I just got around to reading this Matt Nisbet piece on the supposed ethical impropriety of Dawkins et al., previously critiqued by a number of bloggers, including PZ. After reading through the article, trying to think of how to criticize Nisbet’s position, I’ve finally been forced to admit that that’s impossible because Nisbet doesn’t have anything coherent enough to be described as a “position.” First, let’s look at Nisbet’s ethical principles:

1. Dialogue should be a focus of science communication efforts, rather than traditional top-down and one-way transmission approaches: What does this even mean? In many contexts, dialogue seems to mean a ritual for making people feel good about themselves, not a real two-way information exchange. It’s summed up nicely by this comment overheard by one of Greta Christina’s friends: “I’m not saying that I agree with what you said, I’m just validating that you said it.” True back-and-forth makes sense when it comes to trying to make policy decisions, which require discussion of science, values, and first-hand experience with social and economic realities. But it makes no sense when people simply need scientific information. I don’t understand modern physics as well as I’d like, but this doesn’t mean I’d like to have a dialogue with a physicist, it means I’d like to have a physicist explain some things to me. Yes, you have to get where people are coming from, but that doesn’t change the fact that communication often has to be mostly one-way.
2. Scientists and journalists should always emphasize the values-based reasons for a specific policy action. This is true, because knowing how to do something doesn’t automatically make it desirable, even though in some cases the values aren’t the main issue. (Knowing how to keep the planet inhabitable doesn’t make inhabitable planets desirable, but their desirability is still obvious.)
3. Accuracy is a third ethical imperative. This is true. Now I’m curious, how does Nisbet apply this later on…
4. Avoid using framing to denigrate, stereotype, or attack a particular social group or to use framing in the service of partisan or electoral gains. The first half, about social groups, is fuzzy, the second half is just strange: assuming framing is not inherently dishonest (which Nisbet has to assume), what’s wrong with using it in politics? Of course you don’t want to use it in the service of the wrong political cause (it would be unethical to use framing to help out Barack Obama, who is slime), but what’s wrong with using it in general?

Now the weirdly incoherent punchline: Nisbet insists he isn’t saying atheists can’t promote their views, but Richard Dawkins is a big meanie because he uses his “authority as a scientist” to promote his views, and is guilty of denigrating people. Here, “denigrating people” really just means telling them that they’re wrong, which even Nisbet does on a regular basis. (Compare this story.) This is a nice example of how things aren’t are what they’re about. It’s nigh impossible to discuss what reality is like, because such discussions are automatically treated as pissing contests over the status of people with various ideas about reality.

And the “scientific authority” bit can mean only one of two things: that Dawkins is a scientist, or that he uses science in his arguments. The first interpretation, I suspect, is too ridiculous even for Nisbet: getting a Ph.D. does not require you to surrender your right to talk about religion. But on the second reading, Nisbet is saying that science must, as a matter of moral principle, be left out of discussions of religion, a ridiculously arbitrary requirement, given that Nisbet wants it to be involved in discussions of public policy. But in a way, I suspect “scientific authority” means neither things, it means nothing, just as the line about denigrating groups means nothing. They are the rhetorical postures of a man who has forgotten what it means to inquire into the truth about anything.

Also: I love how, in the discussion at Russell Blackford’s blog, Nisbet finds himself unable to talk about Blackford’s <i>claims,</i> rather, he can only talk about the <i>framing.</i> Partly, this seems to be because Nisbet has begun using “framing” like the Newspeak word “duckspeak”: good for allies, bad for enemies. But partly, this is another indicator that Nisbet cannot even think in terms of what is true (and as PZ shows, Blackford clearly had his facts–his facts, not his framing–right).

I need to point out here that in some ways, I’m very sympathetic to Nisbet’s position. Some people think it’s impossible to apply science to real-world human interaction, some people think it’s noble to refuse to do so. I disagree with both positions. But if you think of communication <i>soley</i> in terms of what you have reason to think will produce the desired reaction, and never in terms of silly little thinks like truth, your brain turns to mush. Brown, smelly mush, I might at.