Must read Tech Execs Should Speak Out for Science

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Dan Gillmor <dan () gillmor com>
Date: October 20, 2005 1:22:12 AM EDT
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>


Today's column:

http://bayosphere.com/blog/dan_gillmor/20051019/ 
tech_execs_should_speak_out_
for_science_0

Tech Execs Should Speak Out for Science

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Submitted by Dan Gillmor on Wed, 10/19/2005 - 10:06pm.
(This is my column in today's Financial Times.)
American technology executives often complain about the inadequacies  
of public education, and rightly.
They worry especially loudly about the lack of higher standards and  
attainment in the all-critical areas of maths and science.
There is self-interest involved, of course. If any industry needs a  
qualified workforce in an increasingly knowledge-based economy, it is  
theirs.
Yet they are all but silent on a threat to the science curriculum in  
particular, and to the scientific method in a more general sense.
Few of the technology elite have addressed the movement to elevate  
“intelligent design” – a proxy for biblical creationism – to a place  
equal to evolution in the classroom.
In Kansas, the state’s top school officials seem bent on requiring  
classes to offer intelligent design as a plausible alternative to  
evolution.
In a federal trial now under way in Pennsylvania, a judge is hearing  
arguments against a local school board’s decision to do likewise.
President George W Bush has leapt into the fray. In a statement that  
appealed to his political base but shocked his own science adviser,  
Mr Bush recently said he thought intelligent design should be taught  
in class as the other side of the issue.
Proponents of intelligent design have become experts in using  
language, if not science.
They point out, correctly, that Charles Darwin and his successors  
can’t fully explain some natural phenomena with the well-established  
scientific theory of natural selection. And they point to the  
astonishing complexity and beauty of our universe.
They also claim that intelligent design isn’t really creationism, the  
notion that God created the world in a week, with one day off, just a  
few thousand years ago.
No, they say, it’s the examination of life’s near-infinite  
complexity, and the inescapable conclusion that only an intelligent  
entity could have created it, not natural selection – intelligent as  
in God.
They artfully misuse the word “theory” as applied in science.  
Evolution is not just a theory in the lay sense. The evidence  
supports it overwhelmingly.
The scientific method does not support intelligent design. The  
latter’s proponents fill in evolution’s holes – tiny ones, by  
scientific standards – essentially with faith.
There is nothing wrong with faith, and a great deal right. Behind  
faith can lie great strength, and if religion has been the root of  
much conflict, it is also the root of much good, such as when  
religious leaders stand up for the powerless and against abusers of  
power.
But religion is not science. It does not belong in science class.
Bill Gates is one of the loudest worriers about the quality of US  
schools, and has given billions via his foundation and company to  
improving education and science, notably healthcare. Yet his  
foundation has also lent financial support to the intelligent design  
movement’s most prominent think-tank, the Seattle-based Discovery  
Institute.
The money is directed at programmes other than intelligent design,  
but helps pay the director’s salary – and if anyone knows that money  
is fungible, it ought to be Bill Gates.
At least one member of the tech elite is not silent. Eric Benhamou –  
the former longtime chief executive of networking pioneer 3Com,  
currently an adjunct professor at Insead – addressed the issue at a  
recent public conversation in which I took part.
We were discussing the larger topic of corporate social  
responsibility. I asked Benhamou whether it was the duty of  
executives to speak out when the president of the US suggests that  
science classes be required to teach “intelligent design” as an  
alternative to evolution.
They absolutely should speak out, he said. It’s a fact, he observed,  
that today’s knowledge-based companies need people “whose minds are  
trained on knowledge and scientific fact, and not mixed up with this  
creationism bullshit.”
I then asked if he could name anyone in a prominent corporate  
position who’d actually spoken out in this way. He could not, he said  
with what sounded like regret: “It’s hard to be caught on TV saying  
these things, but it’s particularly important now. I feel quite  
worried that we’re passive about it.”
Silence in the face of this challenge to basic education is not just  
wrong. It is damaging to America’s future. It gives advantage to  
nations where children learn science based solely on evidence.
Powerful people should be defending science. Why are so many so silent?




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