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Kevin comments on Why I'm Staying On Bloggingheads.tv - Less Wrong
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I confess that I'm not really a fan of the idea that creationists should never get any space for debate. If prestigious scientists are worried that talking to creationists gives them too much credibility, then find some bright ambitious college student who reads Pharyngula to shoot their little fish in a barrel. But this business of trying not to have debates... doesn't quite seem to me like the right strategy, somehow, when the cold fact of the matter is that creationists already get plenty of airtime with plenty of listeners. That is probably one reason why I'm sympathetic to BHTV here.
I don't think there ought to be a debate about whether many-worlds is correct, but there is. Should I refuse to talk about it henceforth? Fundamentally, people talking to each other on public video just doesn't strike me as such a bad, terrible, awful thing, even if it's about something you shouldn't have to debate. Now setting up Behe with a non-opponent was terrible, but I'm willing to accept that as an honest mistake.
You're right, but...
Creating the debate is a strategy used by the creationists. Every time you debate a creationist, you perpetuate the idea that there actually exists something to debate. The reason people are so against the debates with creationists is that creationists really like having debates, because it makes it more likely that their perspective will be mentioned any time the topic of evolution comes up even though their beliefs have absolutely nothing to do with evolution.
Okay, so send out a TA in jeans to respond. Seriously, I think that defuses the attempt to manufacture the appearance of serious debate.
I understand what you mean but ... seriously, you overestimate the rationalist skill of the average biologist TA in jeans. Even professors have a hard time making their scientific knowledge truly part of themselves. I don't hold out much hope for TAs.
Don't send out an average TA. Send out an ambitious, bright TA from a higher-ranked school (or just with good SAT scores, I understand the results are the same) who's been vetted by P. Z. Myers for ability to debate well, explain well, and respond with scientific accuracy to standard lies. But send out a TA nonetheless, and make sure they're dressed in jeans.
In other words, don't give viewers the impression that creationists are to be taken seriously, right?
The thing is, because BHTV has previously limited itself to hosting diavlogs between mostly honest, mostly reasonable people about topics that haven't been settled a hundred years ago, and because of the participation of scientists like Sean Carroll, merely taking part in a debate on BHTV gives that impression.
Very true. Last year I have seen an interesting Canadian documentary (Denial Machine, on youtube available, worth skimming through) on how the artificial debate on global warming was generated by the same PR firm that was hired by the Tobacco industry in the 90ies. They even funded the same university professors to generate apparent dissent.
Although creationism/ID is a different area, the methods are strikingly similar. A good example is the http://www.dissentfromdarwin.org/ with the only purpose of luring scientists (mostly in unrelated areas) to sign the list with the sole purpose of demonstrating that there is genuine scientific debate going on.