Thursday, May 03, 2007
Creative Education
Sal Cordova, who has already raised the marriage of sycophantry and inanity to new heights in pursuit of William Dembski's posterior, has outdone even himself in a quote mine that is monumental in its ineptitude (or in its incompetent dishonesty, take your pick). .
But you can go to Ed Brayton's Dispatches from the Culture Wars, Håkan Rosén's The DesignInterference, Orac's Respectful Insolence, Scott Page's All-Too-Common Dissent, or Jason Rosenhouse's Evolutionblog to see the details of that. What I'd like to point out is that the author being abused, Catriona MacCallum, senior editor of PLoS Biology, explains the relative lack of interest in evolutionary biology in medical school curricula as arising from the shortsightedness of people focused on the task at hand -- in the case of medicine, curing the individual in front of them. As MacCallum said:
Crudely put, does a mechanic need to understand the origins, history, and technological advances that have gone into the modern motor vehicle in order to fix it?
I wondered if the Discovery Institute's Dr. Michael Egnor would really like being relegated to the status of a "mechanic" (or as I like to call him, a "highly skilled meat cutter").
Amazingly, the other half of Dembski's Tweedle-Dumb and Tweedle-Dumber, DaveScot, beat me to it, actually saying in the comments to Sal's post:
Doctors are mechanics who diagnose and repair problems in the most complex machine on the planet. There’s no possible way any one of them can know everything there is to know about how that machine works, the range of problems that can occur, and all the best ways to fix them.
Apparently, to DaveScot, not only are medical doctors nothing but trade school graduates but their education should be limited to what can be crammed into the least qualified student the school is willing to pass.
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Update: Jack Krebs has a poignant article at The Panda' Thumb on why the use of evolutionary theory in medicine is personally important to him.
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"Sal Cordova, who has already raised the marriage of sycophantry and inanity to new heights in pursuit of William Dembski's posterior, has outdone even himself in a quote mine that is monumental in its ineptitude (or in its incompetent dishonesty, take your pick)."
You are a poet at heart.
Yes the short-sightedness would, indeed, be a very important reason why evolution is perceived as being unimportant to medicine. That is one of the reasons why medical practitioners frequently prescribe antibiotics for illnesses not caused by bacteria. And we know where the inappropriate use of antibiotics can lead...
But then, that is alledgedly not important to medicine.
You are a poet at heart.
Yes the short-sightedness would, indeed, be a very important reason why evolution is perceived as being unimportant to medicine. That is one of the reasons why medical practitioners frequently prescribe antibiotics for illnesses not caused by bacteria. And we know where the inappropriate use of antibiotics can lead...
But then, that is alledgedly not important to medicine.
Both the sublime and the sub-slime tend to move me to flights of verbal fancy.
Not only is evolutionary theory important in present treatment but it holds promise for many future treatments. Think how much good could be done with a better treatment for pre-eclampsia, a condition that occurs in about 6 percent of pregnancies, where the mothers experience dangerously high blood pressure late in pregnancy. Evidence now points to an evolutionary struggle between mothers and fetuses as a cause of the condition.
A single breakthrough could easily justify making medical students do a little study in the area.
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Not only is evolutionary theory important in present treatment but it holds promise for many future treatments. Think how much good could be done with a better treatment for pre-eclampsia, a condition that occurs in about 6 percent of pregnancies, where the mothers experience dangerously high blood pressure late in pregnancy. Evidence now points to an evolutionary struggle between mothers and fetuses as a cause of the condition.
A single breakthrough could easily justify making medical students do a little study in the area.
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