You know this part: PZ Myers was thrown out of a screening of "Expelled". He blogged about it, Richard Dawkins blogged about it, half the science bloggers in the Universe blogged about it. It made the New York Times and Salon, who both had very good articles about the situation.

Not everyone, however, was pleased. Chris Mooney wrote that this incident has helped the movie more than science, and Matt Nisbet says that PZ and Dawkins shouldn’t have been in the movie to be interviewed in the first place.

I have some thoughts on this, of course. First, Sean over at Cosmic Variance sums things up pretty well. Read his first and then come back. I’ll wait.

OK, welcome back. Again, I think Sean has done an excellent job as usual on this topic. I know Chris Mooney and I like him, but he’s dead wrong on this one. This publicity is killing the movie; it makes the producer Mark Mathis and Ben Stein look like the craven liars they are (and the New York Times article says it’s a creationist movie! Score one for the good guys!). By showing the methods and almost reflexive lying the makers of the movie have resorted to, it’s showing them in a very bad light. By Chris’s reasoning, a movie critic’s bad review actually helps a movie, which is obviously wrong. The more the public knows about the real motives and methods behind this movie, the better.

Nisbet’s claims are a little more complicated. First, his writing his post in the style he did is ironic in the extreme; for someone who talks about framing all the time he certainly didn’t frame his argument in any way that will convince PZ to stop giving interviews and writing about religion. In fact, I don’t think I’d have won Randi’s million dollar challenge predicting PZ’s response.

Nisbet’s overarching comments are more interesting to me. It is certainly true that there are people who are de facto spokesmen for causes who wind up actually hurting their cause. For example, I’ve seen many (many many) scientists who have not exactly pushed forward the idea that science can be cool and scientists hip and fun.

But does this pertain to PZ and Dawkins? I’ve spent some time thinking about this. I think the answer is no, Nisbet is wrong here, and basically for the same reasons Sean laid out: PZ and Dawkins aren’t politicians, trying to spin, shuck, and jive their way through an interview so as to spin things just so. They are scientists, and they are interested in telling the truth as they see it.

Does that hurt the cause against antiscience? Sure, it can. A lot of people will be offended by such talk, and others can edit their speech or frame it in a way that makes science look like some sort of creeping menace.

But looking at what the makers of Expelled have done, it’s clear to me that this would have happened to any scientist they talked to. They would have edited, tipped, and tilted things to make them look good no matter what. I’m sure that had they interviewed Nisbet it would make him look like a befanged devil. That’s the MO of people like Mathis and Stein. They’re liars, and they’re only interested in suppressing reality. Nisbet said PZ and Dawkins should leave interviews to people who can handle it. Even if this weren’t an offensive thing to say, it should be noted that such people do not exist. Anyone can be edited to promote anything at all.

Given that, then maybe we should all shut up. Maybe we should just let the antiscientists, the liars, the hoaxsters, the conmen, and the shills just have their way, saying whatever they want with no accountability at all.

No way. That won’t happen, and we cannot let it happen. Matt Nisbet thinks that we should have front men who can take on issues the way they need to be framed so that they’re more palatable to the public. Of course making science palatable and understandable is a good idea. But we must be honest when we do it. We shouldn’t "dumb down" the science (that is, oversimplify it to the point where it’s content-free news); and we can’t change the results or the methods or — most importantly — the implications of research just because the public will find that an easier pill to swallow.

And it’s the right of any scientist to talk about science. Telling some scientists to shut up and let someone else talk about the issues is ridiculous. If Matt Nisbet doesn’t like what PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins are saying, then it’s his right to counter their speech. Just like it’s mine to publicly state that Matt Nisbet and Chris Mooney are wrong here as well.

The trailer for the new season of Doctor Who has been showing in theaters in the UK for some time now, but they have released a high-quality version of it on the BBC website. Unfortunately, because they don’t understand the power of American bloggers, they made it available only for people in the UK. So naturally, it’s now up on YouTube. Spoilers ho, of course!

I suspect it’ll get taken down, but I also suspect it’ll pop back up on other peoples’ accounts, so if this particular one doesn’t work, taker a look around. In my rationalizing head, this is an act of civil disobedience. It’s what the Doctor would do.

Update: Reed Esau has posted a much more detailed review of the Skepticamp doings over at Skepchick.

Yesterday I went to Skepticamp, where people gather to talk about skeptical topics. First off, a few others have already chimed in about: Hot Chicks Dig Smart men, Skepchick, and Richorman (who posted pix), notably.

The event is a loosely organized series of talks, basically. There were roughly a dozen ranging from 20 minute to the last one, which ran long at nearly two hours but which was fun nonetheless. I think my favorite was from Joel Albietz, a doctor who works at an infant ICU ward; he talked about the total and utter lack of a connection between vaccines and autism. His talk basically vaporizes all the claims of this sad movement which says that vaccines are causing this tragic childhood problem. Joel showed a large number of well-done graphs and statistics showing that autism rates continue to climb even well after thimerosol was removed from vaccines, and still went up for years even after some populations stopped taking vaccines — and of course, ravaging illnesses made a big comeback after the vaccinations stopped. There’s no way to overstate this: vaccinations are one of if not the biggest medical triumph of all time. Smallpox killed more than 300 million people in the 20th century, and it is now gone. Gone.

In general, I think Skepticamp is a good idea. I almost wish it were either more organized, with time allotments more strictly controlled and more specific things to do, or less organized, allowing more interaction and congenial dialogue (though there was some of that). While the talks were good and quite enjoyable, sitting in a chair all day can be tough. I’d like to see more hands-on work too, with people doing things rather than absorbing info.

For example, Crystal Yates-White talked about a fledgling non profit called Fund for Thought, which will be a non-profit central clearing house for skepticism. Her talk was brief, and I wonder if breakout groups discussing ways to grow such an organization wouldn’t have been fun and very useful.

But that’s neither here nor there. It was a fun and informative way tosp[end a day, and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend attending one of these events. If you’re local to the Denver area, join through the Denver Skeptics meetup group. There are other skeptics groups as well you can find through that site.

Skepticism individually is great, but multiplies geometrically through contact with others.

Well, this could have been worse; at least the guy admits it’s just a coincidence.

Still… will Frito-Lay break into the communion market?

Tip o’ the mitre to BABloggee Kevin Frushour.

This weekend is the Blog Against Theocracy blogswarm, where bloggers around the world (or at least the US) write about how this country is turning into, well, a theocracy. If it hasn’t already.

I submitted my Creationism, evolution, and Nazis. Yes, Nazis. post, and there are many, many more there that will no doubt make your blood boil. Enjoy, and remember:

“In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;

And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;

And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;

And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up.”

I have a pretty strong stomach when it comes to gore, violence, and such. I’ve watched the movies, I’ve seen a few things in real life, and basically you can give it to me straight, doctor, I can take it.

But this totally and whole-heartedly freaks me the hell out.

BEFORE YOU CLICK THAT LINK, let me warn you: seriously freaky deaky stuff. It’s a rendering of Homer Simpson as if he were a real, live person. I’d post the picture here myself, but it seriously freaks me the hell out.

You have to understand. When I was a wee lad my brothers and sister liked to watch a scifi TV show called "The Outer Limits". This is not the terrible, terrible, terrible remake from a few years ago, but the original, in black and white. They would watch it in the living room, and I would want to watch it, I really would. But, being like 3 years old at the time, the show scared the bejeezus out of me. Even now, oscilloscopes showing sine waves send me into fits of terror.

But nothing really touched the raw nerves of my soul with a hot wire like the episode "The Mutant". In that episode, a man gets mutated by radioactive rain, and he loses his hair and gets these huge bulging eyes… and the sight of him profoundly terrified me as a kid. I saw the mutant in that episode and ran screaming from the room. But inevitably, hypnotically, I would come back in, drawn like a moth, but then the mutant would come on screen, and I would dive behind the couch.

I was seriously freaked out.

And now someone comes along and takes one of my favorite characters of all time and turns him into the one remaining thing in this Universe that actually and supernaturally freaks me the hell out. Perfect.

For what it’s worth, years later, I found a picture of the mutant in a scifi mag. It looked like a guy with fried eggs stuck to his face. I laughed, and despite the decades of gulf separating me from that frightened kid, I felt like a fool. I guess it’s true: you can’t go homer again.

The most important thing to note in this video of PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins discussing the Expelled nonsense is not the actual story, but that squids can have hairy faces.