If I was Prof Michael Reiss, I'd be annoyed...

Poor Prof Reiss: not only has he been forced to resign for making a generally sensible speech that was leapt on and distorted by anti-religious Fellows of the Royal Society and the media, but the media (in the shape of the Guardian) has actually admitted that it had a part in his downfall. In a column titled "In praise of Prof Michael Reiss": nice touch.

Quotes:

The subtlety of Prof Reiss's position was lost in some media reports, while the headlines in many newspapers- including this one - did not convey the nuance of his message. This appears to have cost him his job.

and:

But Prof Reiss's shabby treatment smacks of an organisation that is frightened of a debate about how creationist views should be tackled by teachers.

You can bet that this is the line that will be taken by those who would wish to pollute science with creationist nonsense. This seems like a spectacular own goal to me.

Creationism in schools: a manufactured controversy

I wrote briefly about the comments of Prof. Michael Reiss, director of education at the Royal Society, that creationism should be taught in schools in certain circumstances. The reaction to Reiss's comments has been somewhat alarming, with calls for him to be sacked [UPDATE: Professor Reiss has now resigned].

Here's Sir Harry Kroto:

I warned the president of the Royal Society that his [Reiss] was a dangerous appointment a year ago. I did not realise just how dangerous it would turn out to be.

And Sir Richard Roberts:

I think it is outrageous that this man is suggesting that creationism should be discussed in a science classroom. It is an incredible idea and I am drafting a letter to other Nobel laureates - which would be sent to the Royal Society - to ask that Reiss be made to stand down.

And, inevitably, Richard Dawkins:

A clergyman in charge of education for the country's leading scientific organisation - it's a Monty Python sketch.

To me these comments seem to taking things too far, especially in the light of a letter to today's Guardian from Prof. Reiss himself:

Your headline (Teach creationism, says top scientist, September 12) misrepresents the views of myself and the Royal Society. The society believes that if a young person raises the issue of creationism in a science class, a teacher should be in a position to examine why it does not stand up to scientific investigation. This does not put it on a par with evolution, which is recognised as the best explanation for the history of life on Earth from its beginnings and for the diversity of species.

Evolution is rightly taught as an essential part of biology and science courses in schools, colleges and universities across the world. Creationism, which has no scientific validity, can be discussed in a science class if it is raised by a pupil, but should in no way be seen as comparable to evolution or any other scientific theory which is backed up with evidence.

If that is what Reiss is saying, it seems to be fairly difficult to argue, and it's essentially what I was getting at in my previous post. But it's a bit of tangle, and there are several interlocking issues. A number of people seem to believe that Reiss's position as an ordained church minister makes him ineligible for his post, as is made most clear by Dawkins. I would have to disagree with that. Just because Reiss is a committed Christian, that clearly doesn't mean he has to believe in the literal truth of the Genesis account of creation. Plenty of perfectly sensible people take it as an allegory or a fable. There are creationists and creationists; if Reiss were a young Earth creationist, arguing that the Earth was 6,000 years old and was created in seven days, his position would be untenable. But that is clearly not what he is saying, as a reading of what he actually said will show. The controversy seems to have stemmed from the way the Guardian quoted him, when they wrote that Reiss thought that "science teachers should not see creationism as a 'misconception' but as an alternative 'world view'. What he actually said was:

Creationism can profitably be seen not as a simple misconception that careful science teaching can correct. Rather, a student who believes in creationism has a non-scientific way of seeing the world, and one very rarely changes one's world view as a result of a 50-minute lesson, however well taught.

That should be seen in the context of what Reiss said about discussion of creationism:

If questions or issues about creationism and intelligent design arise during science lessons they can be used to illustrate a number of aspects of how science works.

This is exactly my view on the matter, and I would say that it is a more nuanced and sensible point than the Guardian's precis would suggest. I can't be too scathing about that, as I wrote my previous post based on the Guardian's construction of Reiss's comments. Which just goes to show that you should always go back to original sources.

For me the grave difficulty here is that scientists are seen to be saying that there is no place for the religious in science. A religious man is being attacked for religious views that he doesn't actually hold on closer inspection. In some cases he is being attacked simply for being religious. That is wrong. There have always been religious people in science, and many of them have been exceptionally capable. What Reiss has said is actually reasonably sensible, and a lot of the opprobrium seems to have come from reading the press, rather than what Reiss has actually said.

Creationism in schools redux

I suppose the debate as to whether you should teach creationism in science class will always be with us. Here's Prof Michael Reiss, director of education at the Royal Society, wading into the morass in today's Guardian. My opinion on this, for what it's worth, is that what needs to be taught is what science is, how it is done, and what it's useful for. Without that context, students don't have the tools to evaluate the arguments, and you're basically engaged in indoctrination, whether you're teaching evolution or creationism. In my view, the evolution versus creationism debate is a perfect opportunity to provide that context; simply pretending that there's no discussion is not helpful.

Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the position that Reiss is taking. From the article:

Reiss said he used to be an "evangelist" for evolution in the classroom, but that the approach had backfired. "I realised that simply banging on about evolution and natural selection didn't lead some pupils to change their minds at all. Now I would be more content simply for them to understand it as one way of understanding the universe," he said.

Reiss, who is an ordained Church of England minister, told the British Association Festival of Science in Liverpool that science teachers should not see creationism as a "misconception" but as an alternative "world view".

This seems to be taking the rather wishy-washy view that all world views have equal explanatory power. To me, creationism is not a way of 'understanding' the universe: it's a way of refusing to understand it. For all I know, there could be a creator of some kind. But that is not a scientific hypothesis that enables me to understand anything I observe. The place of creationism in science class is as an example of what is not science, and where the limits of scientific enquiry might lie.

Creationism, language and structural geology

I wrote a little bit about this elsewhere, but I thought it was of interest to a 'bad science' audience. Dr. David Peacock, a consultant with Fugro-Robertson and well-known structural geologist, has just published a letter to the editor [extremely irritating paywall] in the May issue of the Journal of Structural Geology. The letter criticises the use of the term 'architecture' in published articles in the Journal of Structural Geology. In general, structural geologists use the term to describe the spatial arrangement of structural elements within larger structures, such as fault zones or geological basins.

So far, this is just an argument about arcane terminology in a fairly obscure field of scientific endeavour. However, one of Dr. Peacock's arguments against using 'architecture' is that it introduces a 'hint of creationism'. "Who is the architect?", he asks, going on to ask "Does use of the term imply divine construction or a belief in intelligent design?"

The answer to this latter question is clearly no. Geology has always borrowed terms from architecture (for a few examples, see here). This happens because some geological features are similar to features from the built environment (for example, here's a gratuitous picture of some nice folds). That doesn't imply that someone or something intelligent built them. More importantly, it seems to me that we would have to stop talking about structural geology entirely if we accepted Dr. Peacock's contention. The fact that the Earth has structure is what structural geologists study. So if you ask 'Who is the architect?', you also ask 'Who imparted the structure?' I make this point in a reply [paywall] to Dr. Peacock's letter, which at the time of writing is in press. The text can also be found here.

The wider point here is that the idea that any implication of 'structure' is an implication of 'design' is a classic creationist mis-direction. This is a point made eloquently in the context of evolution by Steve Novella. In structural geology, 'structure' and 'order' emerge from naturally occurring processes. There is no reason to think that saying a fault zone has an 'architecture' is also saying that some intelligence designed the fault zone.

Bad geology: another pseudojournal

Generally, my own field of geology is not somewhere you find a lot of pseudo-science. So it's nice to be able to comment on some, via the folk at Answers Research Journal. Thanks to Michelle for the heads-up. The journal contains a paper on 'catastrophic granite formation', an attempt to show that granites can form very quickly, quick enough to be consistent with what creationists call 'flood geology', the theory that most of the geology we see was formed in the Genesis flood.

The author is one Andrew Snelling, proud holder of a doctorate in geology from the University of Sydney. It seems that Snelling is happy to use the conventional geological column when working as a consulting geologist, but happy to disregard it when propagandising in favour of creationism.

The 'journal' claims to be "a professional, peer-reviewed technical journal for the publication of interdisciplinary scientific and other relevant research from the perspective of the recent Creation and the global Flood within a biblical framework". This raises some questions. Who are the reviewers for the journal, and who reviewed this article? In geology it is standard practice for reviewers to be acknowledged in published papers; reviewers usually identify themselves to authors, unless there are strong reasons not to do so. No reviewers are identified in the article: in fact there are no acknowledgments at all. In the instructions for authors [PDF], prospective authors are asked to suggest at least three referees. The guidelines state that comments will be solicited by at least three reviewers. I wonder if only reviewers nominated by the authors are used? Certainly it's hard to imagine mainstream geoscientists agreeing to review for the journal, or agreeing to the publication of any articles on 'flood geology'.

Why is the journal restricted to "research from the perspective of the recent Creation and the global Flood within a biblical framework"? The instructions for authors suggest that work will be rejected if it is not "formulated within a young earth-young universe framework". This would be like, for example, a physics journal refusing to accept papers that were not formulated within a string-theory framework. No real scientific journal would restrict itself to publication of work that addresses a single hypothesis, because that wouldn't be science.

The journal is claimed to be a "technical journal", but there's a lot of language in the article that suggests otherwise. For example, in the introduction, Snelling writes that "Each recognizably distinctive granite mass, the boundary of which can be traced on the ground, is marked as a separate geologic unit called a pluton on a geologic map". In a section headed 'Magma Principles', Snelling writes that "The molten material which flows from volcanoes is known as lava and cools to form volcanic rocks. So lavas must be molten rocks; that is, they were originally rocks that melted deep inside the earth underneath volcanoes. When deep inside the earth, these molten rock materials are called magmas because they are slightly different in composition and physical properties due to the steam and gases they have dissolved in them that erupt separately from the lavas through volcanoes". There's nothing in particular wrong with these statements, but they read much more like excerpts from a GCSE level textbook than prose from a technical journal. This sort of basic information is never included in real geological journals: the assumption is that those who read them are already familiar with the basics. The article reads much more like a piece written for a general audience.

What of the actual science? It's actually not too bad in the main. The issues surrounding the production and emplacement of granite are quite well set out. The point of the article is that granites could be created and emplaced within a timescale of 6000-7000 years. This seems like a reasonable conclusion, at least in some cases, though I'm not convinced that it applies to every intrusive granite body on the planet. The problem is that Snelling then jumps to the conclusion that this is consistent with the Genesis account of creation. At this point, the article is no longer talking about science, but is trying to provide evidence for an answer that has already been decided on. The argument that the earth is a lot older than 7000 years does not depend on granites taking more than 7000 years to form and become emplaced. It relies on pretty much everything we know about geology, but particularly on radioisotopic dating. How does Snelling get around this? He simply states that isotopic dating is in gross error because it fails to account for the acceleration of decay. This is a load of rubbish, as you can see here.

The dead giveaway, though, is the section devoted to 'Evidence from radiohalos'. A radiohalo is supposedly a zone of crystal damage surrounding a crystal that contains radioactive substances, for example zircon crystals that are relatively common in granites. Snelling claims to be able to identify radiohalos associated with decay of three polonium isotopes. The argument is that the isotopes of polonium have very short half lives: 3.1 minutes (²¹⁸Po), 164 microseconds (²¹⁴Po), and 138 days (²¹⁰Po). Therefore cooling of the granite has to be rapid, because otherwise the polonium would decay too rapidly to form halos. Not to put too fine a point on it, this is drivel. There's a useful summary of why it's drivel here.

Snelling has come to an initially reasonable conclusion about the potential rapidity of formation of some granite bodies, and then extrapolated wildly to suggest that this is the case for all igneous rocks, and that most of what we know about geology is wrong. Still, he is happy to ignore that conclusion in his consultancy work and publications in real scientific journals. Like Homeopathy, Answers in Genesis is a pseudojournal: it's designed to look superficially like it is publishing real science "from a different perspective", but it is not. It is a creationist propaganda organ, and it is publishing creationist propaganda.

Creationism in schools (again...)

Poor useless David 'Dave' Cameron showed up in the press being 'ambiguous' about whether creationism ought to be taught in science class. To be fair, what Cameron said doesn't seem horribly unreasonable: he said "Personally I don't support the teaching of creationism," but he added, "I'm a great believer that we need to trust schools and governors of schools to get these things right and I think that's the right approach." He said he advocated a "more devolved system" for deciding what schools were allowed to teach.

What worries me about this is that we would be likely to end up with the same miserable culture wars that periodically afflict the US, when some local school board in the bible belt decides that creationism ought to be taught in science class, as a competing 'theory' to evolution. We can probably all do without that, I reckon, having enough on with the endless attacks on civil liberties and ongoing foreign policy disasters. The problem is that the alternative to 'a more devolved system' is imposing a top-down curriculum, which is not exactly a comfortable option. But perhaps it's the only way of safeguarding our children from the cranks.

I also think that the scientific community is in danger of a massive PR defeat on this. I think that a lot of people fail to see why creationism should not be taught in science class. After all, what is wrong with teaching the merits/de-merits of competing theories? Now, scientists know the answer to this: creationism is not a scientific theory. The clue is in the name: any system of thought that has a ready-made answer for the questions it asks (in this case, God) is not science, whatever else it might be. In that sense, comparing evolution and creationism is just a category mistake. However, I think the message that gets out is the one propagated by those who shout the loudest (I'm thinking of Richard Dawkins and other militant atheists). I don't think it's a particularly brilliant idea for science to be seen as telling people that they're bonkers for believing in God. Now, I'm an atheist myself, but to me this issue has nothing to do with whether there is a god or not, and everything to do with what science is and is not.