Abominable mysteries

One of the most annoying things I run across regularly is when someone takes a perfectly good piece of scientific research and twists it to support their own highly unscientific pre-existing beliefs.

The latest in this long parade of frustration I found out about because of my good friend, the amazing writer Gil Miller, who is a frequent contributor of topics for Skeptophilia.  Gil sent me a link to a fascinating paper that came out a month and a half ago in Nature about one of the most perplexing puzzles in evolutionary biology -- the sudden diversification of flowering plants during the Cretaceous Period, something on the order of 150 million years ago.  They went on to outcompete every other plant group, now comprising ninety percent of the known plant species, totaling about 13,600 different genera.  If you look around you, chances are any plant you happen to see that isn't a moss, fern, or conifer is a flowering plant.

What caused their explosive rise and diversification, however, is still unknown.  Their success might well be due to coevolution with pollinators, especially insects, which had a sudden spike in diversity around the same time, but that's speculation.  The current study vastly expands the genetic data we have on current genera of flowering plants, rearranging a few groups and solidifying what we know about the branch points of different clades within the group.  However, it still doesn't solve the reason behind what Darwin called "the abominable mystery" of why it all happened -- something the authors are completely up front about.

[Angiosperm phylogenetic chart from Zuntini et al., Nature, April 2024]

Well, any time an evolutionary biologist says "we don't yet understand this" -- especially if it's something Darwin himself noted as odd or mysterious -- it's enough to get all the anti-evolution types leaping about making excited little squeaking noises, and it didn't take long for this paper to appear in an article over at Evolution News (don't let the name fool you; the site is sponsored by the staunchly creationist Discovery Institute).  The article (so I can save you the trouble of clicking the link and adding to their hit rate) glosses over all of the stuff Zuntini et al. did explain, and highlights instead the fact that they never accounted for the reason behind flowering plant diversification (which wasn't even the purpose of the study).  The article ends with, "Nature clearly did make jumps in the history of life and this cannot be explained with an unguided gradual accumulation of small changes over long periods of time, but requires a rapid burst of biological novelty that is best explained by intelligent design."

Basically, what we have here is yet another iteration of the God-of-the-gaps argument; "we don't yet understand it, so musta been that God did it."  The problem is, you can't base a conclusion on a lack of data.  For the intelligent design argument to work, you'd have to show that it explains the data better than other models do.  Simply saying "we don't know, therefore God" isn't actually an explanation of anything, something that atheist philosopher Jeffrey Jay Lowder brought into sharp focus:

The objection I have in mind is this: the design hypothesis is not an explanation because, well, it doesn’t explain. ...  [I]t seems to me that a design explanation must also include a description of the mechanism used by the designer to design and build the thing.  In other words, in order for design to explain something, we have to know how the designer designed it.  If we don’t know or even have a clue about how the designer did it, then we don’t have a design explanation.

Which is it exactly.  Science works because it not only self-corrects, it holds explaining things in abeyance until there's enough data there to warrant a robust explanation.  A mystery is just a mystery; maybe we'll figure it out at some point and maybe we won't, but until then, it doesn't prove anything.  Science doesn't simply look at a lack of information and then throw its hands in the air and say, "Well, must be X, then."

To quote eminent astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, "If you don't know what it is, that's where the conversation stops.  You don't go on and say it 'must be' anything."

Honestly, it's astonishing that the creationist types are still using the God-of-the-gaps approach, because the truth is, it's more damaging to their position than it is helpful.  The reason was noted by German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "[I]t is [wrong] to use God as a stopgap for the incompleteness of our knowledge.  If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat."

But that line of reasoning -- from a respected theologian, no less -- doesn't seem to be slowing them down any.

So I'll apologize to Zuntini et al. on behalf of the entire human race for these unscientific yayhoos taking a really lovely piece of research and claiming it supports their beliefs.  The tl;dr summary of this post is: it doesn't.  At all.  At worst, the study indicates that there's still stuff we don't understand, which is a damn good thing because otherwise the scientists would be out of a job.

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The creationists target Indiana

Well, here we go again.

Dr. Eugenie C. Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education, has once again put rationalist Americans on high alert that a state legislator is planning to give a go to at undermining public schools' teaching of biology.

Dennis Kruse (R-Indiana) has announced plans to introduce a bill into legislation drafted by none other than our friends in the Discovery Institute, who have listed amongst their stated goals:

Scientific research and experimentation have produced staggering advances in our knowledge about the natural world, but they have also led to increasing abuse of science as the so-called “new atheists” have enlisted science to promote a materialistic worldview, to deny human freedom and dignity and to smother free inquiry. Our Center for Science and Culture works to defend free inquiry. It also seeks to counter the materialistic interpretation of science by demonstrating that life and the universe are the products of intelligent design and by challenging the materialistic conception of a self-existent, self-organizing universe and the Darwinian view that life developed through a blind and purposeless process.

Lest my more optimistic (and scientific) readers think this won't have a chance, such efforts have already been successful in Louisiana (2008) and Tennessee (2012).  Inevitably it takes the form of some sort of "teach the controversy" argument -- as if instructing students in the findings of valid, peer-reviewed, evidence-supported science represents some kind of satanic indoctrination.  Interesting, too, that no one ever suggests "teaching the controversy" in, for example, chemistry, inducing chemistry teachers to spend a few weeks discussing alchemy -- despite the fact that the findings of evolutionary biologists are no more controversial in scientific circles than those of the chemists.  Oh, and isn't it odd that it seems to be only people who are poorly educated in biological science who think there's a controversy?  (Wait, that's probably just because we biologists were "indoctrinated" ourselves.  Never mind.)

Kruse, for his part, is serious about this.  He pledged when elected to remove evolution from state science standards, and publicly stated, "I'd guess that 80% of Indiana would be oriented with the bible and creation."  No equivocation there, is there?  No mealy-mouthed "teach the controversy" nonsense.  Nope,  just good, old-fashioned young-earth literalism, designed to further hack away at the state of science education in the United States.  It's no wonder there are so many international students in US college science programs, given our determination as a nation to destroy the underpinnings of science teaching in American high schools.

It's to be hoped that the legislators will handle this sensibly (well, in my opinion, "sensibly" would include laughing directly in Kruse's face, but I'm not optimistic enough to hope for that).  Kruse has attempted this sort of thing before, and failed, the last time because the legislature refused to vote and the bill died when they adjourned -- a remarkably spineless way to handle things, and one which doesn't bode well for the future.

The whole thing makes me despair a little.  Of course, that's what Kruse et al. want; to wear down the opposition, to make them give up out of sheer exhaustion.  I don't think they reckon with the likes of Dr. Scott, however, who doesn't strike me as the capitulating sort.  I think her attitude can much better be summed up in the immortal words of Captain Mathazar from Galaxy Quest:  "Never give up, never surrender."

Fairness, balance, and banana pudding

Last week, the Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education voted 6-1 to approve an industry-standard high school biology textbook, despite a desperate end run by anti-evolutionists to try to have it voted down.  The book, the naysayers claimed, did not teach the "controversy about evolution" nor present a "balanced representation of the debate over the theory's merits."

Well, predictably, my response is:  y'all just did my home state proud.

Equally predictably, the hue and cry started immediately.

Casey Luskin, of the Discovery Institute and the Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness Center, wrote, in an op-ed piece published yesterday, "So much for critical thinking... the Darwin lobby is taking the separation of church and state... and abusing it to promote censorship."  He also complained that because "75% of Americans" have doubts about evolution, the decision by the state school board was irresponsible.  "The students are the real losers here," Luskin said.

Let's take these objections one at a time.

First, Mr. Luskin seems to have the misapprehension that science is somehow a political process -- that a "lobby" promotes its own interests and crushes any others who stand in the way.  He states that "one can be a critic of neo-Darwinism without advocating creationism," and that the media is "confusing (articles) asking for debate with those asking for the teaching of religion."  I find this a curious claim.  If it is true, isn't it odd that evolution (and other models which run contrary to young-earth creationism, such as the Big Bang) are the only ones ever targeted in these discussions?  If "debate," and evidence against a prevailing scientific "lobby," are what he advocates, why stop with evolution?  Why is it "balanced debate" to introduce intelligent design (for which there is not a shred of evidence) into biology classrooms, when no one is suggesting introducing alchemy (for which there is not a shred of evidence) into chemistry classrooms?  The answer, of course, is that he has an agenda, whatever his claims to the contrary. 

Mr. Luskin includes a snarky comment about a question from the biology textbook -- "Describe five pieces of evidence for evolution" -- and wonders why the question doesn't ask students to consider the evidence against evolution.  The reason, of course, is that there isn't any significant evidence against evolution.  There's no less evidence for evolution than there is for any other branch of biological science, but of course he doesn't mention that.  His "balanced" approach, carried to its logical conclusion, implies that students should spend their time describing evidence against cell theory, the model for how nerves carry signals, DNA as the carrier for genetic information, and so on, and that this would somehow promote "critical thinking."

He seems to consider it unfair that responsible textbook writers don't represent ID and creationism as on an equal footing with evolution, that this is somehow silencing debate.  The fact is, of course, this isn't the way science works.  Science is the least democratic of fields; no one is "owed equal time" just because (s)he has a theory.  You may have a theory that the earth is actually made of a crispy graham cracker crust on top of a layer of banana pudding, but giving your theory equal time in a geology class isn't "balanced," it's "moronic."  Your theory, like all theories, stands and falls on the even playing field of the available evidence.  If yours has no evidential support -- well, sorry.  It may sound harsh, but you're simply wrong.

Secondly, it is not relevant that "75% of Americans" have doubts about evolution.  The fact that 75% of Americans (if Mr. Luskin's estimate is correct) disagree is more an indication of the level of science education in American schools than it is an indication of any problems with the theory.  Given this fact, I was unsurprised at the other big education news story released this week -- that students in China were outstripping Americans in science and math education.  If religious indoctrination is really creating a 75% level of doubt amongst Americans about something which is the underpinning of all of the biological sciences, that the Chinese are winning the education race is hardly to be wondered at.

Lastly, his statement that "students are the real losers" implies that if kids aren't presented with an opportunity to see religious views (i.e. intelligent design) branded as science, that science education has failed.  Myself, I think the opposite is true.  We should call ID and young-earth creationism exactly what they are -- religious statements with no scientific credibility whatsoever -- and let the proponents of these theories present what they think the evidence for these statements is.  I find it interesting that in every so-called debate on this topic, the focus of the anti-evolutionists is just that -- anti-evolution -- finding the bits and pieces that the evolutionary model has yet to explain.  I have never once seen any of them present any positive evidence for their own ideas.  How about a dinosaur fossil and a human fossil with contemporaneous radioisotope dates, sedimentary strata showing a catastrophic, worldwide flood five thousand years ago, and so on?  No?  Hmmm.  I wonder why that is?

In any case, I find the recent decision in Louisiana to be a hopeful sign that the nation's educational system may finally be getting behind the idea of teaching science in a realistic, evidence-based fashion.  It's too much to hope for that the likes of Mr. Luskin have given up, but at least we're making progress.