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The most profound display of anti-Enlightenment thinking and misapprehension of the scientific method, its logic, purpose and approaches was Defendant-Intervenors’ Counsel Thompson’s challenge to Plaintiffs’ Witness Lamb upon discovering that a late-1970s study had been overrun by and was therefore inconsistent with later work: "So, was science wrong?!"
Any educated person — any person educated about the scientific method and the endlessly iterative process of discovery and learning — knows that further study might, and in fact usually does, refine human knowledge of the topic under study. Were study in an area complete, finite, and at an end, so would our human existence, based at it is upon curiosity about our world, ourselves, and our universe. Hearing an attorney exclaim that a subsequent study’s inconsistency with previous scientific efforts means that… SCIENCE WAS WRONG is profoundly disturbing in the 21st century.
Is Thompson playing to his anti-science funders?
Is he ignorant himself of how science works?
Does he not, in fact, understand the purpose of scientific inquiry?
Does he not, in fact, understand the process of scientific inquiry?
Does he intend, through this lame charge, to then elicit upon direct examination of his own witnesses, a black/white statement that science, being either WRONG THEN or WRONG NOW, is unworthy of consideration as it has advanced in these areas of behavior and identity?
Whatever the reason for this stunning appeal against reason, Mr Thompson pulled back the curtain a little bit today with this oddity. He, using further cross examination and later direct questioning of his side’s own witnesses, will put science on trial.
And who is accused of wanting a Scopes Monkey Trial again?
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9 Comments
For the Hate Wing, science is hard.
Along with compassion, self-awareness, reading comprehension, and charity.
Is it just my perception, or was Thompson intentionally making a non-scientifically-supported statement and then following that sentence up with a question to the Plantiff’s Witness that had no direct relavance to the first statement? So that the non-supported statement just hung in the air?
Fundie dogs everywhere were howling at this high pitched whistle.
Absolutely.
Thompson is dogwhistling here like mad. He’s ginning up the TheoCons with anti-science rhetoric, as well as trolling for sympathy from the anti-climate change crowd. If this were a jury trial, I’d say he was playing to sway folks there to get them on his side once they start deliberations. This being a bench trial, there’s no jury, and my guess is that Walker will not be impressed with this at all.
That leaves us with only one thing: Thompson is playing to the cameras he fought so desperately to get shut off.
I totally agree with you, Teddy. Did you catch Thompson’s reference to East Anglia and “Climategate”? I would understand if he were trying to convince a jury, but not a sitting judge! What’s going on? Does he actually believe what he’s saying?
Hey Teddy. Agreed. Also think Thompson is playing to Scalia and his sidekick, Clarence. They will soak up this “Fundie” stuff. See you on the next thread. Thanks so much for the play-by-play this week.
Saying ‘Science is wrong’ is saying ‘Truth is wrong’ because what science is, at its most basic, is just the search for truth. A set of experiments may not uncover truth, but that doesn’t mean there is no truth, just that a different way of discovering it must be found. Scientists can be wrong, that’s part of searching. A given path may lead to a dead-end, that’s part and parcel of the scientific method. Then a new path is chosen with the knowledge that the last path was not the right one. That’s called progress. People misunderstand science and use terms like ‘bad science’. There is no ‘bad science’. Something either is science or it is not science.
It could well be that he didn’t mean to be obtuse or cater to anyone.
It’s my experience that dedicated conservative religious Believers find it an awful lot of effort to change categories. For them Science falls into the category of deity or category of religion for all practical purposes. The scientist is the priest of a powerful but wrong religion to them.
Of that stripe of people I’ve never met one who conceptually grasps the notion of transformation, as seen in biological evolution or the maturation of scientific knowledge, or even in its most literal and material form- biological development. They view the universe as a qualitatively static entity in which existing things are hidden and unveiled or obscured again. The dynamic aspect, in which self-referencing/self-modifying things change in form and in their qualities over time just won’t get into or stay in their heads. Complicated but obvious self-generating and self-maintaining entities, like culture- they just can’t make real sense of them.
Creationism is a kind of precis and epitome of the intellectual cul-de-sacs in which these people operate.
Any scientist (unless they are an idiot) will admit that some of the most cherished ideas they may have about the universe/world today may be completely destroyed with a single discovery. To my knowledge no astronomer is factoring Phlogiston Theory into their theories.
In the late 60s geology changed in an eye blink; every textbook had to be rewritten with the final conformation of Plate Tectonics as the driving force of the geology of Earth.
Constant research and data collection is the engine of science evolution – it evolves more rapidly every day.