Hi Jimmycakes, first I must say how impressed I am with the length of some of these replies on this forum. You said in the list of rules ‘They must make sure that they are critiquing what real scientists teach about evolution’. Can you explain to me what you mean by a real scientist? If somebody is a scientist, then presumably they are real.
I think you know fine what I’m talking about here Mike. I’m talking about what gets taught about evolution in schools and universities based on up-to-date textbooks by mainstream science publishers such as Addison-Wesley, Wiley, Springer Nature etc. As opposed to garbled nonsense cartoon caricatures of it that describe it, for example, as “a cat turning into a dog.”
Hi Jimmycakes, If a person has, for example, a PhD in genetics (a real scientist) and that person questions evolution, would his/her views be taken into consideration or would they be excluded?
And to follow up on my own reply before … when I said I’ve read many trustworthy sources, you might fairly ask how it is I know them to be trustworthy since I myself am not qualified to be doing the very investigation about which I’m reading. I want to say more about that, which may relate to what you asked James:
Wondering if our sources are trustworthy, or how we can discern among them if not all of them are, is a very good question; and that is where my own critical thinking comes into play. If I knew nothing of all of this, coming into it totally green and just picked up a random book or article where the author puts their case forward, I would probably have little hope of exercising effective discernment toward that particular source, because I would have no idea or context in which to evaluate their claims. Are they advocating for some idiosyncratic view that runs counter to nearly all the other peer-reviewed science out there? Or are they refining and critiquing largely from within scientific consensus? I would have no way of knowing without a lot more exposure apart from that one article. Once I have that (and I do), I begin to be much more in a position to recognize and discern between these sources.
At some point, I may face a choice such as: which is more likely. Is there a massive international conspiracy of scientists to hide mountains of anti-evolutionary evidence from the rest of us? Or is it more likely that any objections I wish to entertain in that direction might be more motivated by paranoia and ideological commitments of my own? My own critical thinking informs me that the former is so unlikely, that I’m willing to call the latter a near-certainty.
I won’t always know or be perfect in my discernment regarding some particular source. But when a general pattern emerges (as it has) that leans so definitively in one direction, my exercise of critical thought tells me to invest the appropriate proportion of confidence in that direction. As Christy described above, that is the type of critical thinking that children do well to learn.
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No single individual’s views are taught at the basic level in public schools, no matter what their credentials, unless their views are representative of current scientific consensus. Scientific consensus is what is taught. So, no there would be no reason for the questions of a single PhD to be taught to school children. Discussing this person’s questions, if they had any merit, would be done by peer researchers in the specific field the person worked in.
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Only if their question is based on honest and accurate reporting and coherent interpretation of concrete evidence, doesn’t overstate its case, passes peer review to make sure that they have undertaken all the necessary quality control checks and that they haven’t made any mistakes, and is replicated by other researchers.
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Hi Mervin, I’m trying to catch up so apologies if I havent answered all the posts. One thing I would like to clarify is this issue about what defines a real scientist. Is it a question of qualifications, or does it depend on whether a scientist’s views (on whatever subject) is in agreement with the majority?
Neither. It’s a question of whether their published results can be replicated by other researchers.
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Hi Jimmycakes, I’m not sure that any scientist could maintain or even reach that standard - they are only human 
In my opinion, if a person is a qualified scientist then that person is a real scientist. The fact that scientists disagree with each other over all sorts of issues, doesnt disqualify them from being scientists.
While this may generally be a distinction worth trying to make, I would nonetheless caution against trying to divide the world of scientists into “the real thing” and “the pretenders”. There are people whom we would all agree are real scientists who have dabbled in, even promoted stuff that we would call “not real science”. And there are people with no credentials whatsoever who ended up giving us a lot of valuable science. So I don’t think, even today, you can cleanly conclude that people in this set over here are all “real” and have nothing but trustworthy science to offer, while the people in this other set over here are nothing but charlatans. [well, okay - yeah there are probably people we can and should write off as totally charlatan, but my point is that there will be many fuzzy in-betweeners in both sets. Think Linus Pauling - a famous legitimate scientist who nonetheless went overboard promoting vitamin C in ways that were more worthy of snake-oil tactics than of any real science.]
So to try to draw such a stark division sounds to me like an already ideologically front-loaded agenda: somebody may want all the scientists who are “against x” to be recognized as the “real scientists” while the others can be dismissed as fake. I’m not saying you’re doing that. I’m just suggesting that this is what is so often in play.
It’s fascinating to me that Newton is [now] known for having dabbled seriously in alchemy (along with a lot of other famous scientists of his day). Was he not a real scientist? Certainly he was. But that doesn’t mean he was always doing real science.
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“Science” and “evolution” encapsulate a huge body of knowledge and expertise in multiple disciplines. A PhD (assuming you actually earned it) shows you have done some research in one very specific area of science. Dissertations are on really specific topics like how a certain gene affects the way a certain species of brown algae responds to increasing acid levels in its environment. This kind of expertise qualifies you to ask specific questions in your area of expertise and contest specific answers in your area of expertise.
The problem with your hypothetical PhD geneticist who “questions evolution” and has “another view” is that it is not specific enough. What exactly is the person questioning? What competing view is being offered? The way real science works, the question would relate to a very specific question and area of understanding, not the theory as a whole (and therefore would not really relate to what kids are taught in school.)
A PhD does not make you qualified to evaluate the validity of the findings of scientists in other fields, because one human being cannot possibly know all that can be known. That is why we need peer review and consensus science, because everyone can’t go around personally learning and evaluating everything for themselves.
What ID organizations like to publicize is anything that can be twisted to say the whole mechanism for creating consensus science is suspect and can’t be trusted. That isn’t doing competing science. It’s propagating conspiracy theories.
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Hi Mervin, when somebody makes a statement that I consider to be ambiguous then I think it is reasonble to ask for clarity. So, when the term ‘real scientist’ comes up, I ask the question what does the person mean by it.
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Well I’m sorry, but that is precisely how science works: reproducible results. There are lots and lots of findings in science that have been reproduced left, right and centre. For example, when direct GPS measurements of continental drift give exactly the same rate as results from radiometric dating, that is reproducibility.
You’d be surprised.
Take for example Brian Josephson. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics for research that he carried out at age 22, and then spent the rest of his career researching ESP, transcendental meditation, and the Maharishi Yogi. If stuff like that is science then quite frankly I don’t know what isn’t.
Or at the other end of the scale, just a year ago, an anonymous poster published a mathematical proof on a wiki devoted to anime. It’s now recognised by mathematicians as the best answer to the problem that they have.
https://twitter.com/robinhouston/status/1054637891085918209
And then there have been people who have published scientific papers as children. For example:
So no, being a “qualified scientist” is, in practice, neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for being a real scientist. Though in practice, it does help with grant applications…
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Hi Christy, I am not as confident in concensus science as you appear to be. History shows that just one person can turn things upside down. But, getting back to the issue about ‘real scientists’. It seems to me that there is a no true scotsman fallacy operating in some of these replies - the person is a real scientist if they believe in evolution but not a real scientist if they dont.
No, Mike, being a “real scientist” is not about “believing in evolution” versus “not believing in evolution.” It is about testable predictions and reproducible results.
Whether you believe in evolution or not is irrelevant. The fact remains that it comes up with the goods on both counts. Time and time and time and time again.
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I am currently reading through a series on the history of science with my junior high son. It is true that at various points in history, one person “turned things upside down.” But they were all working on the borders of what was known and challenging guesses and assumptions made without the benefit of methodical research and data collection. In other words, Newton and Einstein and Mendel did not overturn the functioning interpretation of mountains of evidence. They offered answers where previous ideas failed to explain and backed up their ideas with new evidence.
The sheer amount of corroborating data we have at this point in history that fit with the evolutionary model makes it pretty much certain that no one is going to come along and “overturn” what is really well-explained. What they might do is offer new ways of solving the problems on the edges, the things that are not yet well-explained.
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Hi Jimmycakes, so, if I am a scientist who has done work that has been peer-reviewed and repeated by others scientists etc, but I question evolution am I a real scientist?
You have great faith Christy. I had that same faith for years. It is not easy to take a step back and question something that you have been so certain of for so long.
Yes.
But that means that your questions about evolution need to meet a higher standard of quality control than questions from someone who hasn’t set foot in a lab since they stopped compulsory science classes at school at age sixteen. Non-scientists can plead ignorance for coming out with nonsense arguments such as “What use is half an eye?” or “Nobody has ever seen a cat turning into a dog.” Scientists do not have the luxury of that excuse.
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Hi Jimmycakes, yes but
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