“We Call it Life”

FactCheck.org on those “Competitive Enterprise Institute” (i.e., oil companies) TV spots intended to counter Al Gore’s new film and book.

9 Responses to ““We Call it Life””

  1. Bart Lidofsky Says:

    All I can say is that factcheck.org is a great resource.

  2. Brent Wilcox Says:

    Ah yes… they just want to make sure the Public hears “both sides of the story” – the true side and the selfish, devious, lying, misrepresented and false side. So happy they only really have the public’s best interest in mind. Just have to be fair, y’know.

  3. Brent Wilcox Says:

    P.S. By “they” I meant CEI, not FactCheck…. just wanted to make sure that was clear….

  4. Brian Spence Says:

    I got pissed at that “both sides of the story” thing, too. IT’S NOT A STORY, IT’S FACTUAL EVIDENCE!!!

    Now that I have a big Hi-Def TV, I naturally watch a lot of nature shows on Discovery (if you have HDTV, you know what I mean). I always wonder how these anti-science people feel when they show evidence of evolution. They talk about how animals adapted and evolved to their changing environment. They just willfully ignore things they see with their own eyes.

    I can somewhat understand it, since I grew up Roman Catholic. In CCD (a Bible study class for kids, leading up to Confirmation), they always tell you to just put faith in the teachings of the Bible. To counter its teachings would be to become a “Doubting Thomas”, someone who had to have the existence of God proven to him. To look for evidence is considered a WEAKNESS by these fundamentalists.

  5. Bart Lidofsky Says:

    To Brian: Don’t confuse evidence of population shifts with evidence of evolution; one major problem with evolutionary theory is that some key points require fairly advanced knowledge of microbiology and biochemistry to understand, resulting in a “Well, I don’t understand it, so it’s not necessarily true.”

    In the case of “both sides of the story”, well, far too often, for political or economic reasons, researchers will fudge results. For example, there was an infamous study linking aspartame to brain tumors. It turned out that the researchers involved carefully picked years where the statistics matched their desired conclusion; when one looked at the entire period during which aparatame was being used, the evidence kind of evaporated.

    Global warming is a complex and not well understood study, complicated by those who wish to use the issue for political gain. Therefore, there’s a lot of cherry picking of data and holding back of factors, depending on what the motivation of those presenting it (for example, the Kyoto Accords would do almost nothing to stop global warming, but would do quite a bit to help many countries increase their economies at U.S. cost). Remember, never confuse the label with the ingredients.

  6. Richard Beland Says:

    Bart: Evolution isn’t a theory — it’s a fact!

  7. Brian Spence Says:

    Bart, are you saying that you don’t believe in evolution? Animals developing certain appendages to adapt to their environment isn’t a “population shift”, it’s evolution. Nearly every nature show you watch points this out.

  8. Bart Lidofsky Says:

    First of all, evolution is PROBABLY a fact, but “theoretical framework” is a better description. One of the problems is that “theory” has a definite meaning in science, and not so definite a meaning in ordinary language. When an unexplained phenomenon exists, a scientist will try to come up with an explanation which does not render any currently explained phenomena unexplained. This is called a “hypothesis”. The next step is to design an experiment, which, if it fails, disproves the hypothesis. Once this experiment is designed and successfully performed, the hypothesis becomes a “theory”. Occam’s Razor recommends that, when you have more than one hypothesis, try testing the more easily tested one first, and the less easily tested only if the first one fails. Then you stick with the theory until it either fails, or a better one comes along.

    A theoretical framework is a more complex thing; it is an overlaying framework to be used as guidelines for creating hypotheses/theories. The mistake that many anti-evolutionists make is that they confuse a replaceable theory with the theoretical framework itself. Many theories under the theory of evolution have been disproven, but they have been replaced with other, better theories, without disturbing the framework.

    One common misconception, grasped upon by the anti-evolutionists, is the theory of natural selection. This is not the mechanism of evolution; it is the mechanism by which it is determined whether a mutation is a positive or negative one. Changing conditions does not cause mutations; it merely means that populations that have certain given characteristics will survive better than those who lack those characteristics.

    As I stated, the actual mechanism of evolution is well-understood, but requires advanced microbiological knowledge to follow. In terms of it being “probably true”, well, it IS possible that the world was created in 1953 by giant pink flamingos, memories and fossils included.

  9. Bart Lidofsky Says:

    > As I stated, the actual mechanism of
    > evolution is well-understood, but
    > requires advanced microbiological
    > knowledge to follow. In terms of it
    > being “probably true”, well, it IS
    > possible that the world was created in
    > 1953 by giant pink flamingos, memories
    > and fossils included.

    …apologies to Steve for giving away the plotline of his next book.