Friday, February 11, 2005
What we're up against: Science edition
On Brad DeLong's site, there is an amusing discussion of a lay columnist's presentation of some research on anti-matter and on cosmology. Here's a juicy quote from Gregg Easterbrook, the layman in question:
To a real astrophysicist, I'm sure this sound like mumbo-jumbo, or a Stephen Hawking book turned into magnetic poetry. From my vantage point as layman-with-a-lifelong-interest in cosmology, I have a slightly different perspective. Easterbrook appears to have read a number of NYT science articles over the last year or two giving reports on studies (both theoretical and empirical) of cosmological questions like the open- or closedness of the universe; the amount of matter in the universe, and its related long-term fate; and the big bang. I have read articles over the same period that discussed each of these issues (even the question of whether some galaxies appear to be reflected in the sky because of the shape of a closed universe has been the topic of a recent NYT article). He probably didn't have too much else to go on besides these articles, and cobbled them together into a semblance of an argument. Because he hasn't (presumably) read many books on the subject, or taken any courses, he's missing some major points. For example, no one who believes the universe is open thinks we could see "all of it" from any one place; very speculative theories on the shape of the universe are unlikely to lead to intellectual "camps"; few non-Buddhist physicists would say the universe is illusion under any version of these ideas; and his slam on the Big Bang is, well, silly, wrong, and totally beside the point.
So maybe Easterbrook should have talked to a physicist before publishing (hey, maybe I should have before hitting "publish" myself).
But this is nothing compared to what social scientists have to contend with. Far more comically uninformed or incoherent articles are written about policy, elections, politics, etc. every day. Most of these are taken seriously, and accrete into an almost impenetrable miasma of misunderstanding. Most discussions I have with laypeople fail to get out of the miasma into the realm of coherent arguments based on , say, known data, facts, and history.
And social scientists have it much worse for another reason: there are several well-funded right wing groups which serve as fog machines, exploiting and thickening common misunderstandings of policy so that the public can no longer tell a policy that benefits them from one that doesn't. I'm looking at you, AEI, Cato, and Heritage.
Evolutionary biologists are presently the only natural scientists facing a constant stream of misinformation that is, well, "intelligently designed" by people who want to keep the public confused and ignorant. The biologists are furious. And the physicists may be next---some on the right, for no reason I can fathom, want to refight the debate over the Big Bang.
Welcome to the club, guys.
Both the donut and soccer-ball camps hold that when astronomers scan deep space, the infinity they think they see is an illusion. In some doughnut-shaped or soccer-inspired or bagel-sliced way, the cosmos appears much larger than it is. Cosmologists estimate there are at least 100 billion galaxies; actually, these researchers contend, what we observe is reflections of a much smaller number of galaxies: a traveler moving at super-speed straight out into the universe would eventually end up back at the starting point, not continue forever. The universe is an illusion? Well, this seems easier to swallow than the idea that all material for the entire cosmos popped out of a single point with no content, as Big Bang theory maintains.
To a real astrophysicist, I'm sure this sound like mumbo-jumbo, or a Stephen Hawking book turned into magnetic poetry. From my vantage point as layman-with-a-lifelong-interest in cosmology, I have a slightly different perspective. Easterbrook appears to have read a number of NYT science articles over the last year or two giving reports on studies (both theoretical and empirical) of cosmological questions like the open- or closedness of the universe; the amount of matter in the universe, and its related long-term fate; and the big bang. I have read articles over the same period that discussed each of these issues (even the question of whether some galaxies appear to be reflected in the sky because of the shape of a closed universe has been the topic of a recent NYT article). He probably didn't have too much else to go on besides these articles, and cobbled them together into a semblance of an argument. Because he hasn't (presumably) read many books on the subject, or taken any courses, he's missing some major points. For example, no one who believes the universe is open thinks we could see "all of it" from any one place; very speculative theories on the shape of the universe are unlikely to lead to intellectual "camps"; few non-Buddhist physicists would say the universe is illusion under any version of these ideas; and his slam on the Big Bang is, well, silly, wrong, and totally beside the point.
So maybe Easterbrook should have talked to a physicist before publishing (hey, maybe I should have before hitting "publish" myself).
But this is nothing compared to what social scientists have to contend with. Far more comically uninformed or incoherent articles are written about policy, elections, politics, etc. every day. Most of these are taken seriously, and accrete into an almost impenetrable miasma of misunderstanding. Most discussions I have with laypeople fail to get out of the miasma into the realm of coherent arguments based on , say, known data, facts, and history.
And social scientists have it much worse for another reason: there are several well-funded right wing groups which serve as fog machines, exploiting and thickening common misunderstandings of policy so that the public can no longer tell a policy that benefits them from one that doesn't. I'm looking at you, AEI, Cato, and Heritage.
Evolutionary biologists are presently the only natural scientists facing a constant stream of misinformation that is, well, "intelligently designed" by people who want to keep the public confused and ignorant. The biologists are furious. And the physicists may be next---some on the right, for no reason I can fathom, want to refight the debate over the Big Bang.
Welcome to the club, guys.
