A net cast too broadly

I live and work near Washington DC. As I've noted before, this proximity has its benefits. I took advantage of my proximity to the Discovery Institute's DC location to listen to a presentation given there by Pamela Winnick, author of A Jealous God: Science's Crusade Against Religion, on my lunch hour this past Tuesday. I felt a bit odd being at a Discovery Institute office, since I am a fairly staunch opponent of political attacks on evolution, but Logan Gage, the DC Office Manager, was friendly and made me feel welcome. And I was able to put another face to a name I'd read in my occasional visits to the USENET newsgroup talk.origins: david ford (I'll link his site and email when I track down the card he gave me.) I am glad I went.

Now, as I've also noted before, I am a philosophical naturalist and I'm religious, so I was intrigued by the title of Ms. Winnick's book (I was fortunate enough to receive a free autographed copy at the talk, and I plan on reviewing it when I finish reading it.) She didn't talk on the evolution and creationism political controversy, but focused on a few other areas: specific cases of misbehaviour by scientists; bioethics; and poor or biased science resources for the general public and for schools. Among the motivations she assigned to bad actors were greed, racism and a general anti-religious bias.

My major objection to her talk is that these areas do not constitute what I think of when I think of science. Specific cases of misbehaviour no more damn science as a whole than specific cases of misbehaviour damn any other human endeavor, including religion. Bioethics is not science at all. Yes, there are specific bioethicists who feel that religious ethical systems that put forward moral absolutes justified by nothing more than divine command theory are harmful, but this is an ethical position, not a scientific one. And every scientist I know is extremely upset about the poor quality of science resources available to the general public, and even more upset about the resources available to schools. Even granting each point, it simply does not add up to a science crusade against religion. I'll leave detailed criticisms to my review of her book, and only present my summary of her talk in this post.

It was my impression that bioethics was at the core of her view that science is waging a crusade against religion. There were two times during her talk where she got to the heart of her complaint. At the start, she identified the premise of her book: that "the scientific community" is seeking to undermine the traditional Judeo-Christian ethical position that assigns equal value to all human life, regardless of the quality or nature of that life. And toward the end of her talk, she stated that the subject that represented the "worst assault on the Judeo-Christian tradition" was human cloning -- "creating human life with the intent to destroy it." Her fear is that scientists will start down the path to the The Island (the plot of the movie is that clones are raised to adulthood and then harvested for their organs.) Of cloning, she said "the danger is that we will created these clones and keep them alive for four or five months. ... Human clones could be a source for human organs."

My take on what she meant by the traditional Judeo-Christian view of the sanctity of all human life is inviolable and that nothing from zygote up to, but not including, a corpse can be excluded from this community of inviolable human life.

Regarding specific bad acts (this example had yet to be made public at the time of the talk, but it would have fit right in,) she talked about the U.S. Public Health Service Tuskegee Syphilis Study, and made some claims about modern practices that I expect are covered in the book. A modern case she did talk about was the gene therapy case of Jesse Gelsinger; and she noted that the head scientist, Dr. James M. Wilson (she didn't mention him by name,) had an apparent conflict of interest in that he owned a substantial amount of stock in the company that held the patents for the vector that he was testing. She said that "if [Wilson] violated protocols, then others are doing it, too." She mentioned a study by Adil Shamoo, a Professor of Medicine at the University of Maryland, that found from 1990-2000 there was a 1000% rise in adverse results in human trials.

She discussed the origin of the modern bioethics; but emphasized it's links to eugenics, noting that an early pioneer in bioethics, Joseph Fletcher, was a member of the American Eugenics Society. Several times she quoted someone at a conference on stem cell research expressing the sentiment that "we need to abolish the sanctity of human life" (I'm guessing it is Peter Singer, who does express something close to that sentiment.) She also mentioned Daniel Callahan and Willard Gaylin in connection with a BlueCross sponsored study on end of life care that I haven't been able to track down; the implication being that there was a financial conflict of interest.

Regarding popular science movements, she talked briefly about Paul Ehrlich and The Population Bomb; and about the population control movement. She strongly implied that the motivation of the movement was racist, saying something to the effect that the only population explosion was among the non-white population. She mentioned how this movement influenced public school text books, using as an example a definition of "responsible parenthood" from one; it was not to take good care of your children, but "to not have too many children." Additionally, she mentioned a textbook that talked about the evolution of skin color in an isolated population that was unrealistically rapid (again, this story had not yet broken, but could have fit in.)

Another thing that she mentioned was the patenting of genes, which she likened to slavery, but I really didn't follow her argument here. I assume she'll go into more detail in the book. I bring it up here because it ties into the greed motivation seen before with the Wilson affair and with the Blue Cross end of life study.

She spent a significant amount of time on embryonic stem cell research, saying that "the real attraction [for proponents] is that it beats down religion." She mentioned the ridiculous statement made by John Edwards during the 2004 campaign (source).

"We will do stem cell research," he vowed. "We will stop juvenile diabetes, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and other debilitating diseases. America just lost a great champion for this cause in Christopher Reeve. People like Chris Reeve will get out of their wheelchairs and walk again with stem cell research."

And this over-selling is ridiculous, but claiming that the real attraction for it is that it is anti-religious is nearly as ridiculous.

I think many of the things she brought up are legitimate complaints. But I also think that her premise, that science is on a crusade against religion, is unsupported by her examples. Specific bad acts occur in every field of human endeavor, including religion. The examples she cited do not seem to me to be motivated by any particular anti-religious bias. Bioethics is not science. The conflict she points to is between ethical systems such as utilitarianism and divine command theory. This is not an issue of science against religion, but of one ethical system against another -- and the attacks are hardly one-sided. And I agree that, to the extent that there are bad science resources, they should be corrected. If there is a misleading statement or scientifically unsupported statement in a science textbook, it absolutely should be corrected.

Toward the end of her presentation, she talked about the responsibility of journalists. She said that few journalists read medical journals, and I concur that most science reporting is superficial. I think that science reporters should have a strong science background and should be familiar, able and willing to report the caveats that are included in journal articles. She said that journalists should be skeptical of the claims of scientists, and I agree. Especially the claims of publicity seeking scientists. But I think she does a disservice by damning an entire field from the acts of a few. I think she does a disservice by equivocating between a battle of ethical systems and a battle between science and religion. And lastly, I think she does a disservice by implying that the laziness of her current profession is a problem with science.

[Update: In response to a comment from my wife, I would like to note that the purpose of this post is primarily to accurately report Ms. Winnick's presentation as I heard it, and secondarily to present my main objection and only my main objection: that the general tone of the presentation, the claim that science is waging a crusade against religion, is both unsupported by her examples and harmful in its own right. There are some exceptions I would take with Ms. Winnick's interpretation of specific events and I also have some strong opinions regarding the ethical arguments discussed, but I felt that going into those topics would both make a long post much longer and would only perpetuate the confusion of these topics with science in general.]