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The Evo-ID debate has gone damnably wrong.
That anything scientific could ever come of it never seemed likely to us
because the question being debated isn’t even subject to the scientific
method. As all good scientists know, there’s no arguing about this
part, the scientific method works best for studying something that is
actually happening. Basically, you simply watch for changes and record
scrupulously what you see and then subject your data to statistical
analysis to be sure it isn’t just, well, chance – all the while puffing
contemplatively on a pipe or sipping coffee with gravitas and
equanimatas. If the thing has already happened, there are no changes to
watch. You’re dealing with history, not science, a job for a historian
or a detective, not a scientist. Science describes how things are
working, it does not explain how they originated. You guess at that.
For both Evo and ID the process in question is not how life functions
but how it originated. Rattle all the fossil bones you want, gasp at
the double helix until you hyperventilate, it settles nothing.
So the debate never was scientific, not by
the proper definition, and could never be much more than a squabble.
And that it has become, all mama bear rage, little gravitas, no
equanimatas.
An ironic part of the brouhaha, considering
that it never was scientific, is that it’s only about who is scientific
and who is bogus, argued by columnists and philosophers and political
scientists, and not surprisingly lawyers, and big think tanks and PACs
and the ACLU and the Discovery Institute, everybody and his dog but
scientists, in courts not laboratories, rather as theologians argued
science in ecclesiastical councils in the middle ages.
The Creationist Curmudgeon expected to hear
all this sermonizing about what science is from The New
Yorker, the New York Times, Time Magazine, Slate, Wired News, and
the bouquet of blogs like “Panda’s Thumb.” Piqued but not beyond
restraint, we aren’t bothering to respond on these pages. But when the
American Medical Association chimes in with the same rant – science is
Evo and Evo only, -- and presents it, of all places, on the Medical
Ethics site (“Virtual Mentor” for “analysis and discussion of ethical
and professional issues”), that grabs us. As an old doc who spent a
couple of years in a research lab scrupulously recording data if not
chugging coffee, we hit our keyboard and speak up.
But we won’t rebut any of the AMA man’s
points. Any debate of medical science issues, like how DNA fits in, is
better left to our medical colleagues, Robert T. (Tommy) Mitchell, M.D.,
and Howard Glicksman, M.D., awaiting in the “Creation Digest” examining
room. (“Evolution and Medicine”; “Irreducible Complexity”). But that
isn’t what the AMA man is talking about.
You really must click the article and read
it yourself.1
Since no facts are
presented, just random and disconnected declarations generated by the
same pool of columnists and political scientists the New Yorker
uses, not the medical authorities we’re used to reading in specialty and
investigative medical journals, you will probably find nonsensical the
quotes we have plucked. We apologize. We yearn to comment, but
refrain. So exquisite are these pontifications, exhortations,
theatrics, agonies, and alarums that any riposte would be gilding the
lily. So here in essence and in quotes, alone in sophomoric splendor,
is the new AMA. Medicine has sure changed since our day.
Science, the scientific method, the
scientific community, our public health, our environment, “the very
integrity of American democracy,"2
are under dire threat, and it’s
“beginning to scare the scientific community” and the science teachers,
31 percent of whom, according to a study, “feel pressured to include
creationism, intelligent design, or other nonscientific alternatives to
evolution in their science classroom.” “Are we headed back to the past
with no escape in the future? Are we trapped in a new period of history
when science, once again, is in for the fight of its life?” “If you're
a believer in facts, scientific methods, and empirical data, the picture
is … depressing.”
Doctors “might not view themselves as
scientists, per se,” but we should see ourselves “as part of the larger
scientific collective that can't afford to shirk its duty.” “The town
scientist is the town doctor, so whether we want it or not, we have the
mantle--the trappings--of a scientist.” “Where Is the Medical
Community? The medical community as a whole has been largely absent
from today's public debates on science. …When physicians use their power
of political persuasion…it's generally for…their daily
survival--Medicare reimbursement” and the like. But the community “will
have to use its privileged perch in society to make the case for
science.” “It is time … to address not only how one can heal thy
patient, but also how one can heal thy nation.” Man the evolutionary
ramparts. “Seize the day, Doc.” “Doesn't combating this virulent
campaign of anti-knowledge lead us back to that old adage of
evolutionary leadership by example, ‘Monkey see, monkey do?’”
As those pixels fade from our screen, we are
left with a mental image of the beloved new AMA Norman Rockwell country
doc, as seen on nationwide TV, at her roll-top privileged societal
perch, her ACLU certification framed on the wall, her stethoscope to the
chest of the little boy’s dolly, squinting her non-scientific eyes and
informing the anxious parents, “Intelligent Design is bogus medicine,
dangerous quackery. But fortunately you came in time. Evo science and
ethics are the cure.”
We demand a second opinion.
1.
http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/15765.html
2. “Science politicization threatens not
just our public health and the environment but the very integrity of
American democracy,” is exactly how the piece puts it. |
