Science by Press Release

As a scientist one thing I recognize that promoting ones science is an important part of a research career. Research visibility provides opportunity to make connections, further your research, obtain funding and keep your job at the University.

When publishing your research in an academic journal peer review ensures your data is valid and conclusions are justified. Most research doesn't make waves, but you hope it gains traction and forms part of the ongoing discussion in the literature through other researcher reading your and citing your work.

However academia and research has somewhat moved past the publish or perish mindset, though publications are still important. Universities now track altmetrics, which is a measure of public engagement with the research. Universities want to conduct research that has this impact, research thats groundbreaking, that produces a technology to market. This drives a push towards creating a splash and the media becomes a means of promoting discovery.

This is where self promotion creeps in as its removed from the bounds of peer review and whats publishable. When talking about your work to the press its all about telling them why they should care, how this will fundamentally change our understanding or a tech application that will revolutionize a process. At this point its where researchers often go beyond the data to potentially exaggerating the implication. In the media a relatively humble data can become an earth shattering discovery if its the right subject matter at the right time.

This is quite common in social sciences whereby not particularly rigid datasets are portrayed in the media as demonstrating clear links or causation between factors, when there are many potentially confounding variables.

A fascinating example comes from a few years ago, with the so called discovery of a microbe that incorporated arsenic in place of phosphorus. Even NASA got in on the promotion, despite most in the biochemistry field being highly skeptical. The paper was published in Science, but the data itself did not clearly demonstrate arsenic was incorporated into the DNA. When the paper appeared in print it was eventually accompanied by 8 technical notes pointing out the issues with the study and the authors conclusions.

The study received a lot of attention in the media and the head researcher did not hold back in proclaiming the implications of the study that would fundamentally alter our understanding of life , or that there could be whole shadow biosphere of microbes utilising arsenic.

The problem was biochemist knew this was impossible due to the fact that arsenic esters are too unstable and hydrolise readily compared to phosphate diesters which don't readily hydrolise. Of course the media not being biochemists did not pick up on this.

Later studies on the bacteria strain failed to detect arsenic in DNA and noted the bacteria likely utilised trace phosphate that contaminated the growth medium and arsentate utilised.

You can read more about it on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GFAJ-1

Ken Ham vs Bill Nye Debate - What can we take from it

One thing I've noted from proponents of evolution (well those that prominantly speak out) is the seemingly earnest belief that they're are no presuppositions that enter into the science. That there is a pure objectivity.

But no scientist is without a worldview, an a priori philosophy that infleuences the way they think. Infact these people often have a staunch materialist philosophy and ascribe science the ability to determine truth.

This brings me to the debate between Bill Nye "The Science Guy" and Ken Ham (of answers in genesis). I'd first like to refer to Albert Mohlers fantastic analysis of the debate:

http://www.albertmohler.com/2014/02/05/bill-nyes-reasonable-man-the-central-worldview-clash-of-the-ham-nye-debate/

Mohler highlights the clash of worldviews of the two debaters.

Here's my thoughts:

Ken ham stuck to the YEC manifesto (I presonally would have liked to see mainly scienctific ideas debated, because I'm not sure how useful argiung for biblical authority is in that context, but that's is AIG's schtick so I guess it's not necessarily surprising). I enjoy wazooloos series on youtube for that reason: he primarily discusses scientific findings from a YEC point of view.

As for Bill Nye, I'd like to discuss his somewhat ideological and naive view on the purity and objectivity of scientifc pursuit.

He himself admits in the debate that there could be no evidence that would convince him of creation. Yet, at the same time insists there is no presupposition and has faith in the self correcting nature of science. However, when it comes to evolution, this most certainly isn't true. For any science, the less is relies on raw empirical data the less objective it is. All data is interpreted but there is only so much you can add your own slant to raw data.

Evolution has fossils (which apart from interpretation don't tell you anything except that an organism lived and no longer exists) the rest the theory projects onto the fossil (ie the fossil record represents the transition from simple to complex organisms from a common ancestor. But, that is not a given. You can assemble fossil data into an overall narrative, but that is by no means definitive. And the notion that all fossils confirm evolution is propaganda. Scientists find confounding discoveries routinely and the evolutionary narrative adapts in one way or another (the theory has so much flexibility to accommodate unexpected findings one has to question if it is meaningfully falsifiable).

I'd also like to bring up the ability of science to self correct. Its arguable that the current system makes paradigms extremely hard to budge, especially those sacred cows of the evolutionary narrative. Questioning of the sufficiency of neo Darwinian explanations to explain what is observed have been buried for years before dissent has been allowable. However, school textbooks continue to tow the line that all evidence points to the standard Darwinian narrative being correct, when this is no longer true.

A good example of evolution not correcting itself in favour of maintaining the narrative is the finding of the transitional fossil Tiktaalik. It was at the time an iconic find, a transitional form between fish and tetrapods found in rocks that predicted it would be. It was widely reported in the press. Yet years later, tetrapod footprints were found in rocks in Poland dating 20 million year earlier than Tiktaalik.

 

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/01/tiktaalik_blown_out_of_the_wat030621.html

 Yet rather than admit they were back to square one on tetrapod evolution, Tiktaalik is still trotted out as a transitional form inspite of the evidence now saying otherwise. Of course, there wasn't much media attention and the original discoverer of Tiktaalik is not so keen to relinquish the title of transitional form for Tiktaalik either.