Archaeoastronomy

I’ll admit not everyone is interested in the world around them.

Here’s a site I like, The Hall of Ma’at. I don’t read it as much as I’d like because my reading tends to be RSS based. Still, it means that when I do remember to visit their forum there’s plenty of interesting stuff. I’ve just learned about The Chocolate Hills. As well as being fascinating geology, that thread also includes a bit of mockery. It’s an interesting place. They’ll have visitors who have found the exact aliens which built the pyramids every so often, and they’ll listen. On the other hand I don’t see them compromising on the need for evidence. If you’re wrong or making stuff up, you will know about it.

The founder, Kat Reese, is an interesting person. She contributed a chapter to the book Archaeological Fantasies. Not all of Memoirs of a True Believer is visible at Google Books, but certainly there’s enough. She puts herself under the microscope and tells of her movement from alternative historical beliefs to more mainstream archaeology. One of the key differences she sees between popular alternative archaeology authors and the academics is that the alternative authors see this as a political debate. It’s not about the science.

Claims about the past are about people, so they’re often political. However, so to are claims in other pseudosciences. You get pronouncements on health policy from the many and varied quacks shun evidence as a means for determining medical care. I’ve recently seen people complaining about the LCROSS impact on the Moon who care deeply and passionately, though not quite to the extent that they visited NASA’s site on the LCROSS to find out what the mission is about. NASA’s research on the effects of the LCROSS impact is a problem if you don’t know anything about lunar geology but you want to argue against them. You could learn, but that’s time consuming. It’s much easier to argue that NASA simply don’t know anything about the Moon. This is about standing up to authority which, along the way, means taking down Science.

Now, here’s the head-spinning bit.

When Deepak Chopra makes his appeals to send him more money he doesn’t do it because of mystic ookiness. He does it based on appeals to quantum physics. I’m using the word ‘based’ in a completely incorrect sense there. Chiropractors get stroppy about being next to other New Age practitioners. Homeopaths don’t refer to themselves as magicians. They give each other degrees and not just any degrees but BScs. Oh yes, the days when scientist could visit the lavatories in the Arts block and smugly write “Arts degrees, please take one,” next to the toilet paper dispenser are over. If there’s so much opposition to scientific reasoning, why do cranks make their claims in pseudo-scientific language?

Even Ken Ham, the man who pushes the line that the Bible is inerrant, promotes his science credentials on Answers in Genesis. He’s got a Bachelor’s degree from QIT. Why on earth would you need a science degree if you say the answers can all be found through Biblical study? The answer is important for science communication.

People love science.

It’s recognised as one of the best methods for learning about the world around you. A lot of people find the world around them quite interesting. Added to that is testing of ideas and ability to weed out bad ideas that makes science attractive. When nutritionists are pushing their pill supplements they’re not interested in ‘another way of knowing’. They’re eager to equate themselves with science because that makes their work fact. When people want to belittle evolution, they don’t refer to evolution’s science base. Instead evolution is a religion or a faith position. It suggests to me that political groups are aware gods cannot compete with science as explanations for a lot of the public. If faith was as important as it’s cracked up to be then calling evolution a religion wouldn’t be a put-down. Similarly global warming deniers don’t say that science cannot be used to examine climate change. Instead they say various arguments are aren’t scientific. Very few people dismiss an argument by calling it scientific because even, if you don’t like it, science has a reputation for working out what is true.

That’s why I think explicitly tagging politics onto science could detract in some way from the scientific message. In Kat Reese’s chapter she’s open that what worked for her was the emphasis on verifiable facts, and the difference in method between the scientific and the pseudo-scientific archaeologists. It’s a great selling point. If that’s the case peddling religion as contributing to or being a partner in scientific findings is not only dishonest, but also confusing the public about what science is. Religion can certainly be an inspiration, but so can the works of Shakespeare and no-one argues that Shakespeare is an essential partner in questions about the universe.

That doesn’t make advocacy wrong. Janet Stemwedel put it much better than me in saying scientists (and academics as a whole) are not all after the same thing.. That might include lobbying for a more ecologically responsible position or against religion infringing human rights. But these are political aims. Mooney and Kirshenbaum are appealing for people who have different political view to them to talk about something else. The fact they don’t see why this might be a problem shows a worrying lack of awareness of society. Personally I’m not interested in whether you believe in a god or not. I definitely don’t feel any responsibility to (de-?)convert people. I already have enough responsibilities. My interest starts when someone claims their beliefs limit what I can do without any justification other than a vague feeling. That is also politics rather than science.

So what can you do for science communication? I think It can be helped by people sharing tactics, but the requires accepting the diversity of scientists or public. It could be helpful to share what works and what doesn’t in different contexts. On the other hand if you insist your political beliefs are in fact a comment on science, you’ll end up with a self-destructive row which does no-one any good.

That’s my attempt to start moving to something positive. I don’t think someone’s a failure just because they don’t appeal to everyone. If the long tail means anything we should be sharing and celebrating all the small successes as well as the a-list. Except me, if I am a success, because whenever I get a traffic spike I always think, “Bloody hell, what have I gone and said now?”

I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said “Stop! don’t do it!”
“Why shouldn’t I?” he said.
I said, “Well, there’s so much to live for!”
He said, “Like what?”
I said, “Well…are you religious or atheist?”
He said, “Religious.”
I said, “Me too! Are you Christian or Buddhist?”
He said, “Christian.”
I said, “Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant?”
He said, “Protestant.”
I said, “Me too! Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?”
He said, “Baptist!”
I said,”Wow! Me too! Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?”
He said, “Baptist Church of God!”
I said, “Me too! Are you Original Baptist Church of God , or are you Reformed Baptist Church of God?”
He said,”Reformed Baptist Church of God!”
I said, “Me too! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915?”
He said, “Reformed baptist church of god, reformation of 1915!”
I said, “DIE, HERETIC SCUM!” and pushed him off.

Emo Phillips demonstrates no-one is generically ‘religious’

I had 2000 words on Mooney and Kirshenbaum’s blogging typed up. I was going to leave it for my own files, then I was going to work it in a blog post. Since then there’s been a bit of a meltdown on the Intersection. That means I’m not going to pick through most of their contradictions. There’s plenty of other people doing that and at worst, if I do it badly, it’s going to feed into the they’re victims of the big blogger / bullying PZ in the national media argument (delete as appropriate). They’re the two popular frames for the argument, and being seen in one or the other pretty well railroads you into one siding or another.

I’m aware Frames are deeply unpopular with some science bloggers. If you’re not familiar with them, they come from an opinion piece in Science, Framing Science, by Nisbett and Mooney which argued that scientists should communicate their work in a social context, or frame, which resonated with the public. To social scientists the idea that texts have social contexts is a mundane observation. To scientists who entered the sciences because they were interested in science rather than culture, this is perhaps less obvious. At its most basic the message is “know your audience”, which appears in more or else every book on presentation I’ve read. Where Framing Science went further is that it seemed to assume that science was political and communication was advocacy. My opinion was that science was political, with a small p, but that the culture in science was built around trying to minimise that effect to create a neutral product. As far as I know there’s no explicitly socialist Law of Gravity. Nisbett and Mooney failed to either realise or convincingly accomodate how antithetical to some notions of science their proposal was. Either Frames are nonsense, or their methods were an example of doing Frames badly.

Spin on to 2009 and Mooney and Kirshenbaum are advocating a change in practice in some scientists. That’s perfectly reasonable. No-one I know thinks science communication is perfect. One of their stated targets is to change the behaviour of scientists who are unsympathetic towards religious belief. This isn’t irrational. They give reasons and come to a conclusion. Whether or not you agree with them isn’t the problem. If you do think the New Atheists should turn down the volume then how do you go about it? Telling the people you want to persuade that they’re bad people and their narrow-mindedness is harming Science isn’t the method I’d choose.

If I were to argue that the biggest benefit to science communication would be for PZ Myers to stop attacking religion (to pick a totally random example), then I’d want to frame my message so that it resonated with people like PZ Myers. I might argue that aggressive debate with a public which isn’t used to evidence-based debate as part of everyday life is polarising. This is a problem if you occupy a small minority position because the problem is political rather than scientific and politics is about quantity rather than quality. I’d preface my argument with data to show it wasn’t something I pulled out of the air. This is because even if you think New Atheists are dogmatic it’s part of their self-image that they aren’t, so data would play well with them. If New Atheists genuinely aren’t dogmatic then they can examine the data anyway, so it’s win-win. Of course if the data doesn’t exist to support the proposition I might want to question if my position was sound.

Mooney and Kirshenbaum have adopted a somewhat different tactic. They’ve aggressively gone after PZ Myers, omitting some details Myers thinks are important in their discussion. Even if Mooney and Kirshenbaum are entirely correct in what they say this still a catastrophic failure of frame if they intend to alter Myers’ behaviour. This failure is being compounded on their weblog. I’m left wondering who the target of the frame is. In theory it looks fine. Mooney and Kirshenbaum are the pragmatic scientists who are fed up with the God Wars. That’s a frame which should appeal to a lot of atheists who can’t be bothered with religion because they have no interest. However the discussion of how the New Atheists are Bad People, pulls it right back into that argument. The only way that could make sense is if Science is a monoculture.

That’s where SEED magazine is wrong. Science isn’t Culture. Science is Cultures, plural, with differing motivations, methods even social behaviour. Physicists will often publish to pre-print servers and work from those rather than wait for formal publication in a journal. Other scientists wouldn’t. I’ve lost track of how many different definitions different disciplines have for the word ‘agent’. I’ve visited one combined department where people identified which sub-field you were working in by seeing what you were drinking. One group drank beer, one group drank wine and the third drank to forget. Throw in complicating factors like personal political views and scientists are not a homogenous bunch. You can’t reach everyone, and you don’t even need to try. You can pick your fights.

The same assumption of a homeogenous (and passive) audience is seen elsewhere. Many comments have argued that Dawkins problem is that he isn’t Sagan. Sagan was respected. Sagan bridge science and religion. Sagan reached 500 million people with his shows. Basically Sagan is the Chuck Norris of science communication. No-one seems to have added that the world has moved on. When Sagan at his peak there were three television stations in the UK. It’s common for a British household to have hundreds now. I don’t know how dramatic the change has been in America. Also there’s additional factors like the rise of the web. Broadcasting is now sat alongside many-to-many communication. These days niche programming is the norm and people will search out the niches they want. I’d like to say the 60s and 70s were a golden age of communication with people like Jacob Bronowski or James Burke being appreciated for their masterful performances of scientific poetry. Yet I can’t help wondering if one of the reasons many people watched was because the only alternative was having a conversation with their partner.

There’s no longer one audience, there’s many. Anyone arguing that there is just the one true way to reach those audiences is only going to satisfy one audience. For instance some other people have held up Gould as a comparison to Dawkins. Gould really doesn’t move me, but then I have no interest in baseball. I’d hope there’s room for a more internationalist approach to science communication than Americans communicating exclusively with Americans, Britons with Britons and so on. It’s yet another layer of complexity. That’s why I’m wary of Mooney and Kirshenbaum’s criticisms of strongly atheist science communciation. But equally it also means that rejecting some communicators because they’re ‘appeasers’ is going to miss some of the public. If we want scientific societies and academia to support communication then acknowledging the important of diversity would be helpful.

Sorry for the lack of links. I’ve cobbled this together at the last minute because what I had was far worse and even longer to make a simple point. I’ll try and add more links in tomorrow’s entry where I’ll try and make a positive case for ignoring religious sensitivities (or even challenging them) in science communication.