As a scientist, let me be the first in this discussion to say "Thank You". As a whole, I would like to think that our training would help us to remain impartial on many of these issues. However, there are those who maintain biases, so we are not pure as a group. However, the vast majority of us strive for truth and discovery and that is reflected in the steady progress of both scientific knowledge and technological progress. Sure there will be times when science fails us or when individuals like Hwang Woo Suk deceive for personal gain/power, but as you said, the scientific method helps to reveal the truth in many of the same ways as journalism.



We have our own method for determining the veracity of claims from our own ranks and that is reproducibility. Journalism has its methods as well from investigative journalists. But politics?



To those who live by deception and selfish grabs for power.....the fields of science and journalism will discover you and reveal you for who you are.

Glad you liked my rant, sir! Though I'd also point out that the field of journalism has no methodology anywhere near as self-correcting and rigorous as the scientific method. I wish it did! Cheats and liars do get caught out fairly often, but the problem right now is that the definition of "journalism" itself seems have to grown to include ideologically-based and faith-based assertions of facts, devoid of any actual proof, or even in flagrant contradiction of generally-agreed-upon facts. (I'm thinking mostly of talk radio and TV.)

First, there's a fun article in Harper's this month (February 2006) written by Darwin's great-great-grandson: sticking out like a sore thumb in Dover, he covered the entire "Of Pandas and People" trial. The story doesn't offer too many new and exciting facts, but it brings that sort of pleasure that so many Harper's articles offer -- that always satisfying pat on one's back.

Now, Clive, I think that your point about journalistic self-correction is dead on (particularly in terms of TV and talk radio). I wonder, though, what an appropriate "watchdog" might look like? There are dozens of websites that keep radio and TV hosts in line -- I'm thinking of "Media Matters," for instance -- but the problem with those sites is, I think, the shift in media. Paper journalists who call eachother on their problems tend to do it in the same space as the original sham-journalist: the NY Times, for instance, wrote about Jayson Blair (sp?) in the same pages that Blair embarrassed. That's why these corrections are so effective, I think. But does Media Matters actually make a difference? (I hate to ask that question.) When Bill O'Reilly says something ridiculous on TV, can a website be an adequate corrective? I guess there's the case of Dan Rather being taken-down by bloggers . . .

I really enjoyed your post, and I also concur with BWJones. However, I disagree with you when you said this:

"In science, it doesn't matter how much you believe something is true, or how ardently you proclaim it; you have to prove it....What's more, in science, if you make an honest mistake -- and, without deceit, propose a theory that winds up being proven false -- there's no shame in it. Indeed, that's precisely how science works."

Not that I agree with it in principal, it just so happens that it doesn't actually work that way 100% of the time. Given that people invest years of their lives in their research, they become very invested personally in its outcome. People do feel shame if they feel somehow they are wrong, and so often they choose to stick to the beleif of their theories, rather than let the evidence change their beleifs.

I find it so funny though that people are so concerned about the honesty of scientists, and whether or not they are lying, yet seem totally complacent with the transparent dishonesty of their politicians. I suppose in the post-modern world people expect their politicians to be liars, but they hold their scientists to a different standard.

As for Andrew's comment, I wonder if The Daily Show has become a journalistic watchdog of sorts. It almost seems to have garnered credibility in that role, as Jon Stewart may have had a direct impact on the cancelation of Crossfire on CNN. If enough people start paying attention to satire, than does it become legitimate criticism?

Further to the concept of "concealing political motivations" which are broadcast by ID advocates to their followers, one could look at the so-called "Wedge" strategy [http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html] for further detail.

The tricky balance that must be considered, however, is the "legitimation of the debate" that ID claims to achieve when criticism and attention are directed to their policies. Naturally, this is an issue that must be discussed broadly (after all, challenges to evolution have arisen in over 40 states, according to the president of the National Academy of Sciences in the USA - http://www.nasonline.org/site/PageServer?JServSessionIdr006=y7rdiszeb1.app5a&pagename=NEWS_letter_president_03042005_BA_evolution).

However, the linked letter from the NAS president also indicates how the NY Times hosted an op-ed by Michael Behe, an ID thinker, the week after a critical article appeared in that paper. This sort of even-handedness makes this disagreement look like a debate, though it certainly seems inappropriate to conceive of it that way. How to address this issue of "legitimation," then? Scientific arguments don't necessarily hold a lot of weight with the uninterested or uninformed. (The most evocative to date, if entirely unlikely, was the flip suggestion that anyone who receives a 'flu shot has to sign an declaration that they now support evolution, since they have now benefited from the application of its theory.)

Although I have no desire to defend the parties you have attacked in this post, your rose-tinted description of science is more poetic than pragmatic.

"In science, it doesn't matter how much you believe something is true, or how ardently you proclaim it; you have to prove it."

This is a wonderfully lyrical description of some Platonic version of science. The ideal of science is much as you say... However, so much of modern science is playing so far from the overtly testable that belief is actually much more significant. As Popper observed, falsification of a hypothesis is a matter of choice on the part of the scientists involved. There is no way yet to construct a machine to arbitrate scientific truth: the beliefs of scientists and the scientific community determine the dominant paradigms (in Kuhn's terminology).

Another side of science you wistfully overlook is the factional political infighting inside the scientific community which can take place on a scale that can make national and international politics seem simple! :) This happens both in the global scientific community, as the majority form the consensus that defines the beliefs of the current orthodox paradigm, and on a micro-scale in every University faculty as scientists scrabble and fight for the limited resources afforded to them.

Although I am largely pro-science, and come from a scientific background (having been on three different science degree courses), I find your staunchly pro-science view often requires me to take an anti-science stance in order to restore some semblance of balance! :)

Take care!

Andrew, good point -- I actually think that satire media may well be the self-correcting mechanism of today's media. Though as even Jon Stewart has said, satire is pretty toothless when it comes to defanging power. As he told Rolling Stone, some of most powerful politicians and media organs were roundly mocked in their times, to no avail. What people fear these days is not being mocked but being ignored; being mocked is a symptom of power, not a reduction of power.

Steve, Chris -- yes, of course I'm being wilfully idealistic in this post. But keep in mind that I'm mostly praising the scientific method, which, in an abstract Platonic sense, is indeed a truly fabulous thing. As to the question of how that method is actually practised? Sure, there's plenty of chicanery, turf wars, and politcking amongst scientists. To say nothing of flat-out ideological blinkering, as anyone who's read Kuhn or Latour would know. And then there's also, as you point out, the ongoing march of increasingly untestable hypthoses, particularly in areas such as theoretical physics.

That said, the scientific method is a sufficiently cool self-correcting apparatus that it is one the few engines of genuine progress in human affairs. Chicanery has never managed to permanently halt it.

I was struck by the honesty of Douglas Melton's response too. But I think you have a point, Clive - as a scientist, about the worst thing that can happen to you professionally is that you are found out to be lying. (What happens when a politician lies and is caught out? They sure as hell don't lose their jobs.) If Melton had said, "Yeah, we thought Hwang was kind of wonky and we didn't believe his work," you can bet that some of his grad students or colleagues would be, "Wait a minute - he didn't say anything of the sort at the time." It wouldn't be the kiss of death or anything, but his credibility among his peers would probably have taken a serious hit - and if you're a scientist, credibility is what you've got.