Title: Re: paleonet NYTimes editorial on
Creationism
And I have to say that, having some
familiarity with those programs, that the
quality of research mentoring offered in the medical Ph.D. programs is
in no
way less than what is expected in other scientific
disciplines.
I worked for a time as an editorial assistant at the journal
Biological Psychiatry and my recollection is that it was largely
MDs who reported research there (although they may simply have not
bothered to list their Ph.D.s). The editor was an MD retired
from a career in research and practice.
In the early 1990s there was an upsurge in criticism of medical
research, which is apparently continuing:
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/287/21/2765
The problem also exists in other countries:
http://www.amrc.org.uk/index.asp?id=937
Not to pick on MDs (PhDs do poor designed research too), but the
original point of this topic was that a lot doctors are drafted into
or eagerly join the ID/creationist side in the public debate over
evolution. The idea that they are somehow authorities on all
things biological should be publicly and systematically
scrutinized.
Look, ID and other creationists who
hold advanced degrees in science do not hold their beliefs because
they received insufficient training or anything
like that. They are religious fundamentalists, and they interpret
everything
in the world around them in that light (no pun intended).
I disagree. I believe that they do receive insufficient
exposure to the concepts of historical science, including the role of
contingency, the statistics of large numbers and avoidance of pitfalls
like the "Whig theory" of history.
The Whig Theory of History
holds that history, in particular the history of the English-speaking
peoples, is the history of freedom broadening down from precedent to
precedent as progress is made away from tradition, authority,
monarchy, and aristocracy toward democracy and
egalitarianism.
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v07/v07p319_Dickson.html
I agree with the emphasis that has been
placed on the role of history in
this debate. Unfortunately, that is a
point that is quite often highlighted
by creationists, precisely because it is a soft spot in the framework
of
evolutionary theory. There are no "tests" of evolution, in
the Popperian
sense, to be had from the geological record.
It is highlighted because they don't understand the true nature
of history. Criticism of the stratigraphic record is often based
on the false idea that the written record of human history is somehow
complete and free of bias and misleading information.
I have worked largely with the deep-sea record of planktonic
foraminifers where you can find uninterrupted, laminated records that
go on for hundreds of thousands of years, and include statistically
reliable numbers of nearly unaltered specimens. It might be more
complete than the written record of the history of 16th century
Scotland.
_Understanding_ the history of life, and
the current state, does indeed require history, but remember, it does
have a significant interpretive component.
I guess what I am trying to say is that the interpretive
component has a conceptual basis that is poorly developed outside of
science education curricula that emphasize history.
Our deep time science also differs from
that of the physicists in one very important and fundamental way.
Physicists can theoretically, and quite often in practice, reverse
time.
And we can't mistake history for time. Two different
things. History is time + memory. That's one of the first
things I tell my students in historical geology.
Bill
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
William P. Chaisson
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
University of Rochester
Rochester, NY 14627
607-387-3892