Humans and apes

[Brian O'Meara]

At 9:06 AM -0500 3/12/03, john Grehan wrote:
>From a science education point of view the number supporting a
>particular view being contested in the literature has no bearing on
>the matter. The citations given by Dettai do indicated that there is
>active question of debate even if its not all that widespread. I am
>factually correct on my assertion that there is a debate even though
>that debate may be limited.

>.... as a non-primate systematist I have to rely on other input
>regarding the validity of the morphological studies that lead to
>different phylogenetic models. From an education perspective I am
>interested to have the public have an opportunity to see that there
>may be different ways of looking at a problem by scientists in a
>particular field. Museums too often take a partisan position where
>there is more than one view active in a discipline.


I'll preface my comments by stating that I am not familiar with the
orang-human hypothesis, so I cannot competently comment on the
importance of the debate (though I have my hunches). Regarding the
more general points about science education above, however, it seems
that science education has two goals: 1) Accurately communicating to
the public what our best answer(s) is for various questions,
including how confident we are about those answers, and 2) Explaining
or demonstrating how science works.

Taking goal #2 first, I think that showing people an area of active
debate in science, where the correct answer is still substantially
uncertain, can demonstrate that we do not have all the answers yet,
science is still addressing big questions, and there is still need
for future scientists.

However, we should not sacrifice a great deal of accuracy (goal #1)
to meet goal #2. For any explanation or hypothesis that is currently
broadly accepted in science (continental drift, the importance of
natural selection in explaining the origin of many adaptations, etc.)
there will always be at least a handful of scientists who will not
accept these ideas. In almost all cases, these widely-accepted ideas
have a great probability of being correct; the multiple alternative
ideas, given current observations, experimental results, and other
information, have a very low chance of being correct, at least
according to most scientists in the field. However, this information
would be lost if we present the dispute as a "debate". Also note that
if the field has continued to develop with the well-accepted idea as
a given, debate between the two camps could be said to be dead -- no
active argument over the idea occurs any longer between the two camps
as the minor camp might be completely ignored by the majority
[whether or not this is justified or a good way to do science is a
separate issue].

At least in my experience, when a museum wants to present two
hypotheses on a supposedly active area of debate in a field, in an
attempt to be fair the alternative idea often seems to be given about
equal play (wall space, amount of text, etc) as the well-accepted
idea in the museum presentation. This communicates to people that the
ideas are about equally likely to be correct -- otherwise, why would
the museum allocate resources equally? By attempting to be agnostic
in its presentation, especially by focusing on a "debate", the museum
actually risks elevating the stature of the alternative hypothesis,
contrary to the opinion of the vast majority of scientists [who,
everything else being equal, are more likely to be right]. The
museum, in effect, takes a partisan position in favor of the far less
likely idea by giving both ideas equal weight. This grossly misleads
the public about our current state of knowledge.

It seems possible to prevent this when designing an exhibit, yet
still recognize scientific uncertainty. For example, if it truly
seems to the vast majority of relevant scientists that the available
data tends to support Homo-Pan, the exhibit could have most of the
displays focusing on this hypothesis and its implications, and limit
possible alternative hypotheses to only a portion of one display. The
public would get the impression that most of the emphasis is on
Homo-Pan, but there's a small chance that another hypothesis may be
right instead. If it currently seems to be equally likely that orangs
or chimps are our sister clade, then it may be appropriate to focus
on each hypothesis equally.

In deciding to create an exhibit, exhibit designers necessarily
believe that they can in some way determine what information in
science is relevant for their presentation, how ideas relate to each
other, what the key concepts are, etc., perhaps in consultation with
competent scientists. Given this assumption of knowledge, designers
cannot then claim ignorance when deciding which hypotheses in a field
are overwhelmingly supported, which ones are still under active
debate by a significant portion of interested scientists, and which
ones are held to by a fringe group unlikely to be correct. They must
design exhibits taking all this information into account or else risk
misleading the public.

Best regards,
Brian O'Meara
--
_____________________________________
  Brian O'Meara
  Population Biology Graduate Group
  mailto:bcomeara at ucdavis.edu
  http://www.brianomeara.info
  http://entomology.ucdavis.edu/faculty/ward/
  Phil Ward Laboratory
  Dept. of Entomology
  University of California, Davis
  Davis, CA 95616
  530-752-9977 (email preferred)