Burnee links for Sunday

A beginners guide to doubting everything « Hayley Stevens

"If there was one thing I have taken from my experience of becoming open-minded and openly skeptical it’s this; people who hold irrational beliefs like I used to, will resort to bullying because they have no stronger argument to throw your way. If they had any solid facts to base their beliefs and points on, they would provide you with them. Instead you get names, threats and disdain."

Some advice from an active, practical skeptic.

The Meming of Life » Ten years of Calling Bernadette’s Bluff » Parenting Beyond Belief » on secular parenting and other natural wonders
I find this very tempting. Dale McGowan's non-fiction writing (on his blog, at least) is something special. I do wonder what his fiction is like.

I thought Iceland was more rational than this : Pharyngula
You can never be sure people are being serious when they report such things. Maybe it's an elaborate play-along. (And do elves have feathers? And does that mean they can fly?)

Free Will: A First, Very Tentative, Step « Choice in Dying
Free will is a fascinating subject. Does it exist, or is it just an illusion? Is there any way of knowing, one way or the other? Chocolate or vanilla, you choose.

Faith leaders - Butterflies and Wheels
Ophelia Benson on the representation of the religious.

How to argue for intelligent design without doing any science

Well, this is a surprise. At last we have something of substance in Dembski & Licona's Evidence for God — shame it's the very last chapter in the section titled The Question of Science. In "The Vise Strategy — Squeezing the Truth out of Darwinists", William Dembski sets out a list of questions to ask those who are skeptical of intelligent design. It could be done as a flow chart, significantly not one with a single starting point, like Darwin's Tree of Life, but with a number of disparate roots.

Initially Dembski's questions are all about establishing why intelligent design should be considered science.

Is it fair to say that you regard intelligent design as not a part of science? Would you agree that proponents of intelligent design who characterize it as a "scientific discipline" or as a "scientific theory" are mistaken?

Would you characterize intelligent design as a "pseudoscience"?

Would it be fair to say that, in your view, what makes intelligent design a pseudoscience is that it is religion masquerading as science? If ID is something other than science, what exactly is it?

Are you a scientist?

Do you feel qualified to assess whether something is or is not properly a part of science? What are your qualifications in this regard? [Take your time here.]

Do you think that simply by being a scientist, you are qualified to assess whether something is or is not properly a part of science?

Have you read any books on the history and philosophy of science

[If yes:] Which ones? [e.g., Herbert Butterfield, Ronald Numbers, Thomas Kuhn]

Would you agree that in the history of science, ideas that started out as "pseudoscientific" may eventually become properly scientific, for example, the transformation of alchemy into chemistry?

Is it possible that ID could fall in this category, as the transformation into a rigorous science of something that in the past was not regarded as properly scientific? [If no, return to this point later.]

We can see where this is going, but it's predicated on false assumptions. For instance, take that last question, suggesting that ID could become science in the same way that alchemy became chemistry. The problem for Dembski is that alchemy did not become chemistry. Alchemy is still alchemy, even today, and chemistry is something else. Also note the disingenuous assertion in asking whether the "Darwinist" has read any history or philosophy of science. This is akin to criticisms of the likes of Richard Dawkins because they don't know any "sophisticated theology".

Let's consider one very commonly accepted criterion for what's in and what's outside of science, namely, testability. Would you say that testability is a criterion for demarcating science? In other words, if a claim isn't testable, then it's not scientific? Would you agree with this?

Would you give as one of the reasons that ID is not science that it is untestable? [Return to this.]

Let's stay with testability for a bit. You've agreed that if something is not testable, then it does not properly belong to science. Is that right?

Have you heard of the term "methodological materialism" (also sometimes called "methodological naturalism")?

Do you regard methodological materialism as a regulative principle for science? In other words, do you believe that science should be limited to offering only materialistic explanations of natural phenomena?

[If you experience resistance to this last question because the Darwinist being interrogated doesn't like the connotations associated with "materialism" try:]

This is not a trick question. By materialistic explanations I simply mean explanations that appeal only to matter, energy, and their interactions as governed by the laws of physics and chemistry. Do you regard methodological materialism in this sense as a regulative principle for science? [It's important here to get the Darwinist to admit to methodological materialism — this is usually not a problem; indeed, usually they are happy to embrace it:]

Could you explain the scientific status of methodological materialism? For instance, you stated that testability is a criterion for true science. Is there any scientific experiment that tests methodological materialism? Can you describe such an experiment?

Are there theoretical reasons from science for accepting methodological materialism? For instance, we know on the basis of the second law of thermodynamics that the search for perpetual motion machines cannot succeed. Are there any theoretical reasons for thinking that scientific inquiries that veer outside the strictures of methodological materialism cannot succeed? Can you think of any such reasons?

A compelling reason for holding to methodological materialism would be if it could be demonstrated conclusively that all natural phenomena invariably submit to materialistic explanations. Is there any such demonstration?

[Suppose here the success of evolutionary theory is invoked to justify methodological materialism — i.e., so many natural phenomena have submitted successfully to materialistic explanation that it constitutes a good rule of thumb/working hypothesis. In that case we ask:]

But wouldn't you agree that there are many natural phenomena for which we haven't a clue how they can be accounted for in terms of materialistic explanation? Take the origin of life? Isn't the origin of life a wide open problem for biology, one which gives no indication of submitting to materialistic explanation.

To my mind, methodological naturalism is the only effective method of doing science. Anything that attempts to stray outside methodological naturalism may be interesting, even fruitful in terms of philosophy, but it isn't science. Whether or not you hold to metaphysical naturalism (and I understand that many scientists don't, or at least consider it an open question), the process of science must assume methodological naturalism to provide meaningful results. If unexplained stages in any set of causal relationships can be replaced with "and then a miracle happened", this doesn't actually pull any explanatory weight. If there are indeed "natural phenomena for which we haven't a clue how they can be accounted for in terms of materialistic explanation" then what we have is something that's unexplained. Any supposed "explanation" outside of methodological naturalism isn't an explanation at all.

Would you agree, then, that methodological materialism is not scientifically testable, that there is no way to confirm it scientifically, and therefore that it is not a scientific claim? Oh, you think it can be confirmed scientifically? Please explain exactly how is it confirmed scientifically? I'm sorry, but pointing to the success of materialistic explanations in science won't work here because the issue with materialistic explanations is not their success in certain cases but their success across the board. Is there any way to show scientifically that materialistic explanations provide a true account for all natural phenomena? Is it possible that the best materialistic explanation of a natural phenomenon is not the true explanation? If this is not possible, please explain why not. [Keep hammering away at these questions until you get a full concession that methodological naturalism is not testable and cannot be confirmed scientifically.]

Since methodological materialism is not a scientific claim, what is its force as a rule for science? Why should scientists adopt it? [The usual answer here is "the success of science."]

But if methodological materialism's authority as a rule for science derives from its success in guiding scientific inquiry, wouldn't it be safe to say that it is merely a working hypothesis for science? And as a working hypothesis, aren't scientists free to discard it when they find that it "no longer works"?

Dembski is claiming that because methodological naturalism hasn't solved every single known scientific problem — that because there are still gaps in scientific knowledge — therefore he is justified in rejecting it. This is plainly nonsense.

Then comes some effort to show that ID is not creationism. It's futile stuff, because though the identity of the designer is often obfuscated by ID proponents, we know where they are going with it, and despite Dembski's insistence that there are atheists who consider ID a valid theory, we also know that the vast majority of ID proponents are theists (including, of course, Dembski himself).

Let's return to the issue of testability in science? Do you agree that for a proposition to be scientific it must be testable? Good.

Would you agree, further, that testability is not necessarily an all-or-none affair? In other words, would you agree that testability is concerned with confirmation and disconfirmation, and that these come in degrees, so that it makes sense to talk about the degree to which a proposition is tested? For instance, in testing whether a coin is fair, would finding that the coin landed heads twenty times in a row more strongly disconfirm the coin's fairness than finding that it landed only ten heads in a row? [Keep hammering on this until there's an admission that testing can come in degrees. Examples from the history of science can be introduced here as well.]

Okay, so we're agreed that science is about testable propositions and that testability of these propositions can come in degrees. Now, let me ask you this: Is testability symmetric? In other words, if a proposition is testable, is its negation also testable? For instance, consider the proposition "it's raining outside." The negation of that proposition is the proposition "it's not the case that it's raining outside" (typically abbreviated "it's not raining outside" — logicians form the negation of a proposition by putting "it's not the case that …" in front of a proposition). Given that the proposition "it's raining outside" is testable, is it also the case that the negation of that proposition is testable?

As a general rule, if a proposition is testable, isn't its negation also testable? [If you don't get a firm yes to this, continue as follows:] Can you help me to understand how a proposition can be testable, but its negation not be testable? To say that a proposition is testable is to say that it can be placed in empirical harm's way — that it might be wrong and that this wrongness may be confirmed through empirical data, wouldn't you agree? Testability means that the proposition can be put to a test and if it fails the test, then it loses credibility and its negation gains in credibility? Wouldn't you agree? [Keep hammering on this until you've gotten full submission.]

This question of negation is no more than wordplay. People often claim, "You can't prove a negative," but that's a self-refuting statement (because it is itself a negative statement), so if it's true it's also false. People often claim that you can't prove God doesn't exist, but if God is defined in such a way that his existence should necessitate certain obvious manifestations in the world, and those manifestations aren't in evidence, then this ought to count as evidence (although not proof, which is usually confined to mathematics) against his existence. Faced with this (lack of) evidence, theists usually redefine God to be something whose manifestation would not be so obvious.

Dembski's "hammering" is all towards the idea that you can't rule out "intelligence" as one of the forces that drives evolution. I'd like to offer an additional force that drives evolution: magic pixie dust. By Dembski's own criteria he can't rule it out, even if he's no idea how it actually works. There are certainly gaps in our knowledge of evolution, and especially abiogenesis, but these gaps can be filled by maintaining that the magic pixies use the awesome power of pixie dust to transmute inanimate matter into living, replicating cells. They also, incidentally, help out with those awkward transitions between organisms when random mutation and natural selection don't quite seem up to the job.

Next we have cellular engineering, the bacterial flagellum, complexity and the rest of the ID arsenal. But it won't wash. Dembski appears desperate to have ID accepted as science, but he won't do the one thing necessary for that to come about. He philosophizes, picks holes in evolutionary theory, plays word-games, and generally complains that the scientific community won't let him in — all the while refusing to take the entrance exam. All he needs to do is some actual research, and get it published in a respected peer-reviewed scientific journal. We've come to the end of the section entitled The Question of Science, but Dembski — who co-edited this entire book — hasn't given us any actual science.

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4truth.net
http://www.4truth.net/fourtruthpbscience.aspx?pageid=8589952933

Burnee links for Thursday

Daylight Atheism > To Win, We Just Have to Show Up
The religious reaction to legislated equality displays the religious agenda for all to see.

Cancelled lessons in tolerance in inclusiveness | HumanistLife
This is offensive?

Paranormality launches in the USA….and the Friday Puzzle! « Richard Wiseman's Blog

American publishers were reluctant to support a skeptical book, with some suggesting that I re-write it to suggest that ghosts were real and psychic powers actually existed!

We in the UK probably don't realise the entrenched depth of magical thinking in the US.

The briar patch of theology « Why Evolution Is True
Jerry Coyne is torturing himself.

YouTube - ‪いろいろな小さ過ぎる箱とねこ。-Many too small boxes and Maru.-‬‏
http://youtu.be/2XID_W4neJo

(Via Jerry Coyne.)

It's designed if it looks designed?

Here we go again. "The Scientific Status of Design Inferences" by Bruce L. Gordon is Chapter 25 of Dembski & Licona's Evidence for God. It begins by doubting that methodological naturalism must be the necessary limit on the scope of science. With liberal use of technical terms from the philosophy of science (without citations), Gordon considers three accounts of "what it means to offer a scientific explanation for a phenomenon." These are the deductive-nomological model, the causal-statistical model, and the pragmatic model. They appear to be different ways of identifying causes that are both necessary and sufficient to explain any particular phenomenon. And they're quite interesting, though Gordon gets bogged down in the minutiae — which would be excusable if it was going somewhere useful. But as usual with intelligent design proponents, he promises much and delivers next to nothing. There's stuff that sounds a bit sciencey, but no actual science.

As William Dembski points out, drawing design inferences is already an essential and uncontroversial part of various scientific activities ranging from the detection of fabricated experimental data, to forensic science, cryptography, and even the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI). He identifies two criteria as necessary and sufficient for inferring intelligence or design: complexity and specification. Complexity ensures that the event in question is not so simple that it can readily be explained by chance. It is an essentially probabilistic concept. Specification ensures that the event in question exhibits the trademarks of intelligence. The notion of specification amounts to this: if, independently of the small probability of the event in question, we are somehow able to circumscribe and define it so as to render its reconstruction tractable, then we are justified in eliminating chance as the proper explanation for the event. Dembski calls such an event one of specified small probability.

Sounds reasonable, doesn't it? Except that it's no practical advance on saying "it's designed if it looks designed." Note the use of "somehow" — this ought to be a teaser for what's to come, but despite not-so-vague promises, we never find out how this specification is to be assessed. (Also note the inclusion of SETI in this block of things supposedly exhibiting intelligence. SETI, however, is not expecting — or hoping — to receive signals containing information, and without information there can be no intelligence.)

One of Dembski's important contributions has been to render the notion of specification mathematically rigorous in a way that places design inferences on a solid foundation.

That's a big claim to rigour and solidity, but where is this rendition? It's often parroted by Dembski's acolytes, but never delivered.

The mathematical analysis used to determine whether an event is one of specified small probability rests on empirical observations set in the context of the theoretical models used to study the domain (quantum-theoretic, molecular biological, developmental biological, cosmological, etc.) under investigation, but the design inference itself can be formulated as a valid deductive argument. One of its premises is a mathematical result that Dembski calls the law of small probability. That the design inference lends itself to this precision of expression is significant because it enables us to see that a rigorous approach to design inferences conforms to even the most restrictive theory of scientific explanation, the D-N model. In fact, even though the accounts of scientific explanation we considered were inadequate as universal theories, all three of them captured important intuitions. Furthermore, it is short work to see that rigorous design inferences satisfy the conditions imposed by all of them.

But we've yet to see the touted "precision of expression". Where are these "rigorous design inferences"? Are they anything more than "if it looks designed, it must have had a designer"? Gordon mentions "design-theoretic analysis" several times in this essay, but gives no actual examples of it (or any references). Why is this? Is it, perhaps, because such analysis has never actually been done?

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4truth.net
http://www.4truth.net/fourtruthpbscience.aspx?pageid=8589952949

Latest Skepticule Extra now available

A varied mix of stuff awaits your listening pleasure in the eighth episode of Skepticule Extra. This time the three Pauls bring you music and cancer cures, science and libel (including an interview with Simon Singh), and an item that male listeners may find disturbing (in an incisive, circular fashion):

http://www.skepticule.co.uk/2011/07/skepextra-008-20110626.html

The music — live! — is by Adam Kay of Amateur Transplants.

Skepticism in the construction industry

Misunderstandings abound in everyday life, at home, at work, in education, in government. This is an example from my own field — construction.

Herringbone strutting is an arrangement of short lengths of timber nailed between timber floor or roof joists to reduce their likelihood of twisting as they dry out. But very few builders actually use herringbone strutting, preferring what they call solid strutting, which is usually short lengths of the same joist timber, nailed at right-angles between the joists. Strutting isn't usually needed between joists less than 2.4 metres long, but timbers that span farther than this can warp as their moisture content decreases.

Solid strutting, however, is next to useless. The short lengths of timber can be jammed in between the joists as hard as you like, but as the joists dry out they shrink, and if the solid strutting wasn't nailed in only the ceiling (usually plasterboard) would prevent it falling out. Herringbone strutting on the other hand exploits the cross section of the joists, which are deeper than they are thick, so as they dry out, the vertical shrinkage is greater than the horizontal shrinkage, and the strutting (which is fixed diagonally — with the top of each joist being strutted against the bottom of its neighbour — and vice versa) actually increases its action, applying greater pressure between the joists as the moisture content reduces.

It's only in fairly old books about construction techniques that I've seen this explanation of how herringbone strutting works. Modern instructions seem oblivious to its unique cleverness, stressing its use in spreading point loads to adjacent joists, and suggesting that solid strutting is an adequate alternative. It isn't. The only effective way of using solid strutting is to drill a hole through each joist next to the strutting and fit a tension rod with nuts at each end. The joists can then be cramped up by force to ensure they won't twist. Needless to say I've never seen this done, and when I suggest it the response is derisive laughter or plain astonishment. But then I point out that herringbone strutting would be a cheaper, easier and effective alternative.

When timber arrives on site green there's a chance it will be used in the construction while its moisture content is still above 18% — all the more reason, therefore, to insist on the proper job.

That's an example of misunderstanding how something works. I've also encountered magical thinking on building sites, in particular dowsing. Anecdotes — like misunderstandings — abound, but as far as I can tell that's all they are. Here's my anecdote.

My own encounter with a dowser was initially impressive as he accurately traced the route of drains. However, when I asked if there were drains elsewhere on the site, he confidently swept the area in question and pronounced it dry. But my own knowledge of how drains are laid led me to speculate that there were in fact drains in this area, and judicious examination of manholes, flushing of loos and turning on of taps revealed that to be the case. I concluded that the dowser was extremely good at detecting drains when he already knew where they were.

It was some time after this encounter that I learned that when dowsers are properly tested under controlled conditions, their results are no better than chance. Unlike the dowsers in the tests, I didn't find this surprising.

Burnee links for Sunday

Metamagician and the Hellfire Club: Manlier?
Manlier. Oops. (Lewis was British — though Irish-born, according to Wikipedia — from a traditional background and upbringing. The "manlier" thing could have been no more than a thoughtless throwaway line.)

Newsletter : July 2011 : Issue 14
AtheismUK's useful report from the recent Dublin convention.

Myths about Assisted Dying « Choice in Dying
Eric MacDonald is so, so right.

America, Land of the Health Hucksters - David Colquhoun, Ph.D., FRS - Life - The Atlantic

"I write from the perspective of someone who lives in a country that achieves health care for all its citizens at half the cost of the U.S. system, and gets better outcomes in life expectancy and infant mortality. The view from outside is that U.S. medicine rather resembles U.S. religion. It has been taken over by fundamentalists who are becoming very rich by persuading a gullible public to believe things that aren't true."

The improbable scientist doesn't mince words.

"A ruling class that is "religiously illiterate" cannot lead in the 21st century" - Vatican Insider
Wishy-washy Blair-bleurgh.... Tony plugs his new religion.

Prince Charles congratulates homeopaths who try to treat AIDS with homeopathy « gimpy’s blog
The Prince of Woo is at it again.

Bad News: Clarkson’s Cock Rides Again! « The Merseyside Skeptics Society
Quick (five-minute) live video on how PR nonsense get into the papers. (Marsh also has a report about this on the latest Pod Delusion.)