A bridge too far

This is a, somewhat belated, reaction to Chris Mooney's article in science progress Will the Vaccine-Autism Saga Finally End? in which Mooney writes about the latest developments regarding Wakefield and his infamous study on the possibility of a MMR-autism link (a study which was retracted by The Lancet recently).

Most of the article is quite fine, but at the end, Mooney writes the following:

Instead, I believe we need some real attempts at bridge-building between medical institutions—which, let’s admit it, can often seem remote and haughty—and the leaders of the anti-vaccination movement. We need to get people in a room and try to get them to agree about something—anything. We need to encourage moderation, and break down a polarized situation in which the anti-vaccine crowd essentially rejects modern medical research based on the equivalent of conspiracy theory thinking, even as mainstream doctors just shake their heads at these advocates’ scientific cluelessness. Vaccine skepticism is turning into one of the largest and most threatening anti-science movements of modern times. Watching it grow, we should be very, very worried—and should not assume for a moment that the voice of scientific reason, in the form of new studies or the debunking of old, misleading ones, will make it go away.

This paragraph is problematic for several reasons. First of all, as Orac reports, this has been attempted before, without success. Not because of lack of trying from the scientists, but because of the behavior by the anti-vaccination crowd.

Second of all, it's problematic because it lends credibility to the anti-vaccination crowd. If the scientists are willing to debate them, then there must be something to it, or so it would seem to many.

Let me go into this a little deeper. When I talked to a friend about this yesterday, he said something which actually sums up the problem really well, while staying in the bridge building metaphor: "One cannot build bridges to alternative universes".

When we are dealing with the anti-vaccination crowd, we are dealing with a crowd that believe that there is a world-wide conspiracy among Governments, pharmaceutical companies, doctors, nurses, scientists, and many other, to suppress knowledge about behavior which is harmful to children.

This might not be what they say, but it's the consequences of their claims.

Think about it for a moment.

Childhood vaccinations are given all over the world, from Communist China, over theocratic Iran and feudal Saudi-Arabia to capitalist USA, yet the anti-vaccinationists want us to believe that all these governments willfully ignore data that shows that these vaccinations cause autism?

Big Pharma, as medical companies are often called, is a billion dollar industry, with heavy lobbying in the US, yet in countries like Denmark, vaccinations are made by state-run institutions (in Denmark, Statens Serum Institut).
Somehow, the anti-vaccination crowd wants us to believe that the Danish state continues to give childhood vaccinations, causing autism, even when the same state is the one who has to cover the cost of the special needs of the autistic children, due to the Danish welfare state?

Doctors and nurses all over the world are involved in giving out the vaccinations. They would also need to be part of the conspiracy.

Scientists all over the world do studies into the side effects of vaccinations, into the root causes of autism, and many other related subjects which would uncover a vaccination-autism link, yet only discredited people like Andrew Wakefield makes claims about such a link.

That is one big conspiracy theory.

Yet, Mooney wants us to build bridges to this crowd. Agreeing on something, anything, in order to... what exactly? How does one convince someone who not only believes in such a conspiracy, but actively promotes the conspiracy theory, that it doesn't exist?

And then there is the problem of giving credibility to the anti-vaccination crowd.

When one builds a bridge, the idea is to cross from one side to the other, not to meet halfway. There is the continent of reality, and then there is the islands of anti-science - meeting somewhere between, will move you from reality towards anti-science. Even more so, when you move towards the anti-science crowd, yet the anti-science crowd stands firm - you won't reach each other, but it will move the halfway point closer to their position. A sort of negative Overton Window, if you want.

No, the scientific community should most certainly not try to build a bridge to the anti-vaccination leadership. Instead, the scientific community should try to inform the public, especially journalists, about what the science says, given them the information needed to form informed opinions, when studying the subject.

People like Paul Offit is doing yeoman's work in this regard, with books like Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure, yet we could use many more.

So, if one wants to build bridges, one should build bridges to the general public, probably through journalists, and ignore the lunatic fridge like Jenny McCarthy.

A side note: Chris Mooney is interviewing Paul Offit in Point Of Inquiry - I haven't heard the episode yet, so I can't comment on it.

Rephrasing global warming

NY Times is reporting on a new attempt to convince more people that global warming is real.

Seeking to Save the Planet, With a Thesaurus

The problem with global warming, some environmentalists believe, is “global warming.”

The term turns people off, fostering images of shaggy-haired liberals, economic sacrifice and complex scientific disputes, according to extensive polling and focus group sessions conducted by ecoAmerica, a nonprofit environmental marketing and messaging firm in Washington.

Instead of grim warnings about global warming, the firm advises, talk about “our deteriorating atmosphere.” Drop discussions of carbon dioxide and bring up “moving away from the dirty fuels of the past.” Don’t confuse people with cap and trade; use terms like “cap and cash back” or “pollution reduction refund.”

I fully understand the power of words when trying to convince someone about an idea or a stance, which is why I won't ever refer to anti-choice people by the label they give themselves. Regarding global warming, however, we're not talking about ideas or stances, but hard scientific facts.

What's needed is for the decision makers to understand these facts, and act accordingly. As James Hansen said in a recent talk in Denmark, which I attended, the problem is the difference in what is known (by the scientists) and what is understood (by the politicians and the public).

The so-called "debate" about global warming, or rather anthropogenic global warming, is a debate between the scientific community on one side, and a well-funded pseudo-scientific inter-connected lobbyist network on the other side. Changing the words won't change this fact.

One of the most well-known speakers on the side of science is a politician, Al Gore. By US standards, he falls squarely in the center of the political spectrum (in Europe, he would be considered right-of-center). He has done a lot in convincing people about the threat - not by changing the terminology, but by presenting what we know (the facts, and the science behind it). This is how we convince people. Not by trying to think of new words to say the same things.

New terminology would perhaps be successful, if it was just an image problem, but since the problem is caused by people actively lying about the science, no amount of rephrasing will help.

In other words, while I understand what ecoAmerica is suggesting, they don't take into consideration the fact that there are well-funded organizations which will actively work against the new terminology, trying to keep real science from shaping the public opinion.

This is why we have to address anti- and pseudo-science

Chris Mooney has written an article for Science Progress that already has created some debate among science bloggers. He elaborates a little more on it in this blogpost: How Science Defenders Enable Anti-Science Forces.

The basic premise is that by debating anti-science people, scientists gives credibility to their views. Mooney thinks that instead, scientists should focus on doing and communicating science.

I think this is both right and wrong. Certainly, debating pseudo- and outright anti-scientific people will give them some credibility, if done by scientists. This is why scientists refused to debate Creationists and neo-Creationists when the Dover School Board and the Kansas State Board of Education wanted such debates.

However, that doesn't mean that we should ignore the arguments put forward by the anti-scientists. These people have only one goal in mind - to "win" the debate, by making people think that there might be something to their side. They don't care if the arguments they put forward are wrong, misrepresenting, or outright falsehoods, as long as they can be used to convince others that there is something wrong with the science they are attacking.

Since it's hard for laypeople to see through these falsehoods, mistakes, and misrepresentations, it's vital that they are addressed by scientists, who explain what's wrong with the arguments. While this is done, it should also be made clear that the anti-scientists don't have any science on their side.

Relevant to all this is a long article in the Dallas Observer about the current battle for the science curricula in Texas - Battle Against Teaching Evolution in Texas Begins. Here the creationists are using their old tired phrase "teach the controversy" while spreading lies about the problems with the Theory of Evolution. Yes, debating those points will give some credibility to the claim that there is some kind of controversy, but if scientists actively attack their claims (while putting emphasis on the fact that there is no controversy), then the controversy will be move to their field.

In my opinion, the biggest and best coordinated attack on anti-science was done during the Kitzmiller trial, where scientists not only "defended" the Theory of Evolution, but also used the time to explain what science is, educate people about evolution, and attack the bad arguments made by the proponents. This resulted in a very clear defeat of the neo-Creationists, and a victory for science. This is the sort of thing we need to see more of. Hopefully not in the courtrooms, but rather in the elections for school boards and similar political events. We need to make it clear that while people are entitled to their own opinions, they are not entitled to their own facts.

In other words, we shouldn't debate anti-scientists, we should call them out on their bullshit.

Friedman framing global warming

Via a rather stupid article at American Thinker, I came across this piece by Thomas Friedman in the NY Times Magazine

The Power of Green

One day Iraq, our post-9/11 trauma and the divisiveness of the Bush years will all be behind us — and America will need, and want, to get its groove back. We will need to find a way to reknit America at home, reconnect America abroad and restore America to its natural place in the global order — as the beacon of progress, hope and inspiration. I have an idea how. It’s called “green.”

In the world of ideas, to name something is to own it. If you can name an issue, you can own the issue. One thing that always struck me about the term “green” was the degree to which, for so many years, it was defined by its opponents — by the people who wanted to disparage it. And they defined it as “liberal,” “tree-hugging,” “sissy,” “girlie-man,” “unpatriotic,” “vaguely French.”

Well, I want to rename “green.” I want to rename it geostrategic, geoeconomic, capitalistic and patriotic. I want to do that because I think that living, working, designing, manufacturing and projecting America in a green way can be the basis of a new unifying political movement for the 21st century. A redefined, broader and more muscular green ideology is not meant to trump the traditional Republican and Democratic agendas but rather to bridge them when it comes to addressing the three major issues facing every American today: jobs, temperature and terrorism.

Let's ignore the idea of the "natural place in the global order" of the US as "the beacon of progress, hope and inspiration", and instead focus on what he is actually trying to say. He wants to redefine the word "green" in the mind of people, and get them to think of it was a subject on which there can be a broad concensus. And he consider this the major issue.

Because a new green ideology, properly defined, has the power to mobilize liberals and conservatives, evangelicals and atheists, big business and environmentalists around an agenda that can both pull us together and propel us forward. That’s why I say: We don’t just need the first black president. We need the first green president. We don’t just need the first woman president. We need the first environmental president. We don’t just need a president who has been toughened by years as a prisoner of war but a president who is tough enough to level with the American people about the profound economic, geopolitical and climate threats posed by our addiction to oil — and to offer a real plan to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.

This is not something I say often, but Friedman is quite right about this.

The rest of the article goes on at some length (the article is 11 pages long) about a number of reasons why being green is important, framed in such a way that it will also appeal to more conservative readers.

The article shows one problem with framing - since Friedman is writing to a specific audience, and targeting his arguments to them, I have serious problems with it, even though I am quite in agreement with the message of the importance of alternative energy.

Framing the frame debate

I don't want to turn this blog into only being about science framing and the frame debate raging at the moment, but I have been thinking a little on the issue since I wrote the last post.

I think there is a fundamental world view difference in play, which might explain the rather strong reactions to Mooney and Nisbet's pieces in Science and the Washington Post. While most of the people involved in the framing debate is at the very least agnostic, if not outright atheist, there seem to be two main views on how religion is a problem when talking about science. One camp, Mooney/Nisbet among them, seems to think that the debate about religion is the problem, since it keeps religious people away from science, while the other group, PZ Myers/Larry Moran among them, thinks that religion is what keeps religious people away from science.

Those two world views calls for fundamentally different ways of framing the debate. One calls for avoidance of outright debate about the scientific merits of religious claims, while the other one calls for direct confrontation where science and religion collides.

What Mooney and Nisbet has done wrong is to ignore their own advice, and instead of framing their ideas in a neutral way (compared to the two world views), they have phrased it in such a way that it goes fundamentally against one world view.
Yes, the ideas behind framing has merit, and many science communicators could benifit from taking it into account, but don't expect people to embrace your ideas, if it's sold in a way that involves rejecting, or at least suppressing, a fundamental worldview.

I hope they take this into account in their future writing on the subject.

Has Nisbet and Mooney lost it?

Ok, first of all, I have a great deal of respect for Chris Mooney and his writing (Nisbet's I don't really know, so I can't comment on it), and I think Mooney and Nisbet have some good ideas that they are trying to sell to scientists and science communicators. As I said before, I think their ideas are flawed, but I am withholding futher judgement until I've read the papers Nisbet has sent me on the subject of framing.

What I won't withhold judgement about is their Washington Post opinion piece Thanks for the Facts. Now Sell Them

It contains some good parts, but the start of it is so completely and utterly problematic that I can't help disregard everything else in it.

If the defenders of evolution wanted to give their creationist adversaries a boost, it's hard to see how they could do better than Richard Dawkins, the famed Oxford scientist who had a bestseller with "The God Delusion." Dawkins, who rose to fame with his lucid expositions of evolution in such books as "The Selfish Gene," has never gone easy on religion. But recently he has ramped up his atheist message, further mixing his defense of evolution with his attack on belief.

I know this is not a science paper, or even an opinion piece in a science magazine, but basing you whole premise on some undocumented postulate is exactly what science is not about.
Dawkins is a best-selling author, and The God Delusion has been on the top 10 NY Times bestseller list, and Dawkins was chosen (by readers) as the Reader's Digest Author of the Year (British Book Awards). So he is obviously doing something right with The God Delusion.

Also, seen from the outside, it seems like Dawkins (and Harris, Dennet etc.) has managed to change the whole US debate about religion, arguing that religious claims must be evaluated in the light of science, or be disregarded. In other words, Dawkins (and others) have changed the debate in the US so religious people must make positive claims in defense of the their religion, rather than dismiss science when it doesn't fit the religion.
How does that help the adversaries of evolution? The hard-core fundamentalists cannot be convinced of evolution, and no matter how you phrase it, they won't be convinced. The moderates on the other hand, can be convinced, but they need to hear that there is another side - something they didn't until people like Dawkins came along.
They might find Dawkins' ideas frightening, but they will make them think. Then, when a moderate atheist or a theist who believes in evolution explains the concepts in a more religious friendly way, they will perhaps believe.

In other words, Dawkins has reframed the whole US debate. Instead of using him as an example of how not to do things, Mooney and Nisbet should look at what he did, and use it as an example of how you can change the whole frame of the public debate, rather than reframe your own ideas to fit the debate on the premise of others.

To borrow a creationist principle, Nisbet and Mooney are talking about micro-framing, while Dawkins have been doing macro-framing.

Now, I am willing to admit that I could be mistaken in all this, but unless Nisbet and Mooney has some documentation for their postulate, I find it unlikely. Instead I would suggest that Nisbet and Mooney in the future focus on explaining their ideas, and leave out personal opinions about other peoples' books out of it. It will only drown out their message, and make those of us who disagree with their postulates about those books (and authors) ignore the real message they want to put forth.

There is of course a whole bunch of posts about the op-ed over at the ScienceBlogs, but instead of pointing to all of them, I'll point to a post by ERV: Okay, Chris, Matt-- Stop digging. Stop it.

Framing science

Chris Mooney and Matthew C. Nisbet have written a piece for Science in which they try to convince scientists that they need to reframe their research depending on their audience.

I haven't read the piece (if someone has it, I would appreciate getting a copy of itgot it, and will read it tomorrow), but going from what they have written on their blogs, and from what people have written in response to the piece, the basic message is that it doesn't help using science-speak, when talking with people who don't understand (or beleive) the basics. Instead, research should be cloaked in terms that appeals to the audience. The example given is to talk about "stewardship of the Earth" when talking to Evangelists about global warming.

Greg Laden has a long post about why this is the wrong use of the theory of framing: Framing Science “Paper” Is Deeply Flawed.
Still, even if they are misusing, or misunderstanding, the concept of frames, it's worth to debate if the ideas have merit.

Obviously, as Thorbjörn Larsson has commented on several blogs, the authors are focusing on the US, and ignoring the rest of the world (a point that both Mooney and Nisbet have ignored so far). So this is obviously the "frame" (sorry Greg) we should consider the ideas in.

First of all, I'll say that I think Nisbet and Mooney have some worthwhile ideas, and that they are right that scientists should tailor their presentations to the audience. However, I think they are missing some very important points.

As Abbie, of ERV, points out, it can be very hard to get to the audience in the first place. Even if that happens, then there is the simple problem of explaining science to someone whose entire world view is based upon ideas that flies against everything we know about science.

How do you convince someone of the evidence of global warming or evolution when they believe that the world is only 6000 years old? Much of the evidence for these things is deeply connected to the fact that we know the age of the Earth (or a fitting approximation of it).
When people like Jerry Falwell can cite the Bible as evidence for global warming not being a problem, how can we counter that? If we share the same basic premises as such people, or if we recast the science to reflect those premises, the science becomes meaningless.

And then there is the simple fact that casting science in non-scientific ways will defeat the whole purpose of science. As someone (PZ?) said, we don't want them to believe in evolution (or whatever other subject we're talking about), we want them to understand it. There is a very big difference between those two things.
Of course, we don't want people to understand every nuance of it, but we do want people to understand the basic principles behind the scientific theories, and what it means. Evolution as a concept is quite simple to understand, any child can do it, but as soon as you mix in conflicting notions (like the creation of man), there is a fundamental contradiction between the scientific theory and the basic premises of understanding.

So, what I am leading up to, is the simple fact that while I agree with Mooney and Nisbet that it helps if the scientists can speak the same language as the audience (something that Coturnix goes into in this post: Framing Science - the Dialogue of the Deaf), I think they are missing the point somewhat.

As Buridan explains, scientists shouldn't be used in the role that Mooney and Nisbet seems to envision them in. Instead scientists should do or teach science, and science communicators should try to communicate the science in a way that suits the audience. Science communicators can certainly be scientists, as the many great science bloggers out there show, but the average scientist is not a suitable communicator for the type of audience as Mooney and Nisbet describes (something that Cotournix also gets into in his post).

In other words, as PZ says, it seems a bit strange that it's the scientists that's the target of that Science piece. Instead it should be the science communicators - the science journalists like Chris Mooney or Carl Zimmer. They are the ones who can take science and put it into a framework that suits the audience, not the scientists. And as Carl Zimmer says, he doesn't want the scientists to tell him what his story should be.

Now, stepping out of a US-centric context, and looking at how the US differ from the rest of the Western World, I would say that it seems to me that the US seems to have a higher degree of science illiteracy. So, perhaps the best way of solving the problem is to ensure a better standard of science teaching. This needs to be done to give people a basic understanding of what is and isn't science. This won't do anything for the people too wedded to their non-science worldviews, but it will hopefully help the future average citizen in understanding when something flies in the faces of everything we know about science.

A Flock of Dodos in Copenhagen

Note: Updated with more links to posts by PZ Myers about Haeckel's embryos.

I've just come back from viewing Dr. Randy Olson's A Flock of Dodos at the Night Film Festival in Copenhagen (in this case, the movie was shown in the afternoon, instead of at night).

It was the first screening outside the US, and Dr. Randy Olson was there to debate a ID proponent and answer questions afterwards. More about that later, but first a little about the film.

A Flock of Dodos is about the fight between scientists and the Intelligent Design movement in the US. Olson tries to present both sides of the debate, and while he makes it quite clear that he is no fan of Intelligent Design, he also makes clear that he thinks that the fight is being lost by the scientists - in a large part because of the scientists themselves.

As an introduction to the debate in the US, the movie is not bad at all, though I think Olson bends over a little too much to describe the ID crowd as charming (I personally found several of the specimens in the movie rather repulsive, but that might be due to cultural differences).

Still, I think the movie fails to both shows the problems with the Intelligent Design arguments, and to show what scientists should do better. The first is not the purpose of the movie, but something that frustrates some viewers (at least one viewer in the audience complained about the lack of science in the movie), while the second part should naturally from Olson's finding that scientists is a large part of the problem.

I also found it problematic that Olson didn't talk with any of the scientists actually working with communicating with people about these issues. Eugenie Scott, Ken Miller, PZ Myers etc. are all great at explaining the problems in clear simple ways, yet none such people were interviewed. Instead many of the insights of the scientists' problems came from a round board discussion (while playing poker) of a bunch of NY academics, who are undoubtfully good at their work, but who don't work with explaining these issues to lay people, unlike the ID proponents from the Discovery Institute.

Even with these problems, I still think it's a great movie, and it should certainly be viewed broadly in the US, as a supplement to all the other forms of combating Intelligent Design - I believe in a multi-front battle against the forces of ignorance.

Now, to the debate afterwards. Denmark has one major Intelligent Design proponent, the theologian Jakob Wolf, however he didn't participate in the debate. Instead it was some person I've never heard about, who didn't explain his qualifications for participating in the debate. According to some of the others viewing the film, he was a journalist, and believed in some kind of Hindu-derived religion (Hara Krishna perhaps?).

Anyway, the proponent started out attacking Olson for the movie's inaccuracies, and started with the Discovery Institute's talking points about Haeckel's embryos, and had even printed out examples of where they were used. Olson quickly dismissed this as nonsense, and as someone shouted from the audience (oops, did I do that?), it all depends on context. PZ Myer's will be happy to know that Olson referred to his sound debunkings of the DI's talking point.
In a sense it was interesting to see Olson's offhand dismissal of the ID proponent's arguments, since it was a display of the same kind of behavior that he complained about the scientists did. It's understandable, since Olson gets presented with the same stupid arguments every time, but perhaps it also explains why scientists do the same, when presented with the same abmyssal stupid arguments again and again (2nd law of thermodynamics, anyone?).

Other than that, there was not much worth noticing about the debate, except:

• A member of the audience, a biology professor I believe, was rather abusive towards the ID person. He yelled something about not knowing any science...


• The ID proponent referred to Dembski's math as sound evidence (don't cry Mark).


• A Raelite spoke up, and asked if the debaters had thought of a human designer? (which prompted the whole audience to laugh).


• The ID proponent said that you could define something as intelligent designed if you can't explain it by chemistry or physics. Both a rather broad statement, and a rather narrow definition of intelligently designed in another.