When Science, and the Philosophy of it, Meet Blogs and the Press

I feel sorry for Elizabeth Lloyd. I haven't read her book, as I'm not really up on all of he "evolution of the orgasm" literature, so reading a critique of a particular perspective would be pretty pointless. But what is painfully clear is that she has been a victim of the inability of the press to understand science, and the further inability of people to look past the bad reporting and their own prejudices when evaluating science. If ever there was an argument for better science education and reporting, it is Lloyd's post over at Philosophy of Biology. She provides several examples of outrageous comments on her book and the ideas within it. I'll just give a couple:

• And we all think Dr. Elisabeth Lloyd is something of an Uncle Tom for women.

• Thinking women, liberal or conservative, will not be thrilled by this book. Fundamentalist Christians, on the other hand, will be ecstatic.

As these and the rest of Lloyd's examples show, conservatives aren't alone in their politicized ignorance of science. Lloyd notes that she didn't "cherry-picked the worst of the bloggers; these are nearly all intelligent and relatively scientifically-informed feminists who are keenly worried about what theyhave heard." I think Lloyd's description of them as "scientifically-informed" may be a bit generous, but if it is accurate, then the quotes she attributes to them are that much worse, because they are made by people who should know better.

I've always believed that there are two general kinds of creationists: the ignorant and the stupid. The ignorant are your everyday, gardenvarietyy creationists, who would ask you things like, "If evolution is true, then why are their still moneys?" or claim that "Evolution violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics." These are people who know nothing about evolution (or thermodynamics, for that matter), and show it in everything they say about it. The vast majority of these people don't really care about evolution, and could go days or weeks without ever thinking or talking about it. For them, it's largely about religion and culture, and science is at most a scapegoat. Then there are the stupid creationists. These are the people who do have a little knowledge of evolution, or mathematics, physics, or chemistry, and who use it to actively campaign against evolution for largely political (notice I didn't say religious) and self-aggrandizing purposes. They're the ones who spend as much of their time as they can talking about evolution and science; who make sure that the ignorant remain that way, and that they think about evolution and science as much as they can, but from the stupid creationists' perspective. They really have enough knowledge to see where they are wrong, or at least to know that they don't know enough to make theclaim that they know what they're talking about. Feminists who are "scientifically informed," but still spout nonsense like the above, clearly without having read Lloyd's book, are no better than the stupid creationists, and just as dangerous as them. And just as in the case of creationism, the press is helping them along.