This is an article written by Clive Thompson in Wired magazine. The article is about evolution (not defined) and how the science community is thinking about using law instead of theory when talking about evolution. Read the article for all of it...or here is a snippet....
"Creationists and intelligent-design boosters have a guerrilla tactic to undermine textbooks that don't jibe with their beliefs. They slap a sticker on the cover that reads, EVOLUTION IS A THEORY, NOT A FACT, REGARDING THE ORIGIN OF LIVING THINGS.
This is the central argument of evolution deniers: Evolution is an unproven "theory." For science-savvy people, this is an incredibly annoying ploy. While it's true that scientists refer to evolution as a theory, in science the word theory means an explanation of how the world works that has stood up to repeated, rigorous testing. It's hardly a term of disparagement.
But for most people, theory means a haphazard guess you've pulled out of your, uh, hat. It's an insult, really, a glib way to dismiss a point of view: "Ah, well, that's just your theory." Scientists use theory in one specific way, the public another — and opponents of evolution have expertly exploited this disconnect....."
This is the letter I sent to Mr. Thompson. I decided to post because it is really important to me that people understand what the word "evolution" contains.
"Dear Clive,
I am writing in response to the article you wrote in the Wired Nov, 2007 issue. I realize it is January of 2008 and you may be thinking "not really staying up with Wired too well, are you?". I live in Australia and it is almost impossible to buy Wired in small towns. Thus I must resort to checking them out of the library, even if a bit dated.
Back to the article. You wrote about the conflicts that have arisen due to the term "theory" being used instead of "law". I don't agree that we can scientifically use that term (law) for all evolution. Scientific law attempts to describe an observation in nature.
The point I wanted make is that there are several types of evolution and that they should not be bundled together without clarification. We need to be very careful not to lump macro and micro evolution under one term. When talking about evolution I think scientists need to work harder at defining terms. I am from a science back ground and understand that there are differences when a scientist says "evolution". However, people without science backgrounds might not know of these differences. I know this is true from talking to my own friends.
Micro evolution was what you were talking about when you referred to vaccines and the flu virus. We know things mutate and change due to different environmental stresses placed upon them i.e. natural selection or micro-evolution. However I don't think we can be as confident when talking about macro-evolution, for example a virus suddenly evolving to have the same properties as bacteria. I worked in a virology lab where we grew bacteria and viruses every day. We never saw any one of those making a species jump.
Perhaps when using the terms "law" and "theory" it should be the "law of micro-evolution" and the "theory of macro-evolution".
When the public of the creationist/intelligent design persuasion say they don't believe in evolution they look crazy because they (without knowing it) are lumping micro and macro together. I think many of them if asked to clarify, would actually agree with micro and disagree with macro.
Part of being a good scientist is being able to communicate what you have discovered to the general public. I think those studying evolutionary science need to do a better job passing on these differences in evolution. There needs to be more clarification on micro and macro and what they mean. How can the general public make decisions on evolution if they don't understand the definitions contained in the word "evolution?"
Sincerely,
Megan Fisher"
1 comment:
The real annoying thing is scientists usurping the term science to refer to things that cannot be observed separably. Calling evolution theory assumes that experiments have been conducted where the proposed hypothesis is isolated so that the experiment either confirms or denies the hypothesis.
Data mining - finding an equation that best fits existing data is generally frowned upon in the scientific community, since it's very easy to predict what has already happened.
This also plagues climatology. The climatologists create a "model" of our planet, feed it with data and tweak it so that it matches current measurements (data mining) then, they run it for different scenarios and use the results to "prove" the effects of global warming. Interestingly enough (and this is from Accuweather, no less), one of the main climate models used to predict doom and gloom was the same one that predicted horrible hurricanes in 2006. Now, they don't know what to do (although it apparently doesn't cast ANY doubt on the long-term conclusions).
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