# Quote — Philip Kitcher, Abusing Science

> Knowledge of science can have a great impact on social and political policy. Students need to be told, clearly and directly, what statements are supported by the available evidence. It is not the teachers function to offer instead a contrived and unresolved “debate” in which one of the parties is an ill-defined position that lacks any evidence in its favor. To represent as equal ideas of unequal merit is to mislead and confuse. Because the consequences of so deceiving the students may be their later inability to perform their duties as conscientious and informed citizens, such educational practices ought to be recognized for the irresponsible charades they are.

- Author: [Philip Kitcher](https://www.leafyquotes.com/philip-kitcher.md)
- Book: [Abusing Science](https://www.leafyquotes.com/philip-kitcher/abusing-science.md)
- Page: 173
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Philip_Kitcher#Abusing_Science:_The_Case_Against_Creationism_(1982)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/philip-kitcher/abusing-science/knowledge-of-science

## More from this book

> Barnes and Morris both choose processes that we know to operate at different rates at different times, and then use the observed rates to estimate the time at which the process began. Dating the past is a complicated and technical business, and one cannot ignore the technical details simply to generate the ages one wants. Without a thorough understanding of which rates are constant overtime and which rates fluctuate wildly, Creationist dates are bound to be stabs in the dark. However, Creationists know what they want the age of the earth to be. So just as in the case of the second law of thermodynamics, important parts of science are abused. By carefully picking a process on the basis of its ability to give the desired result, without attending to the question whether it is reasonable to think that it happened at a constant rate, Creationists attempt to convince the uninitiated that their blind dates have scientific references. Nobody should be taken in.

p. 163 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/philip-kitcher/abusing-science/barnes-and-morris.md)

> Ironically, philosophers of science owe the Creationists a debt. For the “scientific” Creationists have constructed a glorious fake, which we can use to illustrate the differences between science and pseudoscience. By examining their scientific pretensions, I have tried to convey a sense of the nature and methods of science.

p. 5 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/philip-kitcher/abusing-science/ironically-philosophers-of-science.md)

> This response gets high marks for low cunning.

p. 99 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/philip-kitcher/abusing-science/this-response-gets.md)