Science Literature

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Post details: An Orwellian framing of the debate about evolution and ID

04/13/07

by David Tyler 06:32:23 am, Categories: Literature - Articles, 424 words

An Orwellian framing of the debate about evolution and ID

Two outspoken defenders of Darwinism and critics of ID have contributed a Policy Forum piece to Science on how scientists should contribute to "highly contested issues". They identify three cases for consideration: human-induced global warming, evolution and ID, and embryonic stem cells. In each case, they suggest that the thinking of scientists has converged towards an unambiguous position. But, they write: "Research shows that people are rarely well enough informed or motivated to weigh competing ideas and arguments." We live in societies where political and religious ideologies act as screens to distort the messages they hear. So we need to develop skills of communicating: "scientists must learn to actively "frame" information to make it relevant to different audiences". "Frames organize central ideas, defining a controversy to resonate with core values and assumptions".
These two communicators realise that they are advancing ideas that could be seen as manipulation of the media to keep the masses submissive. They conclude: "Some readers may consider our proposals too Orwellian, preferring to safely stick to the facts. Yet scientists must realize that facts will be repeatedly misapplied and twisted in direct proportion to their relevance to the political debate and decision-making. In short, as unnatural as it might feel, in many cases, scientists should strategically avoid emphasizing the technical details of science when trying to defend it."
The fundamental problem evident here is that the authors have failed to grasp that all three of their illustrative cases relate to contested issues within science, as well as having major ramifications for society. There is a significant debate as to whether global warming is human-induced; there is a community of scientists who dissent from Darwinism, many of whom are ID advocates; and there are good scientific reasons for focussing research on adult stem cells rather than embryonic stem cells. The authors are seeing these controversies through their personal ideological "frame".
They qualify their advice on strategy using these words: "without misrepresenting scientific information". However, their analysis of the controversial issues reveals that they have already misrepresented scientific information - by failing to acknowledge the reality of scientific debate and by linking dissent only to political and religious agendas. This is a sure sign of Orwellian control police and a sad day for science.

Framing Science
Matthew C. Nisbet and Chris Mooney
Science 315, 6 April 2007: 56

Issues at the intersection of science and politics, such as climate change, evolution, and embryonic stem cell research, receive considerable public attention, which is likely to grow, especially in the United States as the 2008 presidential election heats up.

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Evolution News Blog
Evolution has become a favorite topic of the news media recently, but for some reason, they never seem to get the story straight. The staff at Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture started this Blog to set the record straight and make sure you knew "the rest of the story".
Intelligent Design Network (IDNet)
Intelligent Design Undergraduate Research Center
Intelligent Reasoning
A blogger from New England offers his intelligent reasoning.
International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (ISCID)
Telic Thoughts
We are a group of individuals, coming from diverse backgrounds and not speaking for any organization, who have found common ground around teleological concepts, including intelligent design. We think these concepts have real potential to generate insights about our reality that are being drowned out by political advocacy from both sides. We hope this blog will provide a small voice that helps rectify this situation.
The Design Inference - The Writings of William A. Dembski
The Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness Center (IDEA)
www.themonkeytrial.com
Website dedicated to comparing scenes from the "Inherit the Wind" movie with factual information from actual Scopes Trial. View 37 clips from the movie and decide for yourself if this movie is more fact or fiction.

Links - Of General Interest

A Brief View of Time and Those That Live There
Don Cicchetti blogs on: Culture, Music, Faith, Intelligent Design, Guitar, Audio
A Quick Guide to Sequenced Genomes
ARN Related Web Links
Creation/Evolution Quotes
Australian biologist Stephen E. Jones maintains one of the best origins "quote" databases around. He is meticulous about accuracy and working from original sources.
CreationEvolutionDesign
Most guys going through midlife crisis buy a convertible. Austrialian Stephen E. Jones went back to college to get a biology degree and is now a proponent of ID and common ancestry.
Darwinian Fairytales by David Stove
Complete zipped downloadable pdf copy of David Stove's devastating, and yet hard-to-find, critique of neo-Darwinism entitled "Darwinian Fairytales"
ID The Future
Intelligent Design The Future is a multiple contributor weblog whose participants include the nation's leading design scientists and theorists: biochemist Michael Behe, mathematician William Dembski, astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, philosophers of science Stephen Meyer, and Jay Richards, philosopher of biology Paul Nelson, molecular biologist Jonathan Wells, and science writer Jonathan Witt. Posts will focus primarily on the intellectual issues at stake in the debate over intelligent design, rather than its implications for education or public policy.
John Mark Reynolds Blog
A Philosopher's Journey: Political and cultural reflections of John Mark N. Reynolds. Dr. Reynolds is Director of the Torrey Honors Institute at
Biola University.
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day