The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe > Podcast Episodes

Podcast #48

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Thakkus:
Regarding these claims of "no fossil evidence" that are made by Ann Coulter and such -

Is this as absurd as saying "There are no human beings living in San Francisco"?  

Is it that wildly false?  Or is there some subtlety they are playing on?

How do real people get away with this?

gost:
Wasn't it Joseph Goebbels who said that the bigger the lie, the easier it is to convince people that it's true? I think that denying the fossil evidence might well fall into that category. It's like claiming that none of the buildings in San Francisco are more than ten years old, despite overwhelming credible evidence to the contrary. Photos and old blueprints could be faked. Weathered bricks could have gotten that way through other processes. All you have to do is deny that any of the evidence is real or valid.

Understanding the validity and accuracy of radio-isotope dating, for instance, requires a background in physics and chemistry that very few people have. Imagine how easy it would be to convince people that the physics behind it is unfounded, when very few of the people you are trying to convince are actually willing to learn enough about it to be able to judge for themselves. That's just one example of how "real" people get away with it, in my opinion.

Thakkus:
Your age-of-buildings example is better than my people-in-San Fran example.  Dates on deeds, testimonials from supposed contractors who worked on the buildings 6 or 8  years earlier...and on and on...

It's amazing, but we could probably pull something like this off. It might go something like this:

NIGHTLINE -  Tonight, shocking architectural news from San Fransisco.  The historic downtown region that seems to have occupied a special place in America's history over the past 100 years isn't all it seems to be.  We went looking for evidence of any buildings built before 1996, a task not overly difficult...

Or so we thought...

***
So how does a layperson get a real sense of the evidence for evolution?  We hear statistics and evidence all the time on science programming, but is there any way for normal people to verify the information without becoming a scientist?

gost:
I'm not sure I have an answer to this question. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined forty years ago that the public's understanding of science could have gotten to where it seems to be today.

On a personal level, I ended up homeless and living on the streets of San Francisco by the time I was sixteen, back in the late 1960s. All I ever dreamed about back then was about having the opportunity to go to school and be able to understand the equation E=MC2 and KNOW what it really means. It's kinda silly, I guess, but that was my benchmark. Einstein was my hero. It took me until near the end of the eighties to finally realize that dream, but I have to say the effort was more worthwhile than I ever could have imagined. In 1986 I had the privilege of going to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean as a photography specialist in the submersible ALVIN as part of a scientific team attempting to understand deep-sea chemical and geological processes caused by bioturbation. Here's a link to the Dive Log from that day. I'm "Observer 1"

http://www.marine.whoi.edu/divelog.nsf/0/89bc088dd521ce018525620b006d4f1c?OpenDocument

Today I find myself astounded by the very idea that so many Americans are so willing to throw away that which has taken humanity so very long to acquire: a legitimate methodology to allow us to understand the very workings of the natural universe around us. Science.

We have community colleges everywhere, and free public schools, not to mention this amazing internet, yet we seem to be willing to wrap ourselves in ignorance at every opportunity and would rather listen to some loud mouthed quack with a half-baked theory (and a book to sell) on Oprah, than to hear the calm, yet admittedly quieter, voice of reason and logic to be found in the free science books available at any public library. I'm afraid I just don't get it.

Thakkus:
Thanks for posting the Dive Log.  How cool!

As for your comments about people and their willingness to  be scientifically illiterate, is it really all that surprising?  Most people can't see past themselves far enough to do a damn thing for someone else, unless doing it somehow betters their circumstance.  With families in the shape they're in today, job dissatisfaction at record highs, the global threat of terror - and other nonsense - thrown in our faces every night on the nightly "noise"casts, is it really any wonder that people don't give a damn about the fossil record, or Einstein, or figuring out how light works?  

I find myself on this quest to become more scientifically literate, just for the sake of understanding things better.

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