[00:00:04] Speaker A: Id the future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Hi there. I'm Andrew McDermott, your host for today's episode. Thanks for tuning in today. I'm delighted to speak again with historian of science Michael Keys, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and author of the book unbelievable seven myths about the history and future of science and religion. Key serves as lecturer in the history and philosophy of science at Biola University and on the board of directors of Ratio Christie, an alliance of apologetics clubs on college campuses. Mike, welcome back to the show.
[00:00:42] Speaker C: Thanks, Andrew. We get to talk about my precious yes.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: Do you know riddles? So I wanted to ask you your thoughts on this article I came across. It's called my precious how academia's golems guard their research fields. From the british higher Ed magazine Times Higher Education. It details the findings of a pair of researchers writing in the journal Frontiers and Ecology and Evolution. John Gould at the University of Newcastle and Jose Valdez at the German center for Integrative Biodiversity Research studied numerous examples of what they termed research opportunity, guarding the lengths some academics will go to prevent others from encroaching on their areas of expertise. The researchers liken the phenomenon to the maniacally possessive guardian of the ring of power from Jar Tolkien's middle earth chronicles. They say this kind of behavior is pervasive but rarely discussed, and finally deserves to be in the open.
Well, Mike, what does the history of science tell us about the gollum effect? Is this a new phenomenon?
[00:01:52] Speaker C: Oh, no, Andrew. And in fact, historians of science have been making this a point of discussion for many years. So it's really gratifying to see this subject come up today as actually under scrutiny, rather than just being under the table. Let me give you an example from the history of science. One of the most famous ones is Tycho Brahe had amassed a huge body of very accurate astronomical data in the late 16th, early 17th century, and he was sitting on this pile of data, so to speak, his precious. And there were other aspiring astronomers who were hoping to get access to it. One of those was Johannes Kepler, and Kepler was a copernican. Tycho Brahe had a different view of the system of the world. Eventually, fortunately for Kepler, Tycho Brahe died. There's not any good evidence that Kepler murdered him to get his data, although that has some have suggested that most likely complications with holding his urine too long at a banquet had an infection. But eventually, Kepler was able to.
Well, first, while he was alive, he got some access to his data. But then, after Tycho Brahe died, he got access to all of it, and that enabled him to reform astronomy. So if data is held back inappropriately, it can withhold progress in science. And this is a case study of that.
[00:03:16] Speaker B: Okay, so this possessiveness is nothing new. We've been seeing it in the past. Well, I'm curious, why do some academics and researchers act this way? You know, it's basically a bullying of other researchers who would approach the cave of wonders that is their work or their topic or even their field. What causes people to act this way?
[00:03:37] Speaker C: Well, self interest, desire to enhance one's own prestige. And now there's some part of this that is somewhat legitimate in that if you worked hard on a project, you're not going to just give away everything you've done to anyone. But some people feel like they even own the data or even own that sector of nature itself, and that they are the gatekeepers of all that's wise and good about that subject. So there's a mixture of good and bad motives here. Unfortunately, the bad motives and the bad behavior is now it's being shown by research that it's still a huge problem in what we would think to be in an open democracy.
Maybe you think today it's not as big a problem as it was in the past, but it's actually becoming worse and worse as time goes.
[00:04:29] Speaker B: Okay, so science isn't immune to the typical problems of human nature, right?
[00:04:35] Speaker C: Science is done by scientists who are humans with all the glories and the fables thereof.
[00:04:42] Speaker B: Yeah. So not only competitiveness for things like funding, publishing positions and prestige, but also just that entitlement that tends to come from those who have gotten some of that, is that what you're saying?
[00:04:54] Speaker C: Exactly. Exactly. There is stiff competition for limited funding, and now some granthenne arrangements require those who receive the money to make certain aspects of their work publicly accessible, but others don't. So it ranges from different kinds of rules about how open they should be about their materials.
[00:05:15] Speaker B: Okay, now, in your estimation, how does this gollum effect negatively impact scientific progress?
[00:05:22] Speaker C: Well, if Tego Brahe had completely restricted his data, we might not have had, quote, the new astronomy as soon as we had. Kepler's brilliance as a theoretician required access to Tico's data to actually enable that part of the scientific revolution to occur. And I'm sure there's many more examples more recently where scientific progress has been held back because of people just being overly selfish about their territory, sort of peeing on their own ground, if you will, and not wanting others to. To get close?
[00:05:57] Speaker B: Sure. Well, if power is kept in the hands of the established few like this, how do young researchers and new scientists hope to build a successful career or get anywhere with their research?
[00:06:09] Speaker C: They got to learn to build networks to get into the inner ring, as CS Lewis called it, of different groups. Now, one problem with this is that in some ways, it sort of enculturates them into perpetuating the very problem that we're talking about. But there are ways to get into the inner ring and still be a force for good to try to make the results of that group more accessible to more people. But young researchers have got to sort of keep their head down, make sure they don't offend someone who is a senior scientist. Sometimes this means even being very coy about their own criticisms of the work of those who are in the lead until they're in a safer position to do so, such as having tenure. But even if they have tenure, there's still the peer review process that often works well, but unfortunately, many other times doesn't work very well. It inhibits new ideas.
[00:07:07] Speaker B: Okay, so you're saying a general courtesy for those, and especially seniors in the field is helpful. It sounds like being tenacious would be a good quality to have as a young scientist, as you're working your way through the ranks and trying to develop something with your work.
[00:07:27] Speaker C: Yeah. And it's often said that the reason most frequently that people lose their jobs in any field is because they have poor interpersonal relationship skills. So anyone's going to have to develop those skills to learn how to affirm what you can of those who are in positions of authority and then, at the appropriate time, criticize those ideas if that's where the evidence leads.
[00:07:51] Speaker B: Makes me wonder how technology has impacted interpersonal relationships and interactions in science. And I know that's another topic for another episode, but you know me, I'm into technology and just its effects on humanity and society. And, gosh, we interact with each other so differently than 50 years ago or 30 years ago even. And it must play out in science, too, to some degree.
[00:08:17] Speaker C: Oh, I think so, Andrew. The shrillness of political discourse, the shrillness of lots of kinds of discourse today is exasperated by sort of the anonymity of web presence, where you would say things online that you wouldn't say to someone who's toe to toe, eye to eye with you. So there's a kind of a dehumanizing effect of some technology because of human foibles. It's not like the technology itself makes us become immoral but there's a tendency for that to exasperate the already existing negative tendencies within humanity.
[00:08:57] Speaker B: Now, Mike, those in the intelligent design research community are no strangers to this type of unjustifiable roadblocks that come up. There's lies, there's disparagement, there's dismissal, threats, stonewalling, and worse. Can you think of a few standout examples of the Gollum effect as it relates to proponents of intelligent design?
[00:09:19] Speaker C: Andrew the best place our listeners could go to find this is the 2008 movie expelled. No intelligence allowed in the first 15 minutes alone of that documentary. You've got Rick Sternberg, you've got Caroline Croker, you've got Bob Marx at Baylor University, which has a sort of christian identity. This problem is not just in secular universities. Guillermo Gonzalez and on. And then in that same 15 minutes segment, there's about a half dozen other individuals who are in dark rooms with disguised voices because they're still in harm's way if they go public on the way in which the gollum effect has either ruined their careers or negatively affected them. The first of those, Rick Sternberg, just to give a little more detail from one example, as you well know, he was the editor of a science journal affiliated with a very prestigious Smithsonian Museum of natural History. And he was a bad boy, as Ben Stein put it in the documentary for allowing Steve Meyer's essay on intelligent design to go through the peer review process and to be published. Again, it was peer reviewed. There was no breach in proper protocol. But those who were in power over Rick Sternberg made his life miserable and eventually was pressured to resign from his position. And he was called an intellectual terrorist.
[00:10:46] Speaker B: Yeah, fine example. And an excellent documentary, too. Expelled listeners. If you have not seen that, you need to get a hold of it. I believe it's still on dvd. It might be available to stream somewhere. I haven't checked recently, but, yeah, watch that. It's eye opening, and it's, what, 1214 years old now. This stuff is still going on just in different ways, perhaps.
[00:11:09] Speaker C: Yeah. Andrew, I was just curious what Wikipedia says about the documentary expelled, and they call it a documentary style propaganda piece.
[00:11:21] Speaker B: Oh, dear.
[00:11:23] Speaker C: And they say, well, there's not enough scientific content. Well, of course, discovery Institute has produced plenty of great documentaries that give the scientific details. This documentary, which was obviously done in cooperation with Discovery Institute and many other folks who were interviewed in the film, it does focus on the more cultural, larger cultural aspects of scientific culture and the lack of openness, the very golem effect that we're talking about. Now, what's ironic about this is the Wikipedia article says, well, this is a conspiracy theory that, you know, intelligent design is unwelcome, you know, because of a conspiracy. What is interesting, this latest research that we're talking about vindicates largely the documentary expelled and its main message, because you don't have to have a conspiracy. This is just human, ordinary behavior that's again and again and again at different places, and especially in places of high positions of prestige, people tend to think they're entitled to be the gatekeepers of knowledge in that area. So expelled is a great way. Expelled, no intelligence allowed is a great way to see the very unfortunate and anti science progress effects of the gollum effect.
[00:12:45] Speaker B: Well, do you. Have you run into this personally? Do you have any personal experience with the golem effect?
[00:12:50] Speaker C: Somewhat. Andrew. Now, it turns out my story turned out well, but it could have turned out very negatively. Some years ago, I submitted an essay for publication, and my field is history of science and philosophy of science. And I'm going to describe this in such a very vague way so that no one will know which blind reviewer was at issue here. But I had two blind reviewers, as is typical, and they were both quite positive about my paper. But one of them was highly recommending that I interact much more with a certain body of literature, namely other papers written by this particular bind reviewer.
They didn't say that explicitly, but I could tell it was obviously that this blind reviewer was the author of the five or six different essays that they were recommending that I interact with more. Now, ironically, I had already interacted with this person's work, and a lot of this person's work was quite good, and I mildly criticized part of it in my essay. But after being pushed to interact with it further by this blind reviewer, I had no choice but to criticize that person's work even more. And they mysteriously dropped out of the peer review process and said they didn't want to do this anymore, and the editor had to assign another blind reviewer. So, as you can see, this turned out well for me, but it might not have. Right.
[00:14:18] Speaker B: Right. Wow. Well, you didn't give up, but the blind reviewer did.
Which leads me to my last question. How do scientists rise above the golem effect? Either they're tempted to do it to others, or they're. They're possible victims of it. How do we get past this in the name of good science?
[00:14:37] Speaker C: Well, the key word is virtue. Now, that may sound like an old fashioned word, is like, maybe even inappropriate. But philosophers of science, like myself, that's my other hat. Besides historian of science, we talk about theoretical virtues. Those are the traits of a good theory. There's also intellectual virtues, the traits of a good scientist or good researcher in any field. And there's also moral virtues, traits of a good person. And those moral virtues include honesty, which is very important for any field, including science. And it includes being generous with younger professionals in your field, or aspiring graduate students to be generous with them and to try to encourage them. And if they are critical of your work, encourage them to be critical in an appropriate way and dialogue with them. A senior scholar should welcome a graduate student who's interested in their work and even interested in sort of picking away at it. In fact, there was an entire master's thesis written about one of my essays. In fact, the one on theoretical virtues by a guy at one of the UK's top universities besides Cambridge and Oxford. I can't remember which one it was. St. Andrews. That's right, St. Andrews.
[00:15:50] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:15:50] Speaker C: And a big part of his dissertation, excuse me, his master's thesis was on my essay systematizing the theoretical virtues. And he had a lot of great things to say and he had some critical observations, and I welcome that and I hope the best for him.
[00:16:05] Speaker B: Excellent. Well, that is the model that we need. That is the example of virtue that we need in science in order for things to move forward. Well, Mike, thank you so much for unpacking this. This was a really interesting piece of research to come across, and as you say, a vindication of things we've seen in the intelligent design research community and elsewhere for many years. So it's a positive development to see acknowledgement of this gollum effect going on.
[00:16:33] Speaker C: That's right. Id folks are not conspiracy theory mongers. We're for open, democratic culture, free speech. Right?
[00:16:41] Speaker B: Hear, hear. Well, thanks again, Mike. For more episodes of the podcast, go to idthefuture.com, or you can search id the future on your favorite podcast app. And hey, if you like what you're hearing, leave us a positive review and rating that helps us reach new listeners with the compelling evidence and insight that we have into this debate, this evolution and intelligent design debate. Too important to sit on the sidelines here. Thank you very much for listening for id the future. I'm Andrew Mcdermott.
[00:17:12] Speaker A: Visit
[email protected] and intelligent design.org. this program is copyright discovery institute and recorded by its center for Science and Culture.
