{"id":118,"date":"2006-03-16T08:23:09","date_gmt":"2006-03-16T08:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/03\/16\/humanists-have-all-the-fun\/"},"modified":"2006-03-16T08:23:09","modified_gmt":"2006-03-16T08:23:09","slug":"humanists-have-all-the-fun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/03\/16\/humanists-have-all-the-fun\/","title":{"rendered":"Humanists Have All the Fun"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve seen the idea of an “Opposite Day” popping up lots of places in the political blogosphere (most recently from Big Media Matt<\/a> and Will Wilkinson<\/a>), and it sounds sort of cool. The idea is that you commit to writing blog posts on topics chosen by readers, taking the opposite position from what you would normally argue.<\/p>\n

The problem is, this really only works for people blogging about the humanities and social sciences, where you can sensibly argue both sides of any position, or invent entirely new sides at a whim. Us science types are a little more constrained by reality. We’ve got all these facts and observations and evidence to contend with– there’s no room for competing interpretations of Newtonian mechanics, so even if I wanted to argue that F<\/b> doesn’t equal ma<\/b>, there’s no way to construct a sensible argument in favor of any other theory…<\/p>\n

Which is a pity, because a ScienceBlogs Opposite Day could be a hoot. I’d love to see what PZ<\/a> would come up with if forced to support Intelligent Design<\/a>, or how Tim<\/a> would proclaim the genius of John Lott, or what angle Orac<\/a> would find for backing RFK Jr.’s position on vaccines.<\/p>\n

Stupid scientific method…<\/p>\n

(I’m willing to give it a go, if somebody can find a branch of pseudo-science I could construct a halfway sensible argument for. Suggestions (not<\/strong> string theory, sit down, Peter), or a legitimate science debate that I could argue the opposite on. suggestions are welcome in the comments…)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve seen the idea of an “Opposite Day” popping up lots of places in the political blogosphere (most recently from Big Media Matt and Will Wilkinson), and it sounds sort of cool. The idea is that you commit to writing blog posts on topics chosen by readers, taking the opposite position from what you would… Continue reading Humanists Have All the Fun<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","category-silliness","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}