The ID proponents then don’t have to use scientifically correct arguments to convince people of their point. Scientists are at a clear disadvantage when debating ID proponents. I do think they could do a bit better, though, by invoking other well established facts.

E.g. we know that the world consists of atoms and is described by the laws of physics. You can’t have ID in such a setting whatever evidence against Darwinian evolution you present. That’s like using the Pioneer anomalies to argue that general relativity is wrong and that therefore gravity has a supernatural cause.

Einstein affected politics in many ways, using his scientific authority. In 1939 he wrote to President Roosevelt suggesting nuclear weapons as a deterrent, but in 1954 he signed a declaration calling for disarmament.

Why did the media report or credit Einstein’s political views? Put it another way, if everyone respected Einstein as much as they claimed, why didn’t everyone listen to Einstein in 1939 (the Manhatten Project funding started in late 1941)? Why didn’t the west disarm immediately when Einstein’s pacifism went against deterrence?

It doesn’t matter how much media gurus write about things, people still make up their own minds. The public is not stupid and won’t automatically be conned by someone’s political expertise if they are expert in mathematical physics.

What is sad is that the science journalists don’t feel confident to investigate physics as they do politics. They don’t rely on what mainstream politicians tell them, but they do exactly that for physics. They’re usually proud to either worship mainstream authority in physics, or proud to say that the mathematics is too awesome to discuss or probe.

If this is so, it makes them even more accountable for their opinion? More correct, then the human being in which they would judge?

No really, as human, as any of us I am sure. Some might try to make you think different.

I don’t know of one opinion that is not countered, okay, lets not call it left or right, but a oscillatory journey to some truth, “about” the truth of it?

Maybe like a term likeresonance with which John Baez has come to a resolve? About which, while used in this sense, all thinking matured to the relevant ideal of science. Ah! I see. What the media should be writing?

What is a good science journalist and supply by name ones that you know.:) What is one man’s opinion worth, least he be associated to a organization? Will his opinion be tainted about those things which I should read?

Space provided:

If we are to infer by deduction the qualities that any of science mind would think appropriate, then such standards would have already been apparent? The views shared, current and to date?

Thank God for the blogosphere, where individuality has been shared through perspective, least we had been deluded by the media?

While Quantum Diaries might not have been thought successful, there are those who had gone on to help us see the science. Thanks John Steinberg on microstate blackhole perceptions. Thanks Michio Kaku for helping us to understand hyperspace. Thanks Brian Greene, Thanks Lee Smolin for all your books. Thanks…etc.etc.etc.

Can a pure mathematical thought become deluded by the host when expressed to a conceptual application? Some of your predecessors had been called kooks while they held the values of science at their hearts. Some would tell you because as they aged, they somehow became senile, and lost touch. How nice.

I struggle to make sense, if for one minute, any of these gentlemen would have been counted better as a human being, then how about another, because of their writing skill. I guess they were not artistic enough in their skill, to write “the book” as others? Okay use an editor?

Okay ID book here by the name of, and over here “true science.” Your way is right uh I mean apropriate, but he saids that you are?

What does the “shock” do to a coherent system?:)

Trackback, to the “Future of the Notebook.” I am speaking to you from the fifth dimensional with only words. The depth is measured by? Graphics is easy to measure, but not the depth of the words people choose?

The problem is that science is entirely based on this, the better journalists refusing to dig into science at all or make any statements of fact themselves. The weaker journalists who don’t quote authorities for every single fact, end up getting it wrong or overstated. Most of these people can’t do arithmetic, they’re English Lit graduates at home with Shakespeare and art, not science.

The worst example I’ve ever seen showed they can’t even add up logically! On BBC TV a journalist quoted an opinion poll of a sample of 1000 people [hence error of +/- 1/(root N) or 3%] as 47% +/3%, when the real result was 47% +/- 1.6% (i.e., +/- 3% of 50%, not 47-53). He then went on about his (misinterpretation of) the uncertainty as including 50% and therefore being too small a sample to suggest a minority or a majority. These people should made to stick to reporting Shakespeare related news.

What I’m saying is that I’m more interested in the evolution/ID issue than easily 99% Americans. Yet still I’ve seen no discussion of the actual evidence in favor of evolution anywhere. It’s always “Expert X says evolution has an unimaginable amount of established evidence.”

A related issue that I’ve never seen discussed is the difference between a theory predicting results of future experiments and a theory giving a concise explanation of past observations. The second one is a much weaker test, and probably many people reject it outright. For instance the difference between the heliocentric and geocentric theories of the solar system is only that, up to a good approximation, the first can be described much more simply, not that they predict different things about the future–afterall they’re the same thing but under different coordinate systems. I suspect that much of the evidence for evolution is also of the second kind. I have never doubted evolution, though I now realize it’s because it does well as judged by the second kind of criterion above, not because it does well by the first.

These are probably the fault of science journalists, but I suspect that scientists are not completely free from blame. Nevertheless, it seems to me this is a golden opportunity to get a large segment of the population actually thinking about these things rather than telling them to accept something because (they are told) it has been verified by scientists. Americans are very practical. If you show them that evolution does predict the future, they will believe it. What better way of showing them how it does that than by comparing it to a theory that predicts nothing?

Jim

“So how do the media work around their inability to deliver scientific evidence? They use authority figures, the very antithesis of what science is about, as if they were priests, or politicians, or parent figures. ”

Which reminded me of the whole evolution controversy. There, it seems to me both sides are playing to their weaknesses — scientists quote famous scientists who say something like Evolution is a fact and you have to be stupid not to believe it, and the ID types claim their stuff is science. The IDers are challenging the science on its home field, and the best defense the scientists come up with is to say louder and louder that evolution is a fact. Why not play ball? I even suspect a lot more kids would be excited by science if they actually had to think through the evo/ID business themselves. I think scientists are too afraid to trust the ability of the masses to separate fact from smoke and mirrors. Or they care more about some message being sent than what people actually believe. Of course, the creationists are also care more about this… Let them have it.

Jim