One of us?

Matt Taibbi, has gone undercover with a Christian fundamentalist group. I don't know if he's brave or just another glutton for punishment looking for a new fix. Whatever the truth about his motives, he pulls some hard insight out of the experience:

...by my third day I began to notice how effortlessly my soft-spoken Matt-mannequin was going through his robotic motions of praise, and I was shocked. For a brief, fleeting moment I could see how under different circumstances it would be easy enough to bury your "sinful" self far under the skin of your outer Christian and to just travel through life this way. So long as you go through all the motions, no one will care who you really are underneath. And besides, so long as you are going through all the motions, never breaking the facade, who are you really? It was an incomplete thought, but it was a scary one; it was the very first time I worried that the experience of entering this world might prove to be anything more than an unusually tiring assignment. I feared for my normal.

Like American Psycho before him

Bryce: He makes himself out to be a harmless old codger, but inside... inside...

Bateman: [voice-over] ..."but inside" doesn't matter.

There is a sense that as long as you say and do what is expected of you, you are one of the chosen and the happy. I remember reading that the Puritans all acted happy even when miserable because they didn't want the others to know they hadn't been saved. The Lord had not revealed their pre-selection for Paradise. If Biddy Jones was really saved, why was she so sad? Goodman Smith must be saved, look how happy he is....

Why do people do it? Why do they make mechanical their lives?

It's that once you've gotten to this place, you've left behind the mental process that a person would need to form an independent opinion about such things. You make this journey precisely to experience the ecstasy of beating to the same big gristly heart with a roomful of like-minded folks. Once you reach that place with them, you're thinking with muscles, not neurons.

They, do it, we do it, I do it, because we want to belong, we want to not have to think our own thoughts. We do it because we watch American Idol. We do it because we would prefer a comedy to a drama. We do it because we are tired, just tired of trying at everything. Those that can do, those that can't... believe.

Science was "Framed" I Tell Ya!

ScienceBlogs... has long been abuzz with Matt Nisbet and Chris Mooney's impassioned pleas to the scientific community that scientists begin "framing" their subject matter. PZ Myers of Pharyngula has been one of their greatest critics. The debate has gone so far that Prof. Myers' expulsion from a showing of the latest creationist argumentum ad Hitlerum has been "framed" by Mr. Nisbet as "[r]eally, [r]eally bad for science." In Mr. Nisbet's words:

The simplistic and unscientific claim that more knowledge leads to less religion might be the particular delusion of Dawkins, Myers, and many others, but it is by no means the official position of science, though they often implicitly claim to speak for science.

I am not an experienced exegete of the Pharyngulaic word, but I don't recall Prof. Myers ever claiming he was, as it were, the Voice of Science.

What's worse, I haven't seen or heard Mr. Nisbet on his blog or his recent Point of Inquiry appearance address a concern which for me is core to my own hesitations about "framing science." James Hrynyshyn of Island of Doubt, puts it best (thx to PZ for the link):

Science does embrace simplicity over unnecessary complexity, insofar as parsimony is a useful tool. But scientists are not trained to simplify as an exercise in communications. And they are certainly not trained to emphasize certain elements of their studies at the expense of others just to suit the biases of an audience. (Well, maybe an audience that's reviewing a grant application...) They are trained to do the precise opposite: prioritize according to genuine importance, regardless of who's paying attention.

Indeed, the whole point of science is the pursuit of objectivity, is it not? Framing, by contrast, seems to embrace subjectivity.

So to the scientist, if framing is anything of consequence, then it's contrary to good science. I don't think anyone objects to dressing up science to attract attention. To many scientists, anything more substantial amount to "spin."

This same objection occurred to me after the enthusiam for Lakoff's "Don't Think of an Elephant!" wore off... Isn't this the same crap that Fox News foists upon its audience every day? What's the difference between the "false spin" of the typical FN broadcast and "framing" away the boring, distrubing, or just plain weird aspects of scientific discoveries. I grant the point that repeating over and over again that "science = atheism" is like gift-wrapping your t***icles and sending them to your enemy but where do you draw the line between the personal opinion of one scientist and the "Voice of Science" ? Mr. Nisbet doesn't clearly show us where this line is or even a range where it might be found. I'm not sure there is a clear line between "marketing" and "propaganda," "false spin" and "framing."