[Marxism] May 7 KC Star editorial: Monkeying around with science

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

5/7/5

KC Star

[lead editorial, unsigned;  could not find it archived, so transcribed
it from the hard copy]
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Kansas Board of Education

Monkeying Around With Modern Science


What's the matter with Kansas?  Thanks to some crackpot thinking on the
Kansas Board of Education, echoes of William Allen White's famous
question from a century ago are now being heard again around the
country.

...the advocates of ignorance have tried to cloak their personal
theology in the robes of science.  Thus the students of Kansas are
advised to study "creationism," which professes allegiance to the
scientific method yet actually rejects its central principles. ---Kansas
City Star editorial, Aug. 13, 1999

Well, as White would say, here we are at it again.

Six years later and all the world's watching as members of the state
board attack modern science.

Yet the opponents of evolution yearn, as always, for the respectability
of science.  So this time, at least slightly chastened by past public
disgust and widespread mockery, they are watching their words a little
more carefully.

They are more circumspect about their religious motivations.  They claim
over and over that their minds are open, and even piously invite the
world's scientists to follow their example.  The tattered flag of
"creationism" has been discarded in favor of another banner,
"intelligent design."

And for the state board's hearings that began this week, opponents of
evolution apparently combed the world for people with scholarly
credentials of some sort-- a retired Italian academic was brought in--
who might plausibly be presented as knowledgable, fair-minded experts.

"We think you are true scientists," a hopeful member of the Kansas Board
of Education, Kathy Martin, told one witness.

But many observers harbor doubts, and with good reason.

"They don't act like scientists," noted Harry McDonald, president of
Kansas Citizens for Science.  He wondered, for example, why "intelligent
design" advocates shy away from publishing their work in mainstream
scientific journals where it could be subjected to serious scrutiny.

Here's how one of the learned high priests of "intelligent design"
explained his thinking at Thursday's hearing:

"You can infer design just by examining something, without knowing
anything about where it came from," said William Harris, a member of the
state's science curriculum panel.  "I don't know who did it, I don't
know how it was done, I don't know why it was done, I don't have to know
any of that to know that it was designed."

This statement illustrates the basic problem in a nutshell:  Inferences
("You can infer...") are magically transformed into knowledge ("I ...
know") in the midst of an almost ecstatic celebration of ignorance
("without knowing anything about where it came from... I don't know who
did it, I don't know how it was done, I don't know why it was done, I
don't have to know any of that...")

Such people claim that they are merely exercising prudent skepticism
about mainstream scientitic thought, but-- as Harris' statement made
clear-- their skepticism does not extend to their own religiously
inspired guesswork.

There's a grand conspiracy theory at work.  It suggests that many
thousands of legitimate scientists around the world have, oevr the last
century and more, hoodwinked everyone else with bad evidence and
indefensible conclusions.

Thus advocates of intelligent design talk as if they are the only ones
who have ever questioned the modern understanding of evolution.

"There is no science without criticism," opined Charles Thaxton, another
witness at the hearings.  "Any science that weathers the criticism and
survives is a better theory for it."

This, of course, is exactly why the theory of evolution is one of the
cornerstones of modern science:  It has weathered a great deal of
criticism and survived.  How is it that Thaxton and his cheerleaders on
the state board don't seem to know that?  Did they sleep through science
class?

Unfortunately for the state board, the veneer of impartial scientific
inquiry began to crack almost immediately.

At one point board member Connie Morris expressed thanks for what she
took to be impressive-sounding material that she could use to support
conclusions that she had obviously reached long ago: "I was hoping these
hearings would help me have some good hard evidence that I could
repeat."

Good science teachers expect their students to consider the evidence
first, then draw their conclusions.

It's a sound approach.  Perhaps Morris and some of her colleagues on the
state board should try it sometime.


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