April 10, 2008

Vomitous

Scientific American has a review of Expelled:

Expelled is a movie not quite harmless enough to be ignored. Shrugging off most of the film’s attacks – all recycled from previous pro-ID works – would be easy, but its heavy-handed linkage of modern biology to the Holocaust demands a response for the sake of simple human decency.

It speaks to their anti-intellectualism and fundamental misunderstanding of science that for the makers of Expelled (and ID advocates more generally) the answer “we don’t know yet” is a badge of shame. “We don’t know yet” is what defines the fruitful frontier for science; it is what directs scientists’ curiosity and motivates them to spend years on research. Research starts where knowledge and certainty drop off. It’s one of the many ironies of Expelled that Ben Stein says he wants this movie to free people to ask questions about science, but the ID theories he defends would close off inquiry with nonanswers.