I’m bringing in eugenics in response to the note on Plato’s Republic, not because I missed it. Eugenics has not been disproved, although specific disorders that were thought to be inherited (leading to the sterilization of sufferers) have since been shown to be environmental. Eugenics and race are highly salient and related topics to the evolution debate because they highlight the question of just which theories about human nature are permissable, and whether scientists are responsible for the political misuse to which their theories may be put. If Darwin is not responsible for the misuse to which Hitler put his theories, why should scientists like Cvalli-Sforza be held responsible for the appropriation of theories of racial differences by racist groups?

My criticism has enough truth in it to be worth considering, whether you delete it or not.

If you examine the transcripts of the Dover evolution trial, you will see that the witnesses go to a great deal of effort to establish that science is in fact a community, an institution, and that it – the community – has certain norms, standards, beliefs, etc. and therefore has a certain cohesion, a certain power. I make the argument that it is not using its power wisely and well. The arguments I would make, if I had all the time and space to make the arguments in full, would come entirely from science itself. Trust and defection. Social signalling. Ethics and cooperative behavior in evolution. The tragedy of the commons. The problem is not that religion has some appeal that it did not have yesterday. The problem is that science has a credibility problem and that it has lost the public trust.

When you’re ready to change the ways that aren’t working, try not calling everyone who disagrees with you stupid. I don’t like being diagnosed, which is one reason I distrust scientific types: too many people who are eager to classify me (always for my own good, of course!)

Just FYI, I am pro-science and pro-evolution. I have little faith in scientific creation stories (big bang) or apocalypse (singularity) or stories explaining our reason for being (which presuppose that the only data that matters is that which is currently observable) – all of those things are articles of faith, beyond what our current data can tell us. Science was better when it was open-minded in its search for truth. But here’s my article of faith: I can’t wait for the day when science replaces ockham’s razor with “first, do no harm”. It will be the death of Christianity and the single greatest thing that ever happened to human rights in the world all in one blow.

You are obviously fearful of knowledge, and perhaps need to go live in your own little garden where you can feed your T-rex lettuce.

Science is a body of knowledge and theory, it can be applied well or applied poorly. Science can’t be good or evil, only people can. Science gets mis-applied when people are ignorant, it leads to good things when people are not.

This is true (although political policies should certainly be informed by science), however what about scientific ideas that can have devastating political and moral consequences (e.g. theories of racial differences). It is easy to dismiss these theories as “pseudoscience” and therefore irrelevant, but that is simply too convenient: whether this or that theory happens to be true there are inevitably going to be scientific facts that can be used to justify immoral politics. The problem with eugenics is not that it is based around poor science (it isn’t), but that regardless of the science behind it, it is incompatible with individual rights.

The question is whether we have the willingness to concede that those advocating evil policies have the scientific facts on their side and resolve to fight them entirely on moral terms, or is it simpler to try and head them off at the past and claim that their science is bogus (a “white” lie)?

A lot of anti-racist campaigners attack the notion that race is even a scientifically meaningful concept, reasoning that if race is undermined as a concept then any political ideology based on it will also be compromised. Unfortunately, statistical analysis seems to show that “race” really does exist (albeit merely as a form of statistically significant genetic clustering). Google “Lewontin’s Fallacy”. This doesn’t mean that racism is justified (a category error, since a moral conclusion can not be wrung from an empirical fact) but it does make it easier for racialists to gain a foothold. This leads us to the issue that underlies Darwinism versus Creationism: do the political/social consequences of a scientific idea count against its legitimacy? If you answer “no” in the case of Darwinism, do you not have to answer the same way where race is concerned?

Forget attacking the religious. Science needs to get its squandered credibility back. As soon as it does, the religious people become irrelevant. But as long as science ignores why people are “voting with their feet”, the problem will continue to grow.

All those grand promises science made? Instead of curing disease, we still die – but now we’re alone and without dignity, in a ridiculous little hospital gown, in a cold industrial room. Instead of feeding the world, our food supply is tainted and untrustworthy. Drug company profits are soaring but our drugged kids aren’t thriving. Marriage counseling doesn’t save marriage.

The scientific community likes to claim credit for miracles, but it acts like the unintended consequences arising from those miracles “just happened”. Drug resistant TB? Global warming? Traffic jams? Pollution? Can’t imagine where THOSE came from!

Credibility starts with listening to all the people who are screaming at the top of their lungs that they do not like the decisions being made by “experts” on their behalf.

If people do not want to eat engineered foods, maybe it’s worth actually considering that people have a right to care about what they put in their mouth. The one trying to change the world should always be the one who carries the burden of establishing trust. (I personally changed my mind about whether “food engineering” people could be trusted when someone started adding chemicals to beef, to keep it red even after it goes bad.)

And even when science does seem to know what it’s doing, it seems to be putting all that knowledge and technology to use helping the parasites instead of making the world better. Science likes to pretend it has no moral responsibilities, but let me ask you, are these drugs really safe for kids? Are the economists really helping America stay economically strong? If scientists can’t be expected to provide us with the truth, who can?

Science needs to either stop pretending it has the right to make ethical decisions (for instance, having an opinion on who or what does or does not qualify as “human”), or it needs to start taking that ethical responsibility seriously, and stop arguing OTOH that ethics is somehow outside the realm of science, as if science were merely about gathering data. If science is merely about gathering data, then scientists aren’t qualified to make ethical determinations. If scientists want to be treated as having more clout than ordinary citizens, then they can’t be amoral anymore – they have to understand and accept that the power of science cannot be allowed to do harm.