The Science Crucible....

Anyone who knows me, knows that I have very strong feelings about science in the public square and the the teaching of science in school. Over the weekend there were a couple of different stories which dealt with this issue.

As some of you know, I feel that science and technological subjects get short shrift in our general discourse. Actually more to the point, the public at large is poorly informed about scientific subjects and the pervasive political culture holds scientists in disdain as "ivory tower intellectuals", or the ever popular "elitists".

So here are a few articles that caught my attention the first two are quite old, but still illustrative of something that absolutely annoys me. When someone no background in a subject critiques/dismantles a scientific subject on purely ideological grounds.

Gregg Easterbrook on String Theory.

An impressive rebuttal by Jason Rosenhouse.

Now I am no expert on String Theory. But then I am not writing on its virtues or inequities. I honestly feel some issues are complex enough that merely picking up a book on the subject is not enough. Sometimes, some subject matter relies on a lifetime of experience and expertise to adequately discourse on the subject. An example of this exchange would be this:

Easterbrook:

Maybe string theory eventually will prove out; maybe the apparent vibrating nothing on which we are based is but a slice of some far grander reality. But string theory seems to contain significant helpings of blather designed to intimidate nonscientists from questioning the budgets of physics departments and tax-funded particle accelerator labs. And consider this. Today if a professor at Princeton claims there are 11 unobservable dimensions about which he can speak with great confidence despite an utter lack of supporting evidence, that professor is praised for incredible sophistication. If another person in the same place asserted there exists one unobservable dimension, the plane of the spirit, he would be hooted down as a superstitious crank.

Rosenhouse:

Right. All of that mathematics that string theorists talk about is just meant to scare away the nonscientists. Real particle physics is something you should be able to explain to a child.

Understanding string theory is difficult and requires years of study and mathematical training. Easterbrook has neither the time nor the brainpower to undertake such a task. So rather than just confess ignorance and concede that he's not really in a position to assess the merits of the subject, he uses the very difficulty of the theory, judo-like, against it. Every profession is a conspiracy against the laity, right? This is a useful technique for cranks wanting to play with the big boys. Creationists frequently make use of it for that reason. But it's not the sort of garbage I would expect from a reputable journal of opinion.

But those last few sentences are really just too much. Easterbrook is merely resorting to word games in likening the extra dimensions of string theory to some mysterious “plane of the spirit.”

The extra dimensions of string theory are spatial dimensions just like the three we know about. Physicists are hypothesizing more of the same, not anything fundamentally new. They are led to hypothesize them because they are a consequence of a promising mathematical theory that just happens to provide a solution to the biggest problem in physics: a theory of quantum gravity. They would also point out that there is nothing in current physics to suggest that such dimensions don't exist.....

.....Easterbrook may as well argue that the Pope should go to prison because he has many convictions. That's the level he's at....

Hopefully that conveyed the point I was trying to make. Here you have an example someone who understands the subject matter versus someone who does not.

Not really much to follow up with on that. Just wanted to get that out of my system. But here are a couple more articles on science and scientists.

Salon did a nice article on "Why America is flunking Science" (may have to watch a small ad).

Also Pew Research Center released and interesting poll about scientists. The poll is interesting in that, I completely agree with Kevin Drum and Steve Benen, it gives both sides exactly what they want. Scientists by large have become increasingly liberal in their affiliations over the past few decades. Echoing a complaint of some on the right, as well as, showing the widening gulf between the GOP and scientists based on a perceived hostility towards their profession.

Some interesting stuff. I can only hope this decade breeds a better relationship between the public and its scientists.

-Cheers