Bill Nye recently produced a video as part of the Big Think series on YouTube, this one arguing that creationism is not appropriate for children. The video has sparked some debate, but not just about evolution and creationism – more so about tone and strategy. What is the purpose of the video, and is it successful?

One of the interesting corners of this discussion is two articles on Scientific American taking two very different views of the video. The first is an interview with Patrick Donadio, “a professional speaker and a communications coach to the leaders of Fortune 500 companies.” The second is essentially a rebuttal by Kyle Hill, which takes a more scientific view. Naturally, I related better to the second article.

Hill points out that there is actually some published evidence on communication that might inform this discussion – something missing from Donadio’s interview. I have had some experience with corporate-style communications “experts” and I have had the same reaction as Hill appears to gently be stating – that there is a culture of corporate speaking and self-styled experts that is not exactly compatible with scientific communication.

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This came to my attention through Orac at Respectful Insolence and I thought I would pig-pile on – the platform of the Texas Republican party. Mine is not a political blog and I will try to refrain from expressing any purely political opinion. Rather I do often address the science that informs politics and the intrusion of politics into science or the denial of science by political activists – all of which is evident in the platform.

Orac does his usual great job of addressing the evolution denial, anti-vaccine sentiments, and promotion of alternative medicine in the platform. Unfortunately, promoters of unscientific medicine and opponents of science-based medicine find allies on both sides of the political aisle. On the left they tend to appeal to anti-corporate and new age sentiments. On the right it’s all about freedom – health care freedom, freedom from mandates, and freedom from regulation. The platform specifically opposes regulation of vitamins and supplements, stating: “We support the rights of all adults to their choice of nutritional products, and alternative health care choices.”

I have written about the health care freedom movement before.  Essentially it is an attempt to undermine rational and reasonable measures to establish a minimum standard of care in medicine. You can’t have a standard without some criteria and some method of enforcing the criteria. The current standard is largely science-based, transparent, and fair, but proponents of unscientific methods that fall below the reasonable standard want to abolish it so they will be free to practice witchcraft as medicine. Health care freedom is presented as consumer freedom, but it is really anti-consumer and all about the freedom to sell pseudoscience and bad medicine.

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I wrote two weeks ago about the latest state bill attacking the teaching of evolution, this one in Tennessee. This particular bill has perhaps attracted more media attention than other similar bills because Tennessee was the location of the famous Scopes Monkey trial. At the time the bill had passed the state house and senate, and we were awaiting the decision of Governor Bill Haslam on whether or not he would sign the bill.

Now our waiting is over. Haslam did not sign the bill, but neither did he veto it. He allowed the bill to pass without his signature.

I had speculated that perhaps Haslam was looking for a politically acceptable (for Tennessee) justification for vetoing the bill, as he stated publicly that the bill might represent legislative intrusion into an area reserved for the board of education. It now seems that speculation was overly optmistic, but not entirely without merit. Haslam indeed did not want to appear to be supporting the bill, but also did not want to veto a bill that is apparently popular in his state. About his decision he has officially stated:

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The Tennessee bill that requires science teachers to teach the “strengths and weaknesses” of “controversial” topics has sparked public discussion on evolution and creationism once again. This means that we will cycle through the same series of arguments that have already been worked through, but that is the nature of the popularization of any topic, such as science. Inevitably in these discussions some people, wanting to be accommodating to all sides, ask some version of the famous question, “Can’t we all just get along?”

This view touches our democratic and individualistic sensibilities and our sense of fairness. Further, the political process is often one of compromise. Creationists are happy to exploit these facts, and claim that they just want what’s fair, they want “equal time,” they want to “teach the controversy,” and they just don’t think evolution should get any special treatment. They use these strategies because they resonate with the American culture. Also it’s easy to portray egg-headed intellectual scientists as ivory tower elitists. This all may be effective politics, but it is bad science and bad for education.

A recent editorial in the Tennessean plays the “compatible” card – here it is in its entirety:

Science has proved the universe began with a collision of two specks moving in an oversize void a very long time ago, evolving into what we have today.

How did they get together? Where did they come from? That is where God came in.

What I don’t understand is, why argue over evolution and creation when both theories are true?

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Creationists continue their assault on the teaching of evolution, this time in the home state of the Scopes Monkey trial – Tennessee. The state senate passed bill 893, which will now go back to the house. The bill reflects the current strategy of creationists to sneak creationist arguments into the public school, or at least water down the teaching of evolution. The bill offers this justification for why it is needed:

(1) An important purpose of science education is to inform students about scientific evidence and to help students develop critical thinking skills necessary to becoming intelligent, productive, and scientifically informed citizens;
(2) The teaching of some scientific subjects, including, but not limited to, biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning, can cause controversy; and
(3) Some teachers may be unsure of the expectations concerning how they should present information on such subjects

The first sentence is certainly true, but begs the question of whether this bill will serve that purpose. Ironically this bill is directly opposed to the purpose of educating students who are scientifically literate and can think critically. This may have something to do with the fact that the creationists supporting this bill generally cannot think critically and are scientifically illiterate – at least when it comes to the topic of evolution.

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Online surveys are worthless. That is, they are worthless as a source of information about popular belief and opinions. Yet many people still find them compelling, and so they can be useful as a way of driving traffic to your website. I guess that’s why they persist.

A recent poll about teaching complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in Australian universities has become a matter of unnecessary controversy. Asher Moses wrote an article complaining about the fact that the survey seems to have been “gamed”, in an article: Vote on alternative medicine falls victim to dark arts of the internet. In the article he seems to miss the two real points about the poll – surveys are not reliable, and it’s fallacious to use them as an argument from popularity anyway.  He writes:

Voting progressed steadily at first but on Tuesday votes began rising from about 125,000 to more than 877,000 by the time voting closed on Thursday. The end result was 70 per cent no, 30 per cent yes.  The number of votes in the poll was about eight times more than the number of online readers of the story, a clear indicator that the poll had been gamed.

Moses talks in the article about how easy it is to “game” an online survey, but that is not the real issue. Most surveys are probably not hacked, as indicated above it is easy to detect such manipulation. Rather, there is a problem inherent with polls and surveys.  The only reference to this issue in the article is acknowledgement that the survey was not “scientific” – but what does that mean, exactly?

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This past weekend I attended DragonCon – mainly to participate in the science and skeptics tracks. It is a great outreach program, teaching the science behind science fiction. I sat on one panel that discussed the science of zombies. Zombies, for whatever reason, are currently very popular. Similar to the panel idea, the CDC has exploited this popularity to promote disaster preparedness – preparing for a zombie attack is the same, essentially, as preparing for any natural disaster. It’s a good hook for public service information.

One point that came up on the panel was the consequence of a zombie apocalypse, specifically if the vast majority of the population are now dead (or undead, or at least seriously brain-damaged), how will we reboot civilization after the zombies are defeated. This is an interesting thought experiment.

My fellow panelists spoke about where to find stores of information that would likely have survived, such as rural university libraries. It is a good thing that we still print books and journals in large numbers. After any apocalypse such hard copies will be our best source of technical and scientific information. Well – perhaps our second best source. The best source will be surviving experts. That, of course, will also be the very problem – the loss of most experts.

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The Canadian Blood Services (CBS) has started a new campaign – What’s Your Type. It looks like a cute campaign to promote blood donation. Unfortunately, CBS has chosen to promote various pseudosciences in the process. You can click a button to “know your type” and will be given what is essentially an astrological reading based upon blood type instead of star sign. In addition there is information about how to eat right for your blood type.

Blood type astrology is common in Japan and other Asian countries, more common, in fact, than astrology is in the west. Blood type is often disclosed in personal ads, on Facebook profiles, in Celebrity gossip columns, and fictional characters are often given a blood type. This even enters into politics – as politicians are often pressured to disclose their blood type.

It all seems silly – the superstitions of other cultures typically do (although to some they may also sound exotic and therefore alluring). Blood type astrology, however, is no more silly than the many superstitious beliefs that are common in the US or elsewhere.

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The Republican primary season is already starting, and we are in for another round of candidates saying embarrassing things about science. To be fair (this is not a political blog so I want to make sure I don’t come off as partisan) bad science is not limited to the Republican party. But there are some issues where they definitely take the lead – and evolution/creationism is one. In some states creationism is on the Republican party platform. Last election cycle 4 of 10 Republican primary candidates endorsed creationism over evolution when asked directly in a debate.

This cycle we have Michele Bachmann, congresswoman from Minnesota, who is already on record as supporting creationism. In 2006 she stated:

“there is a controversy among scientists about whether evolution is a fact… hundreds and hundreds of scientists, many of them holding Nobel prizes, believe in intelligent design.”

Now, following a speech to Republicans in New Orleans, she said to reporters:

“I support intelligent design. What I support is putting all science on the table and then letting students decide. I don’t think it’s a good idea for government to come down on one side of scientific issue or another, when there is reasonable doubt on both sides.”

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Tennessee is currently debating one of the latest creationist bills – House Bill 368, introduced by representative Bill Dunn. The essence of the bill is this:

Toward this end, teachers shall be permitted to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught.

Basically – it’s a “strengths and weaknesses” bill. This is the latest strategy for sneaking creationism into the public schools through the back door. They failed to ban evolution. They failed to force in creationism through “equal time” laws. They failed to sneak in intelligent design (creationism in disguise). So now they are working on two closely related strategies: academic freedom and strengths and weaknesses. They are very clever, but the purpose is exactly the same – water down the teaching of evolution and sneak in as much creationist propaganda as possible.

The language of the bill first sets the stage by saying that evolutionary theory is “controversial.” Of course, it’s only culturally controversial because of creationist denialism. It is not controversial within the scientific community, the overwhelming majority of whom accept evolution as a scientific fact. Then the bill goes on to say that the purpose is just to teach kids (wait, turn down your irony meters) – “critical thinking.”

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