Christian I’m offended by comparing unicorns, elves with angels. Unicorns and Elves are fiction, and angels are biblical. End of story.

(Shhh. Don’t tell him about Numbers 23:22 and 24:8, Deuteronomy 33:17, Job 39:9,10, Psalms 22:21 and 29:6 and
92:10 or Isaiah 34:7. Unicorns are biblical, too.)

This is why the accommodationist strategy is doomed to failure. There is no gentle demurral from religion that will not offend someone — even fun songs about science are expected to pretend that angels are real.

What have you done for science education in your state lately?

One of the big issues in science education is the topic of science standards: each state is supposed to have guidelines for the public school curriculum, which are intended to enforce some uniformity and also make sure that key subjects are covered. These standards are often accompanied by big political fights as the religious right tries, for instance, to get evolution (and sex education, and historical accuracy, and …) expunged from the curriculum. Sometimes they succeed, and sometimes the good guys win.

An article in Evolution: Education and Outreach assesses the current state of state science standards, and one of the things they’ve done is grade each state on their support for evolutionary biology. A centerpiece of the article is this map of science standard scores…how is your state doing?

i-581cff39e192cfb4d1ceca6a9664f1ca-2009_state_science_standards-thumb-400x240-18521.jpeg
(Click for larger image)

Minnesota is doing pretty good. We got dinged for weak coverage of cosmology, and also for the inclusion of some waffly language that was included to appease the creationist lobby. Those are productive suggestions that we can build on for the next round of standards revisions, in a few years. We had our recent infestation of creationist yuckiness (ahh, Cheri Yecke…we do not miss you at all), but we got better. We’ve also built a local advocacy group, Minnesota Citizens for Science Education, that is there to provide support and information in building better standards.

I can’t help but gloat over our neighbor to the east: Wisconsin may have an excellent university system, but their politics have been poison to science education. That may change — they’ve now also got a Wisconsin Citizens for Science group, so maybe someone will be doing some effective lobbying in the future.

I think that’s key: you need activists mobilized to work for improvement, good education doesn’t just poof into existence. The other interesting cases on that map are Kansas and Florida: if you’ve been following this blog for a while, you know that those have been two hotspots for creationist inanity for some time now. So what’s with the perfect As for those states? How can such hotbeds of creationism be scoring so well?

First thing you have to keep in mind is that state science standards just say what should be taught, not necessarily what is taught. States with great standards can still have many teachers who are doing a poor job and not meeting those standards; similarly, there are great teachers in those failing states that go above and beyond to teach evolution well. The standards merely represent what direction the educational authorities in that state want their schools to take. A state with an A standard is declaring that they are aiming high for their students; the F states have essentially announced that they are giving up and diving for the basement.

The other point is that these reflect recent changes: responsible citizens have been stirred up by the crazies infesting their school boards, and are working hard to improve matters. There is hope: there is a clear message being sent to teachers in those states that they must do better. They also have excellent citizen groups organized there — Kansans should join Kansas Citizens for Science, and in Florida, help Florida Citizens for Science.

As for Texas…hoo boy. Texas is a bad story all around. They have some great advocacy groups working there (Texas Citizens for Science and the Texas Freedom Network), but have deep problems. They have a political history of putting the very worst, most unqualified creationist dingleberries in charge — Don McElroy, for instance — which makes progress difficult, and I suspect there is a lot of external pressure on the state, as well. As one of the largest textbook markets, and with a centralized decision-making apparatus for selecting textbooks, they are a major target of all of the creationist organizations; they know that influence in Texas ripples out everywhere else. We can only hope it will turn around soon.

So look at your state. If your standards are good, don’t be complacent: keep them that way, and also work locally to make sure your school districts actually implement them. If your state is shading into the dark grays…look for a state citizens for science group, or if you don’t have one, create one. Write to your representatives and let them know what’s going on; maybe send them a copy of the Mead and Mates paper and shame them a little bit.

Do something, though. It would be nice to see the United States get straight As someday.

Mead LS, Mates A (2009) Why Science Standards are Important to a Strong Science Curriculum and How States Measure Up. Evolution: Education and Outreach 2(3): 359-371.

Zimmer and Carroll say adios to Bloggingheads

I’ve always rather liked Bloggingheads — at least the idea of it, with one-on-one discussions between interesting people. It flops in execution often, since some of the participants wouldn’t recognize reason and evidence if it walked up and slapped them in the face with a large and pungent haddock (the right-winger political discussions are unwatchable, and it’s always had this problem of giving people like Jonah Goldberg a platform), but their Science Saturday has been generally good. I don’t always agree with the people they have on, but at least they’re interesting and provocative. And Sean Carroll and Carl Zimmer have been superstars of the format.

That’s changed lately. First they brought on Paul Nelson and Ron Numbers in a tawdry self-congratulation session that never addressed the Paraceratherium looming over the dialog, Nelson’s insane young earth creationism. Then most recently they brought in Michael Behe, squirrely academic front for the ID creationism movement, and again they let his inanity slide by bringing in a friendly conversationalist, the linguist John McWhorter, who fawned over Behe’s recent bad book.

What is this? Is bloggingheads to become a creationist-friendly site, where crackpots get to play talking head for a while and never risk getting their stupid ideas criticized? This is not good. If they want to bring in creationists, fine…but don’t give them a free pass on their foolishness by pairing them with people who can’t argue with the biology.

There was apparently some restlessness in the ranks of the regulars, and they had a conference call with Robert Wright, the man behind bloggingheads, which did not conclude at all satisfactorily. Now two of the best science people they had on call have declared that they will no longer be contributing.

Sean Carroll says goodbye for good reason.

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.

Carl Zimmer also departs.

My standard for taking part in any forum about science is pretty simple. All the participants must rely on peer-reviewed science that has direct bearing on the subject at hand, not specious arguments that may sound fancy but are scientifically empty. I believe standards like this one are crucial if we are to have productive discussions about the state of science and its effects on our lives.

This is not Blogginghead’s standard, at least as I understand it now. And so here we must part ways.

This is good, principled action, and it’s exactly what we need to do every time some journalistic enterprise tries to generate a false equivalence between serious science and crackpottery like creationism — shut them out. Say goodbye. Let the credible sources wash their hands of them and move on.

I’m still somewhat sympathetic to the idea of bloggingheads — and David Killoren left a good comment that basically admits that they screwed up — but there has to be a commitment to good science from the top down for it to work. I’m not convinced by the replies Wright has left on those two sites that he has that goal in mind.

Here’s our problem

I know, you can’t use reason to talk someone out of a position they didn’t use reason to arrive at, anyway. But this result at least tells us the depth of the problem.

When asked what they would do if scientists were to disprove a particular religious belief, nearly two-thirds (64%) of people say they would continue to hold to what their religion teaches rather than accept the contrary scientific finding, according to the results of an October 2006 Time magazine poll.

I’ve talked to a lot of people who think that way, and the really mind-boggling part of this is that they consider this attitude to be a virtue. That’s where early education in critical thinking is important: children shouldn’t grow up believing that stubbornly clinging to an idea despite all the evidence against it makes them look heroic. It makes them look stupid.

Signs of progress

This is one of the best ideas around for promoting better science communication: The Science and Entertainment Exchange forges an alliance between scientists and the popular media. This interview with Jennifer Ouellette shows that she’s doing it just right, since it isn’t one of these things where surly scientists are invited in to criticize, but where entertainers can tap into the imaginations and weird, twisty brains of scientists to get cool ideas that they can use.

Cruel, cruel tease

If you’re like me, you are eagerly awaiting the release of Dawkins’ next book,
The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), and you’ve probably already put in your preorder at Amazon. It’s kind of like the anticipatory excitement for the Harry Potter books, only for hardcore geeks.

To whet your appetite, there is a short extract from chapter one available online. And alas, you have to wait until 22 September for the whole thing. We’ll have it read by the 23rd, right?

Want more? Here’s an excerpt from chapter two.

The educated/ignorant divide

This is a very interesting analysis of Unscientific America: the authors weren’t only shallow in identifying solutions to the problems they identified, they completely missed the big one. This is an informative chart.


American variation in science literacy is enormous. Data from Salzmann & Lowell (2008)

We’ve got a large number of science-literate students in the top-performing category (which is good), but the average is relatively low (not good). I know this is really obvious, but I have to say it anyway, since I’m afraid many Americans will read this: the only way that can happen is if there is a huge number of students who are also really, really bad at science. Our country has an educated/ignorant divide to match our ugly rich/poor divide.

Here’s a personal story to make the abstract real. It’s back-to-school time in Florida, and the budget isn’t there.

Science teachers are feeling the pinch at Journeys Academy, Seminole’s new alternative school.

“My science teachers handed me three pages of things they’d like to have, but because of the hard budget times, we weren’t given an opening budget for science,” Principal Michael Icardi said.

That means a big need for “microscopes and balances and those types of things.” His team, Icardi said, will have to be “creative.”

If you don’t have the basics, if science teachers are told by their administrators that they have to replace essential tools with their imagination, it’s only going to get worse. If you want to fix science literacy in America, the answer isn’t going to come from the top with the training of a thousand Carl Sagans — we need to give a few tens of millions of students a decent lab experience, a little knowledge of critical thinking, and the intellectual tools to aspire to something better.