A Science-Related Public Circus of Our Own

The US Chamber of Commerce wants a Scopes monkey trial for climate change. This brings up a point: Occam's razor can be dangerously enticing, especially for laypeople judging science.

. . . a cross examination is a lousy way to determine science, because all scientific conclusions are tentative and limited in various ways; there are always holes waiting to be picked at. But the other reason is that a trial situation is a great opportunity for people to confuse the public with what our former colleague Julian Sanchez termed a one-way hash argument.

The gist of this is that it can [be] easy to make a simple, intuitive presentation of an argument that is simply wrong. In contrast, reality is often complex and counterintuitive, and providing all the details needed to understand it can be arduous.

Such a trial can only lead to further misinformation and confusion. The issue is not that skepticism—a foundation of science—is a bad thing, but instead that scientific conclusions are rarely black and white, and courtroom arguments tend to be painted that way.