A Speck in His Eye or a Plank In Mine?

Hopes have been ridiculously high for the Obama administration during his first year and a half.  I have been the first to criticize him from the comfortable position of Paris, which I realize is unfair. I will refrain from discussion about extra troops in Afghanistan, a watered down health care bill or the slowness of financial regulation, mainly because I still think “yes we can”, even if history would show that “maybe if we are lucky we can”. The one decision that I haven’t been able to come to terms with is one that most people think was either an inspired choice, or at least a benign one. That is the appointment of Francis Collins to be the Director of the NIH (National Institute of Health). For anyone who doesn’t know about Dr. Collins, he is indeed an important figure in science. He was in charge of the Human Genome Project, which together with the private company headed by Craig Venter decoded the human genome. He has had a distinguished career, which no one would deprive him of. Equal to his science fame however is his fame as a born again Christian. He has recently been appointed by Pope Benedict XVI to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. People’s personal faith is there business, and certainly not something I should criticize. That is unless that person writes books about it, and says why that faith influences their jobs. For Collins, he does not speak of faith as something which is only personal; he speaks of it as an evangelical, and one which is especially delusional in my view. Central to his conversation to Christianity is a vision he had of the trinity in a three spring waterfall, which is not so entirely different than seeing Jesus Christ in a grilled cheese sandwich (a not unheard of thing). Still, that is just personal, but now he is in a place of power when it comes to handing out the majority of federal biology research dollars. He has said that work on biology is simply a means by which he can understand his Christian god. To me this is a bias that science cannot have. The scientific method must lead down a path that the evidence leads you, not your faith.

This complaint is now old. The reason it comes back to me is that Collins is a participant in an event that I have been involved with, The World Science Festival (WSF). I am not an organizer for WSF, but still I care deeply about it, and support it a number of ways. Still when people look at the WSF website they will see Francis Collins on the schedule and a religious/science organization (Templeton) as a major sponsor. I have to ask myself if my involvement in this group makes my criticism of Obama hypocritical.  In the end I hope, and think that it is different. I think that on average the WSF participants are non-religious, so Collins involvement is more of a balance than a standard. I write this only because our choices are not without consequence. I would not want to be involved with a science festival which promotes public understanding of science, only for the public to be exposed to superstition such as waterfall trinities.