Mailund on the Internet

Ok, most of last week, I mainly read posts about the flu, and I’ve already linked to several of these, but in this summary I’ll link to a few more (and the token other topics).

Evolution

• The biggest challenge in selling evolution (Dawkins)

Flu

• Swine flu: I beat a dead horse (Effect Mesure)
• Swine flu: pictures, big and small (Effect Measure)
• Swine flu: Is this a perfect time to panic? (Neuron Culture)
• Swine flu: just a statistic (Effect Measure)
• Scientist very hard at work (Neuron Culture)
• Swine flu: Why I’m not complaining (Effect Measure)
• Swine flu: More on the genetics (Effect Measure)
• What does the WHO pandemic scale mean? (Aetiology)
• Swine flu: A virus by any other name (Effect Measure)
• Why swine flu is resistant to Adamantane Drugs (The Scientific Activist)
• The new swine flu: Don’t panic but there is a very bad WCS (Greg Laden)
• Swine flu: Case definitions and tough decisions (Effect Measure)
• Swine flu: The overreaction overreaction (Effect Measure)

Genetics

Programming

• Learning from MySQL experts (Amix)

Why we really do need to know the amazing truth about evolution, and the equally amazing intellectual dishonesty of its enemies

How can you say that evolution is “true”? Isn’t that just your opinion, of no more value than anybody else’s? Isn’t every view entitled to equal “respect”? Maybe so where the issue is one of, say, musical taste or political judgement. But when it is a matter of scientific fact? Unfortunately, scientists do receive such relativistic protests when they dare to claim that something is factually true in the real world.

…

Scientific “truth” is only one kind (“Western” truth, the anthropologist may call it, or even “patriarchal”). Like tribal truths, yours merely hang together with the world view that you happen to hold, which you call scientific. An extreme version of this viewpoint (I have actually encountered this) goes so far as to say that logic and evidence themselves are nothing more than instruments of masculine oppression over the “intuitive mind”.

Grr… Does not compute!

Scientific “truth” is only one kind (“Western” truth, the anthropologist may call it, or even “patriarchal”). Like tribal truths, yours merely hang together with the world view that you happen to hold, which you call scientific. An extreme version of this viewpoint (I have actually encountered this) goes so far as to say that logic and evidence themselves are nothing more than instruments of masculine oppression over the “intuitive mind”.

Oh well, no more on this for now.  This afternoon I’m attending two seminars: one on intelligent design and one on Darwin (both at BiRC, but with speakers from Dept. of Science Studies).

I might have more to say after that.

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Today there was a science show on Danish television on The Missing Link.  Cool, I thought, that is going to be interesting.  They will even mention some of my own research (in an interview with Mikkel Schirup, one of my colleagues from BiRC).

It was an interesting show.  Kinda superficial, but still interesting.

Now, there is also a web forum associated with the show. So after the show I logged on to see if there would be an interesting discussion.

Kinda, sorta, but not really.

I mean, there was a bit of a discussion, but it completely drowned in nut job creationists demanding “proof” of evolution.

I tried to argue a bit, but gave up and went for a couple of beers with some friends instead.

Now I just got back and am reading through the discussion there, and I am very saddened.

It could have been a very interesting discussion about the various theories and evidence for this or that scientific theory, but it ended up being a discussion about whether evolution is a fact or not.

Why is it that those crazy people demand proof of evolution but refuse to read all the existing literature supporting the theory?  Which paper, which conclusion is it they disagree with?

Let us start from there.

You cannot just discard a study because you do not like the conclusion.  You have to point out the errors in the study!

If you do not believe in evolution, tell us which bloody paper it is that made a mistake!

Damn it, life is just to short to discuss with people who are ignorant about the topic under discussion…

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I have strong opinions about creationism, but I usually don’t voice them here.  Even discussing it is giving it too much attention.  I prefer just to ignore it, like I ignore astrology, palm reading and other crazy pseudo-sciences.

The reason I mention it today is that today a new Danish website on evolution goes online: evolution.dk

The purpose is to present the science of evolution (yeah, it is called the theory of evolution, but it is science, damn it!) and discuss the various myths about it made up by creationists and their pseudo scientist bedfellows in “intelligent” design.

Anyway, rant off…

I guess it is good to have some public discussion of this, even if I would prefer to kill it with silence.  After all, if only one part in the discussion is heard, you will get the wrong impression about the controversy.  Mind you, the controversy I’m referring to here is not a scientific one, but one between scientists and religion.

And there is a bit of a debate going on now in the media.  Tonight there will be a television show on it, and there was a piece on the new website in my morning paper today.

We also have two seminars on this next week at BiRC, that I plan to attend.  The speakers are not from BiRC but from Science Studies, the group we share our building with.

Anyway, if you can read Danish, go check out their website.

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