re: #124 scienceisreal

I teach statistics at a university. It’s hard enough to get college students to understand variance, probability, and independence, explaining it to anti-science wingnuts is virtually impossible. Yet, they still come here for advice, even though they spend the rest of their time telling people we are a bunch of useless elitists.

I feel your pain. Please believe I feel your pain.

I enjoyed it though when my department got the wrong flavor of wing nut.

We once got several very concerned and very serious folks to come and talk to us about the “science” of intelligent design. They happened to wander into my office and some of my friends and colleagues were there.

First, we explained that this was the physics building and they really wanted to bother the biologists.

Well they wanted to confront us physics folks about this anyway…

I tried very hard to explain that the probability of a DNA molecule arising randomly from all possible combinations is indeed staggeringly small. Because of that, the non-random selective processes of evolution are actually mathematically supported.

In one ear and out the other of course. I was in my public persona as the kindly scientist also - not using the liberating vent that I get to take here - I could not have been more polite or patient with them.

My colleague tried to explain the basic idea that a probability was the number of shots you have to hit divided by the number of things you could hit.

In one ear and out the other.

It is not just that these folks are brainwashed. It is that they really are just dumb.