Month: April 2007

Framing Science: The Same Old Thing And Also Something Completely Different

by tristero

Lots of good commentary on this earlier post on the debate over re-framing science touched off by Matt Nisbet and Chris Mooney. Again, to be clear:

Much, but certainly not all, of the differences in opinion are between people who agree on the basics, namely that (1) science and, more broadly, the importance of reality-based decision making, is under serious attack by far right extremists; (2) the writing skills of the average scientist could stand improvement; (3) science reporting and advocacy also can be much better; and (4) when writing about science, it is important to take into account for whom you are writing – a paper in a physics journal assumes a different level of expertise in its topic than an article on physics in Newsweek Magazine.Therefore. the argument with Nisbet/Mooney hinges on whether scientists, when speaking to a lay public, should emphasize science – ie data, and the inferences and theories from it – or emphasize things non-scientific.

So what do Nisbet/Mooney have in mind? It’s a little unclear from the op-ed but fortunately, in an interview Nisbet offers some concrete examples of exactly what he has in mind:

BROOKE GLADSTONE: … what is it that you’re asking the scientists to do? How are they supposed to change the way they present [science] in order to confront this political reality?

MATTHEW NISBET: You start recasting the issue in ways that are still true to the science but, in fact, actually you’re not talking about the science. You’re engaging with business leaders and CEOs. They’re talking about the promise for innovative technology, again, the market potential for that. They might activate that moderate Republican base that reads The Wall Street Journal and says, hey, suddenly I care about global warming ‘cause there might be investment potential here.

You recast the issue as really a moral duty, not just in a religious sense but saying, look, this is like credit card debt. We’re passing the buck on to future generations if you don’t do something now. The science is there. This is an urgent problem. We need to take action.

Let’s unpack this from the back first. Passing the problem on to future generations is just a variation of a classic Madison Ave. guilt-trip ad technique – think of your co-workers and use Dial brand soap! It’s a bit skeevy but that’s not what’s wrong with the suggestion. Nisbet is claiming that this is a change of frame when it is an argument made all the time by environmentalists. There’s nothing new or original in his suggestion.

As for his first example, I really don’t know how to say this without sending a little, maybe a lot, mean, but Nisbet is hopelessly naive if he thinks businessmen haven’t beat him already to the punch to see whether there “might be investment potential” in catastrophic global warming.* There are things like the groovy Tesla Roadster, a nifty sportscar that’s affordable (I read they were $100,000, which is cheap these days if you happen to be European) and runs quite nicely on a large bank of modified laptop batteries. And, of course, there are also plenty of other products out, or coming out, that are of more immediate utility to us little people.

But even worse than Nisbet’s naivete is, I think, his failure to undertstand that those on the forefront of research into global warming aren’t necessarily going to be the same people who have great ideas for money-making technology that addresses it. I know James Hansen’s time is ill spent trying to do end runs around the likes of Bush-appointed christianists. I’m really not sure his time is any better spent pitching get rich quick schemes to air conditioning manufacturers.

In short, global warming scientists can change the frame all Nisbet wants and they still won’t be listened to. So they might as well talk about global warming. At least when they do so, they’re talking from expertise.

Enough with the negativity! Let’s briefly look at what may be a real frame changer for how science is portrayed to the public. But to call it that is already to impugn the sheer entertainment value of the show, and that is its main objective. I’m speaking of MythBusters. If you’re not familiar with the show, grab it. But a word of advice: Avoid the episodes where they blow up dead pigs (you’lll understand once you’ve seen it.)

Anyway, most science shows that I know deal with faits accompli. The science is long done and they already intone the results as the scientist(s) walks in medium longshot down a remarkably uninteresting corridor. Or an overly enthusiastic host dangles for no good reason from the top of the George Washington Bridge to introduce a mediocre animation segment on, well, I can’t remember because I’m too busy trying to figure out why that guy is so cheerful when a strong wind could knock him off the platform to a ghastly death.

Well, Mythbusters is (are?) different. They pose a question and proceed to find out if it’s true. The questions usually run the gamut from the ridiculous (how exactly can you find a needle in a haystack?) to the genuinely insane (if you use gasoline to get a raccoon out of a culvert, can you inadvertently become a human cannonbal)? The Mythbusters then proceed to test these questions and in the process develop hypotheses, build experimental models and other apparatus, collect data and draw inferences for conclusions.

Rather than avoiding talking about the science and finessing the often long, tedious process of running an experiment (what happens to plants if you yell at them 24/7 for six weeks?), Mythbusters revels in it. And rather than trying to pretend that the main hosts are somehow like “you and me,” it is clear that they are very strange people who you want nowhere near your microwave, your car, or your bug spray.

Most importantly in terms of re-framing science, the experiments and tests are messy and often fail (they also look like a blast to do.) Things go wrong, sometimes because they failed to anticipate problems, sometimes because they spaced out (the plants died before the yelling experiment ended ’cause someone didn’t notice a broken water timer) and sometimes the experiments have to be completely reconfigured in midstream. Sometimes, they even get hurt (never seriously, they are, as the show says, “what you call experts” and are exceedingly cautious at their craziest). And sometimes they go way over the top(the Chinese water torture was horrific, and, by the way, the closest the show’s gotten to political/social commentary: it was clearly a thinly-veiled response to Abu Ghraib). Oh yeah, and sometimes they work perfectly.

By showing us not only the successes but the messiness of failed experiments and their attempts to salvage at least something from the results, Mythbusters shows us laypeople that science (well, engineering science, at least) is a lot more trial and error than many of us might suspect. There are times the “coldly rational” host gets it dead wrong while the manically silly one is spot on. Other times, Jamie – the rationalist – barely manages to rescue Adam – the histrionic – from a total catastrophe.

I suppose Nisbet and Mooney are right, that Mythbusters isn’t for everyone but I can’t imagine who they might be. Doesn’t everyone stand to benefit from knowing which is better at removing bloodstains: straight rum or human urine?. And I dunno, maybe real scientists have major league problems with the actual science they do – some of their sound tests seemed a bit off to me – but I haven’t heard any other than critiques of certain methodologies (hate those exploding pigs). But I do think the series demonstrates that science can be made exceedingly interesting not by avoiding, but actually celebrating both the process and the results.

Hell, forget what I wrote. Just watch it.

*[Warning! Gratuitous snarky comment ahead.] And why shouldn’t businessmen profit handsomely off the End Of The World As We Know It? Somebody has to. When you think about it, drug companies find huge investment potential in potentially fatal diseases, after all.

Hmm…on 2nd thought, let’s not go there.

Killing The Morally Corrupt

by digby

I’m sure Dinesh “Enemy At Home:The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11” D’Souza is in favor of applying some of this good stuff to American jurisprudence. After all, the Islamic fundamentalists do have some good points:

The Iranian Supreme Court has overturned the murder convictions of six members of a prestigious state militia who killed five people they considered “morally corrupt.”

The reversal, in an infamous five-year-old case from Kerman, in central Iran, has produced anger and controversy, with lawyers calling it corrupt and newspapers giving it prominence.

“The psychological consequences of this case in the city have been great, and a lot of people have lost their confidence in the judicial system,” Nemat Ahmadi, a lawyer associated with the case, said in a telephone interview.

Three lower court rulings found all the men guilty of murder. Their cases had been appealed to the Supreme Court, which overturned the guilty verdicts. The latest decision, made public this week, reaffirms that reversal.

“The objection by the relatives of the victims is dismissed, and the ruling of this court is confirmed,” the court said in a one-page verdict.

The ruling may still not be final, however, because a lower court in Kerman can appeal the decision to the full membership of the Supreme Court. More than 50 Supreme Court judges would then take part in the final decision.

According to the Supreme Court’s earlier decision, the killers, who are members of the Basiji Force, volunteer vigilantes favored by the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, considered their victims morally corrupt and, according to Islamic teachings and Iran’s Islamic penal code, their blood could therefore be shed.

Sounds about right:

“Those few abortionists were shot or, depending on your point of view, had a procedure with a rifle performed on them,” Coulter told her audience, which responded with laughter.

“I’m not justifying it,” she continued, “but I do understand how it happened.”

Update: Well, damn. I thought I was being facetious.

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Keeping It Straight

by digby

This column by Eric Boehlert is worth bookmarking or otherwise keeping handy as you confront the reflexive up-is-downism of the right when it comes to matters of established fact. In this case, Boehlert does us all a favor and lays out all the ways in which the Swift Boat Liars were discredited and rebutted in response to Powerline’s ridiculous assertion that they were telling the truth.

I have been coming across a lot of statements lately saying “they were right” and it’s only a matter of time before it makes its way into the mainstream going into 2008. Just the other day, NY Magazine referred to the VoteVets organization as a “Swift Boat veterans” of the left, which is complete nonsense: the VoteVets haven’t pushed any bogus smear campaigns against anyone.

Just keep it handy. It’s going to be needed.

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Surging To Victory

by digby

Dear God:

Bombings Kill at Least 171 Iraqis in Baghdad

BAGHDAD, April 18 — Bombs ravaged Baghdad in five horrific explosions aimed mainly at Shiite crowds on Wednesday, killing at least 169 people in the deadliest day in the capital since the American-led security plan for the city took effect two months ago.

The wave of attacks, four of them involving car bombs, came as Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki declared that the Iraqi government planned to take full control of security from the American-led forces before the end of the year.

In the worst of the bombings, a car packed with explosives exploded at an intersection in the Sadriya neighborhood that serves as a hub for buses traveling to the Shiite district of Sadr City. The blast killed at least 140 people and wounded 150; incinerated scores of vehicles, including several minibuses full of passengers; and charred nearby shops, witnesses and the police said.

I hate to be a naysayer, but what the hell?

Wednesday’s attacks risked reawakening the dormant Shiite militias, especially the Mahdi Army of the militant Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, and reigniting the cycles of sectarian violence that tormented Baghdad after the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra in February 2006.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said the Sunni insurgency’s intent was to provoke a new wave of sectarian violence. “We can only hope that the Shia will have the confidence in their government and in the coalition that we’ll go after the people that perpetrated this horror,” he told reporters in Tel Aviv after meeting with Israeli defense minister, Amir Peretz.

Yes, we can only hope that the Shia will continue to play possum until the US can declare victory just before the 2008 election. They might not be able to hold out, though, what with the horrific death and carnage and all. We can only hope they have very, very, very cool heads and rely on the United States to keep the bloodshed down to a couple hundred dead a day in Bagdad. They will only have themselves to blame if they don’t.

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Winning With Icky

by digby

I hope that I don’t hear any talk today about how it’s really a good thing that the court upheld a ban on a certain “icky” abortion procedure because it will mobilize all the rabid pro-choice people out there to fight back. The whole point of the “partial birth” project was to avoid just that, and it has succeeded. Nobody’s going to mobilize for “icky.”

The forced childbirth movement realized a while back that overturning Roe all at once was politically risky and they would have to build up steam to get it done. (They also enjoy milking it for $$$) So they have devised a cunning plan to chip away at it over time and with addition of the Gang of Fourteen’s shiny new vanity project, Samuel Alito, they just opened up a brand new avenue to do it. It would appear that the health exception is no longer valid because no matter what the medical profession and the science says, if a rightwing congress decides that something isn’t medically necessary, by God it isn’t necessary. (Presumably, the sodomized virgin exception remains in place, dependent, of course, on valid determination by good rightwing Christian men who will assess whether the victim was properly chaste prior to allowing herself to be gang raped.)

Scott Lemieux explained the ramifications of the court upholding the D&X procedure ban in a piece a few months back:

… the larger problem is that, because the distinction between D&X abortions and any other procedure is wholly arbitrary, legislatures can invent further distinctions and continue to tie the hands of abortion doctors. As Eve Gartner, the lawyer representing Planned Parenthood, put it during the oral argument, “to allow such an expansion of pre-viability abortions that can be banned would set the stage for continued legislative efforts to ban other iterations of the classic D&E method of abortion, until truly there would be nothing left at all of Casey’s holding that it is unconstitutional to ban second-trimester abortions.”

Partial-birth abortion bans involve inventing a scary-sounding but scientifically meaningless term, applying it to an abortion procedure morally indistinguishable from any other, and using the legislative results as a Trojan Horse to undermine popular judicial protections of a woman’s right to choose. They are the ultimate example of the increasing cynicism and emptiness of the leadership of the American “pro-life” movement, and the crass exploitation of its rank-and-file by Republicans (and too many Democrats) happy to use the issue to mobilize the base as long as the access to abortion of women in their social milieu aren’t affected. Congress is employing rank dishonesty to play political games with the lives and bodies of American woman.

Christy Hardin Smith posted a very poignant story this morning about a real couple, who had serious health issues with their twin fetuses and were subjected to ridiculous legal constraints trying to save the life of at least one of them with a procedure that the religious right has successfully demonized. It does not strictly apply to the D&X procedure, but the logic is the same: a tremendously complicated issue, both medically and morally, is not in the hands of those who bear the burden of such decisions. Instead, five men on the the Supreme Court and a bunch of self-appointed people who insist that they have a right to legislate their religion into law will be making that decision for you.

But they have to. You see women are stupid selfish creatures who just want to avoid their responsibilities and they must be stopped:

Or as the forced childbirth proponents at Wizbang see it:

Here’s a feminist whose first comment was “We’re f***ed.” Sure, lady,
if you mean that you can’t go to an abortionist when you’re 6+ months
pregnant and have your unborn baby almost completely delivered except
for his head and have his brains sucked out while he’s still alive
because you just don’t feel like being pregnant any longer, then yes,
I suppose you’re f***ed.

Italics are mine.

Read this accountof another real life couple who had to make difficult decisions of life and death and late term abortion and then tell me that that woman just “didn’t feel like being pregnant any longer.” And ask yourself if you or anyone else has the right to tell those people what was the morally proper thing to do. I suppose if you believed that Bill Frist could diagnose Terry Schiavo from the floor of the senate, then you’ll probably agree that the guy from WizBang, Samuel Alito and the Republican congress are the best people to make these decisions. I tend to think that life is just a little bit more complicated than that, but then I don’t have the kind of Moral Clarity that allows me to believe that millions of children dying once they are born isn’t my problem, but keeping fetuses in the womb to full term no matter what the circumstances is a moral imperative. Hell, keeping blastocysts frozen in a petrie dish is more important than saving actual children dying of disease, so I’m just a little bit flummoxed on the moral principles that guide these people.

So here we are. I’m not surprised. It was expected. In fact, it was ordained the day that the Supreme Court elected George W. Bush in 2000. The rightwing special interests that got that fifth vote are very effective when they take the long view and the forced childbirth movement is as good at what it does as is the NRA. (And our side is simply pathetic.) I fully expect that over time we will find ourselves with a “right” to abortion that has been regulated completely out of existence in some places and continuously under siege in others. At which point everyone will agree that the “right” isn’t worth fighting for at all. (We’re almost there already.)

In the real world, where actual people live, these kinds of issues aren’t sickening little bon mots about horrible women who like the idea of “sucking out the brains” of little babies. They are difficult, complicated moral decisions that cannot be adequately addressed by facile, convenient assumptions about women’s base motivations.

And that’s the heart of the matter, going all the way up to the five important men on the Supreme Court. Underlying this decision and all the arguments, not just that puerile little snot’s at WizBang, is something incredibly insulting to half the population of this country, (even if a fair number of its proponents are members of that group). Lemieux today at LG&M:

…let’s also remember the underlying gender assumptions of those who support the power of the states and the federal government. Ann has already noted this powerful passage in Justice Ginsburg’s brilliant dissent: “Revealing in this regard, the Court invokes an antiabortion shibboleth for which it concededly has no reliable evidence: Women who have abortions come to regret their choices, and consequently suffer from ‘[s]evere depression and loss of esteem.’ Because of women’s fragile emotional state and because of the bond of love the mother has for her child,’ the Court worries, doctors may withhold information about the nature of the intact D&E procedure. The solution the Court approves, then, is not to require doctors to inform women, accurately and adequately, of the different procedures and their attendant risks. Instead, the Court deprives women of the right to make an autonomous choice, even at the expense of their safety. This way of thinking reflects ancient notions about women’s place in the family and under the Constitution ideas that have long since been discredited.”

Given Alito’s assumption that the state has the same interest in regulating married adult women as it has in regulating children, that he would vote to uphold this ban isn’t exactly shocking.

Or to put it another way, I’ll quote Maha on the subject from some time back:

…the anti-abortion rights position is based on an assumption that women aren’t real people — especially women who get abortions. Oh, they’re human in a scientific sense, but they aren’t people. They are archetypes who live in the heads of the anti-abortion righters — Careless Woman, Selfish Woman, Woman in a Vacuum. The same people who imagine embryos can think and feel emotions — and therefore deserve protection — must believe a pregnant woman is just a major appliance. There are copious anecdotes from abortion providers who say that often the same people protesting outside the clinic one week are patients (or parents of patients) the next week. These people assume that their situations are unique and should be the one exception. They often want the abortion staff to know they aren’t like those other women who get abortions. This inspired the bitter joke that the legitimate reasons for abortion are “rape, incest, and me.” Such people recognize their own humanity (or their daughter’s), but those other women who get abortions are just archetypes who don’t deserve respect or consideration. I’ve long believed that whether one is pro-choice or anti-choice does not depend on whether one thinks embryos are human beings. It depends on whether one recognizes that women are human beings. Not archetypes, but real, individual human beings. Including women who get abortions.

Oh, Sandy. We hardly knew ye.

Update: For those of you who’ve been reading this blog a while, you know that I’ve been convinced that the Democrats are poised and desperate to throw in the towel on choice, just as they threw in the towel on gun control and the death penalty when the right proved to be relentless and obnoxious enough to wear them down.

Here’s how ABC news reports today’s news:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., took no position on two of the hottest social issues in America today — guns and abortion — in a week when those subjects were brought before the public in quite compelling ways.

Asked about this morning’s historic and unprecedented decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold a state ban on an abortion procedure, Pelosi — longtime backer of abortion rights — said, “This is an issue I need to review.” Reid immediately changed the subject to the prevention of unwanted pregnancies. “That’s what it brings to my mind,” Reid said.

Two days after the slaughter of 32 innocents on the campus of Virginia Tech by a shooter with two handguns, Pelosi demurred on whether Congress was in any mood to examine gun control laws.

“The mood in Congress is one of mourning, sadness and the inadequacy of our words” to help the bereaved, Pelosi said.

Welcome to the Democratic Party 2.0. After years in the political wilderness — President Bush in the White House, Republican majorities in the House and Senate — Democrats are wary of engaging in hot-button social issues such as the “3 G’s” — guns, God and gays.

Many political observers, including Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, believe former Vice President Al Gore’s support of gun control cost him the 2000 election, essentially handing over to Bush states such as Montana, Tennessee and West Virginia.

At a Harvard seminar following the 2000 election, Steve Rosenthal, then the AFL-CIO’s political director, was asked what the Democratic party should do on gun control.

“Shut the hell up,” he said. Democrats have largely heeded that advice.

Moreover, many in their ranks who are responsible for Democrats having recaptured the House and Senate — what Speaker Pelosi calls “the majority makers” — hold conservative positions on many of these issues, such as Sens. Jon Tester, D-Mont., Jim Webb, D-Virginia, and Bob Casey Jr., D-Penn. Reid himself is a foe of abortion who has in the past voted in favor of a ban on the procedure abortion opponents call “partial birth abortion

When you think about it, if we can get rid of the “ick” factor — abortion, guns, god and gays altogether — we can be Republicans, only with higher taxes. Awesome.

I remain confused, however, about why in poll after poll people say they don’t know what the Democratic Party stands for. Oh well, whatever. The Republicans have screwed up so badly that all the Dems have to do is keep their heads down and not stand for anything beyond sparring with the Lame Codpiece and they can still win. Ain’t that inspiring?

Update II: This post from Professor Balkin also explains some of the other aspects of the decision that are so depressing — this in particular, where he draws from an earlier post from 2005:

If the Court applied the Salerno rule to abortion cases, it would mean that plaintiffs could not directly challenge new abortion regulations as soon as they were passed. Instead, a series of plaintiffs would have to go to court and prove that the law was unconstitutional as applied to their individual circumstances. This process would be time consuming and expensive, and it would take years to produce a jurisprudence limiting the statute’s unconstitutional reach. Thus, the effect of applying Salerno (as opposed to what the Court actually did in Casey) would be to allow states to pass significant restrictions on abortion and keep them in force for long periods of time until a series of time consuming and expensive cases gradually eliminated their unconstitutional features. Indeed, precisely because creating an appropriate factual record for an individual as-applied challenge by a pregnant woman may be time consuming and expensive, the series of suits may never be brought, with the result that a whole host of abortion limitations that are actually invalid under the undue burden test will remain in force and will be applied to limit women’s right to abortion. Applying Salerno to abortion litigation, in short, would drain much of Roe’s and Casey’s practical applicability to the real world. And because this will be achieved through an abstruse and technical doctrine of court procedure, many members of the public will not even realize that Roe and Casey have been effectively gutted.

…the rule that Justice Kennedy seems to have crafted has most of the disadvantages I pointed out back in 2005.

…because this will be achieved through an abstruse and technical doctrine of court procedure, many members of the public will not even realize that Roe and Casey have been effectively gutted.

Elections have consequences.

Update III: More consequences

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Framing Science

by tristero

There’s been a fascinating debate in the science blogosphere over the ideas of Matt Nisbet and Chris Mooney, who, put simplistically, advocate reframing important science that, at present the public is little inclined to support. Nisbet/Mooney are not advocating simply better science writing for the public. No one disagrees that that would be a good thing because even though there are many superb writers who can communicate science well to us laypeople, we need more such people. Furthermore, the average writing ability of young scientists is, as it is among most undergraduates and graduates, pathetic. Of course, it needs to be improved. And it can be.

Nisbet and Mooney, however, urge that scientists learn to speak about science through a different frame, a la Lakoff. They urge science writers to make science more “personally meaningful,” stating that this will “activate public support much more effectively than blinding people with science,” ie, overwhelming the lay public with facts piled upon facts.

I strongly disagree. In fact, I can’t imagine a worse tactic than the one Nisbet and Mooney advocate. Briefly, there is no essential problem with the “frame” through which scientists explain their work which, after all, consists of reporting data and drawing inferences and proposing theories and is simply the way science gets done. Rather, they should be proactively encouraged to do what they are already doing to inform the public (just do more of it and do it better).* They don’t need a frame makeover. It is the public’s perception of what science is that needs to be changed. In my lay explorations of sciences like geology, evolution, experimental psych, and others, I’ve noticed that often great science cannot be shoehorned into a “personally meaningful” frame. Not only is it pointless to try when that is the case, it is counterproductive as it comes off as phony pandering and a waste of time (“The Higgs Boson: What’s In It For Me?”). It is far better to try to get the public to better understand what science is, that it is an extensive inquiry into the properties of the natural world. There is wonder and joy aplenty, for sure, and there are many useful things that come from science. But science is, first and foremost a process of deep inquiry, not a process to attain Nirvana.

And that is inherently A Very Good Thing. Consider the alternative. At present, inquiry, skepticism, logic, data, and empirical procedures for increasing knowledge have been under a relentless assault from the far right. Instead of inquiry, they prize a government acting in secret, rather than skepticism they urge us to trust in faith. Logic is replaced by Cheney’s 1 percent doctrine, data on reproductive healthcare is ignored and suppressed. As for empiricism, well… it matters little to a government that places people as mentally disordered as Eric Keroack and Jerry Boykin in positions of power (and apparently, Boykin’s still there ).

Anyway, PZ Myers has written well about the problems with changing the frame of science. Here’s his latest. He also linked to Greg Laden who also has excellent objections and what follows are some comments on Greg’s post, which propose an alternative strategy to Nisbet and Mooney’s suggestions. I’d like to make clear, however, that Nisbet and Mooney are people I respectfully disagree with. I find them genuinely thoughtful people, not ideologues. I think they are very wrong, but they are hardly creationists or even apologists to creationists. They understand full well what the dangers are from theocrats. Anyway…

1. As Greg says, Richard Dawkins is doing a great job explaining science. In fact, the world could use more Dawkins’es “right now,” not less. As for Dawkins’ attitude towards religious belief, his view desperately needs to be heard. Often he is contemptuous where I am less so, and on some things, he’s flat out wrong. But the last thing anyone should urge is to stop paying attention to him. Better would be to understand books like The God Delusion as PZ Myers does, as a way of focusing the argument against religion and religious belief. PZ has made it clear that his beef is not so much with what he characterizes, following Einstein, as “Spinoza’s God” but rather with a supernatural White-Bearded Guy In The Sky who knows all, can never be wrong, and created everything. Which brings up point number

2. The agitation for “Intelligent Design” creationism is coming from a small handful of political extremists who’ve cloaked themselves in the trappings of religion (there are also religious fanatics, but mostly, these are political operatives). They’ve managed to convince a lot of people, including the press, to – dare I say it – frame the issue as one of science versus religion. As disturbing as America’s scientific illteracy surely is, I strongly believe that the public’s attitude towards religion and science is far more complicated than the poll numbers suggest. The number of people who actually agree with christianists when they learn what they are actually advocating is, I suspect, not that large, or that permanent. I’m suggesting that, at the very least, we need more in-depth polling of the public’s knowledge and attitudes. While there sure are many believers in the White Beard, it’s unclear whether that necessarily makes them allies of christianists (on this, I part company with PZ and Dawkins, who believe White Beardism can only imply christianism, albeit often disguised. I’m not so sure people are that consistent about it all).

3. Contra Nisbet/Mooney, the real conflict is not science vs religion but with the far right against the rest of us – atheist, Methodist, Jewish, Catholic, Buddhist, Muslim and even Evangelical. The only way we will change the public discourse on evolution is by making this clear. It is extremists opposed to the wide reality-based community. I’m not advocating a frame change – which in this context rhetorically concedes competing, inflexible ideologies without truth content – so much as understanding how poorly the actual situation has been understood, even – especially – by those who are fighting the christianists.

4. For many reasons, some of which Greg mentions, making science more “religion-friendly” or me-generation friendly as a way of changing attitudes towards science is doomed to failure – How Hox Genes Make You A Better Manager just ain’t gonna cut it. If defeating creationists is the goal, it is far more effective simply to expose to the harsh glare of publicity the real agenda of the creeps responsible for hawking the snake oil of “Intelligent Design” creationism. Howard Ahmanson and his Christian Reconstructionist fellow cultists not only earn the contempt of scientists; most non-scientists who learn what the Reconstructionists really believe in and what they are really up to end up revolted.

4. There is no reason under the sun why many scientists, atheists and agnostics, can’t participate in a broad coalition with other Americans to fight the extreme right. Their worldview need not be compromised in working with Methodists on the assault on science any more than a Methodist’s worldview would be compromised by working with a Catholic or a Catholic with a Buddhist.**

5. Nevertheless, even if people like PZ and Dawkins refuse to participate in such coalitions [UPDATE: PZ Myers speaks about this in comments], they serve an essential role in the fight against the christianists. To claim that some of the most articulate writers of science are ineffective becaused they’re antagonistic to religion (which they cheerfully admit they are) flies in the face of their high sales figures. Rather we should be encouraging more of them while, at the same time, working as hard as possible to drive a wedge between the extremists trying to undermine science and the vast majority of the American public – people who would be horrified to learn what christianists really stand for.

[UPDATE: In comments, Coturnix draws our attention to a series of blogposts he wrote in support of Nisbet and Mooney. I read two of his posts. Although he thinks we disagree, I fail to see how in any meaningful way. I agree that spinning is not framing and I agree that framing is inevitable. Nor do either Coturnix or I disagree on the efficacy of the actual frame for science (even if I think that his comment gratuitous which claims pop science needs to be directed to a fifth grade mentality. I would characterize Sean Carroll’s magnificent Making of the Fittest as popular science writing. I think Coturnix would agree with me that it also is directed at an audience more sophisticated than the average fifth grader. ) And I think we both agree that science writing, at all technical levels, from the most detailed to the most popular, can be improved.

It is Nisbet and Mooney’s specific framing that I object to.They write, “People generally make up their minds by studying more subtle, less rational factors [than a ‘data dump’ of facts].” Whether or not that is true – and it very well may be – scientists have no choice but to remain rational and fact-based (or at least, aspire to be!). That doesn’t mean they have a license to bore their audience, of course, but it does mean that the kind of “personally meaningful” frames – N&M’s words – they advocate are doomed to failure. Why? Because, once again, a lot of science is not personally meaningful in that way. Far better to help us laypeople understand what science actually is, what the mechanisms are for evolution as PZ writes, than to cobble up a meaningless personal meaning.

One final point. Incredibly, Nisbet and Mooney accuse Dawkins of framing the evolution debate as science vs. religion. That is an astounding misconception on their part. Science vs. religion is the frame of the christianists – they are not opposed only to evolution but to what they call “methodological naturalism” which simply is a synonym for science! Dawkins has merely adopted the religion vs. science frame for a classic contrarian argumentation style – “you think I’m a bad boy? I’ll show you just how bad I can be.” Because this is not Dawkins’ frame but the christianists, he cannot be accused of deliberately manufacturing it.

And one final, final point. The public CAN be expected to separate Dawkins’ evolution from his atheism. We’re not all fifth graders out here. ]

*Scientists around the country have started “Science Cafes,” giving informal talks at local eateries on, say, the first wednesday of every month. A great idea. Here in my neighborhood, it’s standing roon only at the local brasserie when the Columbia scientists speak.

**To those who think there’s a far wider ideological gap between all religions and atheism which precludes coalitions, I’d like to remind you of the long history of violent conflict over religious doctrine. And there is also a decent amount of (admittedly more recent) history of accommodation and tolerance religious differences. See, America, Constitution of.

The Big Con

by digby

Hey, everyone. Bring out the welcome wagon for my pal, the great writer Rick Perlstein, and his new blog for the Campaign For America’s Future.

Rick has been working on his latest book, “Nixonland” for the last couple of years, some excerpts of which I’ve been privileged to host here on this humble little site. Now that it’s finished, among other things, he’s going to be delighting us daily with his sparkling prose and keen insight.

There is just nobody around who knows more about what makes the conservative movement tick and how they influence our culture and politics than Perlstein. Now that the ground is shifting a bit, we need his unique knowledge of their sneaky ways (as well as his passionate progressive politics.) Old conservatives never die you know, they just crawl in their coffins and wait for sundown.

Go read this great post about the “E Coli Conservatives” (a keeper, if I ever heard one) — and say hello.

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Teaching Moments

by digby

Papa Bear’s on a tear:

CALLER: You know, about this word “racist.” It’s the single most effective weapon ever devised by the far left and anti-Americans. It immediately — it’s more effective than nuclear arsenals. It immediately puts us on the defensive, no matter what the subject. The Muslim jihadists use it against us, the Mexican invasion is enabled by it. Even our gangs. We can shut down the gangs with the National Guard and a big police presence.

O’REILLY: Oh, you could easily shut the gangs down. You’re absolutely right. But, you know, but the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] would be right on your butt saying, “Oh, you’re racist. You’re profiling. You’re doing this, that, and the other thing.” I understand what you’re saying, [caller], and it’s absolutely true. But enough’s enough. You know, I’m throwing down the gauntlet on these people. And anybody that uses this weapon, you’re gonna get a visit from me.

I just watched Lou Dobbs barely holding back his patented righteous indignation when he found out that you can’t just lock up people for thought crimes in this country. He was shocked to find out that authorities don’t have the right to force people to get psychiatric help when they haven’t done anything illegal.

I’m beginning to think that there is an undocumented side effect of Viagra — uncontrolled tantrums when self-important gasbags realize that they cannot control every little thing in life. They should put a warning label on the TV set.

Update: Sweet Jesus, these people have issues.
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Tainted Love

by digby

Steve Benen notes that the Bush administration’s attempts to confront the congress are not having the positive effect they thought it would:

When Bill Clinton was president, White House aides had a policy: when there was political trouble, and public support was on the wane, put the boss in front of people. Schedule a speech in front of a large audience; arrange for some high-profile television interviews, put together some kind of major White House event, etc. Clinton aides knew that the solution to most problems was letting Clinton talk to Americans.

Invariably, the strategy worked. As it turns out, the Bush White House has embraced the exact same approach. Unfortunately for the Bush gang, it’s not nearly as effective.

He goes on to discuss all the polls that show Bush’s strategy is a big flop so far.

The president is on the wrong side of the country on this and so his challenge is much larger than it was for Clinton. But we should not forget that Bill Clinton was a master communicator who could make an intelligent, incisive and persuasive argument in language that anyone in the country could understand. It’s a mistake to underestimate those gifts in our modern world of 24/7 mass communication. The Republicans thought you could dress up a ventriloquist dummy or a trained dog with some fancy packaging and nobody would know the difference and they’ve been proven fools in no uncertain terms. The ability to communicate and persuade are more important than ever and it’s not something you can create out of whole cloth. It’s a skill that any first rate modern politician needs to have.

People gave Bush the benefit of the doubt after 9/11 (and the media anointed him the next Winston Churchill for reasons that are still unclear to me) but his terrible public awkwardness helped destroy his presidency after Katrina. Someday someone will put together his press conferences in the first months after 9/11 and future generations will be shocked that a majority of this country agreed to follow this man into war — they were stunningly inept. (That first major evening press conference scared the living hell out of me as I realized how over his head he was.) It was only the extreme deference of the press and the nation’s deep need to believe that we were in competent hands that allowed him to get away with it.

He did fine in his well-written prepared speeches. Any person could. But his mind and speech were so slow and thick in his unscripted moments that all he really had was a sort of cliched TV cowboy attitude, which seemed to be enough for people for a little while:

Q Do you want bin Laden dead?

THE PRESIDENT: I want justice. There’s an old poster out west, as I recall, that said, “Wanted: Dead or Alive.”

There he was, “healing us” with his manly leadership.

A president must be more than just articulate, of course. But he or she is at a serious disadvantage if he cannot communicate across all the lines in a way that gives people faith that he knows what he’s doing. I think this has been one of the reasons Bush fell so far. They had to sustain a very difficult illusion for a very long time — you can be believe me or you can believe your eyes. It couldn’t carry them forever.

When they send Bush out today and he speaks in his halting, unconvincing manner — aggressive, slightly hostile and often incoherent — it has the opposite effect they need it to have. Every time they see him now people are reminded that they were sold a bill of goods and they resent him and reject what he’s saying.

If they want the nation’s support for their policies, the last person they should use as their salesman is the guy who makes half the people cringe in embarrassment for their own past bad judgment and the other half intensely frustrated that he is in office in the first place. But there are so few Republicans with any credibility at this point, I honestly don’t know who they can trot out to do it. The party’s lockstep, slavering sycophancy to Bush’s inept governance has left them without anyone people can trust.

I suspect this is why they are all so hot for Fred Thompson. He can at least act like he knows what he’s doing. (Worked for Reagan.) Finding a Republican who actually knows what he’s doing may be an impossible task.

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Inappropriate

by digby

I’m can hardly wait to read Peggy Noonan’s column scolding Nikki Giovanni and the students and teachers at Virginia Tech for being classless with their spirited “Hokie” shouts at the convocation. I’m sure that the university’s opposing teams were shocked and dismayed that these people would hold a “pep rally” at such a somber time. Just because it gave the mourners a needed feeling of solidarity and purpose is no excuse for such thoughtless behavior.

Update: Oh I see, they just haven’t gotten to the memorial service scolding yet because they are too busy scolding the students for not throwing themselves in the line of fire just like they do it on the TeeVee.

(Man, if it had been me, I wudda judo chopped him and then and then I wudda stomped him hard and taken away his guns and saved all the pretty girls too! I would, too’uv!)

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