Both Sean Carroll and Lubos Motl have written great posts thoroughly debunking that popular paranormal phenomenon known properly as “telekinesis”, and more popularly as “spoon bending”. James Randi and Martin Gardner, of course, are old hands at this, but as physicists, Carroll and Motl bring their own expertise and perspective into explaining why it is impossible. It all boils down to the two basic objects that physics studies and tries to explain: matter and the forces acting upon them. Ordinary matter, such as that which makes up you and me or a spoon or a fork, is very simply made up of three basic particles: up quarks, down quarks, and leptons, with gluons holding the first two together. That’s it. There’s nothing special about a spoon, a brain, a rock, a Toyota or a Norah Jones CD beyond the way the fundamental particles are arranged. If there are other particles which are constitutive of matter, they must be fiendishly difficult to detect and ultimately, inconsequential to its observable properties, and so cannot be invoked to support the spoon-bender’s arguments.
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Over at NRO’s The Corner, the indefatigable John Derbyshire has been on a roll critiquing the trailer to Expelled (read the DC thread here). Another Cornerite, Steven Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute, expressed some skepticism about whether or not ID is really that much of a menace to science. Needless to say, that’s a statement only a non-scientist could make, but instead of letting it pass, I decided to explain Mr.Hayward just why it is indeed a danger not just to science and rational thought, but everything else we hold dear (or at least should hold dear). I haven’t heard back from Hayward yet, but I’m reprinting my letter here, in the hope of persuading any other laypeople who may be reading about why it is such a big deal to us scientific types.

Dear Mr.Hayward:

The question “why worry about unreason in science” is almost rhetorical. Science is the complete antithesis of unreason. It is one of the most beautiful products of men’s minds and civilizations, and is dependent on the careful use of reason and empirical data in order for it to work properly. The imposition of unreason on science is far worse than in the humanities, because it completely sabotages its primary functions of helping to best understand the external world. The humanities are not, by and large, dependent on the scientific method, and in fact, precede it. They make use of their own methods of interpretation and analysis  and specific standards of judgement whic are far different than those in the sciences. Moreover, the irrationalism within the humanities comes from its own practioniers; the people trying to impose ID and other forms of unreason on the scientific community are outsiders, bent on imposing their theology on a community which neither needs nor wants it, and properly recognizes it as being harmful to the scientific enterprise. The scientific community is indeed beleagured at the moment, as the irrationalists, fed up with being (rightfully) ignored, are now resorting to legal recourse to force their nonsense to be taught in school. As a member of the AEI, you should be concerned about what will happen to America’s standing if its students grow up believing a false theory-especially since the biological sciences will be driving much of the economy in the next century.

But Intelligent Design is not just bad for science and bad for America-it is bad for conservatism. Every time a conservative advocates intelligent design or creationism, my heart drops, because it means that person has proved him or herself incapable of understanding the scientific method or thoroughly researching the facts. It also means that for the unpersuaded, when they see so many ostensiable conservatives advocating pseudoscience and biblical idiolatry over true science and rational thought, will impulsively run away from anything tainted with conservatism, because conservatism itself is now perceived by them as being tainted with unreason. We cannot win wars against academic or media bias if we insist that lies and falsehoods be taught in the schools and universities, or be given equal time in the public discourse. Creationism is NOT conservative. True conservatism, like true science, deals with the way the universe is, not how we wish it to be (a quote coined by a friend of mine who is both a conservative and a scientist-a physicist, to be precise). Conservatism desperately needs a new Bill Buckley, who will divorce it from the Discovery Institute the same way Buckley divorced it from the John Birch Society if it is regain any relevance or credence.

I leave you with the following blog post. It is from a site I belong to, called Darwin Central. We are a loosely-knit coalition of conservatives, libertarians and moderate Republicans who regard commitment to science and informed thought to be a patriotic duty. Please read it, and I hope I will leave with you a greater understanding of the importance of fighting for science and against unreason-for the future of our country and our culture.

And that (with apologies to both Bill O’Reilly and Lubos Motl) is the memo

They could have given the Nobel Peace Prize to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Paul Rusesabagina or Oscar Biscet. They could have given it to all the activists working for peace in Africa, Afghanistan and the Balkans. But no, they gave it to ManBearPig, in what appears to be one of a successive series of deliberate jabs by the Nobel committee against the current U.S. President. The Nobel Peace Prize obviously now has about as much relevance to actual peace as the Stalin Peace Prize did.

Some more reactions from across the Internet:

Steven Hayward
Ronald Bailey
Lubos Motl
Rick Moran
Neo-Neocon

The cartooning team of Cox and Forkum have announced their retirement from full-time editorial cartooning. I’ll not just miss them because they were by far the best Internet cartoonists around, but because of their political perspective, which was ostensibly Objectivist, but might more accurately be called “right-wing rationalism” or “Enlightenment Conservatism”. It is exceedingly rare to find commentators who are consistently well-informed and reasonable on all topics they tackle, so they were a real breath of fresh air. Appropriately enough, I’ll leave you with their cartoon on the Intelligent Design issue, which, better than any other, illustrates its true agenda:

LAST WEEK, John Farrell posted a great rant denouncing his fellow conservative’s willingness to let anti-science ignoramuses run roughshod over them, and who are not just shrinking the GOP tent, but are effectively pulling out the stakes holding it up. Anyone concerned about the direction of the Republican party or the country as a whole has an obligation to read it.

VIA JOHN PODHORETZ at The Corner comes the news that Virginia Postrel, author of The Future and Its Enemies and former editor of Reason magazine, will be shortly beginning chemotherapy for breast cancer treatment. In typical Postrel fashion, she selflessly just adds the news at the end of an otherwise irreverent blog post, as if denoting that it is just one of life’s hassles, and that we shouldn’t worry about her when there are so many other things in life to be thankful for. And for many of us here at Darwin Central, Postrel herself is one of those things. Although Reason has since literally and figuratively gone to pot with her departure, when Postrel was editing it, it was by far the most intellectually simulating journal around, and influenced the thinking of many of us, conservative and libertarian alike. Not only did Postrel champion the magazine’s subheading of “free minds and free markets” during her tenure, but she has continued to write on behalf of a truly rational and nuanced approach to political and cultural issues, demonstrating the futility of trying to pigeonhole one’s self into categories of “right,” “left,” or “centre”. We wish her lots of luck and love, and look forward to more of her writing once she wins the good fight.

A thread has been started in the DC forums offering Postrel best wishes, and all are invited to contribute. Others who have offered support include Glenn Reynolds, Rand Simberg and Rod Dreher, who provides the best comments of them all.

There has been a lot of blogosphere buzz over this piece that originally appeared in the Australian press, about how redheads are supposedly doomed to extinction due to global gene drift. But as the redoutable Razib Khan explains here and here, the “news” is thoroughly fallacious, based on a facile misreading of the Hardy-Weinberg principle that doesn’t take into account the sort of random deviations and violations of expectation which not only disrupt the linear path which the authors have plotted, but render any accurate estimation of the “moment” of extinction implausible.
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Not the excellent blog, but the exciting new announcement made by a team at the University of Oregon:

Scientists have determined for the first time the atomic structure of an ancient protein, revealing in unprecedented detail how genes evolved their functions.

“Never before have we seen so clearly, so far back in time,” said project leader Joe Thornton, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Oregon. “We were able to see the precise mechanisms by which evolution molded a tiny molecular machine at the atomic level, and to reconstruct the order of events by which history unfolded.”

…

The researchers focused on the glucocorticoid receptor (GR), a protein in humans and other vertebrates that allows cells to respond to the hormone cortisol, which regulates the body’s stress response. The scientists’ goal was to understand the process of evolution behind the GR’s ability to specifically interact with cortisol.

They used computational techniques and a large database of modern receptor sequences to determine the ancient GR’s gene sequence from a time just before and just after its specific relationship with cortisol evolved. The ancient genes — which existed more than 400 million years ago — were then synthesized, expressed, and their structures determined using X-ray crystallography, a state-of-the art technique that allows scientists to see the atomic architecture of a molecule. The project represents the first time the technique has been applied to an ancient protein.

The structures allowed the scientists to identify exactly how the new function evolved. They found that just seven historical mutations, when introduced into the ancestral receptor gene in the lab, recapitulated the evolution of GR’s present-day response to cortisol. They were even able to deduce the order in which these changes occurred, because some mutations caused the protein to lose its function entirely if other “permissive” changes, which otherwise had a negligible effect on the protein, were not in place first.

Ignoring the fact that x-ray crystallography is not exactly state-of-the-art (Max Von Laue won the Nobel Prize for its invention in 1914), the article does an excellent job of both explaining the work itself and its importance. Essentially, Thornton and Bridgham’s team has accomplished the biological equivalent of Wilson and Penzias’ discovery of the cosmic background radiation: they have traced the origins of life back to its original, elemental form, and “listened” to the protein “echo” to determine how successive changes arose. It’s another nail in the coffin of Irreducible Complexity, and another brick in the edifice of The Modern Synthesis of evolutionary and molecular biology.

In April 2006, a similar press release by Bridgham and Thornton’s team prompted a predictable tantrum from the Discovery Institute. We are still awaiting a similar outburst from them. In the meantime, smart people can discuss the actual science behind the news release in the Darwin Central forum.

UPDATE: Chris Street’s brand new blog offers a technical summary of the research, if you want to know the details.

One of our most recent discussions in the Darwin Central forums was about an article in Thursday’s National Post on how Quebec’s only Mennonite community, located in the small town of Roxton Falls, may move out instead of having their children attend the province’s public schools or be forced to have their private schools teach the provincially-mandated curriculum. According to community spokesman Ronald Goossen, “we don’t agree with the emphasis on evolution, which we consider false; we don’t like the morality standards; and we don’t like the acceptance of alternative lifestyles” .

Now, my own reflexive reaction was to say “this is not right”. Although Goossen does have a valid point about the sort of value judgements the public school system often imposes on students, when it comes to teaching science, there can be no compromise. You either teach the students the facts or you don’t. But as DC member Physicist noted, this particular religious community, no doubt in part because of their pacifist beliefs, are making no attempt to impose their values on others; they simply want to be able to preserve their cultural traditions by choosing the type of education they want for their children. Some creationists in both the United States and Canada are not waiting for public schools to allow for their views in the science classroom, and have taken the steps to either send their children to private schools or to homeschool them, where they are “free” of any challenges to their parent’s beliefs. It’s no wonder then that so many Evangelical Christians are in favor of private school vouchers.

As a conservative deeply concerned about science education, my views on vouchers for private schooling have shifted slightly and my views on homeschooling have shifted profoundly. Although critics of vouchers claim that they put public schools at a disadvantage, it seems to me that private schools disadvantage themselves when they don’t teach as rigorously and throughly as they should. Look at the recent controversy regarding the University of California system’s refusal to accept applicants from private Christian schools whose science curriculum did not meet the criteria for adequacy. It appears to me that even private schools will require some sort of oversight to ensure that science and other subjects are being properly taught; we may, perhaps, have to limit vouchers to those schools which meet a certain set of standards regarding teaching pedagogy. As for homeschooling, many of us here at Darwin Central have had frustrating on-line debates not just with creationist homeschoolers but homeschooled creationists, equipped with no actual scientific knowledge or reasoning skills, but who had been so skillfully brainwashed by their parents, that facts bounced off their brains like bullets off Superman’s chest. You don’t have to watch South Park to know that while homeschooled kids may be aces at spelling and other basics, their parents are more often than not ill-equipped to teach them more advanced subjects.

So to the Mennonites of Roxton Falls, and all other creationists: if you insist on having the schools your children attend teach religious myth instead of scientific fact, you may either pay for such a school out of your own pocket, or keep your children at home. But don’t expect me or anyone else to support you, and don’t be surprised if your child’s success as an adult winds up compromised by your own decisions as a parent, and if your own community further decays as a result of remaining anchored in the past.

This June 7 marked the centennial of the greatest American science fiction writer. What would Robert A. Heinlein, a man frequently identified as being on the right, in spite of his complex views that often contradicted the dearly-held shibboleths of both liberals and conservatives, have to say about intelligent design? As it turns out, he had something to say about it, back when it was less-stealthily disguised as “scientific creationism”. I guide you to pages 549-550 of Expanded Universe (1980. NY: Ace Books):

If it suits you to believe that Yahweh created the universe in the fashion related in Genesis, I won’t argue it. But I don’t have to respect your belief and I do not think that legislation requiring that the Biblical version be included in public school textbooks is either constitutional or fair. How about Ormuzd? Ouranos? Odin? There is an unnumbered throng of religions, each with its creation myth—all different. Shall one of them be taught as having the status of a scientific hypothesis merely because the members of the religion subscribing to it can drum up a majority at the polls, or organize a pressure group at a state capital? This is tyranny by the mob inflicted on minorities in defiance of the Bill of Rights.
Revelation has no place in a science textbook; it belongs under religious studies.
If almost everyone believed in Yahweh and Genesis, and less than one in a million U.S. citizens believe in Brahma the Creator, it would not change the constitutional aspect. Neither belongs in a science textbook in a tax-supported school.