Two Heads are Better than One

The November 25, 2005 issue of science (Vol. 310) contains a short article entitled ‘Two Views Better Than One?’ The first thing that really leapt out at me about this article was the question mark. I believe that reveals the typical combination of fear and patronization that marks modern sciences relation to the larger public. At some level it’s a shock to discover someone in the modern world has the contrary view – should anyone in science really question whether two views are better than one? The article proceeds to briefly describe what is apparently to the writer the startling result that two views may actually be better than one.

Freshmen biology majors at Central Washington University in Ellensburg were divided into four sections. In two, arguments both for (uncontrolled) evolution and intelligent design (controlled evolution) were presented. In the other, arguments were only presented in favor of uncontrolled evolution. At the end of the semester, the students were asked to classify their beliefs before and after the course. In results that the writer of the article apparently finds counterintuitive, those that received the greater amount of information shifted their beliefs further in favor of materialism, and had a greater acceptance of evolution. Among those that were only presented evidence from one side of the debate, far fewer changed their position.

Shouldn’t that be the expected results? I find it hard to imagine that if the reverse result had been achieved, that the writer of the article would have entitled it “One View Better Than Two?” with a question mark. The would almost have certainly put a period at the end of the statement as if it was established scientific fact from this one experiment alone, if in fact they did not go so far as to say something like, “Presenting More than One View Dangerous to Young People’s Minds!” and turn it into a full ten page expose bashing intelligent design.

Craig Nelson of Indiana University writes that the study provides “powerful evidence” that directly engaging students’ beliefs, rather than ignoring them may be an effective way to teach evolution. Much as I’m in favor of the accumulation of scientific evidence, you wouldn’t think that they’d need a study to demonstrate this. Isn’t directly engaging students rather than ignoring them usually a better way to teach, regardless of what you are teaching? Isn’t vigorous but respectful debate and the free exchange of ideas usually the best way to convince someone of the merit of your ideas? So why are scientists of all people afraid to engage in this debate? Why do they need to hush up, mock, ridicule, and make straw man arguments out of the views of the other side? If they are convinced of the truth and that they have it, why don’t they present the facts to people and trust people to make up their own minds instead of acting like some sort of religious hierarchy desperate to suppress heretical views that might endanger its grip on power? Whether they know it or not, that sort of behavior is noted, and the public audience is in my opinion pretty darn sophisticated. The public recognizes when it is being ignored, patronized, and mocked and it (rightly I think) holds that attitude against the scientific community, with the result that the public unfortunately reflexively discounts the arguments being made to it. It recognizes the fear and anger in the scientific community and it interprets from that fear that science is a weak position to be holding in the debate.

That lack of courage is evident in the conclusion. Rather than suggesting something merited by the science like maybe that this should have some influence on public policy and how teachers are prepared or how students are taught, or even just that further study is required to verify the results in more general cases, the writers immediately move to belittle the importance of their own results. The article concludes, “But he agrees with evolutionary geneticist Jerry Cone of the University of Chicago that this strategy wouldn’t be appropriate for high school students, who says Cone, “are not intellectually equipped to deal with such a controversy.” That is not a scientific conclusion. That hasn’t been tested. It’s not even intuitive. There is not a whole lot of emotional and intellectual difference between a high school student taking biology and a freshmen in college taking biology. It doesn’t seem to me very likely that one or two years would make a big difference in the outcome of an experiment grounded in such an obvious principle as the free exchange of ideas tends to lead one to a better defined, better reasoned position. But, Nelson and Cone must defend the position of the scientific orthodoxy regardless of the fact that it has no scientific support and is directly contrary to their own evidence. We can only hope that they aren’t doing so to avoid being shunned, denounced as a heretic, or to avoid having to deal with the import of their own work. If you want a career in biology, you know that you don’t say anything that might be perceived as providing even tangential support to the arguments of the intelligent designers. I believe the statement of Nelson and Cone about high school students reveals what is in fact their underlying assumption – they don’t believe the general public is intellectually equipped to deal with such a controversy. The scientific orthodoxy has adopted the position of an aristocrat clergy dispensing truths to the masses.

If scientists want to find someone to blame for the degradation of respect for science and for the practice of science, I don’t think we have any where to look but ourselves. Hard as it may be to back down from a fight, the scientific community must back down from this adversarial relationship it has adopted with the general public. Science must evidence some good faith both in the public and in what the evidence we have forces us to believe if we expect the public to in good faith weigh and listen to our arguments.

Behind this whole issue, at the level of root causes, I think science has found itself increasingly wedded to some unscientific positions it really has no business being involved in. An uninformed observer might conclude that the debate between evolution and intelligent design was entirely one of rationality versus faith, or of science and non-science. There is a certain amount of truth to that, but it’s not the whole truth. Masked by the scientific communities angry denouncements of intelligent design as a danger to the public morals is the fact that reason has already largely won. By and large, the intelligent design community accepts such principles as the antiquity of the Earth and the truth of micro and even macro evolution are taken as givens. So what more are we fighting for? Certainly, it’s worth pointing out that the conclusions of intelligent design are unwarranted and often unscientific, but couldn’t that be addressed by better teaching students how science establishes truth and letting them decide for themselves? In large part, I think that that reasonable and non-combative approach hasn’t been adopted because there is something else at stake. For a good deal of the scientific community, and certainly some of the most vocal and politically active parts of it, casting the conflict as one between science and religion has become only a convenient front for the real conflict. What is really at stake for both sides is theism versus atheism. The mainstream theistic community is increasingly willing to accept the factuality of evolution, but this is not good enough for someone when what they really want is destruction of theistic belief entirely. I don’t expect religious people to compromise on the existence of god, and ultimately it’s not an issue that science should be spending its authority on.