Last Thursday I went to a lecture at the University of Sydney. It was given by Susan Greenfield who is thinker in residence at Adelaide Uni. The subject was Science and Politics and it was disappointing. Mostly because, although it talked about Scientists and Politicians, funding, IP, commercialisation of discovery etc, it avoided entirely the most fundamental challenge to science in the world right now. The interference into science of politics driven by religion.
In the US science in Government is being stifled to cater to the demands of religious fundamentalists, research is being suppressed and results concealed, there are even cases where government websites are publishing actual lies masquerading as scientific fact.
Now it appears that the disease of wishful thinking is spreading to my part of the world and it is not being resisted by the highest officers of the state.
Federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson told the Press Club earlier this month that intelligent design could have a place alongside evolution in our schools if parents wished.
Scientists are angry. One described intelligent design as creationism in a cheap tuxedo, but to those who support the theory, it's all about keeping an open mind.
Yeah, and while we are at it, why don't we teach flat earth? after all it a theory at least as good as Intelligent design. What with a push here as well as in New Zealand to make schools responsible for "teaching our cultural values", there is something wrong with the way we are approaching education in the English speaking world.
Susan Greenfield did talk about the role of women in science and therefore touched on the boneheaded Larry Summers of Harvard whose suggestion that women just can't handle the hard intellectual stuff caused a furore last year. However, it looks like there is plenty to worry about in the UK as well. Kos has this posting Lawrence Summers is Vindicated! which refers to "Academics in the UK [who] claim their research shows that men are more intelligent than women"
Turns out that said academics include a well known eugenicist called Professor Richard Lynn who has, among his many assertions, the following:
"What is called for here is not genocide, the killing off of the population of incompetent cultures. But we do need to think realistically in terms of the 'phasing out' of such peoples.... Evolutionary progress means the extinction of the less competent. To think otherwise is mere sentimentality."
That this dangerous rubbish gets house room in a British University should also be giving Susan Greenfield heartburn.
At the core of western progress for the last 400 hundred years has been the development of the scientific method and that is now under assault. These are major political issues and scientists had better get with the programme or they will find not only that their funding is being cut but that they are having to defend their thoughts to the new inquisition.
Or to quote Carl Sagan
"Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication, and courage. But if we don't practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly serious problems that face us---and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along."
Looks like we are well fixed for charlatans, what we need is more scientists willing and able to defend their practice and their philosophy. Susan, you first.
Or maybe we should just not worry, lets have all this mush poured into our education system holas bolas, those with enough intelligence to spot the BS and act accordingly will prosper, those who can't will live in poverty and ignorance and fear.
Darwin would have called it "survival of the fittest".
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