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In this post, we continue our response to PZ Myers’ review of our book, Unscientific America. For those who’ve just arrived, we previously laid out the course our response would take here, and began to respond here. This is the third post, and there will be one more after it.

5. American Anti-Science. Myers claims the book “entirely neglects the anti-scientific forces.” This is false.

First, Chris wrote an entire book dealing with this problem. That book, The Republican War on Science, dealt very extensively with the anti-science forces and put them in their place.

Unscientific America tries not to reinvent the wheel, but rather to go beyond its predecessor–and indeed, we’ve been describing it as the sequel to The Republican War on Science. This time around, we don’t structure the book by scientific topic, so you won’t find chapter-length refutations of the creationists, the global warming deniers, and so on. However, Chris has refuted them all at great length elsewhere, and they get more than adequate licks in the new book as well. (Indeed, we’ve added some smackdowns of the anti-vaccinationists this time around!)

Perhaps Myers would have preferred a book that contained nothing more than entertaining skewerings of anti-science idiocy–but Chris wrote that book already. Unscientific America tries to take the next step and explore the reasons for the disconnects between science and society, because understanding the true nature of anti-science sentiment and its causes is no less important than debunking it. They’re both important.

6. Root Causes. Myers claims the book “demands we avoid addressing the structural roots” of the problem of science in society. That’s false.

A more charitable reading would be that we differ with Myers about what the root causes are, or place different emphases upon them. Clearly, he thinks religion is a much bigger root cause–if not the only root cause–than we do. But why then doesn’t he just say that we differ, instead of mischaracterizing our position?

We too want to address root causes–we just don’t think religion is the root of all our problems. It is one cause of anti-science sentiment, to be sure–a very prominent one. But not the only one. Our book also deals with many others: The nature of the media; the nature of politics; the nature of the scientific community, and so on. It may be easier to simply single out religion, but we’re not convinced it gets us where we need to be.

7. Science in the Entertainment Industry. Chris spent a month out in LA meeting with experts on the entertainment industry or talking with them by phone, trying to work out why science often gets such a bad shake in film and on television. The result was a report on how the entertainment industry works, and why scientists are often unhappy with the result–and what can be done to change this. (Some of this content is now reiterated in our Salon.com adaptation from the book.)

From this chapter, Myers finds a single sentence about Richard Dawkins to quote [his emphasis]:

Dawkins and some other scientists fail to grasp that in Hollywood, the story is paramount—that narrative, drama, and character development will trump mere factual accuracy every time, and by a very long shot.

This Myers dubs “exasperating nonsense, in which Mooney and Kirshenbaum are discussing how to get science into the popular media.”

Myers is quoting out of context in order to criticize us. Here’s what he (and all of his readers who have not read our book) are missing.

Dawkins was quoted in the New York Times saying that the film Jurassic Park didn’t even need to have human characters in it, because the dinosaurs were so stunning. His words were: “The natural world is fascinating in its own right. It really doesn’t need human drama to be fascinating.” We provide this quotation, and the accompanying context, in the book. Myers does not.

Assuming Dawkins was quoted accurately, these words shows how little he understands about mass entertainment. A film with just dinosaurs running around would never have been so successful (and would never have been made). That was our point. Dawkins’ statement about Hollywood and Jurassic Park epitomizes the type of mindset that has kept scientists from having more productive encounters with the entertainment industry.

Now look at how Myers strives to defend Dawkins against us:

What Mooney and Kirshenbaum fail to grasp is that to a scientist, factual accuracy must be paramount; it is not a matter on which we can compromise. Further, what they fail to recognize, and what they excuse for Hollywood, as that accuracy does not have to compromise narrative, drama, and character! They berate Dawkins as if he has no awareness of the basics of what makes a good story, which makes me wonder if they’ve read any of his books at all — do they think he simply drily recites a body of abstract thoughts at the reader? Perhaps they should take a look at The Ancestor’s Tale^{(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll)} to discover that he actually has addressed this imaginary deficit.

But of course, in context, it is absurd to think that factual accuracy would be paramount in a movie like Jurassic Park.

And for that matter, what can Myers possibly be saying about Dawkins’ admittedly very good writing? That The Ancestor’s Tale could be made into just as successful a movie as Jurassic Park, which grossed nearly $ 1 billion worldwide? Again, that’s pretty hard to believe.

8. Solutions. Myers claims the book “offers no new solutions.” That’s false–the book is brimming with solutions. Chad Orzel even found one we couldn’t fit into the main text–the idea of forming a Science PAC to get more scientists elected to Congress–buried in an endnote, and built an entire discussion around it.

There are solutions in each chapter of the main body of the book, broken down by sector–politics, media, entertainment, religion. And then there is the grand solution in Chapter 10–which emerged from our collaboration, and which we don’t think either of us would have come up with on our own. So far as we know, it really is new in its particular way of analyzing the academic pipeline and finding, in it, a solution to our problems at the science-society interface.

Again, we would ask that readers consult the book, rather than Myers’ review, to determine whether it really offers “no new solutions.” And we’d also direct them over to the review at RealClimate, where a productive discussion about solutions has, indeed, been sparked by the book.

This difference in perceptions in these reviews is certainly remarkable. It’s clear that those who are invested in the “New Atheism” have a strong negative reaction to the book–but is that surprising, in that the book strongly criticizes the “New Atheism”?

But for those who do not have such a strong investment, yet care about the promotion and communication of science–like Michael Mann of Real Climate, Darksyde of Daily Kos, and many others–the book has prompted much valuable thought, response, and commentary. We’re very honored to see that it is having this effect.

In our final post, tomorrow, we will conclude our responses to the claims in PZ’s review.

We’ve thoroughly read, and now plan to respond in detail to PZ Myers’ review of our book.

But first, some throat clearing. It may seem odd for authors to respond so extensively to their critics. In the olden days, such exchanges happened very slowly, if at all, through letters to the editor, and usually they weren’t very long. But this is the Internet age, and there are very different circumstances here:

The People Want It. Hordes of commenters are demanding that we respond to PZ.

PZ Asked For It. Myers did not write a balanced review, an indifferent review, or even a negative review. Rather, he misrepresented our book, got its arguments wrong, assaulted its authors (”their hypocritical and ignorant paean to mealy-mouthedness”), and finally ended by concluding that our labor of over a year is “utterly useless.”

We may not be capable of objectivity judging our own work. But we’re also receiving many supportive emails from people who like the book, are seeing it spark constructive dialogue about solutions on places like Chad Orzel’s blog or RealClimate.org, and are witnessing the careful weighing of its arguments’ strengths and weaknesses at places like Neurotopia. How could a book that is prompting thought and dialogue be “utterly useless”? Myers may disagree with our book in many respects, but debate itself is useful, is it not?

We Wrote a Contempt-Free Book. Myers’ charges come from someone who is directly criticized in the book, and who admits that his opinion “is colored by the palpable contempt [its authors] hold for me.” But there’s no “contempt” here–just entirely fair criticism of Myers based on his freely chosen actions.

But we’ll get to that.

In answering Myers, we will proceed in 10 points, spread across 3 posts to control their length. We will first summarize them here, and then elaborate in the next three posts until we’re done:

1. Getting Personal? Myers claims that our book contains “very direct and personal attacks on me and on Pharyngula, atheists in general, and anyone who fails to offer religion its proper modicum of respect.” We do not agree that we have launched any personal attacks.

2.  Pluto. Myers doesn’t appear to understand our argument here, as we will show.

3. What the Book Actually Says. Starting with Chapter 1, Myers gives little if any sense of the book’s real contents and argument.

4. Carl Sagan. This is virtually the only thing Myers seems to agree with us on. But he doesn’t grasp the nature of Sagan’s uniqueness, or why Richard Dawkins is no Carl Sagan.

5.  American Anti-Science. Myers claims the book “entirely neglects the anti-scientific forces.” This is false.

6. Root Causes. Myers claims the book “demands we avoid addressing the structural roots” of the problem of science in society. That’s false.

7. Science in the Entertainment Industry. By taking a single sentence about Richard Dawkins vastly out of context, Myers misrepresents our chapter on this subject.

8. Solutions. Myers claims our book “offers no new solutions.” This is false.

9. Bigotry. Myers flings this baseless, inflammatory charge at us.

10. The Problem with PZ Myers. Curiously, Myers doesn’t even address our criticisms of…him. But they’re serious and fair, and we will end by elaborating upon why, in the wake of the communion wafer desecration, we decided we had to speak out about them.

That’s how we’ll proceed, and we’ll begin with the first post in a few hours. The entirety of what we’ve written will carry over into tomorrow–but never fear, it is already drafted, and you will see it all soon enough.

While we welcome comment here, we ask that you do not pre-judge our rebuttals on the points above until they have actually been posted.

The first post is now up and can be found here.

We did a Q&A about the book here that should be of interest to some. I’m going to skip the science-religion stuff, but here are some other important parts of the exchange:

Chris pointed out here that climate change denier extraordinaire Marc Morano may be dead wrong, but he’s articulate, well funded, and there’s no one on the science side that competes with him. What specifically can be done to change that?

It’s simple: Things won’t change until the world of science invests in creating counter-Moranos. There are many talented and extremely young intelligent people in science today who could fill that role, but there is little training available for them, and even less of a career trajectory for them to get there.

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Here it is, and I think it may be the best diavlog we’ve done yet:

These are the different segments of the conversation, and we actually had some significant disagreements about the role of education in solving our problem, and other matters. I think it was a great talk:

Science Saturday: The War on Ignorance
Chris’s new book, “Unscientific America” (02:23)
Carl vs. Chris on how to fight scientific illiteracy (16:03)
A brief history of science’s image problem (09:10)
Do we need another Carl Sagan? (04:46)
If bloggers can’t make science cool again, who can? (09:17)
The culture gap between Hollywood and the scientific community (08:38)

Carl is also going to be introducing me when I give a book talk in New Haven, CT, on July 21. Details here.

(Thanks to ‘Ben’ for the link)

So…my last post, “The Deniers’ Last Stand,” has had quite a lot of incoming traffic from ClimateDepot. I guess Mark Morano over there somehow thinks I help him make his point–which, presumably, is that journalists are biased against global warming skeptics, who are really just on a quest to uncover the truth and ask the hard questions.

Yet if Morano sees me as Exhibit A of his argument, I see him the same way in making one of mine–namely, that the Internet is just as hospitable a place for people who attack mainstream science as for those who defend it, and thus no salvation for science at a time when it is vanishing from the mainstream media. The army of climate skeptics descending here via Morano’s link, posting comments making claims that have been soundly refuted a gazillion times, amply underscore that fact.

Morano’s followers can post as may comments as they want, to be sure–I’m quite confident our own readers can and will refute them.

So Mark: Let’s keep linking to each other, and here’s to ya. Only one of us can be right about global warming–but on the web, we can both have lots of readers!

The Post has an interesting profile today of remaining global warming deniers in Congress. It says there are only 10 who are really vocal, all of them Republicans–at least according to an “informal survey” the paper has taken.

I bet the number is much higher, although I agree that not all GW deniers are very outspoken. Among the “vocal” ones identified by the Post are John Boehner (Ohio), Joe Barton (Texas), Steven Scalise (Louisiana), Dana Rohrabacher (California), James Inhofe (Oklahoma), and John Shimkus (Illinois).

All–with the exception of Scalise–are people we have had merry fun with in the past on this blog.

The Post piece is interesting, but it doesn’t lay out what I believe is likely to be the ultimate fate, political and otherwise, of these deniers. So if you’ll permit some conjecture….

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I just came across this Salon.com “Dear Wingnut” piece, written by a pseudonymous conservative, who in this installment tries to defend the Republican record on science. It’s pretty audacious stuff, either completely uninformed about the true nature of the critiques of the GOP that I and others have made, or willing to dodge them entirely. And to top it off, the piece goes out with a whack at mainstream climate science.

Wingnuttery indeed.

Here’s a brief example of what we’re dealing with:

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In the latest New Scientist, I have a commentary piece that places our current president in the context of the long history of American anti-intellectualism, as most famously described by historian Richard Hofstadter in his classic 1964 work Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. George W. Bush, as a president, smacked of anti-intellectualism, but Barack Obama couldn’t be more different:

…Bush was widely reviled by intellectuals as precisely the opposite of the kind of person you want running the most powerful country in the world. The Bush administration’s extensively documented attacks on science (discussed in my book The Republican War on Science, among other places), and his exaltation of Jesus as his “favourite philosopher”, further cemented the idea that here was not a mind to be respected. Add to that the malapropisms, the apparent uneasiness with any kind of verbal improvisation, and the scripted debating, and one could easily conclude the US was being governed by the consummate anti-intellectual.

With the coming of Barack Obama to the presidency, the phrase “sea change” is not too strong. Here is a former academic who is deeply familiar with the world of thought. In his inaugural address, Obama pledged to restore science to its “rightful place” in our government; heck, he even extolled the virtue of “curiosity”. And for the first time in history, he has appointed a Nobel laureate to the presidential cabinet. The worm has turned in American life – but for how long?

The article then goes on to discuss whether American anti-intellectualism is cyclic, and if so, how Obama can break the cycle. Hint: He’s off to a pretty good start.

You can read the full piece here.