Evolution Science and Naturalism

[Aedes]

Originally Posted by NeitherExtreme

Hi yet again. I would indeed be interested in seeing that set up shot for Spare Change…

Here are links for the pictures:

Here is Spare Change again:
http://www.pbase.com/drpablo74/image/72879049.jpg

This is the setup for Spare Change:
http://www.pbase.com/drpablo74/image/72879911.jpg

This shows the setup better. This is Blue Rose (also done entirely in a traditional chemical darkroom, including the blue tone):
http://www.pbase.com/drpablo74/image/72086028.jpg

And here is the setup including the camera, which uses 4x5" film.
http://www.pbase.com/drpablo74/image/72082732.jpg

First, I’ve been honored to have a debate like this with someone who is much more educated than I, and that you would take me seriously enough to give me the quality of responses that you have. Your qualifications in science are both impressive and far, far beyond my own.

It's been my pleasure to participate. As you are experiencing, science has implications outside of science, because it penetrates into our view of ourselves and our world. Maybe it's that I do a lot of teaching, or that I'm in clinical medicine in which I interact with patients who are not educated in science or medicine all the time -- but it would be a foolish scientist who only takes colleagues seriously!

At the same time, I’m sure you’ve realized that for me this comes down to examining world views as much as science (though science is obviously still important). I’d be interested to know if you’ve spent any time studying world views and cultures and how they affect a person, group, culture, or society, or if you have had significant cross culture experience that forced you to examine world views not only of others, but also of yourself?

I'm a first generation American, all of my grandparents are / were Holocaust survivors, and my two living grandparents are quite conservative Jews (and used to be orthodox). I've done medical work in four African countries, in the Amazon, with Native Alaskans, and with immigrants/refugees from all over the globe. I spent three years as a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard in infectious diseases and tropical medicine, and my areas of academic subspecialization are AIDS and tropical diseases. So I am constantly taking care of people from other countries and cultures, and I collaborate with many African researchers and physicians. I speak Spanish and French and a tiny bit of Twi (from Ghana). Furthermore, I love learning about the societies that I'm exposed to, and I've read a lot of epic literature from some of the ancient West African civilizations. I've had a lot of exposure to Islam in my time in Senegal and Gambia, and I've done some studying of Hinduism and Buddhism (Japanese Buddhism especially after visiting about 8000 Zen and Shinto temples during a week-long visit to Kyoto a few years ago). I collect ethnographic artwork (I have around 50 African sculptures, masks, textiles, musical instruments). So in summary, I completely immerse myself in other cultures, and I merge them with my own views of myself. And that's part of the reason I'm here.

I don't let these other facets of my life "contaminate" science, which in pure form takes shape on its own terms, but when I go in the other direction -- by applying science to human life (i.e. medicine), I must find ways to make things logically understandable to patients. Sometimes this is as simple as sitting down when I talk to them so that they don't get a sense of how busy I am. Sometimes it means printing out articles for them and translating them into lay terms. And often it's catering my therapeutic approach (when possible) to their fears and priorities.

At any rate, what is your background?

First, because such arguments are not inherently scientific, and you justifiably disregard them as science.

THIS is what I'm looking for in authenticity. It's ok to believe (unempirically) in the supernatural, and to criticize the cultural role of science in that context. But it doesn't make sense to criticize science itself for not taking responsibility for supernatural propositions. Probably 99% or more of the people in our country believe in science to some extent or another -- because it's just so self-evident in the things we invent and the things we describe. But 90% believe in God. So the two are not culturally mutually exclusive, and whether or not they can be rationally unified doesn't make them incongruous in the individual minds of many people.

conclusions that appear self-evident in from one world view might be self-contradicting from another world view, and vice versa, even thought the information used by both was the same. That said, I still wish I would have avoided going that direction at all.

No need to regret this -- because by virtue of our discussion you're going to undergo some process of refining the way you organize or express your ideas the next time this comes up for you! That's why this discursive process is so useful.

And I want to point out again that I’m by no means saying that science should use the supernatural as an explanation, but I think a healthy dose of “we don’t know” or “it doesn’t make sense yet” would do science a lot of good, and lend it a lot more credibility in my eyes. Anyone may disagree, and I understand that from your perspective the “not know” parts seem very small and the “known” parts seem overwhelmingly convincing, but of course from my perspective I would disagree with you.

This is what I meant by the difficult position you're in when you're outside of science. Science is FULL of "we don't know" or "it doesn't make sense yet". We see it, think it, and talk about it EVERYWHERE. And what we don't know is far greater than what we do -- in fact we don't know what we don't know. Think about how paradigm shifts and major discoveries in science open up whole new lines of research inquiry that weren't even anticipated beforehand. But the reason you feel obligated to make a point of this, and the reason you think science is arrogant about it, is simply that the mainstream reporting of science to laypeople is heavily weighted towards new discoveries. Unknowns and great areas of research do come up, but only in terms of scientific promise-- what are scientists working on next -- not in terms of scientific unknowns.

But after all this, I still bring my (personal) observation that there seem to be problems and gaps big enough that the naturalist scenario painted by modern society and science is not close to being “self evident” or authoritative unless the naturalist world view is already assumed. Of course I haven’t been able to prove that to you, and your responses haven’t shown it to be false to me.

What you call the "naturalist world view" is turning into a sort of targeted label for you. So I need you to step away from that terminology for a second. What you're describing as such, or as a "naturalistic bias", is a viewpoint that has been espoused since Aristotle -- that we can learn about the world by observing it. Science has gotten very abstract and complicated, at least from a lay vantage point. But this emphasis on observation IS self-evident. You know that you cannot walk through walls because of life experience with walking and with walls -- this is simple observational science. And we know that gravitational force is independent of mass because we observe that a 1 ounce marble and a 10 pound rock will hit the ground at the same time. And all of experimental science, while methodologically intricate, is still doing the same thing. This is not a worldview -- this is simply a process of learning about the world by making controlled observations -- and it's part of being a rational human with many (more than 5!!) senses.

First, I have previously agreed and do so again that the 2nd Law of thermodynamics (and its technical definition of entropy) have nothing to do with evolution. When I bring it up I am discussing the universe as a whole, not evolution, with the purpose of seeing if a naturalist world view is at play. I realize that you don't find this appropriate, but it is of interest and significance to me.

Well, if you're discussing the universe as a whole, you come upon two problems. First, evolution is one of a million scientific propositions and areas of study (and it's heterogeneous unto itself!) that will fall under the rubric of the universe. So any conclusion you draw about the nature of the universe will affect mechanics, marine biology, geology, and meteorology just as much as it will evolution.

Secondly, it's impossible to be an expert in all sciences at once. So while I know a lot about evolution, I don't know a lot about astrophysics or the origins of the universe. There may be objective truth out there that can scientifically place evolution within every other scientific principle. But that doesn't mean that the scientific disciplines need to be consistent with one another (yet), nor does it mean that an evolutionary scientist or a volcanic geologist need to concern themselves with what astrophysicists are talking about. It's sort of incidental.

Your objection to using logic to examine science is confusing to me... So why does logic have no bearing on our interpretation of evidence? Am I not understanding your argument?

Yeah, you've missed the point I'm making. My objection is to using logic to critique a science from outside. Any scientific theory is based on a mountain of supportive data. So you aren't going to bring down that theory with logic unless you go to the data proper and show how either the data are flawed or there is a more parsimonious conclusion.

This is exactly how Einstein brought down previous physics. Rather than making a logical, ultrastructural argument about how the "ether" was incorrect, he looked at all the flaws and inconsistencies in that field and created a theory (that he later demonstrated mathematically) that tied all the observations together much more convincingly.

About the paper (first link): First, I think we both know that I’m not qualified to give a professional critique

I know -- I wanted to accomplish a few things. First, to show you that evolutionary science is microscopic, and it's based on studies, not on overarching theories -- so flaws in evolution must be pointed out at the level of these studies. Secondly, to show that nowhere in the papers does a biased worldview appear, because the conclusions drawn are based on the data generated and by reference to other studies. Thirdly to show that it's really hard to penetrate the meat and bones of science as a layperson, so you need to be very careful about what you think you understand. And fourthly, to show how cool this research is on its own merits, irrespective of what the overarching theory states.

From what I could tell, the whole premise of the paper is that it did happen, that it happened naturally, and that all we have to do is understand it, and as such there is never an attempt to question, prove, or test the plausibility of that premise.

Oh come on, that's not in the paper anywhere -- this is the same thing you've been saying all along, and you're now irrationally projecting it onto the paper because it fits your preexisting assumptions.

You need to start out this exercise by forgetting what you think you know and just starting from a clean slate. Don't make any assumptions about the author's viewpoints. Just operate from what he's written.

You're bright enough to go in there and look more specifically. So I'll give you one more chance -- do it with the first paper. Just tell me the following in the best terms you can:

1. What is the research question being asked? (you can get this from the title, practically)
2. What is the hypothesis?
3. What subjects were being studied?
4. What methods were used?
5. What data were generated?
6. What were the conclusions in the context of other science?

All of this is there, and even if you don't understand a lot of it you can definitely identify it.

And, if I want to argue about the paper for the sake of it… that paper as far as I could tell was about the rearranging and copying of genetic material that already existed. This still begs my problem of how genetic information got there in the first place- ex: where did the genetic code for bone itself come from? By rearranging cartilage? But there I go again… Now where did that wild goose chase get to??

See again, your eyes take a quick glance at the paper and then wander up away into your preexisting conception. So stop that, dammit!! Just look at the paper and don't ask of it questions it doesn't address.

And by the way, there is no "genetic code for bone". It's a polygenic phenomenon that comes from the development of cells that are indeed of the same lineage of chondrocytes (cartilage cells), but that are capable of depositing hydroxyapatite (a calcium salt) that replaces a cartilage matrix with calcium. This requires a whole physiology that regulates calcium differently, that can produce osteoblasts and osteoclasts from common progenitor cells (osteoclasts are derived from a kind of white blood cell called monocytes), it requires mechanisms for these cells to develop within appropriate tissues in development. This doesn't necessarily require new genes, but it does require physiologically different regulatory mechanisms, mainly from levels of gene expression. And there is CLEAR evidence of where this occurred in evolution -- within the evolution of fish, because the ancestral fish were (and are) cartilaginous, but later fish species had bone.

Also, you seem to somewhat disregard thermodynamics at least partially on the argument that it is a very limited science because it can only study things in a closed system… But isn’t that in essence what science is doing if it assumes that there must be a natural answer (a closed naturalist system) to every problem?

I'm only disregarding the epistemological necessity that evolution and thermodynamics be unified, because they're both independent sciences that don't even look at the same questions -- and are therefore limited from one another. There can't be inconsistencies between them if they're not even asking the same questions. Their validity (in scientific terms) stands or falls based on their own internal merit.

Again, not that they should assume the supernatural either, but if there was the question of whether or not a natural explanation exists, I think science would take a different posture altogether when it decides what theories are authoritative or not, as every theory would have to pass a certain amount of logical plausibility, not simply be the “best guess” (no matter how developed it is).

I don't see how any question of whether or not there is a natural explanation is the problem of science. Science's role in life is to look for natural explanations by looking at nature -- it's only in the natural world and never outside it. By saying this I'm not even tacitly acknowledging a supernatural (which I don't), but just saying that if there IS anything supernatural then it's by definition outside the viewpoint of science. Why? Because if something is independently observible or demonstrable, then it's amenable to any sort of controlled / scientific inquiry, and that sort of makes it not supernatural anymore. If something apparently supernatural yet observible like lightning or plagues or eclipses occurs, then its supernaturality kind of disintegrates once it becomes accessible to science.

if I can understand just enough to see why chance could not produce the net result of complex life, and that none of the evidence that's ever been presented seems to me to show otherwise, then the “boat” does have a few holes, it’s already sunk.

See, you have three enormous problems here that are rooted in your own assumptions.

1. Your conception of what CHANCE is. No one in evolution talks about life arising by chance. Life arose because the conditions allowed it, and the conditions allowed it because of the chemical and kinetic nature of the earth 3 billion years ago. That doesn't mean it was inevitable that life would arise, but then again it wasn't inevitable that you be conceived as opposed to 70 trillion alternative combinations of your parents' chromosomes.

2. Your conception of PROBABILITY. You CANNOT CONCEIVE of 3 billion years. You CANNOT CONCEIVE of the amount of chemical and energetic complexity that existed at the time. And you therefore CANNOT CONCEIVE of the number and complexity of chemical interactions that were constantly occurring.

Life exists almost completely because of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorus, which make up the near entirety of our organic molecules. These were highly abundant in the earth from the beginning.

It's already been shown in labs that starting from basic elementary chemicals you can produce organic (complex carbon-based) molecules just by bombarding it with energy. And this basically mimics the conditions of the earth before there was an atmosphere (so there was a lot of cosmic energy) and when the earth was far hotter than it is now.

Do you know what DNA is? It's basically a string of simple molecules -- it's a backbone of simple sugars strung together (deoxyribose in DNA, ribose in RNA, which is much less stable chemically and much more ancestral). The sugars are bound together by a simple phosphate ion (just PO4). And stuck to the sugars are one of four also simple molecules called purines or pyrimidines. These are NOT complicated unto themselves. What's complicated about DNA is the number of sequences it can encode using a 4 letter alphabet.

A cell is nothing more than a balloon of water surrounded by a hydrophobic membrane -- and hydrophobic compounds are easy to derive from simple organic molecules.

The components of cellular metabolism -- molecules that can be split to yield energy, ionic membrane gradients, electron acceptors, can all happen using very simple chemical constituents as well.

Put these permissive conditions on a planetary scale over billions of years, and you have a level of probability that is beyond your powers of conception. It's not random chance, then that life arose -- it was, perhaps, inevitable under those conditions given enough time and enough constancy in the environment.

So what is the probability of life evolving on any planet? As far as we know it's a 1 in 9 chance. But that's a statistically meaningless sample size, and we've never found another planet close enough to scrutinize that has had conditions like ours. So maybe the probability of life evolving is greater than 1 in 9 on planets that are moer similar to earth. It's a big universe out there.

3. You assume that evolutionary science is a done deal, and therefore it lives or dies based on its "holes". This is a fundamental misconception about science. We don't know everything about how babies are conceived, but that doesn't mean that the stork delivers us. We don't know everything about human disease, but that doesn't mean that Galen was right about the four humors.

There is a lot we don't know. And that's why we continue to do research. What we DO assume in science is that we'll find answers if we look hard enough or in the right way. So just because we don't know exactly how life arose doesn't mean that it didn't. Maybe some day the mechanism will be more clear.

But there are big holes in every alternative explanation (i.e. Creation), such as the fact that there is no independently demonstrable evidence of any kind that supports divine creation -- so why should anyone rationally believe it? At least evolutionary theory is rooted in what we observe.

If, in fact, I have defined science wrongly to include the notion of an unbiased world view- one that allows for all things logically possible, even those that science might not be able to explore- and that science is justified in assuming a natural answer for everything, no matter how problematic, then I withdraw my complaint entirely.

I'll say again that science's worldview is that we can understand the natural world by observing it. Pure logic is not all that useful once it's contradicted by empirically demonstrable observations. So science is unbiased insofar as it's willing to accept anything that is demonstrable.

Of course that would leave the possibility that science could come to many conclusions (and assume them to be authoritative) that could be far removed from reality.

And that's why we do the science to begin with. If I put my cosmic elephant crap-ball up against Genesis, the only difference between the two is that more people for more time have accepted the view in Genesis -- but there is no way to independently verify one over the other. If I put Genesis up against science, Genesis has no claim to demonstrability beyond a presupposition of divinity; whereas science will produce a world of observations to support its conclusions.

[NeitherExtreme]

Wow, cool set ups... Blue Rose is a beautiful picture.

Glad to see that you have had a lot of exposure to other cultures. I think it does a lot to help a person understand a lot about others. Personally, I grew up (till about 10) living about half the time in Northeastern Brazil and the USA. My dad grew up in Southern Brazil, and my mom grew up in Jamaica. Needless to say, even though I am much more American than anything else, I've never felt 100% apart of any culture, especially since my parents weren't really "Amercican" themselves. Anyway, I've met lots of people from all over- thanks in large part to my dad's aquaintances, and always enjoyed reading books about other cultures. I got to go back to Brazil for a couple of weeks a few years ago, but I'd love to spend some more time there... Last winter my wife and I spent 5 months in Kyrgyzstan teaching English while living with an Uzbek host family and learned a bit of their language as well (since they didn't speak English).

About the papers: I did make my response rather unclear... The response that I wrote was relating them back to my argument, which was obviously not the intent of the writer, so it was not a negative statement about them in particular. Acutally, I found the papers themselves (I read a bit of the one about CNCs as well now) I found to be informative, interesing, well documented, and overall very well done (and a bit above my head).

[NeitherExtreme]

Oops, accidentially hit the "enter" key and posted the above before I was done...

Anyhow, I think that this idea of bias is important. I think we have both agreed that there can be theistic bias that negatively affects their scientific nuetrality. In a past post you said "So if you're going to propose that I have a naturalistic bias, you're in actuality accusing me of not being a scientist." I take this to mean that you think that there can be such a thing as a naturalist bias which would be negative... First, am I right that this is what you meant? And if so, I have a few questions...

What would a naturalist bias be or look like?
How could a scientist tell if they have a bias?
How could a scientist tell if they were working in a system with a naturalist bias?
What would the negative affects be?

Hopefully if we can have some common ground here, it will help clarify our discussion.

[Aedes]

Originally Posted by NeitherExtreme

Anyhow, I think that this idea of bias is important. I think we have both agreed that there can be theistic bias that negatively affects their scientific nuetrality. In a past post you said "So if you're going to propose that I have a naturalistic bias, you're in actuality accusing me of not being a scientist." I take this to mean that you think that there can be such a thing as a naturalist bias which would be negative... First, am I right that this is what you meant? And if so, I have a few questions...

That's not what I meant. Someone outside of science (or even a scientist outside his scientific work) can have a naturalistic bias, but you cannot have a naturalistic bias if science is what you're doing. No more so than a basketball referee is biased towards using the rules of basketball and not football to ref a game. To have a theistic bias in scientific research or communications is possible -- it means that you're infusing science with assumptions that have nothing to do with the science itself -- they are inaccessible.

A naturalistic bias, conceptually, doesn't make sense because science is in itself a naturalistic discipline. Like I said, does the Pope have a Catholic bias in his job? I'd argue no -- because his work is defined by the operations and parameters of Catholicism.

What would a naturalist bias be or look like?

If a scientist has a bias of any sort (like a drug company having a bias towards the efficacy of a new drug), it can affect study design, disclosure of results, and presentation to the scientific community. One area of complaint in medicine (and to a lesser degree in science in general) is that people do not often publish negative findings (except as part of a larger study). This isn't all that necessary in science except that you may save someone the time, effort, and money of doing research that's already known to be unproductive. It IS useful in medicine so that we avoid using therapies that don't work or can cause harm.

As for a global naturalistic bias, I think this could certainly take shape in the nonscientific communications of scientists -- like making polemical statements against religion. But that would be nonscientific communication. The best one can say as a scientist is that "religious explanations have great importance to people, but these are not scientifically verifiable and therefore must not be discussed as if they carry weight within scientific thought." Or something like that.

A scientist would be extremely foolish to make leaps of logic in a scientific communication, i.e. assuming truths about the universe that aren't somehow connected to his/her own work via a chain of scientific discovery.

Certainly evolutionary scientists assume that evolution is true in some form or another, but that's because they are building on a pre-existing body of research that leads to no other overall conclusion. There is always going to be disagreement about the specifics, but the basic tools of understanding genetics, of dating fossilized specimens, of mathematical modeling, and of studying morphology are all well-established, and these are the tools of evolutionary biology; the difference between studies are the subjects and the specifics, i.e. to what questions those tools are applied. Qualitatively these assumptions are no worse, however, than I as a doctor assuming that the blood circulates around the body (even though I haven't repeated the 13th century research of Ibn al-Nafis or 17th century William Harvey). I witness the circulation of blood in some ways, whether it's a blood clot in a leg vein dislodging and migrating to someone's lung, or it's giving antibiotics in someone's arm vein to treat an infection in the brain -- it's all based on confidence in past research.

If an evolutionary geneticist starts linking his papers to thermodynamics, string theory, the Big Bang, and the geologic origins of planet earth, and does so in a way that doesn't directly cite related scientific research, then that WOULD be a type of bias. It's sort of like in court: "I object -- assumes facts not in evidence!" That would be an attempt to link disparate areas of study, and pure speculation can be shaped to reflect someone's biases

[NeitherExtreme]

Okay, I understand how you are saying that there is, in a certain sense, no way to be "natually" biased when attempting to study "natural" science, and on one level I understand and agree with you. It is not the job of natural science to make statements about the supernatural... It is by definition outside of it's considerations. So on this point we agree. I think it's important to push this out a little further though, and hopefully you agree... Keep in mind I am not here trying to argue that anyone (you included) has any biases, I'm just pushing this out theoretically to see where they could be possible.

Originally Posted by Aedes

If a scientist has a bias of any sort (like a drug company having a bias towards the efficacy of a new drug), it can affect study design, disclosure of results, and presentation to the scientific community. One area of complaint in medicine (and to a lesser degree in science in general) is that people do not often publish negative findings (except as part of a larger study).

First, from this example I think you indicated that there is the potential for bias when there is a vested interest. (Is this a fair assumtion, or am I taking that too far?) This article on vested interest is pretty good IMO and rather short, and I think is worth a read (or at least a skim) if you have the time, as it explores the idea much better than I will, and I think it's important to the question I will ask: Vested interest - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia In short, the idea is that if a certain action has a personal benefit to the person, they are more likely to choose that action. And, from my experience and understanding, this can happen on the subconsious level (and therefore unexamined) just as well as the conscious. I think it's also key to note that there can also be a "collective" version of vested interest.

Second, you indicate 3 or 4 areas of potential influences of bias:
- study design
- disclosure of results
- presentation to scientific community
- not publishing negative findings (which I realize can be of quesitonable value, but as you indicated, is still a point to consider)

So my quesiton is this: Do you think that it is theoretically possible for an individual scientist, or a collective group of scientists, to have any vested interest (conscious or subconscious) in the areas of potential influence that you described as it relates to natural history or evolution? Is it possible that there any potential benefits involved in producing results that support a believable and authoritative acount of naturalistic history?

[Aedes]

Originally Posted by NeitherExtreme

First, from this example I think you indicated that there is the potential for bias when there is a vested interest. (Is this a fair assumtion, or am I taking that too far?)

Sure, just look at the tobacco companies and nicotine research. That's why journals and conferences force people to disclose their affiliations, investments, and sources of funding; and if there is any question of bias you have to look EXTREMELY closely at their methods.

In short, the idea is that if a certain action has a personal benefit to the person, they are more likely to choose that action. And, from my experience and understanding, this can happen on the subconsious level (and therefore unexamined) just as well as the conscious.

It can go beyond that in an area like science, in which your methodology can be subtly biased to favor your personal interest -- which further biases everything that happens downstream from that point in the methods -- all your results, conclusions, everything.

So my quesiton is this: Do you think that it is theoretically possible for an individual scientist, or a collective group of scientists, to have any vested interest (conscious or subconscious) in the areas of potential influence that you described as it relates to natural history or evolution? Is it possible that there any potential benefits involved?

You're asking this question WAY too broadly. You ask as if a scientist EVER does a study in which the study question and the primary outcome investigates "did evolution occur or not occur?" or something like that. No one studies that question!

People study questions much more microscopically than that (just refer back to the articles I linked). But to answer your question, people certainly benefit from the success of their research. It increases their recognition, makes them more competitive for grants, advances their tenure status, whatever. If they think they're going to get the Nobel Prize for proving that mice can fly, then they're going to work hard at that question. If they for intellectual / professional / monetary reasons are dedicated to discovering some missing link in evolutionary biology, they'll work hard at that question.

But that is different than what you're asking. And it's immaterial anyway, because if someone's research is crappy, then the conclusions they draw are only as good as their results, their results are only as good as their methods, and their methods only as good as their hypothesis.

[NeitherExtreme]

Originally Posted by Aedes

You're asking this question WAY too broadly. You ask as if a scientist EVER does a study in which the study question and the primary outcome investigates "did evolution occur or not occur?" or something like that. No one studies that question!

Well, I wanted to ask a broad quesiton, just to keep finding common ground. It wasn't meant as an argument or an accusation. (Also, for what its worth, I haven't been questioning whether evolution occured for quite a while now. The question I raised later was whether or not current understandings are a good explanation of life as we know it. And even in that context, I would not ask science to use the supernatural as any sort of explanation if the answer was "no", nor to stop looking for a natural explanation. I have been paying attention. )

But are we agreed that there is potential for there to be a benefit to a person or a collective group of people in presenting a believable and authoritative account of naturalistic history? To me that is not immaterial, as a potential benefit would IMO lead to a personal or collective vested interest in something other than complete and unbiased accuracy... This is still not a verdict or anything, of course.

[Aedes]

But are we agreed that there is potential for there to be a benefit to a person or a collective group of people in presenting a believable and authoritative account of naturalistic history?

Maybe for someone making a TV special about it, or someone writing a book, or even someone writing a textbook.

Otherwise, the benefit you describe is true only insofar as there is benefit for a person to succeed at their job (and in this it's incidental that some people study evolution and other people study dog psychology). I mean, hit men benefit from killing for cash successfully, scientists benefit from investigating scientific questions effectively.

And the real question about bias in science is whether the methods / results / interpretations suffer from that bias. Science is usually hypothesis driven (I hypothesize, for instance, that the symmetrical four-limb structure of vertebrates is associated with homeobox genes expressed in early embryogenesis blah blah blah --- and the null hypothesis is that they are NOT associated with these genes). Thus, a hypothesis is testable. Bias can force you to inappropriately accept or inappropriately reject the null hypothesis -- and you need to account for this in your study design and your interpretation of data (for example if my cutoff for significance is P < 0.05, and I do 100 comparisons, then by random chance I'll have 5 "significant" relationships among those comparisons whether there is a real relationship or not).

Other science is more exploratory or descriptive (like the human genome project). And paleontology is somewhere between -- it depends on finding a limited sample set of degraded specimens, and based on dating techniques (which ARE generally accurate) putting these specimens anatomically in the context of morphologically similar things. Bias, then, is related to how accurate your comparisons and your dating techniques are.

[NeitherExtreme]

Originally Posted by Aedes

Maybe for someone making a TV special about it, or someone writing a book, or even someone writing a textbook.

You bring up a very good point here. So aside from science proper, do you think that some (or many) of the intitutions considered "scientifically credible" by society (talking mostly American here, since thats where I live) would have a strong vested interest, and with that possibly a bias, toward presenting that "believable and authoritative account of naturalistic history"? Some of the institutions I'm thinking of could be museums (smithsonian comes to mind), TV chanels (Discovery etc.), magazines (National Geographic), etc. This of course would not directly reflect negatively on science (as in your profession) in any way. But for those of us "outside" of science, those presentations of history are what we see the most, so I'd be interested in you opinion. Also, you mentioned writing a textbook... don't you think that is a very important thing to remain honest, as it potentially shapes the thoughts of the future scientists?

Originally Posted by Aedes

Otherwise, the benefit you describe is true only insofar as there is benefit for a person to succeed at their job (and in this it's incidental that some people study evolution and other people study dog psychology). I mean, hit men benefit from killing for cash successfully, scientists benefit from investigating scientific questions effectively.

I see what you are saying here, and it makes complete sense... but at the same time it demonstrates a kind of trust in the "purity" of the scientist and the scientific communiy. (Not that this trust is automatically invalid, but we are all human after all.) The question that I'm raising is whether or not there is any potential benefit to the scientist or the scientific community that is other than simply investigating effectively. Just to suggest some possible benefits, though there could be others I'm not seeing, and the things I'm mentioning might not be valid...
-Are there sources of funding that would be happy to have this believable or authoritative account?
-Are the personal world views and philosophic beliefs of the scientist(s) supported, unnafected, or negated by such an account?
-Are there potential professional benefits to supporting such an account, due to "pleasing" other people or institutions?
-Are there potential egotistical benefits (recognition) to supporting such an account?
-Are there potential negative results to presenting or pursuing something that seems to sharply conflict with widely accepted theories?

At the same time, I recognize what you said about results being testable, and agree that that does lend some credibility even when "vested interest" might exist. But the possibility for biase, although maybe limited to some degree, still exists. And as you noted, in more exploratory or descriptive sciences, the potential increases. And when looking at the 4 potential areas for bias that you described a few posts ago, the door for potential influence still seems fairly open to me. They seem to be very fundamental to the point of even shaping potential results, as well as the conclusions drawn from the studies, even if the proper methods are used and correct results are found. Your thoughts?

[Aedes]

Originally Posted by NeitherExtreme

You bring up a very good point here. So aside from science proper, do you think that some (or many) of the intitutions considered "scientifically credible" by society (talking mostly American here, since thats where I live) would have a strong vested interest, and with that possibly a bias, toward presenting that "believable and authoritative account of naturalistic history"?

Having spent the last 3 years as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard, which is as recognized in the sciences as anyone, my sense was that institutionally their interest was in having productive leaders in their respective academic fields. By leaders they want people with notoriety, recognition, and accomplishments. There is a bit of tail-wagging-dog here, because this recognition attracts grant funding and donations for the institution. But at the same time there were people on their faculty with fundamental disagreements with one another. There were other people on the faculty with notably unorthodox areas of research. I don't think the vested interest lies in the theory itself. I think they want leaders in every area of research imaginable -- so they have leaders in everything some of which directly or peripherally addresses evolutionary questions.

Also, you mentioned writing a textbook... don't you think that is a very important thing to remain honest, as it potentially shapes the thoughts of the future scientists?

I've written some textbook chapters myself. The most important things in writing a textbook chapter are 1) know your audience, 2) be true to the literature, and 3) avoid controversies except when necessary. And as for #3, if you're bringing up new and unpublished research, you need to be clear about it.

but at the same time it demonstrates a kind of trust in the "purity" of the scientist and the scientific communiy.

Humans are humans. But while some scientists are certainly corrupt or disengenuous, that doesn't mean that there's some kind of conspiracy within science.

The question that I'm raising is whether or not there is any potential benefit to the scientist or the scientific community that is other than simply investigating effectively.

-Are there sources of funding that would be happy to have this believable or authoritative account?

No, that's not how grants work. Some funding agencies are more conservative or more fringy than others, but you win funding by showing that you've got a track record, and that you have sound proposals that you can carry through.

-Are the personal world views and philosophic beliefs of the scientist(s) supported, unnafected, or negated by such an account?

It depends what account and what belief system. Every possibility is accounted for, so the answer is yes, yes, and yes. Furthermore, views are much more complicated than science vs religion or natural vs supernatural or evolution vs creation. Some people believe that evolution (incl human evolution) is completely true as described through scientific research -- but God presided over it.

-Are there potential professional benefits to supporting such an account, due to "pleasing" other people or institutions?

Maybe in a case by case way. But not uniformly.

-Are there potential egotistical benefits (recognition) to supporting such an account?

You don't get much praise for saying the same thing other people have. You get praise for coming up with things that are new.

-Are there potential negative results to presenting or pursuing something that seems to sharply conflict with widely accepted theories?

The biggest problem is being right about what you've proposed and showing it through research. The scientists who deny anthropogenic climate change have had a ***** of a time making any kind of scientific case. Of course it IS harder to get publications and grants and to be a keynote speaker at a national meeting if you're on the fringe -- but again this comes down to research. You shut up your critics with research, not with theories.

And as you noted, in more exploratory or descriptive sciences, the potential increases.

Well, only by virtue of their lack of statistical power. But you stick to the evidence you have. Again (and again!) it's about data.

And when looking at the 4 potential areas for bias that you described a few posts ago, the door for potential influence still seems fairly open to me. They seem to be very fundamental to the point of even shaping potential results, as well as the conclusions drawn from the studies, even if the proper methods are used and correct results are found. Your thoughts?

Not if you're consistent throughout!! Hypothesis leads to methodology that tests the hypothesis; methodology generates results; the hypothesis is accepted or rejected based on the results, and the validity (or lack thereof) of the hypothesis is interpreted in the wider context of other science in the field. There are strong studies and weak studies, and this comes down to your method. If your hypothesis is something that's easily testable, then it isn't hard to keep bias out.