There's a lot of talk at the moment about the debate between evolutionary biologist Richard Lenski, and Andrew Schlafly of Conservapedia, about so-called "missing data". A good summary of it is up at RationalWiki (read it if you're not familiar with this affair), but I don't want to retread what others have gone over already. Instead I want to explain why many of the science bloggers attacking Schlafly have, in my opinion, missed the point a bit, and failed to understand what it is that the spawn of Phyllis is actually trying to achieve.
Ames at Submitted to a Candid World reported a couple of days ago that Andrew Schlafly is threatening to sue Lenski for the missing data. Of course, he won't, because any such action would force the Prince of the Conservapedes to actually define in exact terms the data that he believes Lenski is keeping secret, and why they are relevent - something which Schlafly has only vaguely attempted.
To those arguing against Schlafly, the understanding of science he demonstrates is so obviously poor that they feel the debate is won before it starts, but what they've failed to realize is that Schlafly didn't start this to have a debate about evolutionary biology. To understand what he's really doing, we need to look at the example of Big Tobacco.
It was pretty easy for science to prove that cigarette smoke was harmful, and tobacco companies realized very early on that there was no way they could dispute the reams of scientific data being published on the links between smoking and health. What the lobbyists realized - and have since applied to climate change - is that if you can't beat the science, you can at least undermine it. Based on that philosophy they launched an effective guerilla war based on spreading confusion about the science in peoples' minds - making it seem less clear-cut and reliable than it really was.
It is exactly this tactic that Schlafly is applying now. He doesn't give a damn about the scientific debate, or the response of science bloggers. The Pharyngulas (and Lay Scientists) of this world are largely ineffective when it comes to reaching beyond the choir they preach to, and are hardly a threat. No, what Schlafly is trying to do is to create and spread the meme that scientists conceal data, and can't be trusted. He's not attacking science, but faith in science.
The one thing Andrew Schlafly is, is persistant. Science Bloggers like P.Z. at Pharyngula and Ames at Candid World may be premature when they triumphantly announce that we've won this debate, or "pwned" Conservapedia (lol), because it seems that Phyllis Jr. isn't actually trying to debate them - that's simply not his objective. His plan is to sow confusion by spreading the meme that scientists are untrustworthy and secretive. In 6 months time, we'll all be off writing about how President Obama is turning into the next George W. Bush, but Schlafly will still be cultivating his insidious little meme. We won't know whether Schlafly has succeeded or not in this little enterprise for months or even years to come.
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Edit: Ames has an excellent reply to this post here.
http://layscience.net/trackback/170
The Lenski Affair: When Will the Evolution Concern Troll Brigade
from Mike the Mad Biologist on Mon, 07/07/2008 - 01:10I'm surprised that I haven't seen a spate of posts from certain quarters proclaiming that the Lenski-Schlafly dustup is good for creationists.
Conservapedia & Distrust of Science: When You Needn’t
from Submitted to a Candid World on Sun, 07/06/2008 - 22:33Our friend the Lay Scientist is getting some well-deserved diggs for this assessment of Andy Schlafly’s gambit in the Lenski affair, a.k.a., When Homeschoolers Attack. L.S. (as he shall henceforth be known) theorizes that Schlafly needn’t...
"In 6 months time, we'll all be off writing about how President Obama is turning into the next George W. Bush..."
Aw jeez, I sure hope not... By the way, have you written any other posts addressing this rather gloomy prediction? (Not to distract from the point here, I was just wondering.)
In any case, you have a good point. Obviously Schlafly never wanted to debate the science, but you've pretty well determined specifically what he otherwise hopes to achieve (if anything).
On the positive side: Andy's audience is actually incredibly small, so even this debacle will do rather little to spread his message (as it will primarily interest science-types anyway).
On the negative side: he's not the only one doing so. Distrust in science (or rather, "liberal, atheistic science") is a notion promoted subtly by the far-right for some time now. And many of those have a much larger audience than Conservapedia does. I'm really not sure what the solution is, though. Try to inspire a love of real science into children? So that they're motivated to explore and ask questions themselves, intead of simply either trusting or not trusting scientists?
I dunno.
Ha ha, actually I do intend to break out a post about Obama. I'm a bit uneasy about the fawning going on in the blogosphere at the moment - remember that in 1996, Tony Blair was Britain's Obama...
Andy's audience itself is small (as I blogged on myself recently, and as RationalWiki neatly summarize). That said, he doesn't need a big audience himself as long as he can push this meme hard enough to give it legs...
How to defeat it, I really don't know. If I did, I'd have said, lol :P It's a tactic that is worryingly effective when used by professional lobbyists. That said, I think Lenski's approach was good and open.
Martin is the editor of layscience.net.
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Even Andy's own editors have distanced themselves from this one. You know you're in trouble when Uncommon Descent blogging comes out against you. It's clear that Andy is on a Heffalump hunt and he's pretty much lost in the woods.
I wouldn't worry. He may be persistent but is he effective? History suggests otherwise.
Well the acid test will be whether this meme gets picked up by any other groups. Other creationist sites have tackled the subject of Lenski - notably you can see a rebuttal on the Answers in Genesis news page - but so far none have suggested hidden data.
If this does fail to get picked up, to my mind it would demonstrate the failure of the medium (Conservapedia) rather than a failure of the idea. In that case I wonder if Andy will realize this, and start to lose his motivation to maintain such a ridiculously inefficient propaganda tool.
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VERY good. Linking :-) -
Appreciated, many thanks Ames :)
Martin is the editor of layscience.net.
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We've seen the tactic you describe many times. Big tobacco is one example. DDT another, as outlined by Andrew Leonard earlier this year at Salon:
http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2008/05/15/steve_milloy_and_rachel_carson/
I'm not sure why I didn't make the connection with Schlafly's intent before seeing your article. But you've convinced me... and I've written it up at my blog (scroll down to the second update):
http://3dsoundblog.com/2008/07/01/intimidation-of-scientists-a-new-creat...
Regards, 3D
Cheers.
To be honest, I think a lot of people just look at a crank like Schlafly, and they assume that he's a dribbling idiot who can't tie his shoelaces in the morning. Maybe he is, and maybe the strategy I describe isn't what he's intentionally doing, but never underestimate what sheer bloody-mindedness, obsession and stubbornness can achieve over time.
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Really good stuff keep it up! Loving the site.
Tom - Author and Salon Software guru
Really good stuff keep it up! Loving the site.
Tom - Author and Salon Software guru