All Evolutionary scientists have been Evolutionary Indoctrinated

Wow! this thread sure took off! I turn my back for a weekend and there are 150 posts waiting.Well first of all, before we examine what effects (if any) EI would have on the ability of Scientists to evaluate evidence objectively, you have to show that it actually occurs.Let's take a look at your first premise
from premis #1 As I stated in the other thread, I do not accept that EI takes place in this way. Obviously I can only directly address the way it was while I myself was growing up. What I can definitely say is that during the 1960s in England, evolution was not taught in any school that I ever attended in any way. Possibly if I had chosen to pursue Biology rather than Chemistry and Physics then it may have been touched on, however I do not think so as none of my biology oriented friends from that time remember it either. I doubt that it would have been allowed in the classroom as English schools are run by the state which advocates creation (Church of England) and taught this in compulsary Religious Education lessons.
As for books and TV. I already told you that TVs were quite rare and only had 2 channels (up until BBC2 came on the scene). I used to watch anything I could find that related to science and I don't ever remember any programs on evolution being aired.
Books? I loved dinosaurs and fossils so I collected every book I could get my hands on. I checked my old collection this weekend and there is narry a word about evolution in any of them.As stated before, the only time I even heard of evolution was when it was explained to me by people who actively rejected it so I got all the hype about it being blaspemous rubbish with no grounding in fact. By the time I went looking for real information I was thoroughly brainwashed that it was complete BS.I can't speak for everyone but I can say pretty much for sure that there was no EI in my childhood. I am also pretty sure that I am quite typical for 40 somethings from England.I would also think that the vast majority of successful scientists in the field of biological sciences right now are around my age or older. I really see no way that any of them could have picked up much EI prior to going to College.Another point is that at college level, science isn't taught by rote repetition of known facts. It is taught by experimentation in which the student performs real experiments with real data and expected to reach their own conclusions as to what that data means.
The point which refutes the EI proposition is simply your own point that the student at this point does not have a real grasp on the subject matter.
Even if EI were true, this actually means that the student is utterly unable to even predict the outcome of the experiment (based on any kind of biased spectacles) that the actual result can be nothing but unbiased. For example, knowing that evolution is true does not give a student the faintest idea how to predict the changes in allelles of a microbe when it is placed in a perti dish containg an anti-biotic so when the most common DNA is examined before and after he has no idea what to expect.
The data spit out by the measurement instruments are the data points. They cannot possibly be biased.
They just show what is there.
How could any bias of the student cloud the results kicked out by a mindless DNA sequencer?
(note this applies to all scientists including PhD and beyond)Here is an experiment that should prove or disprove evolution. There is no way that any kind of EI bias could screw up the results unless you are implying that the scientist would actually lie about the results.

• Take a single microbe.
• put it in a petri dish.
• Sequence the DNA from several of its descendents.
• The TOE predicts that the DNA should be slightly different in the descendents than it was in the original.
• If evolution is false then the DNA will be identical to that of the parent. ie. all microbes have same DNA.
• If evolution is true then they will have slightly different DNA
• If this is still not enough then wait for a nice big population to grow then add a mild antibiotic to the dish.
• Again evolution predicts that some of the microbes might develop a resistance to the antibiotic. Do some survive?
• If evolution is true then yes. If false then NO. (note that multiple studies should be conducted simultaineously to avoid the possibility of contamination)

How could EI possibly affect this experiment?

I still think you have it completely opposite of the actual reality of the situation.
In my experience, the vast majority of 13 year olds would say "No! God made man the way he is" or "Get a life you old duffer! I ain't descended from no ape!"
My son is actually a 13 year old right now and he is about the only kid in his class who actually gives the TOE a second thought. The others are all regular church goers who are taught repeatedly that the TOE is a scientific conspiracy (pretty much as you are suggesting). Many of them make active attempts to get him to renounce the TOE on a regular basis.I know this is a logical exercise to you but unless you can show (with evidence) that there is any kind of EI actually in existence then the rest of the debate is pretty much pointless.
From what I can see it simply doesn't exist and in the vast majority of cases the exact opposite is true. Anti-EI appears to be the norm which scientifically minded kids have to break away from.

What took me?
Well I don't get much chance to post over the weekend but I did post yesterday in message 162 Message 162
Guess you must have missed it in all the action that has been going on. I certainly see what you mean by AM being Anger meter. I read that post too. Pretty good I thought.
I don't know whether my son actually does believe it though. I have done my best to teach him the scientific method rather than bare assertions like "evolution is true". The kind of things I try to reinforce are methods of sound reasoning and beyond that he can believe what he likes. I would like to think that he applies reasoning to any views that he may have but there is no way to be sure. His class is only barely starting to scratch the surface of TOE at school right now (during 7th grade that was). More to come in 8th grade I think. I don't know that he has a stance that TOE is true. I sincerely hope he doesn't as it would go against all that I have taught him. It is just that he is willing to look at it at all without simply dismissing the idea out of hand.
I don't think that a Ph.D is necessary to overcome any conditioning that might exist either. My point is that kids either have a knack for fereting out the facts or they don't. When they do, they go looking for it and often become scientists. It is in their nature from a very early age. A college education just teaches them to formalize their methodology. So what you are saying here is that it may well be possible to be indoctrinated in several directions at once but that only one indocrination is accepted, right?.I will go so far as to agree that some indoctrination may take place in a few unusually impressionable children, but IMO the children who are to become scientists when they grow up are most definitely not included in this set since they are already predisposed to being analytically minded.
For example how many kids just accept something that they are told without the cliche comeback "But why?". This may be annoying but it means that they really want to know why something is the way it is. These kind of minds are simply not going to accept something at face value without a darn good reason.
As a child gets older he develops better reasoning skills and becomes ever harder to indoctrinate with stuff like programs on discovery. A few may believe what they see but these few are most definitely not tomorrow's scientists. Anyone that easy to convince simply wouldn't make it as a researcher. Me too. I took a stab at some of it in message 162 Message 162Take a look at the example experiment there and see if you can see any way that EI could bias the results.

I thnk what they should be demanding (don't know if they were or not) is published papers that have been reviewed and scrutinized by peers, at least some of which are full professors of high standing.I don't have a PhD but I do have a whole string of papers that I have published in my field. They all passed the review step and were accepted as valid science by said professors. I have even been asked to review others papers as part of such a board when the paper encroaches on my specific area of expertise.I only have a Bachelors degree so where does that leave me then?The important step is the peer review rather than the individual qualifications. Some people are able to blag their way through education and get all kinds of qualifications without really deserving them. When it comes down to it, a degree or a PhD is only a piece of paper.
A scientists good name and reputation are earned by writing high quality research papers.

Agreed Agreed again I think the issue here is still in the definition of indoctrination. I fully agree that a whole lot of people don't have either the ability or the inclination to go out and find, then evaluate the evidence for themselves. The question is does that make them indoctrinated, lazy, gullible or what?
By this definition at wikepedia.com, the terms "indoctrination" and "education" are often impossible to separate.

quote:

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The word indoctrination has accumulated negative connotations over the past century. As a result, it is difficult to distinguish it from education, without raising genuine issues of controversy, and some spurious ones too, for no one wants to be informed that they are indoctrinated. Expressions like "common sense" show us how thoroughly indoctrinated we all are. Expressions like religious instruction demonstrate how the word indoctrination is commonly avoided.

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However, "indocrination" is more often associated with the deliberate delivery of information to an individual with the intention of causing that person to accept it as true without proof.
I don't think that you are suggesting that there is a deliberate conspiracy to spread the word about evolution. That would require a vast organisation with a centralized agenda. Besides, your posts don't really read that way. So what we are left with is the fact that the media is full of information pertaining to evolution. Some of this information may or may not be true. (Face it, most programs on the subject don't even agree with each other about all the details) Sounds like a pretty even mix of people believe and people that don't. Doesn't that point to a rather poor case of indoctrination since about half the regular non-scientific people are able to shrug it off? I would have expected higher if you were correct.Anyway, since it is largely impossible to seperate the definitions for "indoctrination" and "education" while using a rather weak, non-deliberate definition of EI, I have to admit that pretty much everybody in this day and age are exposed to information regarding evolution. I still maintain that the positive reinforcement from TV and books will largely be cancelled out by the negative reinforcement from religious comunities and individuals. The net result should be that no particular bias should be found across society as a whole. This is borne out by your own survey. 50% go one way and 50% go the other.So "education" happens! lets move on now. Two points. (A bit off topic so you don't need to answer them here.)
1) Why would creation predict random mutations in DNA?
2) What is the difference between micro and macro? As I see it macro is just a bunch of cumulated micros. Good answer. I can't really fault your logic and I must admit I walked right into that one.
However I am unaware of a branch of accepted science known as "Creation Theory" or of any of its predictions so I would have to be excused for not looking to a field which appears to offer no usable answers when confronted with a real world problem.
Besides, the premise still stands that my experiment does prove mutations happen. If you want to tell me that "creation science" agrees with me on this point then fine. That would just show that the evidence fits both theories equally. It doesn't invalidate my experimenter's objectivity and doesn't show that the experimenter is biased other than by lack of information. Not knowing the predictions of "Creation Science" does not equate to a bias toward TOE.

Personally speaking (which I know doesn't count for much) is that anyone who is capable of stating that they base a decision to accept something on evidence rather than by simply believing it, should be given the benefit of the doubt.I wonder what the result of your 50:50 survey would have come out like if the question "Do you believe in TOE?" had been followed by the question "Why is that?"I think the vast majority of the answers would have been something like "Uhh welll, I uhh.... I dunno" for those who do believe and "Because my pastor told me that all evolutionists will go to hell!" for those who don't. Catholics could well have answered "If it's good enough for the Pope then it's good enough for me." (At least until the new Pope began to distance himself from the TOE anyway )Ask a Biology student their reason and you will get a bunch of case studies that they have read and in many cases reproduced.Science students of any age have a bias for the truth. Do you think they believe that dinosaurs and Man lived at the same time after watching the Flintstones or "Land before Time".