A Suggestion for Neil Godfrey

Photo credit: sxc.hu

Neil Godfrey has written an interesting blog post about the inspiring story of Jack Andraka, a 16 year old high school student who, with a bit of help from Google, Wikipedia, and some open access journals, has developed a revolutionary new test for pancreatic cancer.

Andraka wrote to 200 established scientists asking for the help he needed to put his theory to the test. 199 politely declined, but one scientist, Anirban Maitra, a Professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, offered Andraka assistance, in the form of lab access and the support of a postdoctoral chemist.

Neil questions whether Andraka would have been taken seriously if his area of interest were Biblical Studies, rather than medicine. He writes: 

The ideological nature of [Biblical Studies] will never allow it… Andraka the Bible student would be scoffed at as not having qualifications, not having published, not being a “real Scholar”. And the one out of 200 who might be sympathetic to his views would probably have to remain silent for fear of ridicule and security of tenure. 

Now, having studied Religious Studies at degree level, having no job in academia protect or religious beliefs to defend, I have to say that I disagree with Neil’s assessment of Biblical Studies. However, I think that the story of Jack Andraka suggests a way of objectively testing Neil’s claims about Biblical Studies, and what's more, I’d be more than happy to work with Neil to do this.

Overall, it seems that Neil is offering a hypothesis about Biblical Studies, which is:

A) A proposal from a non-scholar requesting assistance from Bible scholars would receive a more negative response than the proposal from Jack Andraka. Therefore:

B) Biblical Studies is more ideological than the sciences.

I think that we could design a straightforward experiment that would test whether statement A is true, and as a consequence establish the validity of statement B. The experiment would work something like this:

1. We know that Jack Andraka received a positive response rate of 0.5% (one positive response out of two hundred requests), so an equivalent request to Bible scholars should be receive a lower response rate, assuming that statement A is true.
2. We could agree upon and outline an idea that we think has some merit and that might improve Biblical Studies in some regard. 
3. We would then contact 200 established Bible scholars, requesting as non-scholars some form of assistance necessary to develop our idea (e.g. translating a particular passage, help learning a language, access to a particular text or artefact.)
4. We would then compare the positive response rate of Bible scholars with the positive response rate that Andraka received (0.5%).
5. If our experiment resulted in a lower positive response rate from Bible Scholars than Andraka received (i.e. below 0.5%), then statement A would be proven and I think we would have good grounds to think that, by implication, statement B is likewise true. Conversely if the positive response rate were equal to or greater than 0.5%, then statement A would be false, and we would likewise have good grounds to doubt the truth of statement B.

Neil rightly points out that most theories or claims within Biblical Studies claims are not capable of empirical testing in quite the same way as scientific theories (which would equally apply most Arts/Humanities subjects). However, since we’re interested in how scholars respond to novel ideas from non-scholars, rather than the truth of those ideas, this wouldn’t really matter to the experiment I’ve suggested above. 

Of course, I’d welcome any suggestions to revise or improve my proposed experiment: Agreeing on an idea that we both think is worth investigating might prove tricky, as might establishing in advance what counts as a “positive response”. The way I’ve formulated Neil’s hypothesis in statement B might not quite reflect Neil’s actual argument, and need a bit of refining. We’d also need to check that the figure of 1 out of 200 scientists offering help is true rather than a piece of journalistic exaggeration. However, I don’t think that any of these issues are insurmountable with a bit of good will on both sides.

So how about it Neil?

Free E-book: Religion and Science

Mel Thomspon has made his A-level Religion and Science textbook available online and free of charge here. Very kind of him, I'm sure you'll agree.

It includes chapters on the origins of the universe, evolution, free will, and miracles, besides others on the history of science and the scientific method.

Religion and Science sells for £70 on Amazon, so getting it for free is like me paying you £70 to read a book, right?

Mel's website is also worth a visit, and contains summary notes for a range of A-level topics.

H/T: The Facebook Campaign to Improve AQA Philosophy.

Michael Ruse on "Does Life Have a Purpose?"

This essay by philosopher of biology Michael Ruse examines the concept of purpose in biology, tracing its history from Aristotle to the present day. I particularly like his description of Aristotle's prime mover: "rather like some junior members of my family, this God spent Its time thinking mostly of Its own importance"

You can read the essay in full here, or download a kindle version here. HT: The Facebook Campaign to Improve AQA Philosophy group.

The Human Zoo

Driving back to Dover yesterday I stumbled across a really interesting Radio 4 programme: The Human Zoo. The show is about human behaviour and decision making so is worth a listen if you're interested in the problem of free will and the factors that might determine the choices we make.
 
Yesterday's episode looked at the ways that governments and business try to influence our decisions. You can listen to it on iPlayer here. Previous episodes are available here.

Animal Experiments - Resources For and Against

In class today, I showed my Year 13 students a video on animal experiments made by the charity Animal Aid, and I thought I would share a link to the video here. It's split into 4 parts. 

Although the video is intended for GCSE and A level students, it does contain distressing images throughout.

 

Part 1: How are animals used?

Part 2: Is it good science?

Part 3: Why do they do it?

Part 4: What are the alternatives?

Note that the video has a strong anti-vivisection agenda, I haven't posted it as objective summary of the debate. If you would like to hear the case for the use of animals in medical experiments, you can click here.

In related news,the European Union has recently acted to ban the testing of cosmetics on animals. I also posted about my own past views on vivisection here.

Questions on Mythicism and Denial Movements

A big thank you to those of you who participated in my Virtually University sessions on Mythicism and the question of Jesus’ existence. From talking to other teachers, I wonder if my class was more a chat about some stuff I find interesting than a proper university style lecture, but hey - it was more fun than teaching the ontological argument.

I was really impressed by the quality of some of the thinking and the questions you raised, and pleasantly surprised that many of you could anticipate some key Mythicist arguments and the counter-arguments to these. I was also pleased that a couple of you had even heard of exciting things like Q and the apocryphal gospels... though on reflection, perhaps you’ve just been watching The Da Vinci Code?

I did say that I would post some follow up work for you, so here it is. Below are a few questions that I think were raised in the course of our sessions:

• How strong is the historical evidence for the existence of Jesus?
• How convincing is the mythicist case against the existence of Jesus?
• Why makes some people reject the consensus view of experts in particular field?
• What is the role of ideology in shaping way denial movements use evidence and the conclusions they draw?
• Is mythicism a denial movement?
•  Is rejection of human-caused global warming a form of denial?
• Is denying scientific consensus (such as evolution or HIV as a cause of AIDS) different to denying historical consensus (such as the existence of Jesus)?

Please could you pick one of these questions, research the issues raised, and write me a response.  I won’t ask for it to be done by Monday – I’d rather you took your time doing some reading and thinking and came back to me later, even if it’s in the holidays. I’m also planning to post my own thoughts on a few of these questions over the next week or two, so you may wish to read those posts too.

You can either email me your work to my school account or post them as a comment below, though please remember the house rules.

Respect my Authoritah!

Well the good news is that there was enough interest in the Virtually University course I was planning on running on the existence of Jesus for it to go ahead (and so are the other two classes in RS, which is great).

If you’ve already read my introductory post on mythicism, you’ll know that mythicist view of Jesus (that he did not exist historically), is rejected by an overwhelming majority of experts within the field of Biblical Studies.

One of the interesting questions raised by mythicism is how far we should accept the authority of experts, and how far we should consider challenges to their views? An argument frequently made by mythicists is that those who accept the historical existence of Jesus of Nazareth do so because they accept the authority of experts without question, and do not consider the evidence fairly or rationally.

And perhaps they have a point: Experts said that the Beatles wouldn’t make it, that Muhammad Ali could not beat George Foreman, that Sadam Hussein had a whole bunch of nasty WMDs. If you’re one of my students, you’ll know that we have a house named after Jane Tomlinson, who ignored the prognosis of her very well qualified doctors that she only had six months to live, and not only lived for another seven years, but also went on to compete in a number of marathons, triathlons, and long distance bike rides.

History is full of examples people who have successfully defied expert opinion, and it has even been argued that science progresses as one accepted theory is gradually challenged and ultimately overturned by a new one. So not only are experts and authority figures sometimes wrong, but those who prove them wrong are often – rightly – the very people we admire most.

However, just because the experts are sometimes wrong, it can’t be the case that everybody who disagrees with the experts is always right. From your AS level RS, you’ll know that there is group we call creationists who disagree with evolution, and if you study A level History, you should have heard of Holocaust deniers, who claim that the systematic murder of the Jews during World War Two never took place. If you study English, you might even have about a theories that William Shakespeare did not write the plays attributed to him. Each of views of these views is rejected by qualified experts in the fields of, respectively, Science, History and English Literature, and (in my view) rightly so.

The problem is then, how do we distinguish between the next great theory that’s going to revolutionise our understanding and theories which are simply nonsense or worse, racist nonsense?

An obvious answer would seem to that if we just examine the evidence ourselves we can tell the good theories from the bad. But it’s not quite as simple as this: very often the evidence is complex or its value is disputed. So unless we are experts ourselves, at some point we have to rely on the authority of experts to interpret or assess the evidence for us.

If you don’t believe me, have a crack at reading Einstein’s original paper on the special theory of relativity.