Conservatives and Lady Hope

I just had to comment on this post from Matt Yglesias, regarding Al Gore citing Dr. Wieslay Maslowski to the effect that “there is a 75 per cent change that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”  It turns out to have significance not only for the Lady Hope reference in my title (which I’ll explain in a bit) but also as an example of the kind of nonsense that Bob Somerby has been railing against for years. 

It seems various conservatives were in full faux outrage mode over Gore’s saying this because conservatives found a report that Dr. Maslowski had made predictions that were marginally less serious.  Proof the conservatives claimed that Al Gore was making it all up and climate change was a fraud.  Then, what would come as no surprise to Bob Somerby, it has come to light that in other works, Dr. Maslowksi had, in fact, made exactly the prediction that Gore cited.  Once again Al Gore has been called dishonest by his opponents over a comment that was completely accurate, in every detail.  Check out Bob’s site for far more detailed and extensive review of the way Al Gore has been misrepresented.

But the other issue that this post brought to mind was a difference in the approach to assessing comments made by others.  To some people, deciding whether or not to believe some authority involves first deciding that the other person is virtuous, and if so then belief follows.  For others, the question of the authorities virtue is secondary at best, the primary concern is whether or not the authorities claim matches evidence, reason and experience.  If so, then the claims are to be believed, if not then disbelieved.  Therefore, I may well believe in the claims of an individual of questionable character, if the evidence supports him, against another who is generally more virtuous, if the evidence is against him.  Now, the general honesty of a person is not immaterial.  I’m more willing to accept the testimony of someone whose character I admire than from someone whose character I do not, but evidence and reason should always have the final say.

This brings us to the Lady Hope story.  This is a tale that is brought up from time to time by Creationists in arguments against biologists.  Basically the claim is that on his deathbed Charles Darwin was visited by one Lady Hope who converted him to Christianity (and supposedly a fairly literalist version of Christianity) and Darwin renounced evolution.  Now the story is certainly not accurate and has been refuted many times.   But striking to those of us of a scientific mindset is the question “Why would it matter?”.  No person of reason thinks that evolution is a correct description of the history of life on Earth because Darwin, a brilliant scientist, proposed it.  Rather it is recognized that Darwin, by careful observation of nature and by sound reasoning, developed a simple, elegant and accurate description of life’s history that is amply supported by the evidence.  Because he was able to do this we conclude he was brilliant.  The evidence and reason come first, conclusions about Darwin’s character follow.  Had Darwin, in fact, renounced evolution, it would have no impact on my conclusions about evolution.  The same reasons and evidence would still lead to the same conclusion on my part.  I would have less respect for Darwin had he done so, but there could be no change in my conclusions about his theory.  To join in abandoning the theory would require evidence that it was false, not a change in heart by Darwin. 

In a similar vein I respect and admire Newton because his description of the laws of motion and universal gravitation are such a powerful, effective and well-supported description of nature as we observe it.   Were someone to present incontrovertible evidence that Newton had abandoned gravity, and the Copernican model, for Ptolemy's geocentric model, I would think that Newton became crazy perhaps, but could not be affected in my recognition of the accuracy of his theories.  In fact, I need not speculate on some imagined abandonment of gravity.  Newton, the same author of the Principia, and discoverer of laws governing motion and gravity was also a devoted alchemist.  I have no problem admiring his work in physics which is richly supported by evidence, while regarding his work in alchemy, which is supported by none, as a waste of his time.  Again, a scientific description is valuable because it matches our careful observations of nature, this comes first.  The character of the person making the claims may then be judged, in part, by the accuracy and value of those claims, but this judgment of character is secondary.

This brings me then to Al Gore.  The right wing seems to be heavily invested in a kind of Lady Hope story here.  If we prove that Al Gore, a leading spokesman for the science of climate change, is lacking in virtue, then it calls into question the claims he is making.  But that is nonsense.  The claims of climate change are well supported by numerous independent lines of evidence.  The overwhelming evidence indicates that increasing concentration of CO2, and other greenhouse gasses, is causing rising average global temperatures and this is causing various changes to global climate.  Whether Al Gore is a perfect example of human virtue, a monster of historical proportions, or (as I suspect) something in between, has, and should have, absolutely no significance on this question.

How to do Science

Ok, that's rather an ambitious title. I will, in fact, only cover a bit of how science is done. But one of my main themes here is how science is done, what the thinking is like, what the language is like and why. I would like to convey a better understanding of what scientists do and how to understand what they have to say.

For today's discussion, I want to start with a really excellent essay Richard Feynman wrote, based on a commencement address he gave in 1974. Feynman was one of the nation's leading physicists from the end of WWII until his death in 1988. He was a Nobel prize winner and was perhaps most famous for uncovering the problems with the o-rings that were responsible for the Challenger disaster.

Read the whole essay, but there is one part in particular that I want to discuss here. At this point Feynman is talking about one central requirement for doing good science.

That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school -- we never say explicitly what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty -- a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid -- not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked -- to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.

Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can -- if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong -- to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.

In summary, the idea is to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.

It is certainly true that scientists do not always live up to this ideal of presenting all critical evidence. Scientists are human too and sometimes fail to live up to the highest ideals. However, doing good science and gaining the greatest reputation in science requires following this ideal as closely as at all possible. Generally speaking science follows the above ideals pretty well.

This requirement of presenting contradictory evidence, however, is not typical in most other activities. Neither a lawyer not an advertiser nor a salesman would do too well if he or she spent too much time pointing out the possible flaws in his clients case. Because of this characteristic the way that scientists talk about their work often seems a bit strange to non-scientists.

In almost all areas of science there exists some contradictory evidence, or at least evidence which doesn't fit the current theories as well as we would like. So there is almost always some contradictory evidence to recognize and therefore some uncertainty in our conclusions. But also realize that in some cases there is very little that doesn't match up just right, and even then the mismatch is small, and in other cases there are large puzzling problems and other cases that fall in every degree of uncertainty between these extremes. Therefore one of the striking characteristics of scientific speech is an effort to express the degree of uncertainty. Hence the frequent use of qualifiers and so called "weasel" words.

See, in most non-scientific venues people want to come to some conclusion, even if they are not absolutely certain it is correct, and yet act upon it with some action in spite of any uncertainty. In those circumstances "weasel" wording is undesirable. In the scientific arena, they are an essential part of communicating the degree of uncertainty and are necessary for reaching the best, most likely to be correct, conclusions that we can reach.

Burden of Proof

The link is to a good post in the Prospect concerning burden of proof and the ID movement. They link to this Washington Post article on recent discoveries that support evolution. The cite on burden of proof is on page two where we find the following

Asked to provide examples of non-obvious, testable predictions made by the theory of Intelligent Design, John West, an associate director of the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based ID think tank, offered one: In 1998, he said, an ID theorist, reckoning that an intelligent designer would not fill animals' genomes with DNA that had no use, predicted that much of the "junk" DNA in animals' genomes -- long seen as the detritus of evolutionary processes -- will someday be found to have a function.

(In fact, some "junk" DNA has indeed been found to be functional in recent years, though more than 90 percent of human DNA still appears to be the flotsam of biological history.) In any case, West said, it is up to Darwinists to prove ID wrong.

Science proceeds by recognizing uncertainty and seeking ways to reduce it. In doing science we recognize that we start out ignorant and that we will never achieve absolute certainty. Through the process of verification with experiment and observation we can archive ever greater confidence that we know the answer to some question, but absolute certainty is unachievable. Because of this, to any true/false type question there are always three answers, 1) the evidence indicates true, 2) the evidence indicates false and 3) the evidence is insufficient to tell. The burden of proof then falls on whoever claims to be able to answer the question. Failing to provide that burden of proof then leaves the question undecided unless some other scientist can offer evidence supporting another answer. So, for example, for the early Copernicans claiming to know that planets move in elliptical orbits about the sun, they needed to provide evidence supporting this claim, and they did.

Now apply this to ID and evolution. Those of us presenting the conclusions of mainstream science need to provide evidence that organisms share a common ancestor and that natural selection can account for observed variation. And that we can do (see for example the extensive archives at Talk Origins via the links to the right). If the ID theorists want to claim that there exists an intelligent designer, they need to provide evidence of his existence, not, as John West does above, claim that it is the obligation of the scientists to prove the ID assertions wrong.

Furthermore, on the subject of Junk DNA see this article on Talk Origins. Significant evidence indicates that it is indeed "junk".