I think a lot of the reason for the unfounded hyperbole that has been spewed by many people at GNXP and elsewhere (especially by myself) is that this election is just plain ugly...there are no good choices. While no candidate may be Big Brother, O'Brien, HitlerStalinTojo, or the devil incarnate, they are almost certainly amongst the worst candidates Americans have had to choose from in U.S. history (is worst 10 percent reasonable?)

While there has been a lot of hyperbole against all candidates, there has been also a lot of unfounded praise and optimism, I think in hopes that there is a bright spot somewhere amongst these four candidates. I think this is where some commentators and posters such as myself have been driven to hyperbole.

In any case I apologize to anyone who had to dredge through my inappropriate, polemical, and unfocused posts. Time to go back to science or at least non-tabloid grade history.

Labels: apology to readers, commentator peacekeeping, politics

Steve's review of Grand New Party is up. He suggests that much of GNP is laced with Sailerian wisdom; I think that's a fairly plausible point, though Ross & Reihan might claim other sources for the derivation of particular observations or datum. I've read about 3/4 of Grand New Party. I don't talk much about politics because I don't feel like I know much about it, and frankly, I don't allocate many cognitive cycles to the topic (though I do follow politics via my RSS, it's mostly a passive pursuit). Nevertheless, I've liked GNP mostly because the argument and perspective is relatively thickly scaffolded with data which is of a fundamentally apolitical character. I can say the same of one of the few other political books I've read in the past year, Brink Lindsey's Age of Abundance. I'll be putting up a review of GNP at my other weblog soon; I suspect it'll be the first positive review of a right-wing book on Scienceblogs, so I'll count myself a trailblazer after I click "post"!

Update: Ross clarifies (I found the UK working class descriptions to be the sore thumb as well).

Labels: politics

Austin Bramwell, Who Are We?:

Whatever the difficulties of conservatism, surely one can improve upon the typical performance of those who take it upon themselves to explain it. In place of the conventional accounts, try this one: Conservatism is the defense of legitimacy wherever it happens to exist. "Legitimacy" here is defined in the empirical, Weberian sense: that is, an institution is legitimate if and only if the opinion has become widespread that it is right (for whatever reason or lack thereof) to obey it. The conservative, in short, cultivates obedience to existing institutions. This definition, I submit, has all the advantages of the conventional definitions, none of their defects, and some important advantages of its own.

To some extent I think one might make the case that Liberalism is the inverse of Bramwell's definition of Conservatism; what was Liberal in 1920 might be viewed as quite Illiberal today, and what is Liberal in 2008 may seem rather Illiberal in 2028. In any case, I would add that though I don't agree with Bramwell much of the time I'm always impressed with the breadth of his erudition and his good faith attempt to argue rather than scream. Unfortunately most political and social commentary is much closer to the level of morons like Kevin James. Even when one dodges the rank stupidity of someone like James the "punditry" on offer is generally grounded in the incestuous circle-jerk of CW as opposed to facts.

Back to Bramwell's point, if you read this blog regularly you know that I have an amateur interest in antiquity, particularly the period of the Roman Empire. Today we assume that Christianity and the Christian clergy are the Conservative party at prayer.¹ But if you focus on the 4th and 5th centuries, when Christianity went from being a marginalized sect to the established Church of the Empire, you encounter the fact that the Christian religion was fundamentally one perceived as radical and deeply undermining the legitimacy of the ancients (who were pagans after all).² In the late 4th century you have powerful pagans such as Symmachus making arguments defending tolerance and subsidy for the ancient faith based on reverence for the institutions and precedents of the past and the ancestors. Fundamentally deeply Conservative reasoning arguing for the legitimacy of what has become before. By the late 5th century the pagan historian Zosimus had become quite dyspeptic toward the new dispensation, bemoaning the fall of the older order and observing the decline of his civilization all around him due to the abandonment of the old gods (Zosimus flourished in the years following the Western Empire's fall). To a great extent Zosimus reminds me of modern Conservatives of a Christian bent, who seem pessimistic by constitution when observing the decline of Christendom and the repudiation of its truths.

Today I would suspect that post-Christian Liberals would not necessarily align themselves with radicals for change such as St. Ambrose or rationalist refuters of the relevance of the pagan past such as St. Jerome; rather, their sentiments might be with the pagans who were on the losing end of the march of history because of their current quarrels with Christianity. Similarly, of course Conservatives in the West who are Christian or Christian sympathetic would admire the pugnacity of St. Ambrose and other Church Fathers in overturning thousand year old traditions & customs. The axioms of Christianity made such a rejection of the past eminently rational. And yet if temperament was the guide toward affinity I do not think that this would hold. Church Fathers who admitted pagan learning into the canon offered reasons of utility, as such wisdom might be useful toward Christian ends. A convinced pagan would not have to make such an argument because the classical canon was simply part of the customary education of the non-Christian elite; it was received tradition which needed no reflective analysis and justification. In the 4th century Christian intellectuals dreamed of a new world transformed and shorn of the dead weight of the past with its irrational and unnecessary traditions. Nearly two thousand years later the shoe is on the other foot....

1 - Despite the emergence of Leftish Christian movements such as Christian Socialism or the Social Gospel, I think one can make a strong case that on the balance Christianity has been more associated with Conservatism than Liberalism since the French Revolution and the emergence of a modern politics.

2 - Obviously the influx of classically educated men such as St. Augustine and the Hellenic patina which accrued to the religion moderates this judgement.

Labels: politics

Labels: politics

The always interesting Andrew Gelman, Rich state, poor state, red-state, blue-state: it's all about the rich:

Thus, the familiar "red America, blue America" pattern, the "culture war" between red and blue states, is really something happening at the higher range of incomes.

I believe that the details of history are always driven by battles between the elites....

Update: zeil asks if this is a race effect. From Rich State, Poor State, Red State, Blue State: What's the Matter with Connecticut?:

Could the varying income effects we have shown be merely a proxy for race? This is a potentially plausible story. Perhaps the high slope in Mississippi reflects poor black Democrats and rich white Republicans, while Connecticut's flatter slope arises from its more racially homogeneous population. To test this, we replicate our analysis, dropping all African–American respondents. This reduces our key pattern by about half. For example, in a replication of Figure 5, the slopes for income remain higher in poor states than in rich states, but these slopes now go from about 0.2 to 0 rather than from 0.4 to 0.

To see if the income patterns could be explained by other demographic variables, we went back to the full dataset for the Annenberg surveys in 2000 and 2004 and added individual-level predictors for female, black, four age categories, and four education categories; and group-level predictors for percent black and average education in each state. After controlling for all these, the patterns for income remained: within states, the coefficient for individual income on probability of Republican vote was positive, with steeper slopes in poorer states; after controlling for the individual and group-level predictors, richer states supported the Democrats.

Labels: politics

Animal Rights Extremists Wreck Scientist's House.

Labels: politics

I don't follow the non-science news very closely. I'm curious about what's going on in Myanmar/Burma, if you have an interesting link, drop it in the comment box. Thanks.

Labels: politics

Michael Bailey has posted a response to his critics. The first comment is from Ben Barres, who readers may remember from the women in science "controversy" of last year. The political game Barres is playing should be patently obvious-- calling into radio shows to ask pointed, misleading (and well-"framed") questions is a pretty classic polticial talk show/sports radio show tactic, and it's utterly pathetic to see it in science. Slightly depressing, even. Based on these two examples, I'm going to extrapolate and say that if you've ever got Ben Barres on your side in an argument, you've seriously fucked up and need to re-think.

Labels: politics

In the comments below in regards to eugenics I made an argument that rationing is going to be inevitable in national health care systems as the information we have about the propensity (or inevitability) of diseases outruns the ability to treat those diseases. In particular, I believe that it may come to the point where though one can treat something in theory with medical technology the costs may simply be prohibitive. The argument I'm making smells a lot like Malthusianism, insofar as I believe that genomic diagnostic technologies will decrease in price in a manner that scales downward to a far greater extent then the treatments for those diagnosed probabilities for the total sample space of possibilities. But of course, we know how Malthusianism worked out when it came to the argument about population & food production, so I'm not sure about this. We (humans) have a tendency not to account for future innovation. In the near-term (less than 20 years) what do those who know about the costs of medicine think?

Labels: politics

From a reader:

I thought you might find this interesting and sad. I tried to log on to gnxp from work yesterday- web access was blocked by Websense (cisco) - reason- racial hatred. A pathetic sign of the times. Luckily I have a 3g capable smartphone so I was able to log on. But that really sucks. BTW instapundit was also blocked - reason - weapons. PC = damnation!

Labels: politics

There is a rather salty piece of correspondence in the new Nature Neuroscience from one Maureen Condic regarding Nature's editorial position on the likelihood of development of ES cell-based therapies anytime soon. Apparently, Condic has a skeptical take on the issue and Nature had some disparaging words.

The issues of immune rejection, tumor formation and hESC differentiation raised in my article are not distortions or mere polemic; they are matters of scientific fact. These same concerns have been raised in the scientific literature and voiced by leading scientists in the stem cell field. James Thomson cautioned that "major roadblocks" must be overcome before hESC-derivatives could be safely transplanted into patients, and concluded that surmounting these roadblocks will be "likely to take a long time". Similarly, Robert Lanza noted that immune rejection is a significant problem, and warned that creating hESC lines to match most patients "could require millions of discarded embryos from IVF clinics". Although the editors dismiss as "tenuous" the connection between therapeutic use of hESCs and the genetic/epigenetic abnormalities introduced during cloning, this same concern was raised by Jose Cibelli's recent article in Science.

I think it is important to hear about these obstacles and be realistic about what ES cells could provide. There are other uses of ES cells besides implantation type therapy, of course. For instance, they aid the understanding of basic cell differentiation and cell cycle regulation, topics that are important in cancer research.

The problem for me is that I find the 'moral' objections ridiculous. So if ES cells have any therapeutic or just plain scientific potential at all, then I'm all for it. Am I living in naive bliss thinking that most average people wouldn't give a damn after they really understood what a blastocyst is? Right now, I'm thinking that this is one of a few scientific areas where you could educate the public and actually impact policy in a positive way.

There appears to be a semi-lively debate underway over at the Nature Neuro news blog: Action Potential.

Labels: embryonic stem cells, es cells, politics

An FOB (friend of the blog) has a prescription for how you can be proactive if you are a restrictionist and want to affect the pending senatorial proceedings.

According to Krikorian and Kaus, these are the 12 Senators on the fence (there may be more). Perhaps you could post this list with the following directions. It took me all of 10 minutes to do this.

1) open up each link in a new tab in Firefox

2) prepare a message in a text editor, such as the following:

"Dear Senator,

Please vote AGAINST cloture on the upcoming immigration bill. It is a
disaster and would be ruinous for this country if passed. Thank you.

Sincerely,

XXX

[Signature with affiliations, etc. may also be useful to include]"

3) paste it into each text field, update the contact info, and hit send.
It's ok if you're out of state, the Senate in particular is a national
organ.

-------------

Bond (R-Mo.)

http://bond.senate.gov/contact/contactme.cfm

Bingaman (D-N.M.)

senator_bingaman@bingaman.senate.gov

Burr (R-N.C.)

http://burr.senate.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.Home

Boxer (D-Calif.)

http://boxer.senate.gov/contact/email/policy.cfm

Cochran (R-Miss.)

http://cochran.senate.gov/contact.htm

Conrad (D-N.D.)

http://conrad.senate.gov/webform.html

Ensign (R-Nev.)

http://ensign.senate.gov/forms/email_form.cfm

Levin (D-Mich.)

http://levin.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm

Gregg (R-N.H.)

http://gregg.senate.gov/sitepages/contact.cfm

Nelson (D-Neb.)

http://bennelson.senate.gov/contact/email.cfm

Hatch (R-Utah)

http://hatch.senate.gov/index.cfm?Fuseaction=Offices.Contact

Webb (D-Va.).

http://webb.senate.gov/contact/

Labels: politics

Andrew Sullivan says:

And lepers everywhere! I tell you: the nineteenth century was one frigging amnesty after another. And the seventeenth century! We had no control of the borders whatsoever.

This is a common perception that comes up over and over again. From Albion's Seed:

...The founders of Massachusetts, unlike rulers of other European colonies, deliberately excluded an aristocracy from their ranking system.

At the same time, the leaders of Massachussets also made a concerted and highly successful effort to discourage immigration from the bottom of English society. They prohibited entry of convincted felons (many of whom ahd been punished for crimes of poverty) and place heavy impediments on the path of the migrant poor. A series of poor laws were enacted in Massachusetts, which rules of settlement and "warning out" that were even more strict than in England.

The author, David Hackett Fisher, argues that the character of various American regions, in particular New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and the lowland and upland South, was shaped in large part by the character of the British immigrant streams to each region. Whether you quibble with the details of his thesis, the general picture seems to be one where the initial parameters had a strong influence on the future course of events for centuries. In any case, the American colonies were not really characterized by "open borders" by any stretch of the imagination.

Labels: politics

Darwin Catholic has an interest post about work Americans won't do. Darwin & his wife believe in doing their own yard work (I believe they live in Texas, so is probably pretty transgressive). So check this:

I was pounding away with a short-handled mattock when one of a group of teenagers slouching by shouts in my general direction, "Stupid wetback! What ya doin?"

Now, I'm half-Mexican in ancestry, but no one ever guesses it. My hair isn't that dark, and although I take a tan if I get around to going outside enough, I'm not really olive at all. But apparently if I'm wearing workboots, jeans and a white t-shirt and covered in sweat and dirt while working in the yard -- it is actually possible for people to recognize my Mexican background. Perhaps I was even doing some of that famous work that Americans won't do.

A few months ago I was at a fancy restaurant that was going through some renovation, and I overheard one of the diners chatting up one of the owners. They were discussing how nice the new facade was turning out, and the diner blurted out, "Is the man working on this Latin American?" Turns out he wasn't (at least that's what the owner said). Anyway, here is a map of the density of illegal immigrants across the United States. In most of America there is a lot of work that Americans won't do.

Labels: politics

I just listened to Martha Nussbaum's discussion of her new book, The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future, on the Carnegie Council Podcast. Given that I know essentially nothing about India's history or politics I would be interested if any of the more informed cats around could critique or corroborate her assessment of the events surrounding the Gujarati riots of 2002. She uses these riots as a counter-example to the 'clash of civilizations' framework for understanding Islam. As Nussbaum paints it, in the riots, far right Hindu folks informed by a British ideal of masculinity killed and did all sorts of other horrible things to Muslims who were otherwise living peacefully side-by-side with other cultures. I'm currently suspicious of attempts to paint Muslims as oppressed (even though this goes against my guilty liberal inclinations) because I read this article in Commentary about how Muslim's in Europe don't really have it so bad off.

Oh, and I also thought it was interesting how she characterized Nehru's disdain for religion as problematic because he (and his party) lost the ability to use deep cultural symbols to connect with the public at large. In the context of the new Atheism and Hitch's new book, this example illustrates an unforeseen danger of strident atheism. If you're not willing to fill that void in your community's life, someone else with more pernicious aims might be willing to do so. Like Mr. Raymond says, "After tonight, don't leave your girl alone with me, true playa for real."

Labels: politics

The New York Times has an article up about the recent AEI event (which you can watch online), Darwinism and Conservatism: Friends or Foes?. Let me reiterate what I've stated before, if you do a head count, "against Darwin or not?," the 1/3 of Americans who would self-label as "conservative" would mostly be against (see the opinions of white Evangelicals here). That being said, there does exist a "split" among elite conservatives. Humans have multiple affiliations and affinities, and Jonah Goldberg's embarrassment is comprehensible via his identity as a member of the East Coast Pundit Class. If you weight sentiment about Creationism, assign it a positive or negative value, and sum across all self-identified conservatives, I suspect the value would be much closer to 0 then you would have expected because of the shallowness of negative sentiment and the intensity of feeling from the elites.^*

Related: TNR surveys conservative movers and shakers.

* And of course, no on really knows much about the process of evolution. It's more a cultural marker.

Labels: politics

Apropos of David's post from earlier this week, Labor bites it! Sunday will likely be Sarko's....

Labels: politics

Go read Hawks on Nisbet & Mooney:

This kind of cynical strategy is the province of used car salesmen and other charlatans. And it's easily exposed by any clever critic who happens to be watching . . .

My point isn't that these critics are right, but that such criticisms pretty much write themselves! A scientist trying to "frame" in this way is going to end up discredited unless they retreat to the facts anyway. This is, after all, why scientists are typically so cautious in print -- because they work in a field where bad arguments are quickly torn apart by their critics. Why in the world would anyone think politics would be any easier?

This is pretty much right, and I just want to add that this is especially bad advice to give to scientists, because scientists wouldn't be scientists if they were really good salespeople. Spinning is not their comparative advantage, and "fight the enemy on his own turf" is awful tactical advice. Scientists owe whatever respect and deference they're given to the fact that they're percieved as being interested primarily in the truth: their reputation for earnestness and lack of guile is a big part of their cred. The best way to get people to regard you as honest is to really be naively honest.

People may be dumb in a lot of ways, but they generally know how to spot when someone's trying to sell them something, and telling scientists that they should behave more like salespeople will result in them being regarded in much the same way—and they are never going to be better salespeople than professional demagogues. I can think of no better way to erode whatever benefit of the doubt that scientists currently enjoy in our culture. If scientists try to play the political game, they're going to lose. Better to try to stay above the fray than get dragged in and trampled for sure.

Labels: culture, politics

A few weeks ago I watched Bloggingheads.TV which I found really amusing. Eric Alterman was in a discussion with someone named Bill Scher. I don't know anything about Scher aside from the fact that he makes Jonah Goldberg seem really intellectual and a deep thinker (see their diavlog). But I was struck by the following exchange over foreign policy:

Alterman: "People in these countries don't want us, they hate us, they hate everything about us, they hate the idea of democracy, it's inconsistent with their vision of Islamic republics, which is what they clearly want. So you just like glossing over that, but I think that's fundamental. I think the promotion of democracy in the Arab world creates anti-American terrorists."

Scher: "Well, I mean, democracy in the broader sense, what kind of government do those people want. It doesn't have to be Jeffersonian-"

Alterman: "I don't want them to have the kind of government that they want. OK. I don't want Jordan and Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to have the kind of government that they want, because they will want to kill me with it!

I generally cheered for Alterman here. Whether you are an interventionist or not, the whole rhetoric about democracy and its universal appeal on both the Left and Right has gotten out of control. Whether there is a universal yearning for democratic freedom or not, its acceptance as a background assumption in the public discourse has become nearly religious. When someone like Alterman challenges it, you see a "deer in headlights" tendency. There are few counter arguments because people assume any contrary position is either absurd or immoral. These sort of dreamy tendencies are fine when you aren't an imperial power that has to make real-politik decisions (e.g., Iceland?), but at this point bad decisions informed by fallacious assumptions can cost a lot, at home and abroad.

To make the world as you wish it to be, you must first comprehend how it truly is.

Labels: gay media, politics

A few months ago a friend made an offhand comment about how they were on the side of the "Andalusian model." His assumption was that Al-Andalus, Muslim Spain, was far superior in its method of dealing with religious pluralism than Christian Spain. I've read a fair amount of popular & scholarly work on this period and region, and the reality is more complex than the hype. The friend holds a Ph.D. in a social science from Harvard and has a position as an assistant professor at a moderately elite university. He isn't an uintelligent individual. I tried to communicate to him a few general points:

1) Religious pluralism was a reality in both Christian and Muslim Spain

2) Subordination at the expense of the religion promoted by the the elite was the norm throughout this period

3) Persecution of Jews occurred both in Muslim & Christian Spain

4) One can see a general trend where the dominant religion, whether it be Christianity or Islam, tends to become less tolerant when its numbers are great enough to dispense with accommodation with the majority (or what has become a minority)

The issue that I had was that my friend was making an identity between Muslim Spain and the post-Enlightenment West in regards to freedom of religion when that freedom did not exist in the former. Al-Andalus' tolerance only exists on a relative scale in comparison to the later Spanish expulsion of Jews, Morsicos (crypto-Muslims) and persecution of religious nonconformists (Protestants). The expulsion of Jews from Spain looms large in our minds because of its recency (and its memory in the Sephardic Diaspora), but the pogroms in Muslim Spain during the 10th or 12th centuries were nothing to sneeze at. Similarly, Jews and Muslims played roles in the life of Christian states throughout the transitionary period from 1000 to 1500 (e.g., Muslim soldiers were employed by Christian kings). It would not be factually incorrect to romanticize some of the medieval Spanish kindgoms set against the oppressive nature of the Spanish monarchy after 1492.

There are two major issues that loom in the background for me. First, was Al-Andalus more tolerant than Christian Spain? Let's say we evaluate the period between 700 and 1800. If you construct a "persecution" index with a host of parameters (e.g., expectation someone is subject to a pogrom in any give year, etc.) I would probably bet on Al-Andalus. That is, integrating over the time from conquest to reconquest religious minorities might have had a better time of it in Muslim Spain than Christian Spain from 700 to 1800. That being said, the difference is quantitative, not qualitative. Second, one needs to put the contextual issues on the table. Muslims were a small minority in their domains for the first few centuries of Al-Andalus, so it was simply not practically feasible to engage in excessive religious persecution. Similarly, afer the Visigothic monarchy converted to Catholic Christianity from the Arian sect in the 6th century there seems to have been more persecution of Jews. Why? Was Catholicism fundamentally more anti-Semitic than Arianism? I suspect not, rather, the Visigothic elite before their conversion were a religious minority, and as such they were in no position to use the ideology of religious conformity to support their rule since they themselves were at variance with the majority confession. After their conversion to Catholicism they had nothing to lose, and everything to gain, by engaging in religious intolerance as it solidified their rule and identification with the religious majority whom they had so recently joined. Similarly, the Catholic rulers of the Iberian peninsula did not become any less tolerant over the five centuries of the reconquest, the demographic balance of power shifted from Muslims to Christians (just as Christians had once converted to Islam, so Muslims who lived under Christian rule slowly converted over time to Christianity).¹ What people tend to do with cultures in a historical context is similar to what they do with individuals in regards to the Fundamental Attribution Error. Instead of Muslim or Christian tolerance & intolerance emerging out of the situation, they become reduced to cultural essences. My friend had internalized and essence of Muslim Spanish culture that it was "tolerant" as a matter of principle when in reality it seems more a matter of pragmatism. The reconquista states also engaged in this pragmatism for centuries before the expulsions and forced conversions began. Conversely, during times of chaos and stress, and when Muslims had attained numerical dominance, Jews and Christians also were on the receiving end of Islamic persecution.

Which brings me to my final point: attitudes and sentiments about Muslim Spain are not about history or an analysis of the data, they are about the beliefs we hold about the modern world in regards to the values we deem to be precious. That is, my friend, scholar though he is, was not really interested in the nature of life in medieval Spain, he was making a comment about his adherence to the principle of religious toleration and the separation of church & state. Muslim Spain is simply a notional marker, a signal, the historical details are pretty much irrelevant, it is the legend that matters. I bring my friend's educational qualifications up because this is a person who is intellectual in orientation, but in hindsight I realize that bringing up the minutiae of historical detail is pointless, and fundamentally a distraction for him. The history is grist for the mill of ideology, not a thing in and of itself. An analogy might be the Bible, no matter the reality of the scholarship Christians will extract from the text and historical details points of relevance to them and their daily lives. Similarly, conservatives and liberals will take from the life of Thomas Jefferson the slices which are relevant to them, no matter the reality of the sum total of his beliefs and sentiments.

This does not mean we can not glean reality from the past, and understand how it was. Rather, I am implying that for most humans such scholarly points of detail are not important, the past is a fiction which simply allows them to justify their own ideals with a more ancient patina. Of course, on this blog I do insist upon fidelity to reality as we understand it. It is simply an acknowledgement of reality and its power than I concede that historical accuracy is of little concern to most, and so it shall ever be.

1 - The Moriscos expelled in 1600 were crypto-Muslims who could not be assimilated into the Spanish state because of the nominal nature of their Catholicism. But, that does not mean that all Muslims living under Spanish rule were destined to become Moriscos, rather, it seems likely that the great majority converted, just as many Jews became Catholics.

Labels: History, politics

Do you remember the age before polling in politics? I don't. Today we bemoan the emphasis on polls and idealize the past, before candidates knew in scientific and statistically significant detail the temperature of the democratic water. But no one is going to ban polls in the near future, for every person who complains about survey data there are hundreds who are clicking refresh over & over to find the most recent tracking results on their website of choice.

I think something similar is necessary for the sciences (or scholarship in general). Is George Lakoff a laughing stock (as Chris would have us believe), or a thinker of gigantic Aristotelian proportions? I suppose if you were a cognitive scientist you'd know, your sample of individuals in the field with whom you'd engaged in personal communication would be vast and you could get a sense of the direction that the wind was blowing. But for someone outside the field you basically have to trust someone on the inside and hope they aren't misleading you (or, themselves). Is multi-level selection the next big thing in evolutionary biology, as Bora claims, or is it a relatively marginal and muddled field, my own general perception? Bora has made the Kuhnian claim that multi-level selection's day will come when the older scientists die off, but how do we know that his perception is correct? One's own sample is obviously going to be biased toward those with whom one is on common ground with, perhaps there are enormous social science departments steeped in conceptual metaphor theory that Chris has no knowledge of because he is boxed in within his old fashioned world of symbolicists?

I think my point is pretty clear here: in the sciences quite often laypeople are in the position where they know with great confidence that a theory is absolutely accepted at its level of precision (e.g., Newtonian Mechanics) or totally rejected (e.g., the Aether theories). It is as if our knowledge of allele frequencies was certain with any degree of confidence only if they were operationally fixed (i.e., greater than 99%) or very rare or non-existent (i.e., less than 1%). Not only would my proposal help the public, I think it could give scientists some perspective about their position within their discipline.

Labels: politics, science, Social science