The downward spiral of American intelligence continues

[elfs]

After reading about Kansas's continuing to make a mockery of science, I came across an article today in which I learned that not one corporate sponsor stepped forward to support the American Museum of Natural History's "Darwin" exhibit. The entire $3 million display had to be funded by private interests.

I mean, c'mon. Pharmaceutical companies and agribusinesses that rely on evolutionary biology to further their business are terrified of pissing off the anti-science know-nothings in our midst? They want there to be no next generation of great scientists? What's wrong with these people?

I mean, contrast this with the Creation Museum in Ohio, run by Ken Hamm, aka "Dr. Dino." This is the guy who's going around the country buying up all the cheap roadside dinosaur exhibits and relabling them with biblical quotes. His campaign to do this is called "We're taking the dinosaurs back," and it has raised $7 million in the past year.

That's just sick.

Comments

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

Well, not to defend ID, but questioning the veracity of data is something good scientists do all the time, especially the scientist who is collecting the data. Experimental artifacts (that is, data that reflects a flaw in the experimental setup rather than what you're intending to measure) are distressingly common.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

Well, not to defend ID, but questioning the veracity of data is something good scientists do all the time,
Errm... no. And I state this with the authority of my PhD in Physics. We question the accuracy of some of the data. We question their apparatus, and take more measurements.
But researchers don't question the truthfulness of the data. Because, see, that's accusing the experimenter of lying, of out-and-out fraud. Accusing a fellow scientist is attacking her career, and not done lightly or without major cause.
Note that I don't include questioning the veracity of one's own data, because that's equivalent to accusing yourself of lying. If you operated the mass-spectrometer, and you read a measurement of 30.8% U-235 and 68.8% Pb-207, then that's what you measured. And, being a scientist, this wasn't your only measurement; you'll make others to ensure you didn't make any mistakes.
But that's not questioning your own honesty, or questioning whether you hallucinated taht 30.8%. That's just questioning your machines. Or admitting to being a flawed human. Which is why you measure several times.
If you did everything correctly, and you report clearly all that you did, your colleagues at the appropriate academic journal publish it. If they can't tell whether or not you did everything correctly, they reject it, asking you for More Explanation Please. If you can't provide those details, or it looks at all like you were sloppy, they just don't publish it. Again, no questioning of the veracity of the data, only its accuracy.
That, right there, is the crux of the problem: scientists don't question the data. If the data looks "weird," they question the tools. They take another measurement, or another 100. If that data says the same thing, they question their assumptions. They change their view to fit the facts.

They don't try to change the facts to fit their views. Which is precisely what the ID-crowd is doing.