Understanding Science

The Coalition on the Public Understanding of Science has declared 2009 the Year of Science. As part of this initiative, they've launched an excellent new website: Understanding Science. Hearteningly, the website focuses not on the content of science but on the process of science. Especially check out Understanding Science 101 and this great visualization of how science works.

For Google:
Science. How science works. Scientific explanation. Learn science. Become a scientist. Science 101. Science introduction. Science intro. What science is.

Dawkins and Bad Pedagogy

Note: there is a nasty controversy about this post over on Richard Dawkins' website. Indeed, Dawkins himself has taken offense and demanded an apology. I certainly regret the tone of this post and, on reflection, I don't think I have enough evidence to claim Dawkins was promoting atheism. I have therefore withdraw part of my criticism and apologized twice.

I linked to a documentary called "The Genius of Charles Darwin" a while ago, but embedded below (or click here) is the real deal: the first installment of Richard Dawkins' new 3-part series on Darwin. I'm linking to it for two reasons: because I think it's worth watching but also because I think Dawkins is guilty of just horrendous bad pedagogy in the documentary and I want to talk a bit about that.

Let me start with a few caveats: I really like Dawkins - he has inspired me, and I think he's had a tremendous positive impact. Also, I am a fairly "hardcore" atheist not a 'Neville Chamberlain atheist'. And, obviously, I think nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. Nevertheless, I don't think there is any logical incompatibility between theism and evolution, that is, I deny (part of) the conflict thesis and think theistic evolution may be extremely unparsimonious, but it is not logically contradictory. Moreover, I take it as a given that there is a difference between pedagogy and polemics and that the latter should largely be kept out of the former. I take it for granted, in other words, that instructors ought in general not to evangelize for a particular point of view or ignore alternatives when there is no consensus among the relevant experts. Consequently, given the huge body of evidence and the consensus among the experts, teachers and lecturers are perfectly entitled to advocate the truth of evolution by natural selection and to dismiss or ignore alternatives. (I have been known to say things like 'anti-Darwinists are dumb and not worth taking seriously' in lectures). It is not cricket, however, to ignore alternatives and advocate a particular point of view about controversial issues like the relationship between theism and evolution.

Dawkins, I think, falls egregiously afoul of the last principle in this documentary. In one sequence, he goes to a school to teach a group 16 year-olds about evolution. Unsurprisingly, religion soon rears it head; several of the students, it turns out, are religious and they reject evolution for that reason. And what does Dawkins do? He tries to persuade them to become atheists! Now, I have nothing against evangelizing for atheism (I do it myself sometimes) but doing so (1) does not belong in the science classroom and (2) interferes with teaching evolution properly. Moreover, Dawkins' approach criminally neglects the duty of a teacher to present all sides of an argument when there is no consensus among the relevant experts. Crudely speaking, there are at least four possible positions one can take on the relationship between religion and evolution: religious compatibilism (e.g. Ken Miller, Pope John Paul II), atheistic compatibilism (e.g. Stephen Jay Gould, Steven Novella), religious incompatibilism (e.g. Ken Ham, Henry Morris) and atheistic incompatibilism (e.g. Dawkins, PZ Myers). It is obvious that a teacher should at a minimum mention these four points of view and their respective proponents. Unless the scenes were not included in the documentary, Dawkins takes the atheistic incompatibilism point of view for granted and never even mentions the alternatives to his students. This is not only bad pedagogy, it is dumb from a tactical point of view twice over: if the aim is to convince students of the truth of evolution, removing impediments (like worrying they have to give up religion) is obviously a good idea. If the aim is to spread atheism, surely it is much easier to 'convert' someone who accepts science already than it is to convert someone who rejects science? Surely it is easier on average to convert a religious compatiblist who is knowledgeable about evolution than it is to convert an ignorant religious incompatibalist like a young earth creationist? (One issue here is that one does not want to be dishonest: lying to students about evolution's impact on religion would certainly be morally dubious. An incompatibilist can nevertheless go part of the way to allaying students' fears by mentioning millions of scientists and hundreds of millions of religious people do not think evolution undermines their faith. They can acknowledge, in other words, that their view is not the only one and that they might be wrong).

At one point in the documentary I wanted to scream at Dawkins to wake up - one student actually said he (I think it was a he) was afraid to learn more about evolution because he didn't want to give up his religion. By clinging dogmatically to atheistic incompatibilism, Dawkins failed this student, failed as a teacher, failed as an advocate of evolution and arguably even failed as an advocate of atheism.

Misunderstanding evolution

New Scientist magazine published a great series of 24 articles a while ago on the most common misconceptions about evolution. All the pieces are worth reading (and the links are certainly worth following), but my six favorite articles were:

1. Religion and evolution are incompatible
2. Evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics
   
3. Accepting evolution undermines morality
4. The theory is wrong because the Bible is 'inerrant'
5. Half a wing is no use
6. Evolution cannot be disproved

I'm making the whole series required reading for the Darwinism course I'm teaching this coming semester...

Put a Little Science in Your Life

Brian Greene, the physicist and popular science author, argues convincingly that you ought to "Put a Little Science in Your Life". The money-shot:

But science is so much more than its technical details. And with careful attention to presentation, cutting-edge insights and discoveries can be clearly and faithfully communicated to students independent of those details; in fact, those insights and discoveries are precisely the ones that can drive a young student to want to learn the details. We rob science education of life when we focus solely on results and seek to train students to solve problems and recite facts without a commensurate emphasis on transporting them out beyond the stars.

Science is the greatest of all adventure stories, one that’s been unfolding for thousands of years as we have sought to understand ourselves and our surroundings. Science needs to be taught to the young and communicated to the mature in a manner that captures this drama. We must embark on a cultural shift that places science in its rightful place alongside music, art and literature as an indispensable part of what makes life worth living.

Video: Here Be Dragons

Brian Dunning, host of the skeptical podcast Skeptoid, has produced a pretty darn impressive short (~40min) movie that introduces skepticism and critical thinking called Here Be Dragons. While it is clear that the movie was not filmed or produced by a professional, it’s very good for something made in an amateur’s spare time and, besides, the content makes up for the film’s lack of polish. Dunning starts off by defining, then illustrating, pseudoscience, and then goes on to explain common fallacies and biases, why even smart people fall for nonsense and then ties everything together nicely with examples and illustrations. I especially liked his explanation of the randomized clinical trial, it’s by far to best short summary I’ve ever come across. Overall, I’d say it’s an excellent introduction to skepticism, Dunning gets nearly everything right (see below for a few examples of where I think he gets it wrong) and, while I doubt any experienced thinker will learn much that’s new, it’s still worth watching and certainly a good tool for proselytization.

A few nitpicks: (1) Dunning includes St. John’s wort as an example of pseudoscience when there is pretty good evidence it is effective as a treatment of mild to moderate depression. While some herbal advocates clearly go beyond the evidence with respect to St. John’s wort (and other herbs), skeptics should do better: the evidence must always rule. (2) Dunning in one scene endorses a deeply naïve view of history, vaguely referring to a 500 year period of the “Medieval Dark Ages” when there was absolutely no progress in science or scholarship. The idea that the Middle Ages was a period of Darkness is mostly mythical; Dunning would do well to familiarize himself with proper academic histories of the period.

The film has been released under a Creative Commons license, and is embedded below. High quality versions can be downloaded here.

An excellent evolution/creationism resource

Science, Evolution and Creationism, the newly revised booklet on the evolution-creation controversy issued by the National Academy of Science in the US, is the best short, accessible introduction to evolution that I have ever come across. It is authoritative, quite comprehensive, interesting, very well organized, beautifully illustrated, concise, clear and (surprisingly for something produced by committee) well written. The three main chapters – “Evolution and the Nature of Science”, “The Evidence of Biological Evolution” and “Creationist Perspectives” – cover everything the average layperson needs to know about science and evolution. More importantly from a tactical perspective, it does an excellent job of arguing science and religion can be compatible, thereby neutralizing the primary source of people’s rejection of evolution.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover the booklet discusses physics and cosmology – e.g. the Big Bang, how the Milky Way and our solar system formed and so on. In my experience, people unfamiliar with evolution (who tend to be ignorant of cosmology and most of science as well) find it difficult to accept the theory unless it’s placed in the context of the grand scientific narrative of the universe.

In any case, the booklet is an excellent resource – I’ll most certainly use it when I have to teach evolution to the uninitiated again. The booklet, by the way, is free to download as a pdf.

(See also: PNAS editorial on "Evolution, Science and Creation" and, as I mentioned before, the NAS podcast discussed (mp3) the release of this publication a while back.)

Dealing with creationists in the classroom

I am teaching a second year cognitive science course this semester and we're focusing on evolutionary psychology (using Pinker's How the Mind Works as a text). Alas, South Africa's education system - specifically at secondary level - is broken and, moreover, teaching evolution is very controversial. As a result, many students reach college criminally uninformed about evolutionary theory. Obviously, before students can get to grips with evolutionary psychology, they need to have some understanding of evolutionary theory itself. Consequently, I'm forced to give my students a crash course in evolution: I screened the first episode of PBS's Evolution, made them read a bit of Mayr, banged on about common misconceptions (misunderstanding "fact" and "theory" being my favorite), and tried to get all the other basics across.

There is one issue, however, that I'm not quite sure how to deal with: students defending creationism. It's come up a couple of times now: one student said she felt offended by the theory, another that her uncle (a pastor) was aghast she was learning about evolution and a couple of objections to the evidence for evolution has surfaced as well. I don't have a fully worked out method for dealing with creationist students, so I responded off the cuff and I'd quite like to know how others deal with this and whether you think my response was adequate. Here's what I said: I was quite firm and adamant, first of all, that the evidence for evolution is overwhelming and that creationism is not an intellectually respectable position. (I dealt with specific objections with specific reasons for preferring evolutionary theory). Then I pointed out that while some atheists (Dawkins, Dennett, etc.) and some religious people (the Discovery Institute folks, Ken Ham and the Answers in Genesis nuts, etc.) think evolution and religion are incompatible, many religious people accept "theistic evolution". (Even the late John Paul II conceded in a speech that evolution is "more than a hypothesis" I told them). Since it also happens to be my actual opinion, I told the students I honestly see no logical contradiction between evolution and religion: one could respectably be religious and a Darwinist. I then pointed to Ken Miller (author of Finding Darwin's God) as an example of a devoutly religious person who is nonetheless a staunch defender of evolutionary thinking and suggested they read his book if they were troubled.

So... how did I do? Did I go too far by saying creationism isn't intellectually respectable? (I have no doubt that it isn't, just whether it's pedagogically sound to say so). Did I leave anything important out? Feedback would be much appreciated.