I put the incident behind me, but only four days later at an all-boys grammar school, the same thing happened—except social media stardom was replaced with professional gaming and esports. In the space of five days, I had sat with some of the brightest young minds in STEM from my town, yet their ambitions lay elsewhere.

I shared the stories with my wife, wondering how this could happen. The incidents jarred me tremendously, sapping much of my energy and causing me to consider stepping away from education.

It is a fact that we do not produce enough scientists or engineers in the UK. We also have an NHS shortage, relying on overseas recruitment of doctors and nurses. Compared to China and India, we do not prioritise or glorify STEM as a noble career—or at least not in the same way. If anything we glorify the opposite, sending a message of ‘be who you are’ rather than ‘imagine what you could be’. We celebrate the individual in such a way that no one can tell anyone that they are wrong, that their dreams are too small, or that it is their responsibility to contribute meaningfully to society.

There is far too much that can be said on this issue than space affords me. We have serious issues of science scepticism, mistrust of expertise, conspiracy theorising, echo-chamber thinking, ideological capture, and religious fundamentalism. All contribute immensely to an unprecedented level of anti-science bias that I see in students, reflecting society as a whole.

But how can we stop the next generation of engineers and scientists from quitting young? Briefly, let me discuss what can be done in five areas of concern.

We must generate more excitement about research

When addressing grammar school students on behalf of the Mars Society or the Genetics Society, I typically find that most of them are passively moving towards medicine. This is to be applauded to an extent, and we certainly need more doctors. However, these students attend my talks because they are excited about science in general; they have taken a path towards medicine seemingly by default. We must generate passion for research in young minds.

Research needs to be emphasised as an exciting career path. Living on the frontiers of discovery is a wonderful place to be, although not glamorous and sometimes mundane. Collaborating with others around the globe to answer problems, probe the unknown, and push the boundaries of knowledge is a wonderful way to live your life. Problem-solving and critical thinking need to make a strong comeback in schools where students can now ask ChatGPT to do their homework and Google the answer to everything.

Science bodies need to recruit under-18s

I am amazed at how many of the science societies, including those I belong to, act as if life begins at university. Recruitment to bodies is made at university fairs, and for all of them, one can only become a member at 18. We must start recruiting under-18s as opposed to just university students.

When I ask science bodies why recruitment starts at 18 the response is usually blank, as they have never been asked the question before. What if we allowed students to join at 16 instead? It could revolutionise the pursuit of STEM careers for students if they could join science and engineering societies before they apply to university.

It could also guide young people into careers in niche sciences rather than relying on chance. For example, many biology students will have little exposure to genetics as a career option in high school, so genetics bodies must hope that students accidentally stumble onto their discipline and decide for themselves on a future there. This is not a winning strategy.

Generate more inspiration

Many schools would love to do more to engage and inspire in STEM, but the staff have neither the time nor the budget to do more. Inspirational programmes have the most potential to radically change a child’s future.

The finest example of such programmes is the International Space School Education Trust’s Mission Discovery programme, which sees 13-18-year-olds work in teams alongside astronauts, professors, researchers, and NASA personnel for five days to design an experiment that fits strict parameters. The winning team has their experiment flown to space by SpaceX to be performed on the International Space Station by astronauts in their research rotation. Everything about the programme is life-changing for the student.

I run a program in my town called ‘Frontiers’, which simply brings inspirational researchers to the schools of Aylesbury to speak to students in the hopes of exposing them to the possibility of a STEM future full of excitement and discovery.

If we can pump our schools full of STEM inspiration, then we could see a huge uptick in those who dream of shaping the future of science and technology. Ultimately, young people rely heavily on inspiration for their future. They need their imagination to be captured, as most (especially the boys) are not proactive in thinking about their futures unless prompted. I meet very few dreamers (although I meet more and more idealogues), but the ones you do meet you never forget. When it comes to a brighter STEM future, we shall only reap what we sow.

Combat useless, ideological courses

One outstanding student I met two years ago was on track to study medicine at university off the back of incredible STEM A-level results. She came to a Mars Society event and I asked her about her plans. ‘I’m planning on studying medicine, hopefully at Oxford or Cambridge…’ she started, before shyly adding, ‘but I’m thinking about doing gender studies too.’ This caught me off guard, and I asked her to strongly consider picking medicine.

Sitting with a foot in both the sciences and the humanities, the differences are starkest at academic conferences. I try to be fair and objective, but while sitting through humanities lectures, I often find myself quietly asking, ‘How does this contribute to knowledge?’

It is more than fair to advise young people to avoid a gender studies degree. Two of the top jobs that graduates go into are schoolteacher and HR professional. These jobs are open to students from any other degree. The practical applications of STEM degrees stretch far beyond their discipline, and graduates are highly sought after across the vocational landscape.

Furthermore, many humanities courses are now ideologically laden and far from objective. Someone can earn a PhD in STEM or off the back of an ideological reflection on Shakespeare, and both will end up with the title ‘Doctor’ before their names. One researcher commented to me in June that she felt this cheapened her PhD and left her feeling despondent. We must sell truth to our students, and push them to push themselves, for everyone’s sake.

Show young students an exciting future rather than a depressing one

Recruiting STEM students and avoiding the drift away from these essential disciplines will require building excitement for the new world, rather than anxiety about the current one.

Space entrepreneur and activist Rick Tumlinson has condemned the message so often pushed on young people these days that all they have is a mission to save a planet we have screwed up. Instead, they should be inspired to build an exciting, spacefaring future. I agree. We have sold our students short by not providing an adventurous, inspiring vision. Instead, we present a depressing one.

Young people must hear the rallying call to a glorious future of green, renewable energy, space-age technology, and interplanetary travel. They need to hear about the potential of genomics and genetic engineering for maximising nature’s gifts and the possibilities of personalised medicine. There has never been a better chance than right now for humanity to realise a future brighter than any that has come before—and yet so often our young people are distracted by the flash and dazzle of social media and made anxious by dystopian visions.

We can retain our brightest minds in STEM and inspire a host of students who may never have conceived of themselves having a future in STEM fields by presenting young people with a better vision than what they are currently being sold. When we do this, perhaps we will also lose fewer minds to fundamentalism, conspiracy theorising, political nonsense, and fruitless ideologies.

Related reading

80 years on from Schrödinger’s ‘What Is Life?’, philosophy of biology needs rescuing from radicals, by Samuel McKee

The post Rescuing our future scientists and engineers from quitting before they start appeared first on The Freethinker.

However, shortly after this blooming, we find Richard Feynman expressing his contempt for philosophy of science as a discipline that had become dominated by non-scientists, a dismissal that rings even truer today.

What Is Life? is a fine example of philosophy meeting biology and producing quality interdisciplinary work. The molecular biology revolution was a practical outworking of the philosophical appetite of the time, well expressed by Schrödinger. Unless one credits Aristotle et al, philosophy of science as an academic discipline is little more than a century old. It aims to critically analyse and reflect on what science is, how it works, and the questions it asks. It puts another eye on the game, distinct from its partners, history of science and sociology of science. (I admit that I care little for sociology of science, which treats science more as a human activity than as a way of discovering actual reality ‘out there’ in nature.)

This brings me to Feynman’s distaste for the discipline. By the time he won his Nobel in 1965, it would be fair to say that philosophy of science was no longer the same field as it had been: now, it was full of musings from those in the humanities. ‘How dare these outsiders tell us what is really going on?’ was the attitude of those in Feynman’s camp. How can those who have not done any science critique what is being done by scientists, analyse what is wrong with it, and discuss its true value? It all added up to a waste of time and money for Feynman.

Fast forward to our modern challenges. Recently, I was shocked to read that the controversial postmodern ideologue Judith Butler is considered a philosopher of biology. Butler’s writings on gender, for those unfamiliar with them, have been fairly criticised for so severely underplaying the biological component of gender that you would be forgiven for thinking that biology plays no part in our development. She was also the winner of the 1998 ‘Bad Writing Contest’, hosted by the journal Philosophy and Literature, for an incomprehensible sentence in one of her articles.¹

But the characterization of Butler as a philosopher of biology is not (entirely) wrong. If an informed layperson were asked to name one modern philosopher of biology, they might well name Butler. But she is as far removed as someone in academia could be from the sciences. Her education is in literature, feminism, and philosophy, and she owes more to Hegel than to Schrödinger. Someone who believes that sex is assigned at birth rather than observed by a doctor has no business in philosophy of biology. (Other feminists who might be considered philosophers of biology, like the excellent Kathleen Stock, are much more worth listening to.)

There is a straight line to be drawn from Butler’s work to those in the humanities who now claim that biological sex itself does not exist—as anti-scientific a statement as one will ever hear. Eighty years on from What Is Life?, Feynman’s contempt is even more justified. Now, so-called experts from the humanities dominate philosophy of science and are boosting the cause of science denialism more than anyone else even as they claim to be working against it.

It is time to return philosophy of science to those who respect both philosophy of science and science itself. To be clear, there are a great many philosophers of science today who are intimately acquainted with the realities of science and who are doing first-class work in legitimate journals. They treat the discipline with the original, historical respect that it deserves. Their work would not be out of place amongst the reflections written by the giants of the field’s golden era. In other words, there is a universe of difference between Judith Butler and someone like Michael Ruse. As a whole, though, the field is in dire straits.

Let me share a personal anecdote to illustrate what is missing in philosophy of biology. Three years ago, during an interview for a PhD position at a major British university, my surprised potential supervisor halted the interview about thirty seconds in. ‘Hold on, it says here that you have an actual science degree?’ I could not hide my own surprise and affirmed that that was correct. She then put down her papers and remarked, ‘Well, that is a tremendous advantage for you. Do you have ambitions of working in academia?’ I told her that that was very much my dream, but I failed to hide the surprise still written across my face. The interview shifted and I became the one asking questions: Did most professional philosophers of science not have a science background? Apparently not—and it seemed that if I wanted to get ahead, I was in possession of a serious advantage.

One does not have to be a scientist to be a historian or philosopher of science, but today as much as ever, scientists are needed to contribute to philosophy of science. Otherwise, those who have no business speaking in the name of science are gifted large platforms to mislead a general public that might not know any better. This is also why skilled science communicators are so desperately needed.

When one looks at the great names who gave the twentieth-century Gifford Lectures or the Eddington Memorial Lectures, one sees an extraordinary array. There are prize winners and legends from some of science’s golden eras. They each speak philosophically about the questions or meanings of their work or reflect on what the future may hold. This tradition survives today, among the likes of Lord Martin Rees and Sir Roger Penrose, but it is attenuated. Rees and Penrose certainly deserve a greater platform than Butler et al.

Perhaps the problem is one of space as much as communication skills. The platforms for great philosophers of science, or scientist philosophers, are not proportionate to their contributions. Education is also lacking, as undergraduate philosophy programs hardly ever feature philosophy of science in their curricula. Unfortunately, I have also sat through many philosophy lectures that are anti-scientific, pseudoscientific, or just plain mistaken. In continental philosophy and postmodern departments, science is very much the enemy: it is an oppressive force invented by white Western men to establish the patriarchy and is unable to make any claims to truth or reality. This is a very serious problem at a time when science needs to be understood more than ever.

The solution may well be to give scientists a larger platform in society. Post-pandemic, distrust in science (and expertise in general) has increased, even as science—from developments in artificial intelligence to revolutions in cancer research—has become more important than ever for our present and future. Each Sunday morning as I drive through Beaconsfield’s old town on the outskirts of London, I see protestors clad in white inviting us to toot our car horns if we agree with them on the latest conspiratorial, anti-science propaganda they are spouting. At first it was amusing, but now it simply depresses me.

In the space of eighty years, and to an alarming extent, philosophy of science has degenerated. Once, it inspired revolutionary breakthroughs. Now, it is dominated by thinkers who have not seen a laboratory or an observatory since high school and who use their platforms to disseminate nonsense. They have helped to usher in a conspiratorial atmosphere laced with distrust of and cynicism about the sciences. To combat them, we need to recover our sense about science.

1. Take a deep breath:
   
   ‘The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.’ ︎

Related reading

On sex, gender and their consequences: interview with Louise Antony, by Emma Park

‘We are at a threshold right now’: Lawrence Krauss on science, atheism, religion, and the crisis of ‘wokeism’ in science, by Daniel James Sharp

Consciousness, free will and meaning in a Darwinian universe: interview with Daniel C. Dennett, by Daniel James Sharp

‘When the chips are down, the philosophers turn out to have been bluffing’, interview with Alex Byrne by Emma Park

‘A godless neo-religion’ – interview with Helen Joyce on the trans debate, by Emma Park

‘An animal is a description of ancient worlds’: interview with Richard Dawkins, by Emma Park

The falsehood at the heart of the trans movement, by Eliza Mondegreen

South Asia’s silenced feminists, by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Linnaeus, Buffon, and the battle for biology, by Charles Foster

The post 80 years on from Schrödinger’s ‘What Is Life?’, philosophy of biology needs rescuing from radicals appeared first on The Freethinker.

For many of us working in science, philosophy, and education (or a combination thereof), ‘intelligent design’ (ID)—the pseudoscientific theory that purports to be an alternative to evolutionary science and which has been unkindly but not unfairly described as ‘creationism in a cheap tuxedo’—has been out of the picture for the better part of the two decades since the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial in 2005 ruled that it was not science and thus could not be taught in US high school biology classes. In short, ID was of historical interest but not to be taken seriously.

Recently, however, its champions have been making noise and turning heads. Stephen Meyer, one of the original faces of ID, has been featured on The Joe Rogan Experience and Piers Morgan Uncensored and has even dialogued with Michael Shermer. All of this new publicity has been used by ID advocates to prove that it has never been more relevant. And that is the goal of the movement: to fight for relevance and be taken seriously by academics and those in authority.

Everyone who has ever met Dr Meyer says he is a warm, genuine, nice man. He may be mistaken in his views but is respectful and courteous to those who disagree with him (something that cannot often be said for the movement as a whole). As Meyer’s newest book gave the claims of ID more media attention, this May saw the return of the claim that ID is leading a revolution in biology. On an episode of Justin Brierley’s podcast, Meyer repeated the long-since debunked claim that ID had successfully predicted that junk DNA was not junk at all and argued that this gives further credence to ID’s capabilities as a scientific theory. Listen to the key figures from the Discovery Institute (the ID-promoting think tank which Meyer helped to found) and they will tell you that scientists are leaving evolution behind in droves—and that the honest ones are beginning to catch up with what ID has been saying all along.

If one did not know better—and many podcast listeners and church attendees may not—you would think a scientific revolution was underway à la Thomas Kuhn. But this is far from the case. The halls of biology remain silent on intelligent design. There is nothing to see here at all. The ID revolution is complete fiction.

When I was an undergraduate at Cambridge, ID was mentioned twice. The first time was during an evolutionary biology lecture when the bacterial flagellum came up in discussion, and our lecturer asked if anyone knew why it had gained political fame (I knew the answer—Kitzmiller v. Dover¹—but only one other student had even heard of ID). The second time was in a genetics class. We were observing what one might call ‘bad design’ and my professor remarked that if nature had a designer, this was a case where they had done a poor job. That was it—in my postgraduate studies, it never came up at all.

In June, I asked a friend of mine, a world-class virologist, if—whether in her student or professional career—ID had ever been mentioned. Perplexed, she said not once. And this is the case with everyone I have ever asked. ID is not leading any revolution, and no scientist or academic I have ever met can ever recall it coming up. It could not be less relevant right now.

But two years ago, in a debate during an episode of Premier Unbelievable? entitled ‘Is Intelligent Design advancing or in retreat?’, the Discovery Institute’s Casey Luskin claimed that the movement was advancing, gaining new converts, and had never been stronger. He mentioned a conference in Israel on evolutionary genetics that he had attended when marshalling his evidence. My first thought was ‘Why is a geologist attending an evolutionary genetics conference?’ My second thought was that one of my best friends had been there, so I asked him about it. His response was that ID was not mentioned once during the event.

Something is amiss here. The data does not add up. On the one hand, ID proponents claim that biology is about to overthrow Darwinian evolution and that scientists are turning to ID by the truckload. But in science itself, it is very much business as usual, and not a sound about ID is to be heard.

But it is actually worse than that for ID, because in biology an actual revolution is underway. The biological sciences are arguably seeing the greatest boom period since the molecular biology revolution of the 1950s. Consider that since CRISPR-Cas9 burst onto the scene in 2011, genetic engineering has undergone an extraordinary transformation, becoming cheap, easy, and accurate. Even since the Nobel Prize was awarded to Jennifer A. Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier in 2019 for discovering this revolutionary gene-editing tool, base and prime editing have made it even more precise.

Then there is cancer immunotherapy, which since 2018 has transformed the landscape of oncological treatment. It may well be the future of all cancer treatment as soon as costs come down, which is inevitable. Meanwhile, molecular biology has been transformed again by AI, with the CASP competition to build systems that accurately predict protein structure from sequence data alone seeing extraordinary success from AI-based entries. AlphaFold brought the accuracy of predictive results in line with experimental data from x-ray crystallography and cryo-EM, and AlphaFold3, along with its competitors, is set to transform the prospects of personalised medicine.

Gene sequencing itself has become quicker, cheaper, and more accessible every year since the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003. In fact, in 2016, NASA astronaut Kate Rubins sequenced the genome of microorganisms on the International Space Station using a handheld device, showing just how far the field had come. Genomic analysis can now be done cheaply in the field, with a handheld sequencer, on any organism, and the results can be expected back in mere hours.

And what is the word from ID proponents on these extraordinary developments in the landscape of biology? Nothing. The Discovery Institute promises transformational research (yet has no laboratories), boasts predictive science (yet has published none), and claims that science is now looking to design and purposiveness as explanations for biological phenomena instead of leaning on evolution—but seems not even to be aware of what is actually happening in biology during one of its most transformational periods ever.

This is not tremendously surprising, given that a glance at the Discovery Institute’s list of fellows shows that it is full of philosophers and theologians. Even among its scientists, some have published little or nothing. On the whole, ID is dominated by people who have never done a day’s scientific work in their lives. They speak of the ‘scientific community’ but rarely engage with scientists in world-class research. This is, sadly, only the tip of the iceberg, as ID continues to overstate its credentials and overplay its hand.

Do they have a case when they call evolution a theory in crisis? Not in the least. ID proponents could not be more mistaken in articulating evolutionary biology as a science that is rigid and stale. When I was an undergraduate, modern evolutionary biology was described to me as the ‘fastest growing science’ due to the advances in genomics and molecular biology and their associated data revolutions. It is very much a predictive science today, testable and measurable.

Besides, convergent evolution (something ID never talks about) is very much a grand unifying theory in biology, applicable to everything from genetics to medicine at every level. It is still as Theodosius Dobzhansky said over half a century ago: ‘Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.’ Dobzhansky himself was a Greek Orthodox Christian, but because he was an evolutionist, ID advocates pay little attention to him. Dobzhansky is just another uncomfortable obstacle passed over in silence by ID proponents.

It is interesting to track those whom ID proponents acknowledge and those that they do not. ID arguments have not changed since the 1990s, no matter how many times they are debunked or how little serious attention they get. This is partly due to the distance between ID and real science, and partly due to ignorance. When proponents discuss ID on any platform, the same names are always trumpeted, as if being read from a script. First, the latest scientist with any publications who has joined their ranks (Günter Bechly will be named dropped a thousand times), then Thomas Nagel, Antony Flew, and anyone else remotely famous who has ever said anything nice about ID in the past 30 years. In doing so, ID advocates reveal that their arguments are empty veneers, utterly lacking in real substance. If the Discovery Institute was actually putting out research, had an active program, or was doing real science, then these appeals to authority would not be necessary.

As someone with a doctorate in philosophy of science, Meyer is certain to know the demarcation criteria which mark the scientific off from the non-scientific. Thus, great pains are taken by ID advocates to talk about active research and publication in journals (even if it is their own in-house journal BIO-Complexity, which they eagerly pitch to outsiders to publish in) while holding conferences and collaborating wherever possible. Falsifiability remains a problem, however. Whenever the latest example of ‘irreducible complexity’ is knocked down like their old favourite the bacterial flagellum was, advocates don’t seem persuaded of the falsehood of ID. Put simply, ID is not scientific.

There is also the matter of picking their battles. There is a reason why Meyer would talk to Michael Shermer: he is not a biologist, and he has a large platform. When asked why serious scientists don’t engage with their ideas, the responses usually boil down to conspiracy theories. ‘They’, the ‘scientific community’, are locked into ‘Neo-Darwinism’, and the powers that be, with their materialist agenda, are controlling science to their own nefarious ends: those masters at the gates control education and are trying to keep their dogmas alive. In reaching for conspiracy, ID evinces the dogmatism it accuses others of holding.

Recently the Discovery Institute opened a brand-new site outside Cambridge. When I discussed this with a biology professor at the university, he laughed and noted that businesses often try and build their sites in the area to benefit from the association with the university and its heritage. Artificially manufacturing illusory respectability by being a ‘Cambridge’ institute is further evidence of what is really going on here. If ID was really leading a revolution in biology, then none of this would be necessary. I have spoken with several religious scientists in Cambridge who are less than thrilled at ID moving into the neighbourhood. For them, it only makes their lives as researchers harder.

The picture is even uglier than this. In Hinxton, near Cambridge, you have the Wellcome Sanger Institute, home of the UK arm of the Human Genome Project. Next door is the European Bioinformatics Institute, home of AlphaFold and the finest of its kind on the planet. Over the motorway is the MRC Laboratory for Molecular Biology. All of these house dozens of Nobel laureates and pump out thousands of publications in major journals every month. And this is not to mention every other university-affiliated centre in the city, all home to scientists young and old who are changing the world. The Discovery Institute’s new site, rather than giving off an air of world-class credibility, exposes the contrast between ID and real science. Surrounded by giants, ID is revealed to be a pygmy.

To sum up: intelligent design has nothing to say about modern biology, and modern biology is certainly not talking about intelligent design.

1. The bacterial flagellum was cited in the trial as something ‘irreducibly complex’ and therefore in need of the ‘intelligent designer’ hypothesis to be explained. For more on ‘irreducible complexity’ and the bacterial flagellum, see Kenneth Miller’s detailed refutation of this old argument, once a favourite of the ID crowd before it was exposed by Miller during Kitzmiller v. Dover. ︎

Related reading

Linnaeus, Buffon, and the battle for biology, by Charles Foster

The Highbrow Caveman: Why ‘high’ culture is atavistic, by Charles Foster

Consciousness, free will and meaning in a Darwinian universe: interview with Daniel C. Dennett, by Daniel James Sharp

‘An animal is a description of ancient worlds’: interview with Richard Dawkins, by Emma Park

What I believe: Interview with Andrew Copson, by Emma Park

Bad Religious Education, by Siniša Prijić

White Christian Nationalism is rising in America. Separation of church and state is the antidote. By Rachel Laser

The post Is ‘intelligent design’ on the cusp of overthrowing evolutionary science? appeared first on The Freethinker.