You Must be a Creationist

May 4th, 2007

Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.

Academic blogging is an interesting medium. On the one hand it “flattens” the world of communication and facilitates the public engagement of experts with everyone else. But it also has some strong negatives, on display this week over at Chris Mooney’s blog.

Chris, and fellow blogger American University’s Matt Nisbet, recently wrote two pieces for Science and The Washington Post, in which they engaged in a little Science Studies 101, pointing out that how issues are framed influences how they are received. Seems pretty straightforward. But in their piece they suggested, correctly in my view, that how some atheists advance their agenda on the back of science may actually backfire in political debates. For their trouble Chris and Matt have been lambasted by the agitprop blogosphere.

One particularly clueless commentator — a professor with a Harvard degree — went so far as to suggest that Mooney and Nisbet are in fact creationists! This strategy of allowing absolutely no nuance is the main tool in the agitprop toolbox. Why else would Matt and Chris criticize Richard Dawkins unless they are really creationists at heart?! Such drivel is extremely irritating, as Chris and Matt’s reactions indicate and there is really no effective response to it. Here at Prometheus I routinely hear from trolls and others with bad intent and that I must be a Republican (or a Republican sympathizer) since I have advanced some views that some Republicans think make sense. (Outside the blogosphere actually convincing people of the merits of your arguments is viewed in a positive light!;-)

The issue, not surprisingly, is one of framing. The professor alleging the creationist in Mooney and Nisbet describes religious people as his “enemies” suggesting that we are at war with them. Mooney for his part disavows such nonsense:

“Attack”? Those are your words.

“Enemies”? Those are also your words.

I don’t see it that way.

We were trying to make a very serious point about how scientists need to rethink communication strategies. We saw Dawkins as a prominent example to use. He is, after all, prominent.

In political debates the agitprop partisans always have the upper hand, as they can level personal attacks, misrepresent your work, make mountains out of molehills, and nanny-nanny-boo-boo call you names all day long. For academic bloggers who don’t want to themselves become mindless partisans there are only a few choices, develop a thick skin or get out of the fray. David Brooks’ column yesterday on how to handle such people is worth a read (of course, my citing it must be an indicateion my conservative tendencies;-):

. . . they’ll never be open-minded toward you. But the other three-quarters are honorable, intelligent people. If you treat these people with respect, and find places where you can work together, they will teach you things and make you more effective. If you treat them the way you treat the partisans, they’ll turn into partisans and destroy you.

So here at Promethues, until the blogging negatives outweigh the positives, we will stomach those with ill-intent and simply correct the record when necessary and let nonsense stand on its own. The good news, for Matt and Chris and others who find themselves under attack from people who seek to distract from the substance of their arguments is that their arguments must be pretty strong on their merits to attract such passionate attention. So Matt and Chris, keep up the good work, and don’t get too exercised about the noise. Not much you can do about that!

8 Responses to “You Must be a Creationist”

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  1. Benny Peiser Says:

    Roger

    You also keep up the good work, and don’t get too exercised about online harrassment
    http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/05/nature_climate_blog_off_to_roc.php

    Just remember [Laurence] Peter’s Theory of Entrepreneurial Aggressiveness in Higher Education: “Competition in academia is so vicious because the stakes are so small.”

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  3. SteveF Says:

    The internet is a strange place; it seems to bring out the worst in otherwise mild mannered people as well as encouraging the unhinged out of the woodwork. The Guardian newspaper began an interesting experiment, comment is free, in which all of the papers comment pieces (plus additional ones) appear as blogs.

    Unfortunately this site has become a magnet for extremes. Typically, any thread on the current UK government ends up with diatribes on Iraq, accusations of zionist conspiracies and all round lunacy. I’d say that this site exemplifies the potential of the ‘net, but the myriad of problems associated with it.

    http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/index.html

    It seems to me that now everyone has a medium for their views, they are encouraged to believe that their opinions have merit, no matter how insane. If you think debate on science blogs is bad (even those that concern religion vs science), the political realm is far worse IMO. If we ever have to discuss climate science in connection with the Israeli state, then the proverbial will really hit the fan!

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  5. Roger Pielke, Jr. Says:

    Thanks Benny … I dropped in over there to say hello, set the record straight … uncanny timing with that post;-)

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  7. hank Says:

    Let’s try to dig a bit deeper.

    My criticism of the Nature thread is the failure to point the readers to the original information — where it can be considered in context. (It may show up Wednesday when someone there reads her email, I got an Out of Office bounce to a comment.)

    Please — don’t post only links to copies of images —- copies can’t be considered in context or even checked for misstatement.

    And posting copies adds Google Page Rank tallies to the copier’s page instead of to the true source, which is venal.

    Post the pointer to the original image source; if the original is truly not linkable, or is a downloadable PDF or DOC file or the like, provide a citation to the original along with your copy.

    Give real sources for people to look at themselves.

    As to the “little at stake” line, it’s misattributed.

    My excerpt below is from the longer excerpt posted with the book link here, which I commend to your attention:

    http://www.amazon.com/Quote-Verifier-Said-What-Where/dp/product-description/0312340044

    “ACADEMIC politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.” … attributed to former Harvard professor Henry Kissinger. Well before Kissinger …
    … Harvard political scientist Richard Neustadt …
    … [1973] political scientist Wallace Sayre …
    … 1979 … Laurence Peter …
    … C. P. Snow …
    …Daniel Patrick Moynihan …
    … Jesse Unruh (among others)….
    …. Woodrow Wilson … observed often that the intensity of academic squabbles he witnessed while president of Princeton University was a function of the “triviality” of the issues being considered.

    “Verdict: An old academic saw that may have originated with Woodrow Wilson but was put in modern play by Wallace Sayre.”

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  9. Roger Pielke, Jr. Says:

    Hank- Thanks. The figure cannot be linked to directly, but you can find it here on p. 250:

    http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Ch03.pdf

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  11. Lab Lemming Says:

    Of course, some of us are actually Republicans. Yet dispite this, our signal to noise ratios do not mysteriously degrade, our standard deviations remain low, and our ability to interperet results scientifically remains undiminished.

    It’s almost like the natural world reveals its secrets in a non-partisan manner. Who would have thought?

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  13. Roger Pielke, Jr. Says:

    Lab Lemming- Thanks for your comment. I’m not much on denigrating people for their political affiliations or other characteristics (which I suppose makes me a rich target for the mindless partisans trolling the blogosphere;-).

    I’d much prefer to evaluate arguments on their merits. But I do take offense at people trying to characterize me as something I am not in an effort to argue by smear and avoid discussing the merits of particular issues. Thanks!

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  15. DeWitt Payne Says:

    Re: Trolls

    I believe this adage originated in the USENET era: Don’t feed the trolls.

    Ignore them and they will go away. The nice thing about USENET newsreaders was the killfile. Put a troll in your killfile and you never saw them directly again.