But how trustworthy a magazine is it?
Justin Weinberg at Daily Nous yesterday:
Scientific American is a monthly magazine aimed at popularizing scientific and technological findings. But how trustworthy a magazine is it?
This question is prompted by several articles that Scientific American has published on topics in philosophy. It is wonderful that the magazine’s editors recognize how much philosophy is relevant to science and scientific practices. But the quality of those articles has been questionable.
Yes, I’ve noticed that, for instance when they publish Michael Shermer pretending to be a moral philosopher.
The uneven quality of Scientific American articles on topics I am familiar with has led me to question its trustworthiness more generally. I know I’m not alone in that questioning.
As for the quality of its articles on philosophy, let me stress that my complaint is not with the substance of the philosophical views their authors favor. Rather, it is that ideas, arguments, positions, and widely-used concepts have been deployed in mistaken or confused ways, or that highly relevant work (well known to experts) has been completely ignored. The result is that the magazine is misleading its readers about philosophy.
…
A few recent examples of this are “Does the Philosophy of ‘the Greatest Good for the Greatest Number’ Have Any Merit?” and “Will Science Ever Solve the Mysteries of Consciousness, Free Will and God?” by Michael Shermer, and “The Fate of Free Will: When Science Crosses Swords with Philosophy” by Abraham Loeb. I commented on the Shermer pieces here and here. The Loeb piece, which just came out earlier this week, is being referred to online by philosophers as “utter drivel” and “a trainwreck.” Read them for yourselves.
Ah look at that now, it is Michael Shermer.
Neither Shermer nor Loeb are philosophers. Shermer made his name as a popular “skeptic” of religion and psychics, and Loeb is an astrophysicist at Harvard. It’s great that they’re interested in philosophy. But it is unclear why Scientific American thinks that these people are the ones who should be informing their readers about philosophical matters. As Jeff Sebo, a philosopher who directs the Animal Studies M.A. program at New York University put it on Twitter:
i appreciate the liberal approach [Scientific American] takes to who can write what and look forward to pitching my piece about the physics of black holes from the perspective of a moral and political philosopher.
Shermer is convinced that he’s a profound and serious thinker.
From the comments:
Wow, that Shermer Utilitarianism piece is mind-boggling, really.
Yes that essay sucks… I particularly (dis)like the statement that ‘historically’ witch burners determined their course of action by applying a ‘utilitarian calculus’. Er, no they didn’t.
Indeed. I remember frown-laughing at that myself. (I didn’t read the article, because why would I, but someone must have tweeted it or posted it on Facebook or similar.)
Moral of the story: know the limits of your competence.
Scientific American repeatedly published Guillermo Gonzalez, notorious for trying to insinuate intelligent design into the domains of parameters for life and planetary/galactic habitable zones.
Self-plagiarism from Twitter:
I guess narrative clarity and consistency are just more of a gal thing.
Athena @#1:
I am not, nor have I ever been, a professional academic. But myself when young did a course in historiography at the Australian National University, for a time under a professor who had a reputation for being such a perfectionist that he had hobbled himself in his own small field, and had a book that had been in the ‘final draft’ stage for God knows how long, and which was never ready to send to the publisher as a final, finished, and definitely last draft. He had been promoted in academia on the quality of his teaching, which was excellent, not on his publications, which were sparse.
But he did let slip an important principle one day, something along the lines of “always check and re-check for errors in your work. Because if you publish one, it will always be held against you, to the detriment of everything else you have done.”
He was possibly speaking from experience rather than mere observation, and it may have explained his own lack of output in the academic ‘publish or perish’ environment just beginning to hit full canter.
I know nothing of Guillermo Gonzalez or his work, have no time for ID, and agree that its exponents try to slip it into whatever game they are in, and commonly off the bottom of their deck, and quite frequently.
But is that a valid basis for dismissing them entirely, along with everything they have written or done?
It is a basis for applying stricter scrutiny to their work, and to publications which do not appear to have done so on their submissions.
“But is that a valid basis for dismissing them entirely, along with everything they have written or done?”
It is when they try to distort facts/observations to fit their agenda — one of the cardinal no-nos of science.
The phrase “When Science Crosses Swords with Philosophy” was definitely written by someone that thinks science is all about testing and being rigorous with evidence, while philosophy is all about greybeards propounding superfluous blather from the comfort of a fireside chair. He clearly has no idea that philosophy is all about how to frame a problem, how to attack it… and that science is an application of that.
Holms – and that science actually was once part of philosophy.
My new boss is a philosopher. We have some really good conversations about science, because he gets it better than many of my former bosses, who have come mostly from Doc Ed fields.
@1. I have only found one article by Gonzalez, way back in 2001, with two other co-authors Brownlee and Ward. B&W originated the Rare Earth hypothesis (and IIRC this article was related to that work). While enthusiastically embraced by some Creationists (as Gonzalez eventually revealed himself to be), the R.E. hypothesis itself is IMHO neither unscientific nor as helpful to creationists as they claim.
If you are aware of more of Gonzalez’s work that they published, I’d be interested.
Holms @#6: Philosophy includes science. A philosopher told me that, so it has got to be right.
;-)