2009-07-14-2A PZ Myers vs. Unscientific America - Part II

2009-07-14 \Chris Mooney\Sheril Kirshenbaum Discover Magazine \Unscientific America\PZ Myers\PZ Myers vs. Unscientific America http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2009/07/14/pz-myers-vs-unscientific-america-part-ii/ PZ Myers vs. Unscientific America: Part II PZ Myers vs. Unscientific America - Part II  5. American Anti-Science. Myers claims the book "entirely neglects the anti-scientific forces." This is false.

First, Chris wrote an entire book dealing with this problem. That book, The Republican War on Science, dealt very extensively with the anti-science forces and put them in their place.

Unscientific America tries not to reinvent the wheel, but rather to go beyond its predecessor–and indeed, we’ve been describing it as the sequel...

...

6. Root Causes. Myers claims the book “demands we avoid addressing the structural roots” of the problem of science in society. That’s false.

A more charitable reading would be that we differ with Myers about what the root causes are, or place different emphases upon them. Clearly, he thinks religion is a much bigger root cause – if not the only root cause – than we do. But why then doesn’t he just say that we differ, instead of mischaracterizing our position?

...

7. Science in the Entertainment Industry. Chris spent a month out in LA meeting with experts on the entertainment industry or talking with them by phone, trying to work out why science often gets such a bad shake in film and on television. The result was a report on how the entertainment industry works, and why scientists are often unhappy with the result–and what can be done to change this. (Some of this content is now reiterated in our Salon.com adaptation from the book.)

From this chapter, Myers finds a single sentence about Richard Dawkins to quote [his emphasis]:

"Dawkins and some other scientists fail to grasp that in Hollywood, the story is paramount—that narrative, drama, and character development will trump mere factual accuracy every time, and by a very long shot."

This Myers dubs "exasperating nonsense, in which Mooney and Kirshenbaum are discussing how to get science into the popular media."

Myers is quoting out of context in order to criticize us. Here’s what he (and all of his readers who have not read our book) are missing...

...

8. Solutions. Myers claims the book "offers no new solutions." That’s false – the book is brimming with solutions. Chad Orzel even found one we couldn’t fit into the main text – the idea of forming a Science PAC to get more scientists elected to Congress–buried in an endnote, and built an entire discussion around it.

There are solutions in each chapter of the main body of the book, broken down by sector–politics, media, entertainment, religion. And then there is the grand solution in Chapter 10 – which emerged from our collaboration, and which we don’t think either of us would have come up with on our own. So far as we know, it really is new in its particular way of analyzing the academic pipeline and finding, in it, a solution to our problems at the science-society interface. Response: 2009-07-14 Unscientific America - still useless

Point #6 is clearly cheap rhetoric; Myers clearly meant "here is [what I have demonstrated repeatedly as] the root cause, and you refuse to even look at it.", which they deliberately misunderstand as "you refuse to acknowledge the idea that we should look at the root causes of the problem". In so doing, they commit the hypocrisy of knowingly mischaracterizing his position while claiming that he is doing the same to them -- which he is not.

M&K respond to 4 further areas of disagreement with PZ Myers's reviews of their book Unscientific America, under the headings of "American Anti-Science", "Root Causes", "Science in the Entertainment Industry", and "Solutions".   