> "This is not a scientific issue, it's a political issue," he said.
> "There isn't a scientific issue about the validity of evolution. The
> only issue is whether schoolchildren will learn real science or 
> not."
>          -- Adrian Melott

I've no idea of the original context.

This promises to be short and brutal.
But lets see if the rule set allows an interesting discussion.

Observing the Newton tag dictat the tag is now [OT]
Observing the Newton 'non specific-word usage with any amount of 
innuendo allows vast lattitude' dictat, I attempt, hopefully 
successfully [:-) ] to employ non specific words.

Responding to sig lines is seldom a good idea.

I found this one motivational. It seems to embody such truth although, 
after having looked at the owners other siglines, presumably 
semi-randomly chosen from a file, it may be intended to say other that 
what it seems to.

Messieur Melott seems to have grasped what escapes so many. There are 
some issues which are scientifically treatable. And there are some 
which are not. Being untreatable by Science does not make a subject 
bad or wrong or unable to be dealt with. It simply means that attempts 
to use the tools or trappings of science, or to use science as a 
shield or haven is inappropriate. Insistence that one is "doing 
science"  when such cannot be the case, all too soon instead becomes 
"doing religion" (in the proper sense of the term), although those who 
do this would be appalled at the suggestion and fight tooth and nail 
to deny it.

If one wishes to insist that one is "doing Science" one must first 
define what Science is. Science comes in two flavours

    1.    A la Popper
    2.    All the rest

If you do not subscribe to Popper's definition then you can do 
anything at all and call it science. Just as Marxism is unfalsifiable 
as everything it sees it can explain in terms of its theories, so 
"science" not according to Popper can explain anything it wishes, 
justify any conclusion, make warm and comfy and satisfying and 
unquestionable the most derelict of positions. Just because a subject 
has been given such "religious" treatment it does not follow that it 
has no merit or that the positions which it takes are untenable. But 
there is every chance that if there are such deficiencies they will 
never be spotted, or will become evident only when the foundations 
have long since crumbled away and the emperor's new clothes are very 
very clearly missing. Such religious adherence benefits nobody but the 
high priests and those who gain financially or academically from the 
charade.

SO - will children learn real science or not?
A good question.
If they are taught that Science is as Popper says and the rest is 
flavours of religion, and that there is no demerit in this being so, 
then they will indeed learn real Science.

But if they are told, as they all too often are,  that the theory of X 
and the postulate of Y are facts most true, to be bowed down to, and 
worshipped, and set in stone and most certainly not to be questioned 
in any way, and that THIS is science, then no, they will not learn 
real science. And the world will be poorer for it. As indeed it 
already is.


        Russell McMahon




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