{"id":463,"date":"2014-09-19T21:29:22","date_gmt":"2014-09-19T21:29:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/genotopia.peachpuff-wolverine-566518.hostingersite.com\/?p=463"},"modified":"2014-09-19T21:29:22","modified_gmt":"2014-09-19T21:29:22","slug":"truth-in-science-advertising","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/genotopia\/463\/truth-in-science-advertising\/","title":{"rendered":"Truth in science advertising"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve run across this chestnut from NdGT before, but this time it struck me as both untrue and misleading. Of course in a crude sense it’s true. When you get on an airplane, it\u00a0flies\u00a0thanks to Bernoulli’s principle whether you believe in or even know of Bernoulli’s principle.<\/p>\n

But in a deeper sense it fundamentally misrepresents the nature of science. The good thing about science is not that it’s true–it’s that it’s open to revision. Science’s truths are constantly in flux. As John McPhee said, “science erases what was formerly true.” It’s time to abandon the science cheerleaders’ trope that science is about finding the truth about nature. Every scientific fact ever discovered, every scientific theory ever put forward, is eventually rejected,\u00a0revised, or limited.\u00a0The beauty of science isn’t that it’s right–it’s that it can be proven wrong.<\/p>\n

The statement is\u00a0misleading because\u00a0it is actually more true of religion than science. In his essay “Science and Theology as Art Forms” (Possible Worlds,<\/em> 1928), JBS Haldane made the point about Christianity, although it holds for certain\u00a0other religions as well: its gravest problem is its view that it is only true if you believe in it. Hinduism, Buddhism, and many, many others do not hold this view. They hold that their beliefs are true whether you believe in them or not. Karma, for example, just is. It doesn’t matter to a Hindu whether you believe in karma–the wheel will turn on you just the same.<\/p>\n

The good thing about good<\/em> science popularization is that it’s true, period. At a time when\u00a0science is under fire from fundamentalists, we need to make sure that what we say about rational inquiry into nature is accurate.<\/p>\n

\"\"
NdGT quote<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve run across this chestnut from NdGT before, but this time it struck me as both untrue and misleading. Of course in a crude sense it’s true. When you get on an airplane, it\u00a0flies\u00a0thanks to Bernoulli’s principle whether you believe in or even know of Bernoulli’s principle. But in a deeper sense it fundamentally misrepresents … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[315,389,388],"class_list":["post-463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-calling-bullshit","tag-neil-degrasse-tyson","tag-science-cheerleading"],"yoast_head":"\nTruth in science advertising - Genotopia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/genotopia\/463\/truth-in-science-advertising\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Truth in science advertising\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I’ve run across this chestnut from NdGT before, but this time it struck me as both untrue and misleading. 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From 1997 to 2002, he was on the history faculty at The George Washington University, where he also served as Deputy Director of the Center for History of Recent Science. The Center\u2019s director and founder was Horace Freeland Judson (The Eighth Day of Creation), who, along with John McPhee and Monty Python, Comfort considers among his biggest writing influences. Comfort\u2019s books include The Science of Human Perfection: How Genes Became the Heart of American Medicine (Yale, 2012), The Tangled Field: Barbara McClintock\u2019s Search for the Patterns of Genetic Control (Harvard, 2001), and the edited volume, The Panda\u2019s Black Box: Opening Up the Intelligent Design Debate (Johns Hopkins, 2007). In addition to scholarly articles, he has written for Natural History, the New York Times Book Review, National Public Radio, Nature, Science, New Scientist, The Believer, and other publications. 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