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The Big Bang and other “theories”It’s tempting to draw pleasure from the dismissal of George Deutsch, the 24-year-old presidential appointee who made a short career terrorizing scientists at NASA. Deutsch’s resignation came about not as a result of his gross overreaching as a NASA public affairs officer, but instead because of the false claim on his resume that he had graduated college. An oddly fitting end for a person who finds truth to be such a slippery notion. Deutsch, you may recall, was the one who instructed scientists at the agency to append the word “theory” everywhere next to the phrase “Big Bang.” The Big Bang is “not proven fact; it is opinion,” he lectured colleagues who, unlike Deutsch, had actually received degrees from accredited universities. “I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA.” Unwittingly, Deutsch provided a crisp distillation of what has become a worrying trend: the devaluation of the scientific process itself in the popular discourse. Increasingly, we see scientific results being treated as one more partisan club, and the scientific community regarded as just another special interest group whose views on technical matters hold no more objective validity than, say, the industry or religious groups those views might offend. According to Deutsch’s worldview, society is engaged in a “debate” over the validity of the Big Bang. There are two “halves” to this debate, and in the interest of fairness or intellectual honesty we must equally weight the “opinions” of these various factions. Deutsch is explicit about his meaning. “This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue.” Taken by itself, the kerfuffle over the Big Bang might seem to be no big deal. After all, Deutsch got his comeuppance, and presumably the public affairs office will be that much more wary of dictating to the academic community. And this really is an academic issue. Most of us don’t lose much sleep over cosmological events that took place over 10 billion years ago. But the Big Bang memos only came to light after one of NASA’s top climate scientists went public with the claim that the agency was trying to silence him. His offense? Calling for a reduction in greenhouse gases linked to global warming. The point, of course, is not that we should simply accept what scientists tell us on the strength of their own authority. After all, there is still plenty of basic research to be done on the essential mechanisms of climate change, plenty of arguments to be hashed out, plenty of need for skepticism and disagreement. And even when the scientific community does establish a consensus, as eventually it will, we can still respectfully disagree about the policy implications of that consensus. But we should never quibble with the facts. Unfortunately, we increasingly see people with eccentric worldviews wrapping themselves in the banner of open debate and demanding that their opinions receive equal attention. Unfortunately, many who practice this technique aren’t as hamhanded as Deutsch. They get the attention they seek. When the public discourse is corrupted in this fashion, science itself is the loser. And so are we all. Comments6 comment(s) on this post. Leave your own!
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This is one of endless acts of duplicity and irrationalism perpetrated by an illegal, unethical, and un-American executive administration. The strange challenges posed by the right wing in the USA to science represent one aspect of the fundamentalist Christian attempt to replace a constitutional democracy with a theocratic one in the guise of so-called "Christian Reconstructionism". Both political parties are tools for the right wing to exploit, either as active agent (GOP) or reactive-passive agent (Democrats). Wendell Phillips (1811-1884, abolitionist) said "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." It is prudent for us to keep a wary eye on the regressive religious elements in our country.
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Although I personally agree with your viewpoint I find myself wondering if this is an appropriate forum for this type of article. Granted…it is YOUR blog, however, when I open up an email from TerraPass I expect it to have news relevant to the cause I am supporting. Discussion on how, when, and what quality of public discourse happens is not what I have come to expect from you since I signed up a year ago. The information normally received has been more appealing and useful – stories about the business success and failures of TerraPass, the environment, carbon calculations, new technologies, and the like. Please, I would request that the political commentary and opinions be moved to another place entirely. Thank you.
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Hi Joel,
One of the more interesting aspects of running a corporate blog is trying to find the right balance between open, honest communication on topics you find genuinely important, and respect for the diverse sensibilities of your audience. It can be exhilirating and, frankly, a little terrifying. I can understand why large corporations are reluctant to embrace blogging.
We kick around the question of how political to be on this blog all the time. The safe thing to do would be to avoid politics altogether, because more likely than not, we aren't going to please anybody. We love wind farms, which probably annoys bird enthusiasts. We love free-market carbon-trading mechanisms, which makes anti-corporatists suspicious. We are intrigued by the climate-friendly possibilities of nuclear energy, which enrages the anti-nuke crowd. We would be very willing to pony up for carbon tax, which drives anti-tax zealots to fits of rage.
So why touch on politics at all? Because climate change is a political issue. To deny this would be to deny that the earth is round. I think you underestimate just how deeply politics suffuse even the posts on this blog that you claim to like. If we were to scrub out politics entirely, we'd probably have to throw away about half of our content.
I will grant, however, that this post was more strongly political than usual. And the reason why is simple: I wrote the post, and I happen to feel very strongly about this issue. Normally I try to temper my strong feelings with respect for the diversity of viewpoints, but sometimes you have to have the strength of conviction to point at something and say, "This is happening, and it's very bad." Now is one of those times.
There are certain things we will continue to avoid on this blog. For example, we generally steer clear of overt partisanship, mainly because we think partisanship is pointless and self-defeating. But otherwise, we are going to keep experimenting with this forum to see what works and what doesn't. And we welcome feedback such as yours -- in fact, we wish more people would let us know how we're doing.
Obviously, we could ignore the politics and stick to selling our decals, but if we did so, we'd be missing a great opportunity to build on the amazing community that TerraPass members make up. And that would be no fun at all.
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I wrestle with the same political considerations on my own weblog, which I have determined to keep strictly non-partisan and generally non-political. I regard your choice to run this item as entirely consistent with your focus, and I feel inspired to post on this subject tomorrow.
I'm constantly bemused and occasionally frustrated by the deliberate distortion of the term "theory" in this context. According to the definition I was taught--pretty much in line with the Wikipedia entry on the subject(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory#Science)--it is factually correct to refer to the Big Bang, evolution and climate change as theories. However, this shouldn't be construed(or intended) as calling these concepts into question.
I truly wish we could reclaim "theory" as a valid and accurate description of these ideas, without having it misused by those who wouldn't know a falsifiable hypothesis from a hole in the ground.
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I agree that the meaning of the word theory has been twisted by those who would discredit ideas they don't like. In fact, the scientific process itself -- which uses self-criticism and refutation as a means to advance knowledge -- provides unfortunate fodder to its antagonists.
One additional thing I'd like to point out, even though it's slightly off-topic: eventually scientific theories do pass into the realm of fact. Yes, evolution and the Big Bang are both theories. At some point, though, the weight of evidence becomes so overwhelming that we feel comfortable taking the hypothesis as the established description of reality.
I'm not enough of a philosopher of science to know what criteria suffice for fact-hood, but I do know that, whatever these criteria are, the theory of evolution has passed them. Not only is evolution directly observable, but without evolution, all of modern biology and medicine essentially make no sense.
I'm pretty sure even the Intelligent Design folks concede that Darwin's theory of natural selection is a genuine phenomenon -- they just deny that it is the main mechanism of speciation or the origin of life.
Anyway, throw us a trackback later and maybe we'll post some more on this topic.
P.S. On the front page of your blog, I find the sentence, "It says something about us that Gillette spent about as much developing and promoting its new Fusion shaver as the US government is putting into the clean coal, wind and solar technology R&D this year." It's not as easy to avoid politics as you think :)
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So which is correct, general relativity or the big bang?
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