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From:
"Bruce Hutchinson" <bhutch@g...>
Date: (Date Unavailable)
Subject: Interesting Article
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For those of you that do not read UFO Updates, here is a very
interesting and informative article from the NY Times.
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The New York Times - Science
Tuesday, April 30, 2002
Odds Are Stacked When Science Tries To Debate Pseudoscience
By LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS
I vividly remember the first time I was hijacked on the radio. I
had agreed to participate in a debate for a Florida radio
program that specialized in alien visits and UFO sightings.
My better judgment suggested that I should be wary. But I
thought if I kept my focus purely on the physics challenges
involved in space travel, I might be able to persuade some
listeners to be skeptical of the claims that aliens were
regularly visiting, abducting and experimenting with our fellow
earthlings.
I should have known better. After 45 minutes defending myself
against the claim that I was close-minded, when I argued that
science did in fact impose constraints on what is possible, and
politely responding to demands that I must first scrupulously
review all the specific claims of alien sightings before I could
possibly have the temerity to make general statements about
plausibility or implausibility, I felt that any uninformed
listeners who might have been waiting to be swayed probably
found themselves merely confused at the end of the show.
In a debate that confronts the results of science with
pseudoscience, from alien abductions and crop circles on one
hand to the health benefits of weak magnetic fields or young
earth creationism on the other, the odds are stacked against
science.
Part of the problem is uniquely American. We in the United
States are constantly regaled by stories about the limitless
possibilities open to those with know-how and a spirit of
enterprise. Combine that with a public that perceives the limits
of science as targets that are constantly being overcome, and
the suggestion that anything is absolutely impossible seems like
an affront. Indeed, modern technology has made the seemingly
impossible almost ordinary. How often have I heard the cry from
an audience, "Yeah, but 300 years ago people would have said it
would be impossible to fly!"
Although true, the problem with that assertion is that 300 years
ago people did not know enough about the laws of physics to make
the assertion, so the claim would have been improper. Had they
made a simpler claim like, "Three hundred years from now, if you
drop this cannonball off the Tower of Pisa, it will fall down,"
they would have been right.
Although it is probably true that there is far more that we do
not know about nature than that we do know, we do know
something! We know that balls, when dropped, fall down. We do
know that the earth is round and not flat. We do know how
electromagnetism works, and we do know that the earth is
billions of years old, not thousands.
We may not know how spacecraft of the future will be propelled,
whether matter-antimatter drives will be built or even if time
travel is possible. But we do know, absolutely, how much on-
board fuel will be needed to speed up a substantial spacecraft
to near the speed of light an enormous amount, probably enough
to power all of human civilization at the present time for
perhaps a decade.
That means that aliens who want to come here from a distant star
will probably have to have some better reason than merely
performing secret kinky experiments on the patients of a Harvard
psychiatrist.
As difficult as debating ultimate limits of the possible may be,
there is another debate that is even harder to win. But it is a
debate that may be even more important. It is a debate on the
"fairness" of science. The reason for the difficulty is simple.
Science is not fair. All ideas are not treated equally. Only
those that have satisfied the test of experiment or can be
tested by experiment have any currency. Beautiful ideas, elegant
ideas and even sacrosanct notions are not immune from
termination by the chilling knife edge of experimental data.
In Ohio, a debate is raging over whether to teach "intelligent
design" alongside evolution in high school biology classes.
Intelligent design is based on the belief that life is too
complicated to explain by natural causes alone and that some
intelligence, ultimately some divine intelligence, must have
created the original life forms on earth or guided their
development.
Proponents of that idea suggest that including it in the
curriculum is simply a question of fairness. If a significant
number of people do not believe that evolution provides an
adequate explanation of the origin of species, they argue, then
it is only fair to present both sides of the argument in a high
school science class.
But at least half of Americans polled in a recent survey by the
National Science Foundation did not know that Earth orbits the
Sun, and that it takes a year to do so. Does this mean we should
teach that Earth is the center of the universe? Of course not.
It merely means that we are not doing a very good job informing
the public about physics.
Science is not a democratic process. It does not proceed by
majority rule and it does not accept notions that have already
been disproven by experiment.
Intelligent design makes assertions that cannot be tested by
experiment. Those assertions that can be tested, say about blood
clotting or the claimed irreducible complexity of various
components of cells, seem to have thus far failed those tests.
So intelligent design does not belong in a science class. End of
story.
Nevertheless, recently the Ohio State School Board felt it
necessary to run a hearing on evolution vs. intelligent design
in a debate format, with two proponents of evolution to face off
against two advocates of intelligent design in Columbus.
One might think that I would know better than to agree to
participate in such a debate. But I did, because I felt the
education of schoolchildren in Ohio was so important.
Nevertheless, I tried to learn from my earlier mistakes. Merely
having a debate inevitably suggests that each side has some
credibility. As a result, opponents of the scientific method
like creationists try very hard to appear in debates with
scientists. Merely being on the same stage represents a victory!
I made sure that I emphasized this intrinsic inequity in my
opening remarks in Columbus, and it colored much of the
subsequent discussion, as well as the later reporting of the
event. I do not know whether it was sufficient to let listeners
focus on whether there was really anything worth debating in the
first place. But it at least allowed for that possibility.
In the meantime, for those scientists who find themselves thrust
in such public debates, I have found at least one useful tool.
When debating U.F.O. experts, ask them whether they believe in
"Young Earth Creationism." When debating young earth
creationists, ask them whether they believe in alien U.F.O.'s.
When they say no, ask why. Their answers will inevitably shed
light on the weakness of their own positions.
Of course, as has once happened to me, you might find yourself
debating a U.F.O.-believing creationist. But you can't win them
all. My hope is that you can win at least some of the time.
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