Equal Time for Science and Ignorance?

If you watched astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson's "Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey" last night, you were treated to a sampling of how science should be presented.  The 13-part series, as we noted on Saturday, is an update to the powerful "Cosmos" program presented by the late Carl Sagan (who was a mentor to a young, 17 year-old Tyson).

Being a scientist requires patience, but as the nation's science IQ slips, Tyson has no patience with the anti-science crowd and their foolish enablers in the media who insist on "balance," even if the alternate view is patently nuts:

"...you don't talk about the spherical earth with NASA and then say let's give equal time to the flat-earthers.  Plus, science is not there for you to cherry pick. You know, I said this once and it's gotten a lot of Internet play, I said the good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it."

Too bad "equal time" journalism can't free itself of the flat-earthers.

On "Cosmos," Jesus Will Not Be Riding A Dinosaur

Hank Stuever at the once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle previews "Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey," a 13-part series hosted by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson that follows in the footsteps of Carl Sagan's landmark "Cosmos" series from a quarter century ago.  Given the intellectual devolution that has occurred in that quarter century =cough= creationists =cough= wingnuts =cough= Stuever notes:

To borrow that Max von Sydow line from Woody Allen’s “Hannah and Her Sisters”: If Sagan returned to Earth on his interstellar Ship of the Imagination today, he might never stop throwing up. He’d see evidence of climate change. He read polls that find nearly half of Americans don’t buy evolution. He’d see creationist museums and theme parks. 

This 2014 “Cosmos” has its work cut out for it, to say the least, in a far different context than Sagan’s series did. 

“This ad­ven­ture is made possible by generations of searchers strictly adhering to a simple set of rules,” Tyson tells viewers in a carefully but beautifully phrased invitation to have an open mind. “Test ideas by experiment and observation; build on those ideas that pass the test, reject the ones that fail; follow the evidence wherever it leads and question everything. Accept these terms and the cosmos is yours.” (Reject these terms and you might wind up sitting on an Adam and Eve roller-coaster ride around our 6,000-year-old planet.) (our emphasis)

We can bemoan a failure of public education, the success of ideologically-driven know-nothings, and/or other factors that might account for such a large portion of Americans retreating into anti-science, pre-Darwin 19th Century beliefs.  But this series reminds us that evolution has had it's failures, dead-ends and back-tracks, too.  Put into a socio-political context, that could provide some hope that, despite setbacks, evolution, climate change and other science tested by experiment and observation will come to be accepted by the vast majority.  This series is a step in that direction.

"Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey" premieres Sunday night and repeats Monday night.  In America, check your local listings for the time and channel.

Sam, Mike, and Tom: Your Rethug Stooges

We didn't bother watching the Rethuglican candidates' "debate" last night, along with most Americans. One commenter on a popular post said, "the winners of last night's debate were the people who had their television sets turned off." True, but Crooks and Liars did capture one hilarious moment when the luminaries of the American Taliban Party were asked who didn't believe in evolution. Three idiots, Brownback, Huckabee and Tancredo, raised their hands! And it's 2007, not 1707!