PSA: Google Does Not Make You a Scientist

During one of those uncomfortable getting-to-know-you conversations with a new acquaintance, I was recently told that, though she is a biology major, said acquaintance doesn’t believe in evolution.  She’s done a lot of research on google and it just doesn’t add up.

As someone who once had to take a full anti-evolution course and occasionally listens to Intelligent Design sermons for fun, I immediately wanted to school her on how flimsy all of the arguments I already know she believes are.  Of course, I then reminded myself that this person was not convinced by an entire semester of college biology and refrained.  Truthfully, I’m less bothered by the fact that she doesn’t understand the theory (science is hard!) and more annoyed that an otherwise reasonable person is basically ascribing to the most ridiculous conspiracy theory I’ve ever heard.

99.9% of the Scientific community thinks evolution does, actually, add up.   Now when I say “scientist,” resist the urge to imagine a hunchback in a laboratory maniacally rubbing his human-fat soaked hands and think instead of a person who has devoted their entire life to studying and learning about science.  That is their whole job.  And it’s not a few guys in a basement scouring blogs, it’s somewhere around 500,000 professional science people.   Unlike the googler, their livelihood depends on this stuff.  When they come up with theories they publish them and then other scientists review them. Those other scientists either agree or publish their own theories about why scientist #1 is such an idiot he can’t tell his protons from his neutrons.  It’s self-correcting in that way; it’s competitive. The more they publish studies that the scientific community can replicate, the more grants and awards and job offers and press they get.  When you can definitively disprove a long-standing, well accepted theory, you get even more money and fame!  That’s why you know who Galileo, and Newton, and Einstein are!  It’s capitalism!  You people love that!

So let’s review, Scientist: years  and years of study, doctorates and experiments, peer reviewing community, figure out how things like this work for a living, rewarded with money and fame for proving/disproving stuff; you: google.  Got it?

If a scientist could disprove the most widely accepted modern scientific theory around (evolution) he/she would win the Nobel Prize, money, and his or her name would be burned into every history book ever.  This scientist wouldn’t even have to disprove Evolution!  If they could disprove the ancient age of the earth to say, something crazy like 6,000 years, they would demolish the majority of current science.  There is every reason in the world for scientists to do this, and yet, they don’t.  Is it because they hate fame and money?  Is it because every scientist ever has a vendetta against God?  Is it because they DON’T HAVE GOOGLE?  No, it is because like gravity, the theory of evolution is a fact.

If you believe that the earth is 6,000 years old or that the first woman came from a rib or that there is some kind of difference between “micro” and “macro” evolution (hint: there isn’t), you aren’t just wrong.  You believe in a massive, worldwide conspiracy.  You believe that nearly every scientist in every branch of science; every scientific foundation and research organization; every journal; and every accredited college or University in the WHOLE WORLD is participating in some kind of coordinated, malicious cover-up to hide the truth.  It makes 9/11 Truthers and Moon-Landing conspiracy types look downright brilliant.  Scully-esque.  Pillars of reason and logic.

So whatever, keep on believing you can out-google science, just do me a solid: start wearing tinfoil hats or carry around your dead pet bird so at least I know before we start making dinner plans that I should be prepared for a dinosaur-train to crazy town.