Investigating Atheism

The faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge and University of Oxford have put together a website on "Investigating Atheism." Although it's ironic that a bunch of theologians have done this, in my brief perusal of the site I haven't found anything objectionable--it does a good job of putting current atheist arguments and personalities in historical context.

(Via the Secular Outpost.)

UPDATE: Well, they do have an article from well-known net kook John A. Davison. That's a bit of an odd choice.

The Amazing Meeting 7: SGU, Shermer, Savage

This is part four of my summary of TAM7, now up to Saturday, July 10. Part 1 is here, part 2 is here, part 3 is here, and my coverage of the Science-based Medicine conference begins here.

Skeptics Guide to the Universe
Both Friday and Saturday morning began with live recording sessions for the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast, for which I didn't bother to take notes, since it was being recorded (it's Skeptics Guide podcast episode #208 and may be found on the website archive or via the iTunes store). The Saturday morning event began with a satirical ghost hunter video by Jay Novella, "The G Hunters" (part one, part two). But the real surprise came during the listener Q&A session, when Sid Rodrigues asked a question "maybe for Rebecca," which turned out to be "Will you marry me?" A seemingly impromptu, but carefully planned wedding followed immediately, though there wasn't enough cake for everyone, nor a champagne toast. All present did receive after-the-fact invitations as a nice memento, and there was a first dance for those who wanted to participate.

Michael Shermer
Michael Shermer prefaced his talk with an overview of the Skeptics Society and Skeptic magazine that bore some resemblance to the introduction of his TED Talk of 2006. His talk, titled "Rise Above--Towards a Type I Civilization," argued that we should work to rise above our tribal instincts, our evolutionary heritage, and the left-right political spectrum. He began by noting that most of our decisions are judgments made on uncertainties (a reference to the classic book Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases, by Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic, and Amos Tversky), made emotionally with intuitive leaps which are then followed by rationalization to provide reasons to justify what we've already decided to do. He observed that when the amygdala is damaged, this leads not only to loss of emotional capacity, but an inability to make decisions. We don't fall into categories of good and evil, but good and evil run through each person, he said, referencing Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago. An individual's expanding circles of concern are based on genetic relationships and kin selection, he said, and reciprocal altruism operates within kin/kind/community. We're good to members of our in-group, but skeptical and cautious about other groups.

He spoke briefly about the left-right political spectrum, arguing instead for a three-dimensional Nolan chart that is used by libertarians with a misleading questionnaire as a recruiting tool. While I agree with Shermer that the left-right spectrum has serious weaknesses, I don't think the Nolan chart is much of an improvement, especially when the coordinates on the chart are determined by a limited set of questions that are worded in a way that glosses over details. Better, I think, is to recognize that the space of political positions really encompasses far more dimensions. Shermer asked the audience how many considered themselves to be left of center, right, or libertarians, and the answers were about 1-2 people right of center, 15-20% libertarian, and the rest self-described liberal. He put up a couple of slides containing exaggerated stereotypical descriptions of how conservatives view liberals and vice versa, which produced cheers to both. He put up the political map of red and blue states based on the last presidential election results, and pointed out that the map is misleading, because if you look at it on a more granular level the country is really a mass of purple. (Though he didn't mention or address the thesis of Bill Bishop's The Big Sort.) He noted that his speaking out about his libertarianism has raised more ire than his views on religion (theism), and stated that it's fine to disagree, but that political topics should be open to discussion. This was probably the most controversial talk of the conference, and it, along with Shermer's recent interview on the Point of Inquiry podcast, have led to some to argue that skepticism should be apolitical. Shermer said that he's been told that he should be apolitical, "like Carl Sagan," to which Shermer (correctly) responded that Sagan was not apolitical, as he argued for a number of liberal causes, including nuclear disarmament (a cause for which he was twice arrested during protests).

He then turned to some more interesting research, Jonathan Haidt's work on how people make moral judgments. Haidt has hypothesized that we make moral judgments based on five scales, which Shermer compared to "a five-channel moral equalizer":

1. care: Protection from harm.
2. fairness: Justice, equality.
3. loyalty: Family, group, nation.
4. authority: Respect for law, tradition, and traditional institutions.
5. purity: Rules about sexual conduct, recognition of sacredness.

Liberals tend to emphasize the first two items, which place a focus on individual rights, while conservatives use those two and the remaining three about equally, and the last three focus on group cohesiveness. These tendencies seem to hold up across cultures.

Shermer apparently argued that all five of these scales are important, saying that "since 9/11, things have changed," and noting that group loyalty is now getting some emphasis from left-atheists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. Shermer argued that religious extremists are dangerous, and are assisted by religious moderates. I think this is actually a badly mistaken inference to draw. Sure, there are extremists who are out to harm the U.S., but terrorism is a strategy of the militarily weak against the strong, and the right way to combat it is not by doing things like launching an invasion and occupying a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 (Iraq), engaging in torture and abuse, and causing religious moderates to join with the extremists, but rather by a divide-and-conquer strategy that isolates the extremists from the moderates and maintains the moral high ground. (Skeptic and physicist Taner Edis, from Turkey, has criticized Sam Harris for his misunderstanding of Islam, as has Chris Hedges who, despite his sometimes annoying attitude, made some good points on the subject in his Point of Inquiry interview.)

To support his point, Shermer showed a clip from the film "A Few Good Men" in which Jack Nicholson defends his position of ordering a "Code Red" to engage in self-enforcement to punish a slacker in the military ranks as an ugly and unpleasant necessity.

Shermer then turned to the Kardashev scale referenced in his title, which classifies civilizations into Type 0 (energy produced from dead plants and animals), Type I (planetary civilizations controlling the energy of an entire planet), Type II (stellar civilizations controlling the energy of an entire sun), and Type III (a civilization controlling all of the energy in an entire galaxy). Shermer gave an ordering from Type 0 to Type II, with tribal communities at 0.3, liberal democracies at 0.8, and then described Type I civilizations as including a global wireless (why wireless?) communication system (the Internet), a global language (English, most likely), a global culture (why not diverse cultures?), and global free trade, which breaks down tribal barriers. He didn't really provide an argument for the details of the how and why, apart from that short defense of global free trade and a little more he said later, pointing to the work of Fredric Bastiat (Bastiat's axiom: where goods cross frontiers, armies will not), which he augmented with the "Starbucks theory of war" (two nations with Starbucks won't fight each other) and the "Google Theory of Peace" (where information and knowledge cross frontiers, armies will not).

He then cited the work of Rudy Rummel on democracy and war, stating that between 1860 and 2005 there have been 371 wars, of which 205 were between non-democratic nations, 166 were between democracies and non-democracies, and 0 were between democracies. He said that some have challenged the details of the classifications, but that in general, democracies seem to be less likely to engage in war as a means of resolving disputes.

He concluded by saying that rising above tribal instincts is hard, and quoted Katherine Hepburn's line from "The African Queen": "Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we must rise above."

I didn't get a chance to ask my question in the Q&A, but I went up to Shermer afterward and suggested that the tribal in-group seems to be a biological/mathematical limitation of our memories and processing capabilities with respect to the number of combinations of relationships we can track. Anthropologist Robin Dunbar's work on this topic has led to what is called the "Dunbar number" or a "Dunbar circle," which is the number of people you can keep track of and that make up your in-group, and it's about 150. Studies of Facebook users show that even those with thousands of friends still engage in most of their interactions with a group of 150 or fewer. So my question was, in light of that limitation, how can we rise above tribal membership? Shermer's answer was the same one I would have given, which is that although we may still be limited to that number of relationships, today they don't have to be limited by geography, and so the way to "rise above" is to have lots of these small groups. Shermer suggested that we need to avoid any such groups having a political monopoly, but the real concern is how those small groups build coalitions which obtain and exercise political power, and what they try to do with it. I'm not sure there's any getting around the problem of having political institutions which govern vastly larger numbers of people.

My own opinion on whether "skepticism" should be apolitical and avoid religious topics is that skeptical organizations should avoid taking positions on those topics, except where there are clear empirically testable hypotheses. (For example, it should be perfectly legitimate for a skeptical organization to publish an examination of the social and psychological factors that cause people to give credence to crackpots like Orly Taitz and Philip Berg, and their respective bogus Kenyan and Canadian Obama birth certificates--as well as to examine the facts around topics like the "birther" controversy.) Individual skeptics, however, should feel free to argue for whatever positions they hold, while being cognizant of what is within the realm of the empirical and what is more philosophical. I don't think Shermer's talk should have been ruled inappropriate for TAM, though I would have liked to have seen a bit more science and argument in the talk, and I wouldn't want to see a whole bunch of talks that all touched on politics or religion, especially if they all came from a single viewpoint.

(UPDATE: I recently came across something I wrote relevant to this point about ten years ago on Usenet, which I still agree with today:

"The skeptic's position should be, on any issue where there isn't conclusive evidence one way or another, either agnosticism or tentative acceptance of the view that seems to be best supported--but with tolerance for those who accept other views which are also inconclusively supported by the evidence. In other words, there is no and should be no official skeptic's position.

Further, there shouldn't be an official skeptic's position on subjects which are matters of political ideology, religious faith, or metaphysical views on which empirical science is silent.")

Adam Savage
Adam Savage of Mythbusters gave a talk not directly related to skepticism, but to which everyone could relate--a talk about personal failure. He said that he is often asked how he attained his success, and he said that he didn't follow a straight path and that he had a lot of failures along the way. He began by referring to Aaron Sorkin's "Sports Night," which he called the best 26 hours of television. In an episode of the second season, a billionaire who's going to buy the show says, "Dana. I'm what the world considers to be a phenomenally successful man. And I've failed much more than I've succeeded. And each time I fail, I get my people together, and I say, "Where are we going?" And it starts to get better. And that's what you should do."

Savage said that he wanted to present the details of how spectacular and painful some of his failures have been. He said that he's been fired from a production assistant job, he's been divorced, and he's yelled at his kids. All of our lives are two steps forward, one step back. He got a job at Industrial Light and Magic, working with his heroes, a job he'd wanted since he was 11. In the SFX industry, everybody is freelance, working on jobs for a time, and always looking for the next. But at ILM, there is no selling required. He said your resume is just three words--just four words--Industrial Light and Magic. And he would also take extra outside jobs.

His friend Ben called him with a job that he couldn't take because of the short turn-around time. A department store wanted a window display within five days, that depicted a ballpark fence. What they wanted was baseballs automatically being pitched over the fence on a continuous basis.

Savage bid his day rate, $300-$500/day, plus a market-rate rush fee. It was a really fat paycheck for five days work. He got pitching machines and a ballfeeder, built it, and watched it work 70 times in a row, and then fail. He figured this was a solvable problem. He stayed up all night Friday and Saturday morning trying to get it to work--it was originally supposed to be ready by Saturday, and needed on Monday (?)--and brought it to the store to assemble. It turned out that the size of the display area was different from what he was told, and in the new set up it was down to 30-40 balls in a row before failure, so would fail every 3 hours. He observed that there's a reason the displays in airports with balls moving around on tracks use fixed rails, rather than tubes like he was using--rails lead to balls moving in a predictable amount of time, while the air resistance in a tube makes the timing unpredictable. So he added an air blower to force the balls down the tubes.

The next problem was that when one pitching machine pitches, it takes more power, which causes the other two machines to slow down, increasing the failure rate. He had relatives coming into town at 6 p.m. on Saturday and it still wasn't working. He came to the conclusion that no amount of effort is going to make it work, and told his employer that in 30 minutes he would present three alternatives and have whichever one they chose implemented by 8 a.m. the next morning. He came up with a new solution using a monofilament chain connected to the balls, simulating the motion of a pitched ball--no pitching machines. He stayed up all night and visited Home Depot repeatedly, and finally got it working with 10 baseballs.

The National Head of Display came to look at the display, and said, "it looks great, but I don't like the balls--get rid of them."

Savage's second story of failure was from earlier in his career, when he "pretended to attend NYU for a year" and then worked with his film student friends on their films. He worked on a friend's film that was filmed at the Alexis Theater, and the film ended up winning the NYU Film Festival's best art direction prize. So he thought about becoming an art director, and put his name out. He was asked to work on a friend Gabby's film, with an $850 budget. He needed to build a set of a room with a glass door with an ATM in it, which he figured he could do with wood frames and canvas for the walls, a shell for a computer as the ATM, and a plexiglass door.

He never asked for help.

He worked Wednesday through Saturday morning, without sleep for 60 hours, and wasn't close. The screen on the ATM cracked--he figured, it's supposed to be an urban environment, it will be fine. He didn't pre-prep the canvas, so it all become horribly wrinkled. He put down linoleum on the carpet of the home where the set was being built for the floor. At some point, a member of the crew asked him, "Do you even know what you're doing?" He responded with what he thought was a clever line from Raiders of the Lost Ark, "I don't know, I'm making this up as I go along." The response from the crew member: "Go home." So he did.

The following Monday, he went to the set to pick up his toolbox, and it wasn't there. There was a note that said "We have your toolbox. Call me. Gabby." He called her, and she said, "What did you do to me? You screwed me. You pissed away the money. If you could do anything to destroy our friendship, this is it. I want you to account for every penny." He cried and called his father, who told him, "All you can do is move forward." He went and met with Gabby, and accounted for every penny that he had spent. She then said, "The crew is next door, and they want to talk to you."

He went to the room next door, and found a dark room with a chair in the middle, with a spotlight focused on it. He sat in it, and the director read from a pad of paper all of the things that Adam had said he would do, but didn't. This litany of offenses was periodically interrupted by a member of the crew adding something, like the fact that the linoleum he put down ruined the carpet in the apartment. There was also one point during the work where Savage was across town having sex instead of working on the set, and somehow the crew knew about that, too, and brought it up.

Finally, they asked him what he had to say for himself. He simply agreed--"You're absolutely right. I screwed up. I'm sorry." He added four meta-levels of sorry, and said that he knows it doesn't mean or help anything. At that point, the director said, after a long pause--"look, we're not trying to bring you down or anything."

Savage then quoted, from memory, from Ian McEwan's Enduring Love, which begins with four people in a public park running towards a balloon accident. In the opening, he writes something like "running towards a catastrophe, a kind of furnace in which are characters would be buckled into new shapes."

He said that he doesn't trust working with people who don't know or understand failure--failure builds character. And whatever you think now (about anything?), you're probably wrong.

He ended first by reading from Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, which went something like this: "We find out moments of sadness terrifying because we are standing in a place we cannot stand. It's important to be lonely and attentive when one is sad, because that is when you learn." And then by saying that his favorite fictional character is Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, because Chandler so clearly describes his flaws and foibles. He said that if the world were full of people like Marlowe, the world would be a safer place, but not boring.

There followed a Q&A, most of the questions were about Mythbusters, except for one question which Savage answered about Rilke's hatred of Rodin (and writing "what is fame but a collection of misunderstandings about a name?") and another which he answered by describing his "boyhood dream" to win an Ig Nobel Prize for writing a taxonomy of nonsense words for large and small numbers.

(Savage gave a similar talk at Defcon 17, available online.)

(Click on the link to continue to a summary of the rest of the Saturday sessions at TAM7--a panel on the ethics of deception, the Skeptical Citizen Award, a Jerry Andrus video, Stephen Bauer's talk on Jerry Andrus and his estate, a panel on skepticism and the media, Phil Plait on Doomsday 2012, and a JREF update.)

The Arizona Skeptic online: vol. 3, 1990

Continuing the postings of The Arizona Skeptic; you can find volume 1 (1987-1988) here and volume 2 (1988-1989) here. Volume 3 was edited by Mike Stackpole. An index to all issues by title, author, and subject may be found here. The Arizona Skeptic, vol. 3, no. 1, January 1990:

• Predictions 1990
• "Some Failures of Organized Skepticism" by Jim Lippard
• Editorial Blathering
• Our February Meeting: speaker Hans Sebald on witchcraft

The Arizona Skeptic, vol. 3, no. 2, February/March 1990:

• "The Secret of the Challenger Secret Mission" by Mike Stackpole
• Meeting Announcement: Dr. Robert Dietz on "The Sacred and Profane History of the World"
• "Dissension in the Ranks of the Institute for Creation Research" by Jim Lippard
• "HGH 3X and The New England Journal of Medicine" by Mark Adkins
• "Book Review: But Is It Science? edited by Michael Ruse" reviewed by Jim Lippard
• "What is Occam's Razor" by Michael A. Stackpole
• Editorial Blathering
• "Who Are We?" by Michael A. Stackpole

The Arizona Skeptic, vol. 3, no. 3, April 1990:

• "Ethical Skepticism" by Michael A. Stackpole (a visit to Peter Popoff)
• Editorial Blathering
• Meeting Announcement: speaker Michael A. Stackpole on Satanism

And that was it for volume 3--volume 4 picked up in July 1990 for another two issues edited by Mike Stackpole.

The Arizona Skeptic online: vol. 2, 1988-1989

Continuing the postings of The Arizona Skeptic; you can find volume 1 (1987-1988) here.

An index to all issues by title, author, and subject may be found here.

The Arizona Skeptic vol. 2, no. 1, July/August 1988:

• "Lippard Disgraced!" by Ron Harvey
• "A Visit to the 'Psychic Showcase'" by Jim Lippard
• "Color it Absurd" by Ken Morse
• "Handwriting Analysis" by Jim Lippard
• "Recognizing Destructive and Manipulative Groups" by Al Seckel
• Upcoming Meetings
• "Ghost Busters or Lease Breakers" by Ken Morse
• "June PS Meeting" by Judy Sawyer: speakers Craig Nichols and Lee Earle of Manifestations
• "July PS Meeting" by Judy Sawyer: speaker Anita O'Riordan of the Arizona Attorney General's Elderly Abuse Project
• Correction (of omission to "Psychic Detectives" article in previous issue)
• Editor's Ramblings

The Arizona Skeptic vol. 2, no. 2, September/October 1988:

• "Hype-nosis" by Jim Lippard (title typoed in published copy)
• "Recipe for Successful Local Group" by Kent Harker
• "Book Review: Nostradamus and His Prophecies by Edgar Leoni" reviewed by Jim Lippard
• Upcoming Meetings
• August PS Meeting: speaker Michael Preston on hypnosis
• "September meeting" by Mike Stackpole: speaker Gary Mechler on astrology
• "October meeting" by Judy Sawyer: speaker Janet Lee Mitchell on out-of-body experiences
• Editor's Ramblings

The Arizona Skeptic vol. 2, no. 3, November/December 1988:

• Predictions for 1989 and Beyond
• "Psychological Factors Conducive to Paranormal Belief" by Jim Lippard
• "Book Review: The Art of Deception by Nicholas Capaldi" reviewed by Ted Karren
• "Book Review: Hypnosis, Imagination, and Human Potentialities by Theodore X. Barber, Nicholas P. Spanos, and John F. Chaves" reviewed by Jim Lippard
• Upcoming Meetings
• November PS Meeting: skeptics' predictions
• "December PS Meeting" by Judy Sawyer: speaker David Alexander on faith healers
• "TUSKS Lecture" by Ken Morse: speaker Conrad Goeringer on "Bimbos for Satan"
• Editor's Ramblings

The Arizona Skeptic vol. 2, no. 4, January/February 1989:

• "Let's Be Serious: Defensive Skepticism" by Mike Stackpole
• "Behaviorism and Consciousness" by Jim Lippard (on January speaker, Erv Theobold)
• "In Response" by Erv Theobold, Ph.D.
• "Book Review: Mindspell by Kay Nolte Smith" reviewed by Judy Sawyer
• "Book Review: Science and Earth History by A. N. Strahler" reviewed by Roger Mann
• "Book Review: Eyewitness Testimony by Elizabeth Loftus" reviewed by Jim Lippard
• "Book Review: ESP and Psychokinesis: A Philosophical Examination by Stephen E. Braude" reviewed by Jim Lippard
• Upcoming Meetings
• January PS Meeting
• Editor's Ramblings

This volume had only four issues, and marks the end of Ron Harvey's editorship. The next volume picks up in January 1990 with Mike Stackpole as editor.

The Arizona Skeptic online: vol. 1, 1987-1988

I've begun putting old issues of The Arizona Skeptic online as PDFs, starting with the old Phoenix Skeptics News, edited by Ron Harvey. Volume 2, 1988-1989, is here. An index to all issues by title, author, and subject may be found here. Phoenix Skeptics News vol. 1, no. 1, July/August 1987:

• Welcome!
• July Meeting
• Resource Library
• "Cold Reading" by Jim Lippard
• Local Radio Talk Show Features Psychics
• Modem Users Take Note
• "Foes Turn Up Heat: Fire walking is not so hot, skeptics of seminars say" by Simon Fisher, Tribune
• Postscript by Jim Lippard
• Book Reviews
• Local Conference on Health Fraud
• Upcoming Phoenix Skeptics Meetings

Phoenix Skeptics News vol. 1, no. 2, September/October 1987:

• August Meeting: Hans Sebald on witchcraft
• September Meeting: Charles Cazeau on prophecies of Nostradamus
• Surveyor Needed
• Randi on Faith Healers (interviewed by Jim Lippard and Mike Norton)
• "Health Fraud isn't 'snake oil' anymore" by Phyllis Gillespie, Arizona Republic
• "Charlatans can be spotted if you know common clues" (Arizona Republic)
• "Proper Criticism" by Ray Hyman
• Upcoming Meetings

Phoenix Skeptics News vol. 1, no. 3, November/December 1987:

• October Meeting: Halloween party at Hans Sebald's
• November Meeting: James Randi psychic surgery video, Randy Jones on psychic surgery
• Papers ignore disclaimer request on astrology columns
• Flyers needed
• Psychic fair
• "Focus on You" by Jim Lippard
• "Channeling: Believe It or Not" by Hans Sebald, Ph.D.
• "Book Review: The Faith Healers by James Randi" reviewed by Jim Lippard
• "On the distinction between nonbelief and disbelief" by Hans Sebald, Ph.D.
• "Book Review: The Psychology of Transcendence by Andrew Neher" reviewed by Jim Lippard
• Editor's Ramblings
• Upcoming Meetings

Phoenix Skeptics News vol. 1, no. 4, January/February 1988:

• December Meeting: Jim Speiser and Marge Christenson of MUFON
• January Meeting: Robert Dietz of ASU on creationism
• Philip Klass Lecture
• Skeptics Reorganized
• Skeptics subcommittees formed
• "Peter Popoff Came to Town" by Jim Lippard
• "Towards a more effective organization" by Bob Guzley
• "Update on the Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin" by Jim Lippard
• New Phone Number
• Editor's Ramblings
• Upcoming Meetings

Phoenix Skeptics News vol. 1, no. 5, March/April 1988:

• Important Announcement!
• February Meeting: Jeff Jacobsen on Scientology
• Philip Klass Lecture
• March Meeting: Mike Stackpole on claimed dangers of D&D
• The Organization Explained!
• "Frank Baranowski: Promoter of the Paranormal" by Jim Lippard
• "Book Review: The New Inquisition by Robert Anton Wilson" reviewed by Jim Lippard
• "Robert Anton Wilson and the H.E.A.D. Revolution" by Zak Woodruff
• Editor's Ramblings
• Upcoming Meetings

Phoenix Skeptics News, vol. 1, no. 6, May/June 1988:

• April Meeting: James Lowell on Mexican cancer clinics
• May Meeting: Jim Lippard on psychic detectives
• Press coverage
• "Turin Shroud Update" by Jim Lippard
• "Dr. Stranges Lives Up to His Name" by Mike Stackpole
• "Near-Death Experiences and TV" by Jim Lippard
• "An Artistic 'Phenom'" by Ted Karren
• "Psychic Detectives" by Jim Lippard
• Editor's Ramblings
• "TUSKS Tips" by Ken Morse
• Upcoming Meetings

The last issue of this volume was the first one also distributed to the Tucson Skeptical Society (TUSKS), and prompted a change of name to The Arizona Skeptic beginning with volume 2. This was also about the time I moved to Tucson to attend graduate school at the University of Arizona (August 1988).

ArizonaCOR video: A Life, a World, a Future

The Arizona Coalition of Reason's video, "A Life, a World, a Future," has been released on the ArizonaCOR website. This was a project done by and with the participation of members of several of ArizonaCOR's member organizations.

New Markey/Eshoo net neutrality bill

Ed Markey (D-MA) and Anna Eshoo (D-CA) last week introduced HR 3458, The Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009 (PDF). This bill is much better than past bills in that it doesn't contain any prohibition on classes of service or preferential treatment of packets based on protocol or application, as opposed to based on source, destination, or owner. It still, however, gives the FCC new powers to regulate the Internet and puts the onus of developing specific regulations on the FCC. And it looks like the language will give the FCC the power to regulate Apple's iTunes store with respect to iPhone Internet-related applications, as well as to force the opening up of wireless walled gardens. The bill leaves open to the FCC the ability to treat "private transmission capacity services" as exempt from the requirements of the bill, so long as they don't impact Internet capacity for the end user. It also provides disclosure requirements for ISPs to report on any methods they use for network and capacity management that may impact Internet traffic.

The Amazing Meeting 7: Swiss/Randi, Ouellette, anti-anti-vax panel, Nickell

This is part three of my summary of TAM7, still on Friday, July 10. Part 1 is here, part 2 is here, and my coverage of the Science-based Medicine conference begins here.

Jamy Ian Swiss and James Randi
After lunch on Friday was a conversation between Jamy Ian Swiss and James Randi about Randi's early career, beginning with an old BBC live broadcast of Randi making a radio disappear, and an escape he did in Quebec as the "Amazing Randall." They discussed Randi's early appearances on Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show," and how Carson, himself a magician, would visit Randi in his dressing room when he appeared on the show, leading show staff to wonder who this guy was, since Carson never visited other guests. Other old footage included an underwater survival stunt on "You Asked for It," in which Randi stayed underwater for an hour and 50 minutes, breaking Houdini's record. Randi was embedded horizontally in a block of ice on Boston Common for the Dick Cavett show, somewhat reminiscent of the more recent stunt by David Blaine. Footage was also shown of Randi's water can escape when he was a closing act after David Copperfield and Shibata, which Randi commented was made more difficult for him by the fact that Copperfield and Shibata were standing on the catwalk above him cracking jokes while he was supposedly drowning in the milk can (but was actually already on top of it trying to look out-of-breath and using a sponge to make his head wet again before the big reveal).

Then was shown a lot of amusing footage from Alice Cooper's "Billion Dollar Babies" tour, for whch Randi played a mad dentist and created various illusions for the stage, culminating with Alice Cooper's head being chopped off by a realistic-looking guillotine. Randi told various stories of the tour and how he came to be involved with it, saying that it paid very well and he knew he was going to get alone well when he visited the offices of Cooper's Alive Enterprise and found it was full of potted plants, all of which were dead. A DVD of the film made during that tour was recently released on DVD, which includes the original version of the film rejected by the studies, which included a bunch of comedy sketches, a few of which feature Randi.

When the tour came to Phoenix, Cooper asked Randi to sit in the audience with his mother, who wasn't aware of the nature of his show. Randi kept reassuring her--the wife of a Mormon minister--that Alice Cooper is just a character being played by her son (Vincent Furnier). Randi said that he saw Mrs. Furnier again a couple of years ago at Alice Cooper's 60th birthday party, and she remembered him and thanked him for the reassurance he provided during that show.

Footage was then shown of two version of Randi's upside-down strait jacket escape, one in Niagara Falls in January. He said it was so cold that he beard became completely frozen and he was unable to speak when he had freed himself and was brought down, until hot water was poured over his beard. He said it took two years to get permission to do that stunt, and they had the whole area blocked off so that only the film crew was present. But while he was hanging upside-down, he saw a Chinese family standing there watching him--they had gone sneaking through the woods to get there and watch the performance up close.

The second version of the escape was for the Japanese show "Supermen" and was performed while hanging upside-down from a helicopter flying around Tokyo. Randi, who does not like heights, said he kept telling himself, "I'm doing it for the money."

Jennifer Ouellette on the Science and Entertainment Exchange
Jennifer Ouellette, executive director of the National Academy of Science's new Science and Entertainment Exchange project and author of the book The Physics of the Buffyverse, spoke about the project. She began with a short film clip from the TV show "Numb3rs" that illustrated a scientific point about geographic profiling by reference to the physics of water drops from a sprinkler head, which she used as an example of the productivity of having scientists and entertainment producers working cooperatively.

She observed that science and Hollywood have had a love/hate relationship. Hollywood sees scientists as nitpickers who don't understand entertainment, which she depicted with a reference to an episode of "The Big Bang Theory" which pointed out that the ending of the film "Superman" was unbelievable not because of the time travel but because if Superman caught Lois Lane while she was falling at 32 feet/second/second she would be cut into three pieces by the arms of the Man of Steel. (This reminded me of Larry Niven's classic analysis of why Superman can't have sex with a human woman, let alone produce a hybrid offspring, "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex.") Scientists, on the other hand, see Hollywood as promulgators of misinformation, a point she illustrated with reference to an anti-vaccination episode of "Eli Stone" and the fact that DNA results on "CSI" and "Bones" are always returned within hours (also illustrating the nitpicking point).

The Science and Entertainment Exchange provides producers of film, television, comic books, video games, novels, etc. with a free way to obtain accurate scientific information early on in a project, and has already worked with major productions including "Bones," "Tron II" (now "Tron Legacy"), and several that she was contractually forbidden to mention.

She told the story of how she met the showrunner for "Bones," and when she told him she was a scientist, "he instantly cringed, flinched, and apologized." She subsequently worked with him on the "Death by Physics" episode of the show.

She pointed out that this is a great time for science and skepticism, with the popularity of current programs like Numb3rs, Bones, Lie to Me, The Mentalist, House, The Big Bang Theory, and, "a fringe case," Fringe (one of the writers of the show is Glen Whitman of the Agoraphilia blog; and for those interested in the glyph code on that show, here's the solution).

Ouellette argued for the importance of this project by pointing out that a factoid about breast cancer which appeared in a soap opera was found to triple the knowledge of that factoid in its viewing audience (based on testing viewers before and after watching the episode), and that these new shows do a good job of humanizing scientists. When debunking messages come from sympathetic characters, that softens them and makes them more persuasive. She suggested that The Mentalist saying that there are no real psychics, or Lie to Me debunking the polygraph, has huge potential impact.

She closed by saying that the success of these popular programs suggests that critical thinking and science placed in an entertaining context do sell, and asking those with a science background who want to be consultants for her project to contact her--and CSI needs new ideas on how to kill people.

In the Q&A, the first questioner said that they don't like when scientists are depicted not acting like scientists--misusing words like "proof" and "theory," and misrepresenting the process of science. Another asked whether she could say anything about science on "Lost"; she said that scientists consulted and commented on the DVD extras about the temporal anomalies and "chronology projection conjecture," and that it's the best-selling TV show on DVD. One questioner asked whether there is any way to do something like this for the news media, as well as for entertainment; she answered that people in the news media need to be paid better (I presume she was referring to print reporters rather than talking heads on television), and those outlets are in their death throes. Another questioner asked why skeptics have to be depicted as dumb in shows with supernatural or paranormal phenomena, rather than showing them change their minds when presented with overwhelming evidence of these things.

Anti-anti-vaccination Panel
Steven Novella, David Gorski, Joe Albietz, Harriet Hall, Michael Goudeau, and Derek Bartholomaus made up the panel to criticize the anti-vaccination movement. Novella began by recounting the Andrew Wakefield case, a study published in Lancet allegedly connecting measles/mumps/rubella (MMR) vaccination with harmful effects in children, which subsequently turned out to be a thoroughly bogus study ("if I can use that word," he said, referring to the Simon Singh lawsuit). But that study caused a decline in MMR vaccination in the UK, and a corresponding leap in news cases of measles, mumps, and rubella. When Novella blogged about this, journalist David Kirby contacted him and argued that thimerosol (sodium ethylmercurithiosalicylate), was the issue. Novella read Kirby's book arguing that thimerosol causes autism, Evidence of Harm, and did 3-4 months of research. (Novella's Skeptical Inquirer article on the subject is here; a reply to Kirby on Novella's blog is here.) He said Kirby's book was a terrible piece of journalism but a good collection of data sources to start with. By 2005 there was strong evidence of no link between thimerosol and autism. Novella's panel intro is now on YouTube here; Dr. Joe Albietz's talk is on YouTube here.

Back in 2002, thimerosol had already been removed from routine vaccine schedules, and Kirby said that autism rates would subsequently plummet to pre-1990 levels. Novella said no, If I'm right it will continue to increase until it hits some ceiling--and the autism rates have continued to rise for the last four years. Kirby moved the goalposts for his prediction out to 2007 and then to 2008, but there is no more room to move them now, said Novella--thimerosol is demonstrably not the cause of autism.

Novella said that the antivax movement has grown as evidence has accumulated against them, spearheaded by promotion by Jenny McCarthy and Generation Rescue.

David Gorski talked about how "I'm not antivaccine" is the biggest lie of the antivaxers. They will say things like (quoting Jenny McCarthy), "I'm not anti-vaccine, I'm pro-safe vaccine. I'm anti-toxin." Examples of people making such statements include Jenny McCarthy, Dr. Jay Gordon, a frequent visitor to Gorski's blog, and J.B. Handley, the founder of Generation Rescue.

He quoted a statement from Jenny McCarthy saying that mercury, the "second worst neurotoxin in history" is injected into children, but noted that she's not so anti-toxin as to avoid injecting the worst neurotoxin, botox, into her face. He also noted that despite claiming not to be anti-vaccine, she has also said, "If I had another child, I wouldn't vaccinate at all. Never, not ever."

Claimed toxins in vaccines include aluminum, ether, and mercury. Generation Rescue claimed in 2005 that autism is a misdiagnosis of mercury poisoning, then they've shifted to being caused by heavy metals, to being caused by toxins, to being caused by too many vaccines, too soon--but it's always about the vaccines.

Gorski suggested the following questions for those who say they are not anti-vaccine, yet are still challenging vaccines in this way:

1. You say you want safer vaccines. By what measure?
2. What toxins would you remove? What's the evidence for toxicity?
3. What evidence would it take to persuade you that vaccinations are safe with respect to the risk of the disease (i.e., using the vaccines saves significantly more lives than not using the vaccines)?

Dr. Joe Albietz then spoke on how every major medical breakthrough and development to save lives pales in comparison to vaccination. This was a powerful talk that I'd like to see turned into a viral vaccination video for YouTube.

Smallpox vaccine has saved over 300 million lives. In 1967, a global eradication campaign was begun, at an estimated cost of $10M-$15M/year over 31 countries. After ten years--in 1979--the disease was officially eradicated at an expense of about $23M/year.

Dr. Albietz presented a list of vaccine-preventable diseases, and noted the number of incidents per year before and after the vaccines. For just the top ten diseases, over 1.1 million lives per year have been saved from disease by vaccination.

He noted that polio and measles are scheduled for eradication. In 2008, the number of cases was 1,652, which amounts to over 5 million cases of paralysis prevented. Measles used to be the second leading cause of infectious disease death, killing 1 million children per year. The goal is to reduce measles cases by 90% by 2010, which will probably be missed.

The anti-vax movement not only affects the lives of children who are not vaccinated, the reduction of the rate of vaccination reduces the herd immunity of the population, making it more likely that even those who are vaccinated will get the disease.

Dr. Harriett Hall spoke on "Two False Alarms," which gave much more detail about Andrew Wakefield and Neil Halsey. She began by talking about Andrew Wakefield's 1998 Lancet paper on MMR vaccines, which used no controls and had an honest conclusion ("we did not prove a link"), but Wakefield called a press conference saying that the MMR vaccine should be stopped and made into separate vaccines--without disclosing that he had just filed a patent for such single vaccines. This resulted in measles again becoming endemic in the UK, Wakefield's study was retracted after problems were found in it, and Wakefield was exposed as unethical. He had been hired by a lawyer to find a link between vaccination and some harm in order to sue drug companies, and was paid 500,000 pounds for the purpose. His study was performed on the children of plaintiffs in the legal case, there was no ethics committee approval, and he didn't disclose his conflicts of interest.

Neal Halsey raised warnings about thimerosol, which contains ethyl mercury. We knew that methyl mercury can cause problems, but not ethyl mrcury. Experiments on adults with amounts 20,000 times higher than in thimerosol in vaccines have caused no symptoms of mercury poisoning. Halsey didn't raise autism as a concern, just mercury poisoning, but two mothers of autistic children who learned of his claims decided, incorrectly, that the symptoms of mercury poisoning were the same as the symptoms of autism. Today 2/3 of the U.S. population incorrectly think that mercury causes autism.

Michael Goudeau, juggler in Lance Burton's Las Vegas show and writer for Penn & Teller's Bullshit!, briefly spoke about his experience as a parent of an autistic child, and pointed out in his closing statement that nobody can hold up a healthy kid and say "Look, my kid got vaccinated and didn't get autism." But maybe, he suggested, the parents of those whose children get measles, mumps, or rubella as a result of the spread of the disease from unvaccinated children can effectively raise that issue. He said that Andrew Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy are assholes, and you shouldn't base your opinions on the science of celebrities (or jugglers).

Derek Bartholomaus spoke about how he decided to try to find the "Jenny McCarthy body count"--the number of preventable deaths and illnesses caused by non-vaccination--as a result of hearing Steven Novella make references to such a body count on the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast. He announced his website, jennymccarthybodycount.com, on Twitter and Facebook three months ago, and it has received tremendous traffic as a result of links from the Pharyngula, Bad Astronomy, and Respectful Insolence blogs.

In the Q&A, Hal Bidlack said "my wife died of cancer, and I'm still angry at her surgical oncologist. I understand these people--does calling them stupid help?" Dr. Novella said that Jenny McCarthy needs to be called out on her misinformation, but the rank and file are victims and we have nothing but sympathy for them--our interpretation of the evidence is diametrically opposed. Dr. Gorski said that it's human nature to want to blame someone. A child born with a disability is painful, but they shouldn't be allowed to use that as a shield against criticism--but they do it because it's effective.

Another questioner asked whether Oprah can be made aware that there is a Jenny McCarthy body count to try to put a stop to McCarthy's TV show. Dr. Gorski suggested that giving McCarthy her own show might have been "a woo too far" provoking blowback in the form of criticism of Oprah such as appeared in Newsweek.

One questioner whose sister is a pediatrician in L.A. said she sees the most resistance to vaccination from high-income people in Beverly Hills. Dr. Albietz said you're 23 times more likely to get whooping cough if not vaccinated, and that he sees nonreligious vaccine refusal as the top reason for children not being vaccinated, but others are still not being vaccinated due to poverty and lack of access, which was the reason for TAM7's vaccination drive.

Another questioner asked if anyone had heard of an increase of cases of polio in India due to anti-vaccination superstition. Dr. Novella said that there were rumors of polio vaccine being tainted with AIDS in Nigeria, which resulted in an outbreak of polio due to lack of vaccination. Harriet Hall said that there were antivaxers back at the beginning of the smallpox eradication effort, but it was nothing like the current scale of opposition.

Someone asked whether we're just speaking in an echo chamber, or is someone working to craft a media message. Dr. Albietz pointed out the Rethinking Autism videos, and observed that we should bring the fight to every front that the anti-vaccination movement uses.

Anti-vaccination is being pushed by chiropractors and practitioners of alternative medicine, observed another questioner, and it won't stop until we stop them. How can we do that? Dr. Hall said that she reported a homeopath to the Department of Homeland Security, since he claimed to be making homeopathic smallpox vaccine, which requires access to smallpox. Dr. Gorski said that we're also combatting the view that natural is better, that getting a disease naturally is a better outcome than vaccinating and not getting the disease. Dr. Albietz pointed out that you cannot strengthen your immune system any better than by vaccinating, and that the keyelements of vaccines are natural ingredients. Dr. Hall observed that delaying the vaccine schedule is based on the misguided idea that it will lessen negative impact to immune systems, when in fact vaccinations promote immune response.

In closing, Dr. Gorski said that most antivax parents are probably persuadable, but he fears that the return of vaccine-preventable diseases will be what it takes to persuade them. Dr. Novella said that if anything is going to help mitigate the problem, it is probably going to come from the people in the room.

Joe Nickell on Bigfoot and Aliens
Joe Nickell gave a visual travelogue of photos of Bigfoot-related signs and places in the Pacific northwest, which included all sorts of Bigfoot-related oddities. The Bigfoot Highway, the Bigfoot Museum at Willow Creek, Bigfoot Rafting, Bigfoot Ave., Little Foot Ct., Bigfoot Breakfast, Bigfoot Motel, Bigfoot Crossing signs, Bigfoot Burger, Bigfoot Books (with big selection of books on bigfoot, as expected). He showed murals of Bigfoot, Bigfoot chainsaw sculptures, and Bigfoot statues. A lot of it was tongue-in-cheek, but some was serious and some included religious elements--he observed that some think that Bigfoot is supernatural.

He covered aliens and UFOs in a similar manner, starting with photos of Roswell, the Mac Brazel ranch house, and the famous photo of Jesse Marcel and the pieces of foil, sticks, tape, and rubber. He did an experiment with boxkite-like devices (corner reflectors) on a train attached to a weather balloon, that was shot down to see what the wreckage looked like. He also discussed Alien Autopsy "fakelore" and showed a timeline of alien evolution. Hypnagogic experiences that used to be reported as ghosts or demons are now commonly reported as aliens.

In both the cases of aliens and Bigfoot, he sees them as mythical creatures, and remarked that Bigfoot seems to be used as something like an "eco-messiah." Aliens have also been used in the employ of environmental causes.

In the Q&A, the first question was why there seems to be a rise in alien abduction claims, rather than UFO sightings, and whether this might be related to the rise of camera phones. (If I can reconstruct the reasoning, I think the issue is that there are more people out there with cameras at all times, yet fewer UFO sightings, while if there were really alien spacecraft, you'd expect more successful photographs. But if it's more of a psychological or mythical phenomenon, then perhaps it transforms to fit the evidence.) Nickell responded by observing that alien stories have evolved and continue to change. In my notes I commented that there seems to be a shift in the UFO community from "alien spacecraft" to "another reality" as an explanation of UFOs, and even some creationists have gotten in on the latter sort of view with the claim that UFOs are demonic influences. That view was expressed by Norman Geisler's testimony in the McLean v. Arkansas creationism case back in 1981, and has more recently been propounded by Gary Bates of the Australia-based Creation Ministries International.

That concluded the regular conference programming for Friday, July 10.

Saturday continued with a very special Skeptics Guide to the Universe recording session, Michael Shermer, and Adam Savage, summarized in part four.

The Voyage That Shook the World

I finally had a chance today to watch the Creation Ministries International-funded film, "The Voyage That Shook the World." It's a 52-minute, professionally produced docu-drama. The cinematography is excellent, and there are high-quality graphics and effects. There's not a whole lot of acting to judge--most of it appears for visual effect during narration or interview voice-overs--but I saw nothing to criticize in that regard.

The documentary content itself starts off reasonably, with the only initial hint that this might not be a mainstream production being the emphasis put on Darwin "making up stories" as a child. The first experts to appear are professional historians. Apart from H.M.S. Beagle having the wrong number of masts (two instead of three), I didn't notice any obvious mistakes in the history, though I'm no expert.

Where it first veers into creationist territory is when the narration starts talking about Charles Lyell's influence on Darwin, with regard to uniformitarianism and "deep time," and it makes an odd assertion that the great age of the earth was a settled question in Darwin's time, unlike today. That's an odd assertion since the age of the earth is overwhelmingly confirmed by science today, and there is no scientific debate about the earth being about 4.5 billion years old. (Particularly odd was that this remark came from historian Peter Bowler, I believe, which makes me wonder about the original context of his remark.)

Several creationists and intelligent design advocates appear, though they are not identified as such. A CMI web page about the film does show who's who, but this is perhaps the most deceptive aspect of the film--using on-screen credential identification that puts recognized experts with well-established reputations on a par with relative unknowns without established reputations. For example, creationist Rob Carter is identified on-screen by where he earned his Ph.D. and as "marine biologist and geneticist," but he has no academic appointment, a scant publication record, and works for CMI. Stuart Burgess is identified as "Design & Nature, Bristol University" but he's a mechanical engineering professor at Bristol University. (UPDATE: Note that Burgess' title is, in fact, Professor of Design and Nature.) Emil Silvestru is identified by his Ph.D. and as a "geologist and speleologist," but he works full-time for CMI. Cornelius Hunter of the Discovery Institute is identified by his Ph.D. and as "molecular biophysicist and author" when he is an adjunct professor of biophysics at Biola University. That institution was originally known as the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, founded in 1908 by Lyman Stewart of Standard Oil, the guy who funded the publication and distribution of The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth, from which fundamentalism gets its name. I consider this to be a deceptive equation of expertise, for which the film deserves criticism. (I gave the same criticism to "The Incredible Discovery of Noah's Ark," which used the same technique to equate creationists with little or no reputation with recognized experts.)

Creationist Emil Silvestru argues for a young earth and for the creation of geological features by catastrophic flood, though I noticed he mentioned "a flood" and not "the flood" at first, and while he mentioned the Channeled Scablands of eastern Washington as having been cut rapidly by catastrophic forces (true), he did not make the common grossly mistaken creationist assertion that this is how the Grand Canyon was formed. Silvestru also makes a polystrate tree fossil argument for rapid deposition (which may well be the case in the particular instance, but is not generally the explanation for polystrate tree fossils).

The creationism starts out fairly subtly in the film, with the remarks about the age of the earth, and at one points sets up a novel opposition between two views:

Science	Religion
Gradual change Fixity of species Old earth	Rapid catastrophic change Mutability of species Young earth

The film argues that Darwin was misled by his reliance on Lyell's worldview to initially miss the evidence for natural selection in the Galapagos islands, when he didn't bother labeling the finches he collected, and the film clearly asserts that species change can occur, even across genera (between which hybridization may also be possible), though it avoids addressing the potential implications for humans and other primates. The film suggests that the religious view is that the wide diversity and geographic dispersal of living things emerged in the last few thousand years since the flood of Noah, which entails a rapidity of evolution that evolutionary scientists would reject as implausible. I believe the film's offered cases of rapid morphological changes in finch beak sizes are correct, along with its cases of hybridization that include hybrids between land and marine iguanas in the Galapagos. CMI creationist Robert Carter asserts that this is evidence of a young age of the Galapagos islands, because otherwise all the species would have mixed rather than being distinct, rather than concluding, for example, that some of these species are reproductively isolated and others aren't. I almost had the impression that I was witnessing the evolution of a new form of creationism-as-hyperevolution, that required special creation only because a young earth didn't allow enough time to generate the diversity of current life on earth.

But then more standard creationism begins to emerge, with arguments that there are limits (or "apparent limits") to biological change, "as any pigeon breeder knows," and that it is impossible for evolution to generate new information. Finnish creationist biochemist Matti Leisola asserts that random mutation cannot generate new information or novel structures, and that introducing randomness "causes information to disappear" and we only see new information arise from intelligent sources. He doesn't explain what notion of information he's using, but randomness does generate new information, and new information has been observed to appear in the lab, as well as in computer simulations using genetic algorithms. Leisola goes on to say that genetic engineering originally promised the ability to make arbitrary changes to organisms, but now promises much less--we can create bacteria that produce insulin, but we can't change bacteria into anything but bacteria. I wonder what Leisola would think of this?

The film is right that a role for catastrophes has been found in geology (but not to the exclusion of mostly uniformitarian processes over very long periods of time, such as evidenced in the Grand Canyon), and for bursts of rapid biological change, as well as that biology has been found to be more complex than originally suspected. However, these discoveries, made by evolutionary scientists, have not generated support for the creationist worldview, which has been remarkable for its lack of scientific fruitfulness. This points out another failing of the film, which is its complete omission of the overwhelming evidence in support of the common ancestry of all life on earth, the evidence of the great age of the earth, and the evidence of human evolution.

At one point, the film touches on Darwin's racism, and suggests that this is because of his evolutionary views, as opposed to religion which teaches the common origins of all human beings from Adam and Eve. But both views teach common ancestry of all human beings, and there was no scarcity of racist religious believers in the mid-19th century. The Bible offers no word of condemnation of slavery and both explicitly and implicitly elevates some people over others, with the Hebrews as the "chosen people" and descriptions of God ordering genocide and the taking of slaves. The Southern Baptist Convention in the U.S. owes its existence to a split with the Northern Baptists over the issue of slavery--the Southern Baptists were for it. The dichotomy of evolution-supporting racists vs. religious creationist non-racists is a false one.

Near the end of the film, the film points out that in Darwin's time, science was just beginning to emerge from philosophy, and argues that Darwin's project was philosophical and anti-religious as much as it was scientific. Philosopher Alvin Plantinga argues onscreen that Bertrand Russell's idea that we should only believe what is established by scientific evidence is a self-undermining thesis, since it is not a scientific statement, but a piece of philosophy or even theology. I think Plantinga is probably right that we can ultimately never avoid the need for philosophical argument, but he probably underestimates the degree to which philosophy can be "naturalized" and scientific evidence brought to bear on historically philosophical problems.

The conclusion of the film states that there are opposing views of evolution and creation, and that "some suggest that they can coexist, but Darwin himself resisted this position." (I guess this is one case where the filmmakers want you to believe Darwin, in his opposition to accomodationism between evolution and religion.) The final statement of the film is that questions about how we came to be here and why we are here refuse to go away.

In all, the film is somewhat better than I expected it would be, and the film itself could be described as trying to hide its own creationism, probably in hopes of working like a Trojan horse. I hope that its effect will be to encourage the children of creationists to become interested in scientific questions, as it does depict scientific research and discovery in a largely positive light. If it does, then some of them will come to discover for themselves the facts about evolution and creationism, perhaps with the assistance of online sites like the TalkOrigins archive.

UPDATE (August 2, 2009): I've received emails from Carl Wieland of CMI and from Steve Murray, the director of the film, offering a bit of additional explanation and rebuttal. First, the remark from Peter Bowler about dispute over the age of the earth was apparently regarding the fact that there was no young-earth creationist movement at the time of Darwin like there is today, and no indication that Bowler intended to suggest that there is a scientific dispute over the age of the earth today--as commenter Physicalist suspected. Second, Steve Murray pointed out that he was aware that the ship used didn't have the same number of masts as the Beagle, but they went with what they could find close to the size of the Beagle in Tasmania, and generally tried to hide the differences in how they shot the film. Third, both disclaimed any attempt to be deceptive in choice of on-screen credentials. Finally, Steve Murray chose the on-screen credit for Cornelius Hunter based on the fact that he learned of his work and selected him to be in the film based on his books.

UPDATE (November 30, 2010): A different version of the above review, co-authored with John Lynch, will appear in vol. 30 of Reports of the National Center for Science Education and is on their website.

UPDATE (June 2, 2011): The film's claim about Darwin taking the idea of natural selection from Edward Blyth is rather decisively and completely refuted by Joel S. Schwartz, "Charles Darwin's Debt to Malthus and Edward Blyth," Journal of the History of Biology vol. 7, no. 2, Autumn 1974, pp. 301-318, online at http://www.jstor.org/stable/4330617.

Anthony Watts abuses DMCA to suppress criticism

Anthony Watts, a radio meteorologist who has collected evidence of badly sited weather stations to argue that climate change data is incorrect, was the subject of Peter Sinclair's latest Climate Change Crock of the Week video. Rather than attempt to refute the criticism (which would be difficult--both "good" and "bad" weather stations show the same long-term temperature trends), Watts resorted to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to get Sinclair's video taken offline. Watts doesn't hold copyright on television footage he appears in on Glenn Beck's show, which has been used in fair use excerpts, anyway.

But the video is back, and you can see it for yourself here.



(Via Pharyngula.)

UPDATE: As Rich Trott points out, Watts has replied here. He says that the basis of his copyright complaint is that the video shows the cover of and photographs and graphs from his book, but doesn't say why he thinks the video exceeds fair use. He says that the NCDC's response to his data (a) used out-of-date data and (b) used a process guaranteed to have two similar graphs, by taking a weighted average of the good and bad station reports even in the line reported as just the good stations.

This is not exactly correct--there is a correction for urban heating that does use nearby station data, but even if you do not perform the urban heating adjustment step, you STILL get two graphs with essentially the same trend. (This was indirectly linked to in my previous post on this subject, through my link to the Daily Doubt blog of frequent commenter Hume's Ghost.)

UPDATE (August 10, 2009): Climate Progress points out the inanity of Watts' defense of his DMCA abuse, observing that he's suggesting copyright infringement on the basis of a few graphs and images shown from his book, which is given away for free in PDF form on the Internet. So not only was Sinclair well within fair use based on the amount and substantiality of material used, there's no chance that Sinclair's video could possibly have had any adverse effect on the commercial market for Watts' book, since there isn't one.