Cigarettes Don't Cause Cancer. "Cigarette-Science" Tells Us So

Credit: Lady Grey

The non-tobacconists have constructed a complicated and massive program to brainwash you into thinking that cigarette smoking will give you cancer and other horrible diseases. This pernicious plot has happened because the "scientists" who work for the non-tobacconists are trying to make sure they get lots of grant money to keep studying the so-called problem. If you are a smoker and you feel uncomfortable with this state of affairs, don't worry. You can choose to believe in "cigarette-science".

We, the practitioners of "cigarette-science", know right from the start that cigarettes can't cause cancer, and we carefully design our reports and our scientific experiments to prove this. And we are very good at showing that the so-called "science" of the non-tobacconists is faulty because one of their researchers twenty years ago said "we aren't totally sure that cigarettes are the sole cause of cancer". And there was a spelling error on one of the graphs they published fifteen years ago.

Best of all, we can prove we are right because we are great debaters, especially when we face off against a non-tobacconist in a room full of smokers. Those non-tobacconists keep trying to produce "facts" and "evidence", but we know how to "play the room", er, excuse me, "speak to the true believers". Our smoking friends want to believe that smoking cigarettes won't kill them. They need to hear that smoking cigarettes won't kill them. So we can never lose.

People hate ambiguity. They like firm statements like "cigarettes don't cause cancer" and hate the uncertainty inherent in a statement like "the available evidence strongly suggests a link between smoking and cancer".

Your blog author steps back and takes a deep breath (of fresh clean air):

Yes, of course I am talking about "creation-science" and the essentially useless "debate" that took place last night between creationist Ken Ham, and Bill Nye, the "Science Guy". I didn't watch it, not because I have a closed mind about such things, but because I have been studying and following the tactics of the creation-science community for the last twenty-five years, and I have seen in person the tactics used by them in debates (oh, and I was teaching a class last night. On science). I'm hearing that Bill did okay from those who have a scientific background, but I have no doubt that Ken Ham is celebrating his "victory", just as he has done with every other "debate" he has ever had. The problem with the whole concept is that debates aren't science. They are carnival side-shows. The debates are often held in churches and in front of audiences of religious believers who aren't about to listen to facts or evidence. They are there to see their champion slay the dragon of secular science.

Science is the pursuit of knowledge about the physical Universe, and the methodology of science is to achieve that knowledge in the most objective way possible. Ideally, people solve a problem or a mystery by gathering all the relevant evidence, analyze the evidence, and proposing as many hypotheses (plausible explanations) as they can to explain the mystery. They then set up experiments to test each hypothesis and hopefully eliminate those that cannot work as an explanation. When a specific hypothesis withstands all experimental challenges while all other hypotheses have been eliminated, it may be elevated to the level of being a scientific fact or theory. Atomic theory, plate tectonics theory, and evolutionary theory have reached this level of confirmation, along with many others.

Young Earth creationism starts with the conclusion ("the Earth was created 6,000 years ago") and uses the words of science to try and prove this conclusion. To put it succinctly, no. Science does not and cannot work this way. One cannot identify the person you want to convict of a crime and then garner only the evidence that he is the perpetrator. One cannot decide that vaccines cause autism, and then only collect anecdotal evidence to prove one's case. One cannot decide that the profits of the tobacco industry are more important than the health of smokers and set out to "scientifically" prove the lack of a link between cigarettes and cancer. And companies cannot decide that the profits of the fossil fuels industry are more important than the health of the planet and thus sow "scientific" doubt about global warming and climate change.

Or can they?

South Dakota Senate Proposes to Allow the Teaching of the Great Spaghetti Monster Model in Science Courses!

Via Wikipedia

Via Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy and from the South Dakota State Senate website itself, we find that a bill has been proposed that will make law the statement that "no school board or school administrator may prohibit a teacher in public or nonpublic school from providing instruction on intelligent design or other related topics" (italics mine). That's actually the whole law. I would really be interested in seeing this pass the state legislature and get enacted into law. One can only notice that "intelligent design" is not defined, and that "related topics" covers a great deal of scientific and religious ground. The fact that it would be constitutionally illegal is beside the point.

The ramifications are fascinating. This would mean that at last biology and earth science teachers in South Dakota would no longer be shackled by the confines of "science" in their teaching. Anything that they believe explains the origin of the Earth or the evolution of life would be fair game. Science class could be fun again! I would of course expect that along with the teachings of Noah's Ark and the great flood of Genesis from the Bible that teachers will in all fairness include the story of the Great Spaghetti Monster in space hypothesis. It explains the world we see at least as well as any other creation story, and in many instances explains it better.

It is such a shame that the people who desire most to be elected as the representatives of our state and country often are the most ignorant of fundamentally important scientific principles. We see this in their foolish attitudes towards global warming and climate change, and we see it in their failure to understand the difference between religious belief and scientific evidence. And to be clear: "intelligent design" is ultimately a religious belief, not a scientific discipline. This is true whether a badly written law in South Dakota defines it or not. It is highly unlikely that the bill would become law, and lawsuits would assuredly follow, wasting a great deal of time and money. And in the end, I would hope that I never have to place my life in the hands of person schooled in "science" in the state of South Dakota. What an embarrassment.

Rock on, Pastafarians!

"...(they) must teach them how to get history from the ground"

"After customary greetings and handshaking, White gets down on his hands and knees with a few fossil hunters to show the tribesmen how the researchers crawl on the ground, shoulder to shoulder, to look for fossils...White explains that these stones and bones reveal the ancient history of humankind. The Alisera smile wanly, apparently amused that anyone would want to grovel on the ground for a living. They grant permission to search for fossils - for now. But they add one caveat. Someday, they say, the researchers must teach them how to get history from the ground."*

This short passage, from an article this month in Smithsonian magazine, brought to mind much of what I find so wonderful about being a teacher in the earth sciences. And a bit of frustration that I occasionally feel as well.

Human beings are curious creatures, and the earth sciences are a treasure trove of fascinating phenomena. Children are endlessly intrigued by dinosaurs, volcanoes, earthquakes, crystals and rocks. Though they try to hide it under a veneer of jaded indifference, my "grown-up" students will suddenly act like excited kids when unleashed on a slope that may reveal a fossil trilobite, a shark tooth or a gemstone. To enter the world of geology is to enter a realm of time and space where pretty much everything that could have happened did happen at some point in the past: massive volcanic eruptions, asteroid impacts, exploding stars, mass extinctions, evolution of strange and wonderful creatures of all shapes and sizes. The clues to these events lie in the grains of sand and silt, in the shapes left behind in the rock of the creatures that swam, walked or crept in numerous environments, in the trace elements found in the rocks. There are even atomic clocks in the rock that allow us to put a date to these events. I love being a teacher, I love being a story-teller. It is what makes "groveling on the ground for a living" a wonderful career. Reading of the natural curiosity of the Alisera people made me smile in recognition of the same impulses that led me into the earth sciences.

Because I realize this curiosity exists, I am patient with the visitors from the community who come to my office, explaining why the chunk of rock they found in their yard is not a dinosaur egg, or an asteroid fragment. They have come to learn something, after all. My enthusiasm dims a bit sometimes when they say "well, where can I go to find out the truth about my rock?" (it happens...), or they ask if I want to buy it anyway. But sometimes something really neat happens. A woman last year brought in what she thought was a piece of petrified wood, only to find she had a one foot section of a mammoth tusk!

But how to explain the willful and downright irrational ignorance I encounter on a too-regular basis? Well, I can't. Sometimes it is relatively harmless, but in other instances it dangerously misguided.

In the relatively harmless category we have a long discussion from Eric's Dynamic Earth about a hilariously over the top video made by an expanding earth supporter. What started as a bit of hilarity among geologists turned into a long debate with true believers, who turned out to be ignorant of some of the most basic tenets of geology. But they believe the earth is expanding, by golly, and we geologists are involved in a conspiracy of silence, preventing the truth from emerging (or expanding, as it were). For a while it was amusing to respond to the questions, but it was soon clear that the people asking the questions had no real interest in learning anything new, and especially not from people who actually understand the processes involved.

And then there are the discussions that pop up once in awhile about evolution and global climate change. The former gets into religious issues, and the latter into conservative politics. I don't want to go into details just now, but I've had a frustrating week in both areas. In short, it saddens and angers me how easily people will believe there is some kind of scientific conspiracy designed to control minds and research dollars. It makes no logical sense, but that doesn't matter. It does make sense that energy companies who stand to lose money would pay immense amounts of money to manufacture doubt. In any case, people have been told specifically what to believe by preachers with no science education, and senators or talk radio hosts with no science education. But the Jim Inhofes and Rush Limbaughs of the world do have their agendas, and the majority of us will not benefit if they are successful. Neither will our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. And how they kill a sense of wonder and understanding!

The sciences like biology, geology, and astronomy have led humanity into some of the greatest adventures of our history. We've explored the limits of outer space, and the innermost workings of the cell. We explored the vast expanse of time, the development of life, and the forces that have moved continents thousands of miles. I don't know the solution to dealing with global warming deniers or creation scientists (although I have some suggestions here). It's not easy, but it must be done.

Below, a treasure of the past, and one of the more exciting moments in one of my student's life!


* Ann Gibbons, 2010, The Human Family's Earliest Ancestors, Smithsonian, volume 40, number 12.

What's Wrong With This Picture? A Short Rant

(slight paraphrase)

"We have to do this the scientific way

Observe....

Theorize...

Try and prove it....."

I was grading papers tonight. Given that I fall asleep easily while doing this means that I need distractions, so I was watching an old episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In the first season episode "Home Soil" the good doctor Beverly Crusher delivered this stunner of a statement about "science". As much as Star Trek was a half-decent attempt at good science fiction (don't ask a physicist, maybe), the statement above represents the kind of television/movie silliness that science teachers have fought against for decades: a fundamental misunderstanding of how we gain knowledge in an objective manner.

The term "theory" has been misused for a long time, I suppose because it is harder to get actors to say "hypothesis" in a convincing manner. And to get the science right means cluttering up a crisp script where everything has to happen in the 47 minutes or so that isn't commercials in an hour-long broadcast (and yes, I know all about 47 and Star Trek). How many times have you heard someone say that an explanation is "just a theory"? Or, "here's my theory about why something happened the way it did". These statements only work when the word "theory" is replaced by "hypothesis".

Theories, on the other hand, are models that are accepted and understood by scientists as to the way the universe works: atoms are theoretical; so is gravity. And evolution. We don't "believe" in atoms or evolution, we accept them on the basis of years of research and exploration. And the world and universe behave exactly as if these phenomena are in operation. One can choose not to believe in gravity, but trip over a rock and you will land on your face anyway.

In any case, the Creation-Science/Intelligent Design movements use a method much like that at the start of the post: Decide upon the truth, and garner all the evidence that supports this truth. You can try to call this approach "science", but it is not science.

So, to assist the Star Trek writers, here is Beverly Crusher's statement, updated to reflect the way things work in scientific research. Sorry I'm 20 years too late for this episode...

"We have to do this the scientific way...."

"Observe the phenomena, collect evidence and organize all the data, formulate as many possible explanations (hypotheses) as we can, and design tests that can disprove our hypotheses. If one explanation is finally supported by the evidence and cannot be disproven, we will accept the explanation and act accordingly, knowing even then that our explanation could be disproven if new evidence emerges".

Sorry script-writers, science is sometimes hard to jam into a sentence (and this, among many reasons, is why I am not writing scripts for a living). I welcome any of my readers to try to make this more succinct. But I wish Hollywood would try a bit harder; it would be better for us all.

Thus endeth a short mini-rant...