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I would recommend to scrap the policy of regular, semi-mandatory mammography screening

Overscreening, overdiagnosing, and overtreatment are three of the chronic diseases of the modern healthcare systems. The New York Times brought to our focus the results of an extensive, 25-year-long survey involving 90,000 Canadian women whose results just appeared in the British Medical Journal.



The results seem to clearly show that the use of mammograms doesn't reduce the breast cancer death rate. It is not the first study with a similar outcome – see e.g. this mammogram study one year ago – but it's arguably the most extensive, empirically rooted one.




The numbers seem to speak a clear language. Those 90,000 women between 40 and 59 years of age were randomly divided to two groups of 45,000 women each. The first group received breast exams and mammograms; the second group only received breast exams.




During the quarter of a century, 3,250 women in the "with mammogram" group were diagnosed with breast cancer; the number was reduced to 3,133 women in the "without mammogram" group. The difference, 117, is almost exactly 2 standard deviations (two times the square root of 3,250) so one could say that with the mammograms, the detection rate is marginally higher – so that the difference may still be due to noise.

But what really matters is that 500 women (about 1%) died of breast cancer in the "with mammogram" group; the number of casualties in the "without mammograms" group is 505. Here, the standard deviation is the square root of 500 or so, or 22, and the difference is just 1/4 of a standard deviation. It is a pure noise, a statistical tie. The policy of random screening by mammograms hasn't detectably reduced the breast cancer death rate.

The paper mentions that this failure comes despite the fact that more women are dragged through the hassle of the cancer treatment – including surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. The mammogram itself uses low-energy X-rays, too. It may be useful to know that mammography has a high, about 10% false negative rate (undetected cancer). The paper's data also imply some over-diagnosis (it's something else than a false positive; over-diagnosis counts cases of detected and real cancer but one that is "weak enough" and that would remain harmless enough for the rest of the life).

Now, there may be a signal. A more accurate measurement or survey could show that mammograms reduce the number of women by a small fraction of a percent. But even if it were the case, is an arbitrarily low reduction of the death rate a good justification for an expensive policy? I don't think so. The society is often held hostage to emotions and precautionary principle so that it becomes almost if not entirely politically incorrect to point out that someone (or a technology like mammogram) who is supposed to help isn't actually helping anything.

Some numbers.

In the U.S., about 2.6 million people die every year. That includes about 1.3 million women. Out of them, 40,000 women see breast cancer as the cause of the death. That's about 3% of the women who die. The comparison of the numbers 505 and 500 above suggests that the mammography screening is unlikely to reduce the breast cancer death rate by much more than 1% relatively – I mean 1% from 3%. Even if you ignore the probable fact that the difference between 500 and 505 was just noise, mammograms are saving at most 400 women a year or so; it is 3 parts per million from the set of the women who die on the same year.

You may translate this figure to an expected increase of the life expectancy. That quantity is likely to increase by something comparable to 3 parts per million of its current value which is 80 years for women, too. If you multiply "3 parts per million" by "80 years", you will get something like "2 hours".

Even if you assumed that the observed difference in the death rates between the "with mammogram" and "without mammogram" group were due to a signal, the signal is so weak that an average woman prolongs her life by something like 2 hours only. It's less than what she spends with the mammography screenings in her life. It's actually much less because a majority of women are getting a mammogram every year. Let me articulate this point once again:

By undergoing mammography screening, you may (statistically speaking) only prolong your life by a (much) shorter time than the time you spend with the mammography screening (plus waiting for the results in the hospital).

Is that a good investment of time then? And of course, it is not just time. A single mammogram costs something like $100 – that's what the uninsured women typically pay. If you get a mammogram annually for 30 years, it costs $3,000 per lifetime. Would you pay $3,000 for 2 hours of extra life that you would be obliged to spend in the hospital with annoying diagnostic devices (and possibly with much more annoying treatment)?

My answer would be a clear No. Just try to think how wonderfully you may improve your life for $3,000. And by the way, even if you added 2 hours for $3,000, the cost of your 80-year-long life would then be $1 billion. Try to inform your life insurance company.

Incidentally, the paper clarifies many subtle differences between various foggy claims that are being made. The refinements sometimes sound like black humor. For example, it is sometimes being said that women with breast cancer who undergo mammography live longer. It is true, in a sense, the paper confirms. However, what it means is that they live longer with cancer – more precisely, they live longer while knowing that they have cancer simply because they learn about it earlier. So their total lifetime is the same; just a higher fraction of their life is burdened by the disturbing knowledge.

I feel that the modern society is literally flooded with similar policies that were justified by pure emotions or the mindless precautionary principle. But if you think about them rationally, they are not bringing anything good to us. Mammograms look scientific but the assumption that their scientific basis automatically implies that they make a difference is believed as mindlessly as the belief in shamans in less advanced societies. Mammograms are just a tip of the Seiberg. Similar policies make people feel more anxious and add psychological problems in general, they are wasting their time, they cost something like $100 per mammogram - lots of money, they (I mean antibiotics that are overused) are making the bacteria more resistant and more dangerous in the future, and they bring virtually no improvement in the survival rate etc.

It seems to me that people think that "it must be possible to do something about the diseases" and "it's their duty to do so" and "it's the duty of others to morally support them in these policies". But it's a fact that even if you try hard and even if you use all the currently available technological know-how, you won't really reduce your risk of death to zero (or close to zero). Most of the people who were born are going to die on some day, anyway. Well, the truth is that all of them will but I didn't want to scare you by this revelation. If someone is eager to help (and be paid $100), it doesn't mean that he is really helping.

What I mean by the recommendation is that the providers of mammography and politicians shouldn't be allowed to claim that their method saves lives – or that it is a "must" for similar "reasons" – because this claim contradicts the evidence. Extensive, peer-reviewed, blah blah blah, scientific evidence.

CNN also wrote about some criticism targeting the study voiced by those who make living by mammography – billions of dollars per year industry. I find all the criticism to be indefensible malicious junk. Someone has done the most careful research involving 90,000 women for 25 years – and someone else may simply find the scientific results inconvenient. That's what's going on. The critics said that better-quality imagining devices and better professionals could have been used. Great but that would be biased. They have used the same kind of devices and professionals whom the typical women in the Western world get when they go to the annual mammography so any complaint is clearly indefensible. Moreover, if mammography were that helpful, it could be seen with the less-than-best devices, too. And despite the continuing improvements, the mammograms were in no way a "new technology" in the 1980s; mammography really began in 1895. Chances are that the death rate wouldn't drop even if everyone were undergoing the most advanced mammography. The critics also question the paper's comments on overdiagnosis. But they're very solid. In particular, it's very correct that the paper chose the actual number of casualties, and not "survival rate among the diagnosed ones", to be the quantity that matters. And there's no difference here. A higher (70% vs 63%) percentage of the "diagnosed ones" may survive in the mammography group but those 7% in the difference group would not be diagnosed and would not die (or face serious illness) if they didn't go to mammography. So this 7% group wasn't really helped in any way and it would be pure demagogy to count them as a victory for mammography. The defenders of the annual mammography have lots of vested interests – but those are among the holy cows whose motives and integrity cannot be questioned by the cowardly, hypocritical, PC media.

Australia's ABC quotes some oncologists who don't like that the study seems to imply that the very "finding the cancer early" doesn't reduce the mortality. And you know what? The study indeed seems to imply that – within their resolution. It's a dogma people want to believe that the early diagnosis is always great. But it isn't necessarily so. So minor/early stages of cancer may be present in random people. Many of them may be doing just fine with it for a century – the problem may never grow to proportions that matter. And those whose tumors are actually going to become dangerous, the early detection may be useless, too. Add the illness that may be added by the screening itself and by the unnecessary treatment and you must conclude that it's still totally plausible that the early detection makes things slightly worse, not better.

But again, even if the early detection does help in principle, we must still ask "how much it helps" and an actual empirical survey such as this one is extremely helpful if not necessary to answer the question. The answer seems to be "the help is negligible". Remarkably enough, Reuters only dedicates one paragraph (the last one) to the empirically unfounded criticism of the paper. On the contrary, KCCI offers a passionate testimony by Ms Mary Sievers who is convinced that she and her several relatives were saved by mammograms. Why is she so convinced that what the mammograms had found would have killed her? There's lots of religion-like faith in these matters.

Similar comments apply not only to healthcare; public safety is another example. A hurricane or any other natural catastrophe that destroys houses or human lives is terrible. People feel that they are "obliged" to fight against such catastrophes, at least by their way of talking or symbolically. But those things aren't really helping so any "feel good" feeling is utterly unjustifiable. You can't (detectably) reduce the hurricane rate by driving a Prius or not driving at all or by turning off the U.S. economy, for that matter. Hurricanes don't care about these matters and even if they do care, the dependence is so weak (similar to the reduction of the death rate with the help of mammograms) that it doesn't qualitatively change any particular story.

Fusion (off-topic): In October 2013, we were told about a positive energy balance at the National Ignition Facility near San Francisco, California. Today, The New York Times and everyone else spread hype about some further advances since October. I used the term "hype" because I didn't quite understand what the advance since October is supposed to be. The overall energy budget is still poor, only 1% of the energy burned by the lasers is recovered.

The Daily Galaxy is among those who bring us the new E.T. gospel: SETI's chief astronomer Seth Shostak (*1943) promises that by his 97th birthday in 2040, SETI will find electromagnetic signals sent by the extraterrestrial non-resident aliens.

I am afraid that if he's around in 2040, people will have forgotten about his promise and if they will remember, they won't spank the poor 97-year-old man, anyway.



He builds the prophesy on the quantification of the number of planets that are being discovered and analyzed, their percentage in the habitable zone, and some amazing assumptions about the "straightforward" evolution of the intelligent life if not the technological singularity.

Stephen Wolfram agrees and adds some comments that these clever ETs produce so complex and sophisticated artificial products that they become indistinguishable from the natural objects ("very advanced cars start to resemble trees", he essentially says).

I tend to disagree with all these guesses.




First, I don't think that advanced cars will resemble trees. For quite some time, cars have been getting "smoother". Aerodynamics is one of the reasons. But even internally, carmakers don't want to flood cars (and other products) with lots of confusing details. The simplicity, at least the visual one, is one of the features that are favored by the natural selection in the world of technology.

Sometimes technology copies an idea from Nature. But we often see that animals and plants are suboptimal in many respects and when products are made from scratch, most of these seemingly useless imperfections may be avoided. So I would probably think that the converse of Wolfram's statement is much closer to the truth: the more advanced a civilization is, the more clearly its environment will differ from the natural background.




I am also ready to bet that by 2040, intelligent ET electromagnetic signals will not have been discovered. (If you wish, we may agree that the 1-to-1 bet will be active as long as both parties are alive.) Well, I just don't believe that intelligent life is that common.

Instead, I always agreed with Michael Crichton's view on these matters. He used the Drake equation as the original template for numerous kinds of the postmodern pseudoscience, including the global warming hysteria, in his speech

Aliens Cause Global Warming

that he gave at Caltech in 2003. The Drake equation includes at least seven factors – my 2005 edition of the equation contains dozens if not hundreds of factors – and all of them are mostly unknown. Some of them have huge uncertainties that may add or subtract many orders of magnitude. Even those that are only "somewhat" uncertain are so numerous that the product may be almost anything. Moreover, the product in the Drake equation is dominated by various fractions and percentages that are meant to impose a story on you.

It reminds me of a game we would play in the kindergarten. "What is pouring if you prick your finger?" – "Blood." – "What is pouring if you prick your thigh?" – "Blood." – ... – "What is the color with which you cross the road?" – "Red."

Try it. It really works. The repetitive questions at the beginning make you think about the blood. You become so brainwashed that you choose "red" instead of "green" as the answer to the pedestrian question. In a similar way, the Drake equation is deliberately containing lots of factors, some of which are arguably "large" or (in the case of the fractions) "of order one", and this makes some people brainwashed and assume that all of the factors must be large of order one. But the factors have nothing to do with each other, except that they were artificially and demagogically incorporated into an equation. One of them or several of them may be really tiny or de facto zero. Even though one factor that is tiny could be in a minority (most factors could be large), it would still decide about the result's being very small. It seems to me that people love to fool themselves with a trivial fallacy that "the majority of the factors" is what decides. It doesn't.

I think that intelligent life is rare – if not confined to the vicinity of the Earth – for many reasons.

One of them is that it may be very difficult to construct the simplest RNA/DNA molecules that may produce cells capable of reproducing the RNA/DNA code. There is no known code capable of doing such things that would contain just dozens of bases. Craig Venter's artificial cell has a million of bases in its DNA. Even Mycoplasma genitalium that is used due to its simplicity has over half a million pairs.

Also, I was sort of persuaded by the panspermial Moore's law suggesting that the life started before the Earth was created – because the extrapolation of the complexity of DNA codes seems to imply rather complex codes already 4.5 billion years ago. This belief of mine is strengthened by my realization – yes, I think it is an extremely important realization, overlooked by many – that the primitive life doesn't really need too strong gravitational fields (adhesion is OK) and the surface of a rock is enough. But the surface area is, unlike the volume or the mass of rocks, dominated by the surface of small meteoroids, comets, asteroids, if not dust in the Solar System and perhaps in the interstellar regions (smaller objects have a higher surface-to-volume ratio than the larger ones; this ratio goes like \(1/R\), of course). I think that this is probably where primitive life began billions of years before the birth of the Solar System. This primitive life just found the Earth to be a particularly hospitable place for further evolution – for concentrated progress.

Vast regions of outer space with dust and small meteoroids may have been needed to accidentally produce the smallest molecules that were needed for life to erupt. Only a small portion of the interstellar space may be "infected" by these tiny seeds of primitive life and only a small fraction of the infected regions may have the "right seeds" that may begin to flourish on the Earth. See that I am adding a structure or a story with extra factors, possibly very small factors, that were hiding behind a single factor in the Drake equation that was pretended to be large – without any evidence whatsover.

Moreover, I think that if it were really so straightforward to produce intelligent life and if it were so easy for a civilization to exponentially grow to conquer its cosmic neighborhood, and so on, we would have already seen signs of such extraterrestrial civilizations. The belief in "life is omnipresent trash" involves the belief in its nearly inevitable presence or birth on Earth-like planets; and in the subsequent exponential growth of the civilization that is nearly unlimited.

But if there were billions of planets with life in the Milky Way and if the growth of the civilization were this exponential and this unlimited, some of them would already have to become easily visible – even without the improvements in the telescope technology we will see by 2040. I feel that the belief that the ETs are not visible now but will be visible by 2040 is a belief in a "fine-tuning" of a sort. For this assumption to be true, the ET civilization must have been growing exponentially for many decades but they had to stop in time, to remain invisible to us in 2014. It is bizarre.

In other words, if one believes that the life is so easy and omnipresent, there should probably be many civilizations that are vastly more advanced than ours. But if this were the case, they would probably actively contact us before we would contact them. An advanced civilization out there – somewhere in the Milky Way – would almost certainly know about the Earth which is a rather bright "star" in the microwave spectrum. Some of these playful gay ET folks would probably send some strong signals directly to us to have some fun (even if their government preferred the "don't ask, don't tell" policy).

Well, this is of course only possible if the advanced ET civilization is at most several light decades from the Sun; the signals from more distant places couldn't have returned yet. But even among the more distant places where advanced civilizations may be living, they might know that the Earth was very promising for life – even millions of years ago. They could be sending localized signals in the direction of the promising hospitable planets and we should be already receiving lots of these signals.

In other words, if such a contact between two civilizations took place, the more advanced civilization would arguably be doing "most of the work" needed for the contact – because it's easier for it to do the work. We would be more likely to detect the more advanced civilizations than the primitive ones. That's why we should expect that they would have already "showed up" even if we remained relatively passive. In a universe full of advanced ETs, we would feel like the primitive tribes in the Pacific. They often see some signs of the more advanced nations (airplanes, International Space Station etc.). We don't see such things which indicates that we are not living in a universe flooded with advanced ET aliens.

But what really makes me upset about the "life is everywhere" paradigm is the same thing that was insulting Michael Crichton, namely that it is a religion. Or an inverse religion, if you wish. I mean a religion of scientism, scientology, or whatever these scientifically unjustified beliefs in something sold as "scientifically cool" should be called. Centuries ago, people would think that the Earth was the center of the Universe and played a special role. Copernicus and others showed that the Earth wasn't a special celestial object when it comes to the celestial motion. It largely orbits the Sun and there are many planets and stars and galaxies out there.

So some people love to "kick into the dead body of geocentrism" by trying to go to the opposite extreme. The Earth can't be the headquarters of life, either, they automatically assume. They believe that we have learned that the truth must always be the opposite thing than what the religion says. Except that these two types of "geocentrism" have a completely different status. The idea that the Earth is special as the center of the celestial bodies' orbits has been excluded; the idea that the Earth is where the Milky Way's life is concentrated is alive and kicking. There's no evidence of extraterrestrial life even though some people love to pretend otherwise. One of the claims is supported evidence, the other is not. Some people apparently want to hide this "detail" and this is just too flagrant a dishonesty in my eyes.

The idea that the life on Earth is the only intelligent life in this galaxy (or beyond) is perfectly compatible with everything we know about science. The only thing it is incompatible with is the science-inspired religion of "atheists on steroids" but that incompatibility is not a real problem of any sort.

A decade ago, I didn't quite appreciate it but now I do think that Crichton's insight that the Drake equation exhibits the same sloppy pseudoscientific thinking that has made the global hysteria possible decades later was a deep and true insight. It's the obsession with things that look like scientific equations but they are not scientific equations because they don't improve our quantitative knowledge of anything in any way; they're not even implying anything if we assume that they are "right". Equations that are meant to convey an ideology, not a useful calculation that tells us something verifiable, something that has been tested against the evidence. The Drake equation isn't science and the fact that this pseudoscientific construct has been sold by many people who were employed as scientists has loosened the expectations about the standards and it has allowed similar would-be scientists to talk about the threats for the climate posed by the CO2 and several other major preposterously unscientific idiocies. The scientific "beef" has completely evaporated from these science-inspired parts of our mass culture.

It started with the Drake equation and with the hype – helped by some of the modern media etc. – that the aliens have to be everywhere around us.

Evolution vs creation

If you have 2.5 spare hours, you may want to watch the debate between a creationist and an evolutionist.



The moving content begins around 13:00.

Bill Nye is known as "The Science Guy" who became famous after he stole Professor Proton's shtick (and Sheldon Cooper's wallet). Ken Ham is an Australia-born founder of various creationist facilities. A CNN host moderated the debate somewhere in Cincinnati.

Their yesterday's debate was sort of friendly. Once viewed as the prototype of a bitter intellectual war, the creation-vs-evolution cold war morphed into a pleasant piece of debate. It can't be compared with the climate change debate which is much more vitriolic. I think it's largely because of the societal implications of the climate panic – and because it's not clear where the front lines are. In the religion-based debates, everyone knows that everyone has heard most of these things and the believers or creationists have a certain concentration in some regions and it is only changing slowly. In the climate debate, the concentration of the enemies could be around the corner.

When it comes to the climate change, Bill Nye would be a hardcore Young Earth creationist who believes that the climate began to change not 6,000 but just 100-200 years ago. The climate was created to the man's image and nothing about it is natural, he believes. He is a complete lunatic. But when he talks about the longevity of the Universe and the Earth and about Darwin's theory of the origin of species, he is just fine. I think that he designed the case very cleverly.




Ken Ham is a pleasant, modest man. He is a believer. You will hear the proper creation defended, with God as the unmasked primary authority, without any postmodern tactical labels such as the Intelligent Design.

I think that it's clear that the evidence just doesn't work for him and he knows it. That's why lots of his focus goes something else than actual empirical arguments. We hear the testimony of several inventors and scientists who are fundamentalist Christian believers. Raymond Damadian, the inventor of MRI, is probably the biggest achiever among those. Well, I think that Damadian's contribution is a bit overhyped. MRI would be impossible without the underlying physics, NMR, that was found by Isidor Rabi in 1938 (with improvements by Felix Bloch and Edward Mills Purcell in 1946).

1938 may look like a long time ago and your humble correspondent may look "not that old" but my former colleague (with whom I would often communicate during academic dinners) would actually do some important work – Ramsey method – before Rabi. ;-) Yes, it was Norman Ramsey who is no longer among us.




Ken Ham also offers complaints about the harassment of scholars who are Christians, complaints that often sound like conspiracy theories. He added comments about the hypothetical decay of the society that results from the secular science. I know that much of this criticism of the Academia is completely justified. On the other hand, it is very clear that Ken Ham focused on the sociological would-be arguments because the actual empirical evidence doesn't allow him to present a convincing case. For the same reason, climate Young Earth creationists such as Bill Nye (in another context) love to talk about 97% consensuses and dying grandchildren because their actual scientific case makes no sense whatsoever.

Ham believes that a "secular religion" is being sold as science – it is sometimes true but in most cases, it is not because some assertions called "secularism" are actually supported by proper science. And he made a big deal of the division of science into "empirical science" and "historical science". Bill Nye rejected this division and it seems to me that the division was indeed designed to make you believe that the laws of Nature are changing with time, that miracles could be possible in the past but impossible today, and that nothing is obliged to fit in a complete picture quite generally.

Well, in principle, the laws of Nature could be variable. But the strong assumption that they are not variable is compatible with all the observations which is a highly nontrivial confirmation of the assumption that can't be overlooked. And if one allows the laws of physics to change at all times, the theory designed not to contradict the empirical data is too loose and "fudged" and unconvincing – or unlikely.

Bill Nye had the task to debunk a rather easy target – the young Earth. I would probably pick almost identical evidence as he did. By parallax, billions of stars are clearly further than 6,000 light years. The number of species (tens of millions) is too large to evolve from 7,000 "kinds" ("big species" relevant for the Big Flood proposed by Ken Ham) in 6,000 years (this calculation was partly demagogic because the 10+ new species predicted for every day could very well emerge in the tropical forest where no one sees them, so it wouldn't be a contradiction; after all, people are discovering new species at a comparable rate even in this real, Darwinian world).

The ice cores exhibit up to 650,000 annual cycles, also impossible in 6,000 years. Geological layers allow us to go to millions of years. These long timescales may also be deduced from the radioactive decay of some isotopes with long lifetimes, and so on, and so on. The Young Earth picture is clearly incompatible with any kind of reasoning where you expect to make sense of the doable empirical observations.

Back to Ken Ham. We can't observe the age of the Earth and many other things because they fall into "historical science", he argues. This is bizarre. Every science is historical to some extent because all the data we use to develop, refine, and test theories are observations of something in the past. The past is known although sometimes some extra "indirect" work is required to translate the direct observations of the traces to the events in the past. Some of these analyses are more indirect than others but there is no qualitative "gap" that could allow you to divide the science into historical science and empirical science.

It may make sense to talk about the "historical science" as a science about some one-time events that are "no longer repeatable" while the empirical science is about the lab experiments that may be reproduced as many times as you want. That's OK but there are very thick relationships between these two groups of insights. Some one-time historical events influenced something we can repeatedly observe today; and the one-time historical events were also affected by some laws whose validity we may repeatedly test in the lab, too. Some natural scientists have more of the "unrepeatable historical component" in their research, others have less, but as long as they are doing any natural science, it is impossible for them to live just with one "would-be part" of science.

Ken Ham also talked about some problems with radioactive dating methods. Except for the (wrong) claim that the methods (significantly) disagree, I didn't understand anything in these arguments, probably because it makes no sense. Ken Ham would also criticize the inconsistency of Old-Earth Christians. Their "misbeliefs" are argued by the words of the Bible. Too bad. And all dating methods are unreliable etc. – the only good method is to trust a witness who was there, namely God.

Bill Nye responded similarly as I would – why it's bizarre that they (including lions) had to be vegetarians before the Big Flood etc., why it's strange to place so much faith on a Bible translated many times into English (and censored at various congresses). We always observe the past because the speed of light is finite, and so on. Bill Nye is troubled that interpreters of the Bible such as Ken Ham are supposed to have a stronger authority in finding the truth than the fossils you may find in your Kentucky garden.

Ken Ham is reduced to enumerating about a dozen of fellow believers who have PhDs. It's not just "his models". Well, it wouldn't really matter to a scientific ear. Even if it were just his models, it could be right if it would be empirically viable. The ark may have hosted just 2 x 1,000 animals so there is a plenty of room over there. ;-)

Ham complains that the ice core layers estimate the age only when they rely on "assumptions". Sadly, he doesn't present his alternative set of assumptions that would be compatible with the existence of the numerous layers as well as with the Young Earth. And how did Bill Nye dare to question Noah's ability to build bigger boats than the 19th century engineers? Sometimes it sounds like a parody. ;-)

Concerning the speed of light (and distance of many stars), Ken Ham made an amusing argument that made me laugh out loud. The Big Bang Theory has the horizon problem (he didn't know the right terminology but he meant it), so everyone has a problem, so we're tied. ;-) The only problem is that the horizon problem is harmless for all questions about the Universe that is more than a fraction of a second old and the Big Bang Theory and proper astronomy still explains all the data; Ken Ham's picture breaks down as soon as he encounters first old tree or fossil or anything like that. So it is not a tie. The learning is a gradual process and the Big Bang Theory is able to describe 14 billion over 6 thousand i.e. 2 million times greater portion of the spacetime, with much more natural initial conditions.

Nye said that the shipbuilding is getting better, not worse, species are probably being lost, not created. And the assumptions that Ham complains about are supported by something, by some previous knowledge (or, I would add, by the tests that the assumptions pass later). Bill Nye also explains the possibility of your making a revolution in science.

At 1:50:00, they begin to ask visitors' questions.

First one for Ham: how the celestial bodies are explained and what is their purpose in the Grand Design? The answer is that they are receding now and we don't know the reason but it's probably done in this way for His glory, ;-) to nurture His ego. He is great, indeed. He is infinite. We are small. Wow. Bill Nye talks about kids' curiosity and asks Ham for predictions.

Nye says that "what was before the Big Bang" is a mystery. I would disagree with this approach to the answer. And what will happen in the future? Nye says lots of wrong things about the history of cosmology, wrong years etc. Nobody knows why the expansion is accelerating. People laugh and they have a reason. I find this summary by Nye misleading. Ham informed Nye that there's actually a book out there that explains where we came from and it says, in the first sentence, that at the beginning, God created Heavens and the Earth. Ham adds lots of bizarre spiritual dogmas that "matter can't create information" etc.

Ham is asked about the extra evidence aside from the Bible he has but he starts to talk about "majorities are not always right" which is true but he clearly failed to give an answer to the question.

Nye says that we don't know how consciousness arises from matter. Well, I would say that we know most of answers to refined versions of this question that are demonstrably meaningful. Nye repeats that without science education, the U.S. economy will fall behind. Ham says that the book out there also answers the consciousness question. Ham says that life is meaningless without afterlife.

What would change your mind? Ham effectively says "nothing, I am a Christian". But they may at least refine the detailed geometry of the Big Flood. ;-) Bill Nye enumerates dozens of groundbreaking types of evidence – that stars are nearby, and so on – which could change his mind. Bill Nye is asked to enumerate non-radiometric estimates of the Earth's age. Stars' age, deposition rates, etc. Story about Kelvin's burning-coal model of the Sun. He could know many more methods... Ham says that only meteoroids were radiometrically dated, not Earth. He claims that lots of methods contradict billions of years.

Ham is asked about the rate of continental drift 6,000 years ago. He apparently has no clue what continental drift is. ;-) Instead, he offers a name of PhD literal Christian geologists. Suddenly, he starts to talk about catastrophic plate tectonics. He would repeat that nothing can be said about the past so the question remains unanswered. I mean, if you're asked about a number, this vacuous tirade of conspiracy theories just can't replace this number.

Nye says a few basics on the plate tectonics. Of course that plate tectonics is another way to show the longevity of the Earth that he had previously forgotten. He also points out that various clocks always "differ a little bit" which doesn't mean that they're fundamentally wrong. Nye picks green as the favorite color, Ham picks blue. Ham won this one.

Nye is asked how he reconciles evolution with the second law of thermodynamics. It is a fantastic law, he says. Some intro to heat losses and entropy. The answer is that the Earth isn't a closed system. The energy from the Sun drives it. Well, the Earth is really converting high-energy heat quanta to low-energy heat quanta by which it increases the entropy of the radiation, which allows the Earth-bound processes to reduce the entropy. Nye didn't "quite" explain that. Ham repeats his thesis that energy and matter can't create life, just God has a license for that. ;-) Entropy is too much for Ham.

Ham, would you still believe Jesus if the Earth were shown to be old? Ham answers that it's impossible to prove the age of the Earth using the scientific method (to him because he is already stuck, I must add). Nye, is there place for God in science? He talks about believers who still like science or use its results.

Should we take the Bible literally, Ham? Stone those who touch a pig to death, marry several babes. He takes it "naturally" but what it means is arbitrary. God said that multiple women are wrong. Nye complains that Ham has the power to divide the Bible to "real stuff" and "poetry". Has Nye ever believed that evolution was achieved by a higher power? Nye chooses to be an agnostic about a higher power here but the ID is wrong because the complexity increases without a designer as a mediocre model of life is being eaten by the better model. Nature is bottom-up and it fills Nye with joy. Ham claims that there's no function ever created that wasn't there previously, genetically. Bizarre. One first has the genes and the animals with functions is built around the DNA. But all pieces of DNA and corresponding functions were created for the first time; most of the people's organs' genes are not in the genes of primitive bacteria, clearly.

Ham, is creationism used to produce a single useful product? Ham: yes, many (including secular inventors) are borrowing from the Christian view. So the Bible says that God invented the clothes etc. ;-) He enumerates Maxwell etc. who were creationists, too. Ham repeats the names of creationists in science; Nye repeats the "lack of predictive power". They haven't trained enough material. ;-)

Nye is asked how growing IQ is compatible with smart folks in the past. He says the IQ isn't growing, just the fitness. Ham says that there's just survival of the surviving and it is a tautology with no new information. That's an interesting argument but it's completely wrong. The survival of the fittest implies and explains that and why the complexity is increasing.

Most important pillar of his belief. Ham: the Bible, better than any religious text and it has everything (a five-minute summary of the Bible follows). Nye: information and process we call science. It fills him with joy. And we want to know: is the E.T. listening? It drives us.

Warning to the audience: county is under snow emergency now. Too bad that Nye hadn't just talked about global warming in the previous monologue.

The Daily Beast has a thoughtful article saying that Nye has lots and had to lose (but he loves media attention) but I disagree with that. He did a very good job and it had to be too clear that Ham didn't actually have any answers to any real questions. There are surely believers who don't care and who won't change their mind – most people won't. But I think that sufficiently curious and technically skilled listeners regardless of their religion or irreligion were affected – in Nye's direction.

By the way, Nye and Ham continued to debate at Piers Morgan's CNN show. Ham destroyed Morgan's plans for the segment when he revealed that he is a climate alarmist whacko just like Bill Nye and Morgan himself, in contrast with Morgan's expectations. So Ham and Nye essentially differ only in the point that according to Ham, global warming is a punishment for a human who touched a pig; while Bill Nye thinks it's a punishment to a human who exhaled some CO2 after he touched the pig.