Too much thinking, too little writing
Aug. 22nd, 2005 07:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marcusmarcusrcWhen do we know something for certain? Who gets to decide?
When it comes to evolution (see several recent articles in the New York Times), I feel like all the important parts are known well enough that I am comfortable requiring schools to teach natural selection as the only credible mechanism for explaining the origin of species. Sure, we can’t prove that the Flying Spaghetti Monster did not tweak a mutation here or there with His Noodly Appendage, but there is as yet little need to call upon him for explanations. If someday we find a “babelfish” equivalent, or 100 years from now we have yet to find convincing paths leading to the so-called “irreducibly complex mechanisms”, then there may be a reason to introduce this stuff into classrooms. But for now, the evidence for anyone who knows even a little molecular biology is pretty overwhelming. But given that I have not yet become God-Emperor, who gets to decide that the evidence is overwhelming? Our elected officials? Clearly (Bush, Frist, Santorum, Inhofe) not. A panel of scientists or teachers, like the NAS, AAAS, NATB? Well, they would likely arrive at the “right” answer, but this sort of decision making process seems prone to leading to perceptions of an “elite” class separate from the populace and therefore a general distrust. In addition, leaving out stakeholders often leads to solutions that implement very poorly. Do we let the states decide, and hope that the shift of biotech companies to pro-evolution states will eventually cause the ID states to relent? But then are we abandoning thousands of students to poor education systems just because they were born in the wrong place? Maybe the court system can help, when parents sue to take God out or put Her back into the classroom? But my time on a debate team has always made me doubt the adversarial system, though at times professors and lawyerly friends have almost convinced me that it is still better than most of the alternatives.
So if this much controversy can be raised about evolution, which is close to a slam dunk case, what hope do we have for reasonable solutions to climate change, secondary cigarette smoke impacts, health effects of fine particles, asbestos, Vioxx, missile defense, DDT, vaccines, breast implants,?
Climate change is obviously the one I know the most about. Yet my name is on a paper stating that our model shows that the 95% bounds on the warming in 2100 are 1.0 degrees C (pretty acceptable, as long as you aren’t an alpine ecosystem or an especially vulnerable coral reef) to 4.9 degrees C (a pretty disastrous outcome), and being intimately involved in the process I know that there are many potential sources of uncertainty that are not included in our model as well as things we just don’t understand/can’t predict. This makes it easy for politicians to stand up and fight against hard constraints until ‘sound science’ (oooh, how I hate how that phrase is used) comes to a consensus. And there are always a couple of maverick scientists you can quote for any dispute (Behe for evolution, Singer/Christy/Lindzen/Michaels/Mcintyre/ for climate change, etc.) to ensure that ‘consensus’ is never reached.
Theoretically, I went into technology and policy because I felt like we needed more scientifically literate people in the policy arena in order for good decisions to be made, but the longer I study how this all works (or doesn’t work), the more I feel like I’m sinking into a morass of confusion, weasel-words, and uncertainty. Though perhaps for now I should just focus on writing a couple hundred pages and getting a degree, and leave solving the world’s ills for next year...
When it comes to evolution (see several recent articles in the New York Times), I feel like all the important parts are known well enough that I am comfortable requiring schools to teach natural selection as the only credible mechanism for explaining the origin of species. Sure, we can’t prove that the Flying Spaghetti Monster did not tweak a mutation here or there with His Noodly Appendage, but there is as yet little need to call upon him for explanations. If someday we find a “babelfish” equivalent, or 100 years from now we have yet to find convincing paths leading to the so-called “irreducibly complex mechanisms”, then there may be a reason to introduce this stuff into classrooms. But for now, the evidence for anyone who knows even a little molecular biology is pretty overwhelming. But given that I have not yet become God-Emperor, who gets to decide that the evidence is overwhelming? Our elected officials? Clearly (Bush, Frist, Santorum, Inhofe) not. A panel of scientists or teachers, like the NAS, AAAS, NATB? Well, they would likely arrive at the “right” answer, but this sort of decision making process seems prone to leading to perceptions of an “elite” class separate from the populace and therefore a general distrust. In addition, leaving out stakeholders often leads to solutions that implement very poorly. Do we let the states decide, and hope that the shift of biotech companies to pro-evolution states will eventually cause the ID states to relent? But then are we abandoning thousands of students to poor education systems just because they were born in the wrong place? Maybe the court system can help, when parents sue to take God out or put Her back into the classroom? But my time on a debate team has always made me doubt the adversarial system, though at times professors and lawyerly friends have almost convinced me that it is still better than most of the alternatives.
So if this much controversy can be raised about evolution, which is close to a slam dunk case, what hope do we have for reasonable solutions to climate change, secondary cigarette smoke impacts, health effects of fine particles, asbestos, Vioxx, missile defense, DDT, vaccines, breast implants,
Climate change is obviously the one I know the most about. Yet my name is on a paper stating that our model shows that the 95% bounds on the warming in 2100 are 1.0 degrees C (pretty acceptable, as long as you aren’t an alpine ecosystem or an especially vulnerable coral reef) to 4.9 degrees C (a pretty disastrous outcome), and being intimately involved in the process I know that there are many potential sources of uncertainty that are not included in our model as well as things we just don’t understand/can’t predict. This makes it easy for politicians to stand up and fight against hard constraints until ‘sound science’ (oooh, how I hate how that phrase is used) comes to a consensus. And there are always a couple of maverick scientists you can quote for any dispute (Behe for evolution, Singer/Christy/Lindzen/Michaels/Mcintyre/ for climate change, etc.) to ensure that ‘consensus’ is never reached.
Theoretically, I went into technology and policy because I felt like we needed more scientifically literate people in the policy arena in order for good decisions to be made, but the longer I study how this all works (or doesn’t work), the more I feel like I’m sinking into a morass of confusion, weasel-words, and uncertainty. Though perhaps for now I should just focus on writing a couple hundred pages and getting a degree, and leave solving the world’s ills for next year...
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Date: 2005-08-23 12:05 pm (UTC)Interestingly this is sort of like the question "what gets to be science for legal cases?" Something I don't know very much about, but I know that there is a question about it.