vividly remember the first time I was hijacked on the radio. I
had
agreed to participate in a debate for a Florida radio program
that specialized
in alien visits and U.F.O. sightings. My better
judgment suggested
that I should
be wary. But I thought if I kept my
focus purely on the physics challenges
involved in space travel, I
might be able to persuade some listeners to be
skeptical of the
claims that aliens were regularly visiting, abducting
and
experimenting with our fellow earthlings.
I should have
known better. After 45 minutes defending myself against the
claim
that I was close-minded, when I argued that science did in fact
impose
constraints on what is possible, and politely responding to
demands that I must
first scrupulously review all the specific claims
of alien sightings before I
could possibly have the temerity to make
general statements about plausibility
or implausibility, I felt that
any uninformed listeners who might have been
waiting to be swayed
probably found themselves merely confused at the
end of
the
show.
In a debate that confronts the results of science
with pseudoscience, from
alien abductions and crop circles on one
hand to the health benefits of weak
magnetic fields or young earth
creationism on the other, the odds are stacked
against
science.
Part of the problem is uniquely American. We in the
United States are
constantly regaled by stories about the limitless
possibilities open to those
with know-how and a spirit of enterprise.
Combine that with a public that
perceives the limits of science as
targets that are constantly being overcome,
and the suggestion that
anything is absolutely impossible seems like
an affront.
Indeed,
modern technology has made the seemingly impossible almost
ordinary.
How
often have I heard the cry from an audience, "Yeah, but 300 years
ago people
would have said it would be impossible to fly!"
Although true, the problem with that assertion is that 300
years ago people
did not know enough about the laws of physics to
make the assertion, so the
claim would have been improper. Had they
made a simpler claim like, "Three
hundred years from now, if you drop
this cannonball off the Tower of Pisa, it
will fall down," they would
have been right.
Although it is probably true that there is
far more that we do not
know about
nature than that we do know, we do
know something! We know that balls, when
dropped, fall down. We do
know that the earth is round and not flat. We do know
how
electromagnetism works, and we do know that the earth is billions of
years
old, not thousands.
We may not know how spacecraft of
the future will be propelled, whether
matter-antimatter drives will
be built or even if time travel is possible. But
we do know,
absolutely, how much on-board fuel will be needed to speed up
a
substantial spacecraft to near the speed of light — an
enormous
amount, probably
enough to power all of human civilization
at the present time for perhaps a
decade.
That means that
aliens who want to come here from a distant star will
probably have
to have some better reason than merely performing secret
kinky
experiments on the patients of a Harvard psychiatrist.
As difficult as debating ultimate limits of the possible may
be, there is
another debate that is even harder to win. But it is a
debate that may be even
more important. It is a debate on the
"fairness" of science. The reason for the
difficulty is simple.
Science is not fair. All ideas are not treated equally.
Only those
that have satisfied the test of experiment or can be tested
by
experiment have any currency. Beautiful ideas, elegant ideas and
even
sacrosanct
notions are not immune from termination by the
chilling knife edge of
experimental data.
In Ohio, a debate is
raging over whether to teach "intelligent design"
alongside evolution
in high school biology classes. Intelligent design is based
on the
belief that life is too complicated to explain by natural causes
alone
and that some intelligence, ultimately some divine
intelligence, must have
created the original life forms on earth or
guided their development.
Proponents of that idea suggest that
including it in the
curriculum is simply
a question of fairness. If a
significant number of people do not believe that
evolution provides
an adequate explanation of the origin of species,
they argue,
then it
is only fair to present both sides of the argument in a high
school
science class.
But at least half of Americans polled
in a recent survey by the National
Science Foundation did not know
that Earth orbits the Sun, and that it takes a
year to do so. Does
this mean we should teach that Earth is the center of the
universe?
Of course not. It merely means that we are not doing a very good
job
informing the public about physics.
Science is not a
democratic process. It does not proceed by
majority rule and
it does
not accept notions that have already been disproven by experiment.
Intelligent design makes assertions that cannot be tested by
experiment.
Those assertions that can be tested, say about blood
clotting or the claimed
irreducible complexity of various components
of cells, seem to have thus far
failed those tests. So intelligent
design does not belong in a science class.
End of story.
Nevertheless, recently the Ohio State School Board felt
it
necessary to run a
hearing on evolution vs. intelligent design in
a debate format, with two
proponents of evolution to face off against
two advocates of intelligent design
in Columbus.
One might
think that I would know better than to agree to
participate in such
a
debate. But I did, because I felt the education of schoolchildren in
Ohio was
so important.
Nevertheless, I tried to learn from my
earlier mistakes. Merely having a
debate inevitably suggests that
each side has some credibility. As a result,
opponents of the
scientific method like creationists try very hard to appear
in
debates with scientists. Merely being on the same stage represents
a victory!
I made sure that I emphasized this intrinsic
inequity in my opening remarks
in Columbus, and it colored much of
the subsequent discussion, as well as the
later reporting of the
event. I do not know whether it was sufficient to let
listeners focus
on whether there was really anything worth debating
in the
first
place. But it at least allowed for that possibility.
In
the meantime, for those scientists who find themselves thrust in
such
public debates, I have found at least one useful tool. When
debating U.F.O.
experts, ask them whether they believe in "Young
Earth Creationism." When
debating young earth creationists, ask them
whether they believe in alien
U.F.O.'s. When they say no, ask why.
Their answers will inevitably
shed light on
the weakness of their own
positions.
Of course, as has once happened to me, you might
find yourself debating a
U.F.O.-believing creationist. But you can't
win them all. My hope is that you
can win at least some of
the
time.