The Virology Journal Retraction: Desecrating Faith, Incapacitating Science

My other hat is subsidized by NYU, so when the recent controversy about an article at Virology Journal -- a diagnosis of apostle Simon Peter's mother-in-law using the passages from the books Matthew, Mark, and Luke of the bible, by Chinese University of Hong Kong researchers -- came across my screen, I couldn't help but think about a not-so-long-ago case of journal retraction. Hark back with me to 1996 when a seemingly-devilish physics professor from NYU, Alan Sokal, decided to test a little grumble of his. As Sokal eventually explained, with a quote and a statement, at Lingua Franca:

The displacement of the idea that facts and evidence matter by the idea that everything boils down to subjective interests and perspectives is -- second only to American political campaigns -- the most prominent and pernicious manifestation of anti-intellectualism in our time.

-- Larry Laudan, Science and Relativism (1990)

For some years I've been troubled by an apparent decline in the standards of intellectual rigor in certain precincts of the American academic humanities. But I'm a mere physicist: if I find myself unable to make head or tail of jouissance and différance, perhaps that just reflects my own inadequacy.

To test his inadequacy, Sokal wrote a parody article for a special "Science Wars" issue of Social Text, a reputable publication, titled, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity." It was published. You can read his account of the so-called "Social Text Affair" here. There was some ugly fall-out, accounts and recounts (some of the noise, I imagine, owing to the fact that Sokal chose a pub edited by peers of the same university, NYU). It wasn't quite a mass scandal but it was pretty damn ugly.

As the modest (new and green) editor of a modest (non-scientific) publication on religion and media, I'm apt to see the editor's side in a small way. I edit and approve some stuff that I would never designate as representative of my own views. It's good to have diversity of opinion; what shakes out in the curation and discussion is sometimes insightful and instructive. But social science -- nor faith, nor "tolerance" -- isn't science.

Some months ago now I had a post here about a Christian Science Monitor story that made the case for increased training of doctors in "spirituality sensitivity." As I stated in the piece, I found it absurd that -- necessary interpersonal skills aside -- doctors should, when making diagnoses, account for the 75% of Americans who think God can heal them. Be sensitive to a patient's beliefs but don't short a patient of the facts simply because they (and you) want to hold out hope for a miracle. A diagnosis (however variable) is a diagnosis, regardless of whether the patient (or doctor) believe in God or Allah or the green monster.

I grant that the body is inexplicable; I've seen patients who have outlived their diagnoses, whose pain defies drug research, whose will to live makes them indomitable. But these are the rare cases that don't make the rule, and if science can't explain a 96 year old woman with inoperable cancer, on a respirator for 3 years and still, if not kicking, alive, I accept it as proof that there are too many variables for us to make sense of it all. We don't know everything (nor do we have to) but we do know what has been scientifically proven.

So when a story like the "research" of an illness experienced 2000 years ago makes the pages of Virology Journal and then is noisily retracted, I think Sokal was onto something. He writes, again from his Lingua Franca piece:

While my method was satirical, my motivation is utterly serious. What concerns me is the proliferation, not just of nonsense and sloppy thinking per se, but of a particular kind of nonsense and sloppy thinking: one that denies the existence of objective realities, or (when challenged) admits their existence but downplays their practical relevance. At its best, a journal like Social Text raises important questions that no scientist should ignore -- questions, for example, about how corporate and government funding influence scientific work. Unfortunately, epistemic relativism does little to further the discussion of these matters.

In short, my concern over the spread of subjectivist thinking is both intellectual and political. Intellectually, the problem with such doctrines is that they are false (when not simply meaningless). There is a real world; its properties are not merely social constructions; facts and evidence do matter. What sane person would contend otherwise? And yet, much contemporary academic theorizing consists precisely of attempts to blur these obvious truths -- the utter absurdity of it all being concealed through obscure and pretentious language.

It's the premise of the Virology article (more on the retraction here) that I have issue with. With little evidence (well, actually, none) beyond bible verses, the researchers go through a litany of potential afflictions, ruling out the most obvious, then decide that they've identified the earliest recorded case of influenza. Writes, Tara C. Smith at Aetiology:

They go on to dismiss a significant number of other viral pathogens, as well as demonic influence (phew! Those are so hard to get rid of):

One final consideration that one might have is whether the illness was inflicted by a demon or devil. The Bible always tells if an illness is caused by a demon or devil (Matthew 9:18-25, 12:22, 9:32-33; Mark 1:23-26, 5:1-15, 9:17-29; Luke 4:33-35, 8:27-35, 9:38-43, 11:14) [1]. The victims often had what sounded like a convulsion when the demon was cast out. In our index case, demonic influence is not stated, and the woman had no apparent convulsion or residual symptomatology.

It's hard to see how a scientific investigation can be conducted using un-proven conclusions or assumptions -- particularly one's that involve the casting out of demons by Christ.

Yet, the point of this post isn't to brow-beat Virology Journal or to praise Sokal for his "gotcha," but to point to a prevalent use of faith (or political ideology or social objective) to address (and distort and refute) scientific issues. From Intelligent Design (read Lauri Lebo's recent article at Religion Dispatches about the Discovery Institute's continued efforts to distinguish intelligent design from creationism for the sake of having it taught in science classrooms), to abortion (faith that a fetus is a person entitles a fetus to constitutional rights?), from global warming (unbelief in things seen is faith in capitalism) to end-of-life rights (accepting that elders will die is somehow a denial of the "sanctity of life," and a last shot at redemption through suffering) political ideology, faith, and ignorance of scientific fact, continue to make scientific inroads.

Why make faith into a science? (I get making politics into a science and even making ignorance into a science, power is a splendored thing) Isn't one of the beauties of faith that it is free? That it's inexplicable and magic, outside explanation? That it's changing and personal and untethered to things like gravity and research, location and law? And isn't that the beauty of faith? I can't help but feel that the merging of faith and science -- not as a study of intersections and influences but a reliance on one to somehow prove or disprove the other -- somehow desecrates the former and incapacitates the latter.

Parsis Lose Their Vultures.

Friend and senior editor of The Revealer's sister site, Killing the Buddha, Meera Subramanian, has an article in the Wall Street Journal on the crisis faced by Parsis who once relied on vultures to eat their dead. The vultures are becoming extinct.

I enjoy Meera's writing in a way that isn't simply caused by friendship. You can read her article here:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304017404575165732562175068.html

Faith and Racism.

Wendy Wood of USC conducted an analytical study of existing research into the link between religion and racism. Here findings are both expected and shocking.

One can only ask what the implications are for other discriminatory opinions in the US such as anti-reproductive rights and anti-social services. And, at risk of running out these implications too far, what this study says about the Tea Party-furcated Republican party, committed to “no”-ing our nation’s way to a complete stalemate under our current black-led administration.

From Science and Religion Today, where I found the study. Here's a clip:

The researchers found barely any difference between the amount of racism among religious fundamentalists and more moderate Christians. “Only religious agnostics were racially tolerant,” they write in their paper.
We shouldn’t be shocked, Wood explains:

Religious groups distinguish between believers and nonbelievers and moral people and immoral ones. So perhaps it’s no surprise that the strongly religious people in our research, who were mostly white Christians, discriminated against others who were different from them—blacks and minorities.

She also points out that people who are religious because they value tradition and social convention were especially likely to be racist, noting:

The effect stays significant even in recent years. For people who are religious for conservative reasons, they have become less racist in recent years as racism has become less socially acceptable. But even they are still significantly racist, just that the effect has reduced in magnitude.

How Much Do We Know About What We Believe?

From Rod Dreher at Beliefnet, musings on how we understand and articulate our faith. Here's a clip:

This morning on the way in I was listening to an old episode of the unfailingly excellent and indispensable Mars Hill Audio Journal, in which sociologist Christian Smith discussed his findings about American youth and Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. I was struck by the part of his discussion with host Ken Myers about how American teenagers lack the basic vocabulary to discuss religious particularities. They are so theologically ignorant they can't even articulate what their own traditions teach. And in this, Smith suggests, they are like their parents.

Myers asked if there are any data to indicate that teenagers today are any more ignorant than past generations of Americans. Not really, Smith said, but anecdotally, when he interviews older professors, they tell him that young people today are markedly less able to discuss religion to any informed degree. Atheist humanities professor Camille Paglia is also bothered by this, but for different reasons:

Can you have a vibrant culture without cult? Traditionalist conservatives say no. Dr. Paglia is inclined to agree - and says that our lazy secularism and superficial religiosity puts America at risk of succumbing to acedia, the Greek term for spiritual slothfulness. She is shocked to discover how few of her college students grasp basic biblical concepts, characters and motifs that were commonly understood one or two generations ago. This stunning loss of cultural memory renders most Western art, poetry and literature opaque.

"The only people I'm getting at my school who recognize the Bible are African-Americans," she said. "And the lower the social class of the white person, the more likely they recognize the Bible. Most of these white kids, if they go to church at all, they get feel-good social activism."

What are they left with? "Video games, the Web, cellphones, iPods - that's what's left," Dr. Paglia laments. "And that's what's going to make us vulnerable to people coming from any side, including the Muslim side, where there's fervor. Fervor will conquer apathy. I don't see how the generation trained by the Ivy League is going to have the knowledge or the resolution to defend the West."

We seem to love cultural and religious particularity, so long as it's not our own.

Barry Black, Senate Chaplain.

From radio station KOSU, a look at the meaning of separation of church and state:

Most mornings, after the gavel is struck in the Senate chamber on Capitol Hill, a prayer is offered in that most secular body — a practice that goes back to the founding fathers at the Continental Congress in 1774.

Chaplain Barry C. Black delivers the prayer, offering up some of the first words heard each day in the chamber.

Black works from an office in the Capitol building, a well-appointed room with high, arched ceilings and wall-to-wall mahogany bookcases. Compared with the number of people working for senators, the chaplain’s staff is downright humble. He has an executive assistant, a director of communications and a chief of staff.

But from this third-floor perch in the Capitol building, Black enjoys one of the best views of the National Mall’s mosaic of cherry trees, museums and monuments.

Biblical Analysis For Earthly Decisions

The role the chaplain performs for the Senate stands almost at the meeting point between church and state. He’s a religious leader and shepherd to what is essentially a secular flock. This includes the Senate lawmakers, their families and their staffs, as well as all the other people who work on the Senate side of the Capitol — nearly 6,000 people in all.

His job entails coordinating events with other spiritual leaders throughout the year, from rabbis to Muslim imams. He officiates at weddings, funerals and christenings for lawmakers, their families and their staffs, and offers one-on-one counseling on matters both spiritual and private.

He also leads five Bible study groups each week, including one that is made up of just senators. Black says he thinks that for almost any issue the Senate is debating, there are biblical aspects that can be discussed in the study groups he holds.

“For instance, when the health care bill was being debated in the chamber, the people at my Bible study were from both sides of the aisle,” Black says. “And though we did not talk directly about the health care bill, I did a study on euthanasia and what the Bible says about ‘end of life.’ “