Creationist accusations of bias against scientists

[micatala]

Those who follow the creationism versus evolution debate have undoubtedly seen claims on the part of those who support creationism that evolutionary biologists or those who accept evolution are biased. Various specific accusation are made:

1. Evolutionary scientists have so bought into their scientific paradigm that they cannot or will not consider evidence or arguments to the contrary.

2. Evolutionary scientists are specifically biased against religion, or at least particular religious beliefs.

3. Related to 2, it is often suggested that the main reason or motivation for the development of evolutionary theory is specifically to discredit religion or the Bible.

4. The bias is such that it consitutes religions discrimination, particularly with respect to what is taught in the public schools. This accusation is sometimes accompanied by the declaration that 'evolution is a religion.'

The general question for debate is whether there is anything to these accusations.

More specifically, we can debate the following questions independently I think.

1. Are evolutionary biologists biased against considering other paradigms or theories?

2. Are creationist teachers and others who have allegedly lost their jobs or suffered some other harm the victims of either viewpoint bias or religious discrimination?

3. Assuming there is documented bias against creationists or creationism, is this justified?

I'm adding question 3 since, even though we often think of discrimination as 'bad', we may find that the weight of the evidence actually justifies some instances of discrimination. Certainly the Bush administration has tried to make the case, for example, that discriminating with respect to young male Arabs in designing security policies and processes is justified.

The Catholic Church practices discrimination against women and gays with respect to appointing clergy. Many churches and faith-based organizations are likely to have a bias against hiring or appointing non-theists to certain positions, or even allowing them as members.

This question came up recently in the Hen's Teeth thread.

This link was offered as evidence for such bias, and I offer it here as exhibit A to get the discussion started.

[Jose]

I think a scientist can be unbiased in his personal opinions and beliefs...

I would think that his/her personal opinions would be precisely where bias is likely to be.

but he would have a problem in his work as a scientist if he tried to publish a paper that sought to explain a piece of evidence in anything other than materialistic processes.

No, I think he'd have a problem only in two respects: (1) if his explanation is contradicted by other evidence, or (2) if his explanation goes beyond the data. This is, perhaps, a silly example, but it was in our newspaper a while back: the data were that more red cars are involved in accidents than silver cars. The explanation that the writer gave was that silver cars must be easier to see. Well, this explanation goes beyond the data, in that it imagines that these various accidents were of the variety in which someone runs into a car that pulled in front of them, and for which there would have been time to stop if the driver had seen the suddenly-appearing car. Additional data are needed, such as whether the red cars were driven faster and more recklessly than the silver cars, or whether we might be dealing with single-car accidents. In any event, the explanation must stay within the bounds of the data that are available.

Most people who believe in evolution probably believe that there is no physical evidence of special creation or intelligent design, and I am not claiming right now that there is, but suppose, just for the sake of discussion that there was. Suppose a scientist found physical evidence that he believed could only be explained by special creation, not evolution, something he thought disproved evolution. Could he publish?

If, for the sake of argument, he really had such data, and the other possible, alternative explanations had really been ruled out, then he'd not only be allowed to publish, but he'd become extremely famous. The difficulty is that this is merely hypothetical; he'd have to have data that simultaneously overrule and provide alternate explanations for the vast array of data that have forced scientists to propose and eventually accept evolutionary theory.

Would any respectable scientific publication accept a paper that proposed a creationist explanation for physical evidence? I don't think so. That kind of view would have to be rejected by the scientific community because of its violation of the scientific method.

Note the interesting way you've phrased this: "because of its violation of the scientific method." This suggests an inherent assumption that creation is non-scientific. BUT, if there were real, valid data that force us to a conclusion of creation, it would be scientific.

But that is a problem. You can't find truth and prove something by only looking at one side of an issue. You have to be willing to look impartially at both sides without bias at every stage of the investigation. But science cannot do that with the origin of life.

Hmmm...is it really the case that there are only two sides to this issue? In a broad sense, maybe so: natural vs supernatural. Well, natural explanations are easy to deal with; we collect data, and then ask what explanations are possible. We adhere to the two rules mentioned above, that explanations must not be ruled out by other available data, and that the explanations do not extrapolate into areas beyond the data. This is where evolutionary theory comes from. For supernatural explanations, however, it's very hard to develop criteria that can guide the speculation. There are hundreds of supernatural explanations kicking around the earth, and codified in different societies' religions (aka origin myths), and there are perhaps an infinite number of additional supernatural explanations that we could dream up. How do we distinguish among them?

And when when evolution is taught to students, it is not taught as a scientific view that only considers non-creationist ideas, but it is taught as fact, something that is certain. Yet it has never been proved and cannot be proved in an atmosphere of bias.

Regrettably, it is taught as fact--in the sense that all of science is taught that way. The tradition is to tell students "what we think we know so far." If there were time, and different traditions, it would all be taught as "these are the data, which are the only facts in science. How can we explain them?" When teachers explicitly teach about the Nature of Science, and the fact that all "knowledge" is tentative, pending collection of all of the data that it will ever be possible to collect from now until the end of time, students tend to ignore it because they expect teachers just to tell them facts. Evolution is just as proven as any other scientific theory, and moreso than most. There are more lines of evidence supporting evolution than there are supporting the theory that the earth orbits the sun.

As a non-scientist, I have never dug up a fossil or examined strata in the earth. I have never sequenced a segment of DNA. I have never applied carbon dating techniques to date any sample material. If I want to read about the evidence, it is all filtered through scientists who are required by their profession to fit the evidence into the evolutionary framework, whether that framework is proven or not.

Indeed, this is a problem. At some point, we have to "trust the experts," or else learn enough of the field to evaluate it for ourselves. The latter would be best, but who has the time or the brain capacity to do that for everything? How do we know whether the "experts" are trustworthy?

Conspiracy theorists like to argue that scientists, as a group, are trying to foist this wacky model onto American schoolchildren, presumably because scientists are anti-Christian liberal treehugging wackos. They're probably gay, too, as long as we're labeling them. Conspiracy theorists really like the idea that scientists aren't allowed to say anything "true" like creationism, because they'll be ostracized from the club.

But think of what the club is really like. I collect some data, develop an interpretation, and then write my paper that moves the field forward imperceptibly. I send it to one of the journals. The editors send it to three of my competitors, who review it anonymously. Three months later, I get my rejection letter and some scathing reviews about how stupid my paper is. Don't I know that researchers X and Y have published on Z, and reached a different conclusion? And what's going on in figure 2, where there's that blob in the corner of the photograph; how do I know it's not _____, which would blow up my argument? Figure 3 can be interpreted in two different ways, and I've only mentioned one of them (of course, I ruled out the other interpretation in figure 6, but they conveniently overlook that point). So, I do some more experiments, rewrite the paper so it addresses all of the reviewers' criticisms, and try again. The point here is that there is really fierce, and sometimes nasty, competition among researchers. We are trained explicitly to ask seminar speakers--regardless of their reputations--hard questions, in an effort to show that they are wrong. Why such a nasty tradition? Because we really want to have all of the errors caught before they show up in print. It's OK to have arguments about how to interpret data, but if you publish stuff that's wrong, you're dead.

When creationists or purveyors of ID have tried to publish in the scientific journals, they've received the same treatment the rest of us get. It's pretty shocking if you're not used to it. It may even feel like a conspiracy against creationism/ID. It's not. It's just the rules for making sure that what's published is actually valid science.

Therefore, I suggest that the tradition of the field--trying to prove the other guy wrong--results in the research literature being as close to accurate and honest as it's probably possible to be. I can't say the same for books, which are not reviewed in the same way, but the primary literature is pretty much valid. And, I might add, any errors that get published, or premature conclusions published in the heat of enthusiasm, tend to be corrected within a year or two as people discover that it wasn't quite what it seemed at first.