Why then is it that modern Protestant evangelicals appear to struggle with accepting science today? Why does this struggle emerge especially around biology, particularly evolution? And why have many evangelicals turned to approaches like “Intelligent Design,” which instead of replacing science with religion, instead seeks to co-opt science within terms acceptable to Protestant evangelicalism?

These are the questions I was considering today while discussing sociology and science, and considering how the nature of certain kinds of evidence and theory influences its acceptance and utility by different social groups. (For more, see, e.g., Religion and Science: Beyond the Epistemological Conflict Narrative, by John Evans and Michael Evans.)

Let’s consider Protestant fundamentalists, who generally consider the Bible literally true (despite problems of translation, changes in fundamentalist interpretations over time, and other difficulties). This is the group, one would expect, who might well have the most objections to science, and indeed when it comes to geological sciences and evolution, they do.

But interestingly, most Christian fundamentalists see no conflict with other kinds of science (chemistry, for example), and are typically  —  despite what one might extrapolate from Young Earth Creationists or geo-centrists, for example  —  quite happy to accept many forms of modern science and technology.

Evangelicals  —  who take the Bible less literally than the fundamentalists, but otherwise share many values  —  have even fewer quibbles with mainstream science, but do tend still to object specifically to the concept of Darwinian evolution. They object so strongly, and yet otherwise consider science so important, that they have struggled to create and teach their own theory of “Intelligent Design” to account for the empirical data scientists have accumulated.

But why is it evolution, and not heliocentrism or photosynthesis, both of which draw from scientific theories which organize and explain empirical data, which has attracted such vehement opposition from evangelicals and fundamentalists?

First, I think evolution, and especially the apparent “randomness” of mutations that leads to change (even if natural selection itself is far from random), generates a kind of anti-materialist repugnance that sees in it a threat to the moral order. If our existence owes as much to chance as anything else, does this not threaten the role of the divine in our lives and, perhaps more importantly, does this not threaten or status as the elite of the world? If we as humans came to exist in the same manner as every animal on Earth, what right do we have to claim an immortal soul?

Second, Protestantism comes from a tradition that values evidence and observation, but looks suspiciously at over-abstract concepts and trust in elites. Thus, evangelicals are wary of science that relies on abstractions, but are fine with science that is strongly connected with observable events. We can see and experience a chemical reaction, but we cannot see or directly experience macro-evolution over millennia.

So why is evolution a target? It is abstract. It is difficult to observe directly, and thus seem to require trusting in scientific elites. (Both of these have historically been issues for Protestantism generally.) It is threat to the established order of things. It feels wrong.

In short, it is less about the truth of the matter than it is about values.

Does this same kind of analysis apply to conservative resistance to climate change research? How many of those who do not believe that the Earth’s climate is being impacted by human activity are evangelical or fundamentalist Protestants? I’m not sure of the answers to these two questions, but I am curious.

In colonial America, quarantine was a state-sponsored restriction on individual liberty in the name of public health, and was accepted by the public. Early inoculation, on the other hand, was done by individuals, and was immediately resisted by the public.

In the seventeenth century, colonists in America, despite “strong religious beliefs about pestilence-as-divine-punishment,” readily made the connection between arriving ships and outbreaks of smallpox. Their populations, unlike urban centers in Europe where outbreaks appeared random, were not sufficient to sustain smallpox as an endemic virus. Thus, outbreaks tended to occur with the arrival of ships, and could not be blamed on “unsanitary neighbors,” as in Europe.

The earliest step taken by European settlers in North America, then, was the quarantine of arriving ships. Some extended this approach beyond maritime quarantines to include isolation of victims to prevent the spread of the disease, including early legislative attempts in the colony of Virginia in the 1660s.Charleston, South Carolina mandated the isolation of smallpox victims at home as of 1738. Boston and New York City both established quarantine stations as of 1717 and 1755, respectively.

In 1721, Reverend Cotton Mather and Dr. Zabdiel Boylston introduced inoculation in the fight against smallpox for the first time, a move that “provoked a violent controversy.” Inoculation brought forth stronger claims of personal autonomy and liberty than quarantine had, likely because they involved purposefully infecting an unexposed person with a potentially deadly disease, as opposed to the maintenance of a kind of status quo as with quarantine. Inoculation was viewed by some, especially by Puritan New Englanders in the early eighteenth century, as “interfering with the will of Divine Providence“ in a way that quarantine did not. Smallpox and other diseases were God’s “mechanisms for controlling the balance between the blessed and the damned” and served “as natural controls over the size and extent of the poorer populations.” According to James Hodge and Lawrence Gostin, “[t]his Malthusian analysis was one of the most widely quoted theories of the early antivaccinationists.” This view survived well into the twentieth century.

Reactions in 1721 were violent. In the midst of Boston’s smallpox outbreak, Mather and Boylston began inoculating patients, beginning with Boylston’s son. They were roundly condemned: “Physicians, ministers, and citizens were outraged and horrified that Boylston had deliberately infected someone with smallpox.” Both received death threats, and Mather’s house was attacked with a homemade grenade.

Many opponents of immunization were especially concerned with the potential danger of actively spreading smallpox to a community through the means of inoculation, a very real possibility when dealing with a live smallpox virus (instead of Jenner’s much safer vaccinations with cowpox virus). From a religious perspective, this kind of interference broke the “covenant between the community as a whole and God.” With inoculation in play, “no longer could the people be told convincingly that their suffering resulted from their sins, or that repentance was the only road to salvation.” From a medical perspective, intentional infection with smallpox could be seen as contradictory to the Hippocratic oath and general tenants of medical ethics.

Early approaches to mandatory public health measures lacked the concept of a legally-articulated “exemption” from the policy for individuals. Any exemption or exception was applied in an ad-hoc manner, even as many public health interventions were, in fact, ad-hoc responses to circumstances. Mather and Boylston, for example, acted as individuals, not as public health officials, and their inoculations were neither systematic nor comprehensive. Quarantine, on the other hand, was state-sponsored. It would be applied to incoming ships if smallpox was suspected, but there was no articulated provision for allowing any particular to leave quarantine early. The concept was to protect the public as a whole, not to preserve individual liberties.

You can read my working paper, “Lessons from Smallpox Vaccination,” in its entirety on SSRN.

It may seem unfair that much of the fruit of the compiler’s labor may be used by others without compensation. As Justice Brennan has correctly observed, however, this is not “some unforeseen byproduct of a statutory scheme.” … It is, rather, “the essence of copyright,” … and a constitutional requirement. The primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors, but “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.”

from Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone, 499 U.S. 340 (1991).

The history of copyright is complex, but in my research to the disputes before and after the Statute of Anne (also known as the “Act”) passed the British Parliament in 1710, copyright  —  when it finally existed  —  was not “theft,” but “infringement” of one sort or another, at least under the law. Still, there were arguments then on this that were quite similar to the ones we have today, and claims of “piracy” of intellectual property have a long history.

Before the Act (but after the invention of movable type), printers were granted exclusive  —  and often effectively perpetual  —  monopoly rights in England to control reprinting and copying of books. (There were no such laws that applied in the United States until much later. America was the source of many illicit, although not illegal, reprints of British works.)

The Act changed this, and put rights in the hands of authors for the first time (although printers could purchase the rights from them), but only for a limited duration.

Printers nonetheless tried to argue for a perpetual copyright, saying that common-law precedents from before the Act should take over once author’s rights expired. Instead of falling into the public domain, the rights should go to the printers.

While this was based on English common law, it was also grounded in an idea that so-called “natural law” put creations of the mind on the same footing as tangible or real property, and thus that ownership should be perpetual. Much of this drew from theories like those of English philosopher John Locke that “sweat of the brow” created property rights. That is, by investing effort  —  farming, hunting, manufacturing  —  an individual thereby gained ownership rights. This is the same philosophical strand that still emerges today in very similar arguments, but that has been firmly rejected under U.S. law.

In England, the House of Lords rejected this argument in Donaldson v. Beckett, 1 Eng. Rep. 837 (1774), holding that the Act extinguished even the possibility of such a perpetual copyright (if it had even ever existed, which is still debated). The U.S. Supreme Court held similarly in its first copyright case, Wheaton v. Peters, 33 U.S. 591 (1834), and has continued to do so.

The goal of copyright is not to reward creators for their efforts. Copyright does not come into being because authors labor over their novels. Instead, the point is to create an incentive to create, while leaving open the eventual public benefit:

The law was meant to provide an incentive to authors, artists, and scientists to create original works by providing creators with a monopoly. At the same time, the monopoly was limited in order to stimulate creativity and the advancement of “science and the useful arts” through wide public access to works in the “public domain.”

via A History of Copyright in the United States from the Association of Research Libraries.

Although there is ongoing disagreement still if this is the way copyright should function, nonetheless under the law as it now stands, investing effort into a creation does not create a property right akin to the rights in tangible objects. However natural and fair it may seem, rewarding effort alone is neither the goal nor the basis of copyright law.

Reflecting on Avvo‘s Internet marketing conference for lawyers, Kevin O’Keefe of LexBlog writes:

I started on the Internet at AOL. I answered people’s injury, medical malpractice, and worker’s comp questions. The more questions I answered, the more work our firm got and the more successful we became. The more I listened to others and the more engaged I became, the more I enjoyed myself and the more people who contacted me to help them.

I discovered that Internet marketing was not all about me. It was about what I, as a lawyer, could do to help other people. Rather than buying cheesy yellow page ads and running expensive TV ads, I could get good legal work by helping people.

via For lawyers is the world really all about Google rankings? : Real Lawyers Have Blogs.

The lesson that good connections with people  —  arising from providing good quality content on a blog, helpful commentary in forums, useful information and replies on Twitter, to name just three examples  —  is the core of effective marketing is often lost.

You might call this “un-marketing” or “non-marketing” to distinguish it from frantic SEO, blaring billboards, or extravagant banner ad purchases. It’s deceptively simple: go out and help people, and clients will find you.

Taking this kind of approach does not mean foregoing an online presence. How can you put yourself out there and be helpful if you don’t join Twitter, don’t blog, and don’t contribute to forums? And once you start seeking out people to help, how can they and others find you later if you aren’t on LinkedIn or don’t have your own Web site?

Whatever you call it, the core message is to be helpful and do good, and the clients and customers will seek you out in return.

As a do-gooder, SEO, ad buys, and similar strategies should be done to be helpful. That is, such strategies should make it easier for people to find you, and for you to be helpful in return. They are secondary strategies, not primary ones.

For a do-gooder, primary strategies involve getting out there and providing utility to others: answering questions, being a resource, advocating positions you believe in, sharing your experiences and knowledge.

Doing good and being helpful isn’t a new marketing strategy. It’s just an old way of showing the world your worth, updated for new mediums. It takes Google’s “don’t be evil” and goes one better: go do good, and the clients will come (just don’t forget to make it easy for them!). It takes “add value” and takes it further: go be helpful!

Has this kind approach worked for you? Have better ideas? Think it’s crazy? Let me know in the comments.

I don’t believe there are any bad intentions at work, but I do think it’s not always clear to people what their obligations are when using Creative Commons licensed images in their blog. (My focus is on the attribution aspect of the licenses, not those pertaining to commercial use, sharing, etc. I am also relying on version 3.0 of the license, but this discussion should be applicable to all the versions.)

So how can we do better?

We can do better by making sure the images we use are properly licensed. For Creative Commons licensed images, this means putting in proper attribution that meets the standards of the license. I plan to do this going forward, and I also plan to spend time going back over images in my old posts to make sure they meet licensing requirements as well.

The Key Provisions in the Creative Commons Licenses

There are two key provisions of all the Creative Commons licenses that are critical for proper use of images in a blog. First, section 4(a) requires that a copy of the license or a link to the license be included with the work. Second, section 4(b) requires that you provide the name of the owner (or who they designate), the title of the image, and a link to the work (but make sure you don’t suggest they are endorsing you).

So What Does this Mean for Bloggers?

As a blogger you should provide the following information along with the image you are using in your article:

• the name (or screen name) of the creator (or who they designate);
• the title of the image, if there is one;
• the specific Creative Commons license and version under which the image is licensed;
• alternatively, if the creator of the work requests you attribute it in a specific way, you should do as they ask.

Ideally, you should link as many of these items to either the original source, or to their canonical location online. While section 4(b) implies that you must provide the URI of the CC license, in practical terms naming the license should be enough (the Creative Commons FAQ says, “it is nice if the license citation links to the license on the CC website”). This is, I think, especially true if you link to the location where the image originates and where the original copyright and license terms are explained (for example, linking to the Flickr page for a CC licensed photo stored on Flickr  —  actually, this is mandatory for Flickr images if the image is hosted by Flickr).

In practical terms, I think the following example is the kind of attribution that is appropriate under the license:  ”Agatha on the porch” by Flickr user Kristopher Nelson, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 license. This citation includes (1) the title of the picture, (2) where it comes from, (3) who created it, and (4) what license applies.

Captions with WordPress

In WordPress, you can put this information in as a caption in the popup image add/modify box.

Because the WordPress caption is styled with CSS (via the “wp-caption” class that WordPress puts in), you may make it appear in a variety of creative ways. You can even “filter” the code produced by WordPress if you want the HTML to appear differently.

Captions with HTML & CSS

If you do not use WordPress, you could use HTML and CSS similar to the following (courtesy of the W3C site):

[sourcecode language="html"]
<div class=”figure”>
<p><img src=”eiffel.jpg” width=”136″ height=”200″ alt=”Eiffel tower”></p>
<p>Scale model of the Eiffel tower in Parc Mini-France</p>
</div>
[/sourcecode]

And some CSS:

[sourcecode language="css"]
div.figure {
float: right;
width: 25%;
border: thin silver solid;
margin: 0.5em;
padding: 0.5em;
}
div.figure p {
text-align: center;
font-style: italic;
font-size: smaller;
text-indent: 0;
}
[/sourcecode]

(For more about this, including additional discussion and examples, see Figures & Captions at the W3C site.)

Rollover Image Captions with jQuery

Another approach would be to use jQuery and a plugin such as jCaption or Captify, which will automatically generate sophisticated rollover captions. These look very nice and keep your site design clean, while providing all the required information.

Using the Title Attribute of the Image Tag

If you choose, you may instead put all the information into the title attribute of the <img> tag, along with linking the image to the source page, like this:

[sourcecode lang="html"]
<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/krisnelson/4213915751/”><img title=”&quot;Agatha on the porch&quot; by Flickr user Kristopher Nelson, used under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 license.” src=”http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2677/4213915751_050a74b704_s.jpg” /></a>
[/sourcecode]

Like jQuery-based approaches, this has the benefit of making the information fully available (although you cannot insert links, so make sure the image itself links to the source page). It also keeps your page design uncluttered. It doesn’t look as nice as the rollover approach, but it is simple to implement on any site.

Use Zemanta

Zemanta allows you to easily select and insert images into your posts (along with related links and more). It takes care of adding appropriate captions and links so you don’t have to. It’s image selection is good, but I like to pick my own images generally, and to style them my way. Nonetheless, it’s an excellent tool that I recommend highly.

Or Just Put it at the End

Finally, you could also add a simple attributional note to the bottom of your posts. This is a straightforward and easy approach, allows complete information and full links.

Conclusions

Creative Commons licensed images are a wonderful resource for bloggers. Use of such images is free and easy  —  provided you follow a few requirements that primarily serve to acknowledge the creator of the work. If you, like me, didn’t always do the best job of this, take some time to go back over your posts and make sure everything is in order. And remember, whether you use CC licensed images, pay for stock photos, use your own, or rely on the public domain, photographers and authors will always like to hear from you if you like their work, so let them know.

So just remember to check to make sure the images you want to use are licensed properly, and that you’re meeting the terms of the license, and enjoy!

More Resources

• Five sources of free images for your blog
• How do I properly attribute a Creative Commons licensed work? – from Creative Commons
• Best Practices for Creative Commons attributions – how to attribute works you reuse under a Creative Commons license
• Creative Commons Search – easily find CC licensed images

The cloud consists of data and services that live on someone else’s servers. Although the term itself is new(ish), the basic idea is embodied by traditional legal research services like LexisNexis and Westlaw  —  data lives on someone else’s servers, not your own. Thus, someone else controls the data, not you. And someone else can delete or modify the data, and you’d never know…

It’s one thing to have to contend with Supreme Courts, like California, that have the power to “depublish” an opinion that helps your case and making it worthless as far as precedent is concerned. But to my knowledge, those cases are still on the books, and binding on the parties to the litigation that created the opinion. It’s an entirely different problem when a court can ask a publisher to take down an opinion previously published, and the publisher does it. In fact, the publisher has apparently been doing it for years. Maybe you knew about it, but I didn’t.

via Dear Publisher, Please Stop Deleting Case Law | Jason Wilson | Law Publishers.

This is the sort of thing that has always given librarians heart attacks  —  to the extent that one librarian I knew years ago attempted to print out every Web site she ever accessed and stored them in file cabinets. A bit extreme? Yes, but the point was that she could control it once it was in print: the data couldn’t disappear, change, etc.

I don’t have the solution to this conundrum  —  cloud services make too much sense to fight  —  but the downsides are expensive, too. What to do, what to do?

Image via Wikipedia

Looking for alternatives to expensive legal research through Westlaw and LexisNexis? Here’s a non-exhaustive list of ten alternative sources for legal research (aimed primarily at lawyers and law students) that are useful – and much cheaper:

1. Quimbee – a case brief database.

2. PreCYdent – an “open law source” and legal opinion search.

3. SSRN – an ideal source for cutting-edge legal scholarship (and a repository of older articles too).

4. AltLaw – free access to federal case law, but not as up-to-date as other sources.

5. FindLaw – free access to case law, provided by Westlaw‘s owner.

6. LexisONE – Lexis’ answer to West’s FindLaw: the last ten years of state and federal court opinions, and U.S. Supreme Court opinions from 1781 to present, all free.

7. VersusLaw – inexpensive subscription alternative to LexisNexis and Westlaw (federal and state appellate case law).

8. Fastcase – subscription-based online case law research service, providing access to law, court cases, statutes, and regulations, at reason.

9. CALI – The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction provides free online training in most law school subjects.

10. Your local law library – paper and electronic resources, plus librarians who can help:

• Find a law library in California
• Counties often have public law libraries
• Many law schools have law libraries open to the public

For help with conducting legal research, ask a law librarian or consult the Gallagher Law Library’s legal research guide. If you are not a lawyer but still need to do legal research, you might also find it useful to read How to Research a Legal Problem: A Guide for Non-Lawyers.

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Minneapolis News – Westlaw rises to legal publishing fame by selling free information:

West makes its money by selling free, public information – specifically, court documents – to lawyers. On this simple model, the company raked in $3.5 billion in revenue last year, placing it on a par, sales-wise, with retail giant Abercrombie and Fitch.

The article goes on to discuss interesting ideas for businesses operating in today’s economy: “find a niche with growth potential,” “organize information to make it useful,” “the Internet is a distribution model – not a product,” “turn words into math, “separate the signal from the noise,” “computers can’t do everything,” “treat content like patented material,” “print’s not dead, it just needs online help.”

An absolutely key point that I think the article makes through its examples and discussions is exactly the opposite of the idea that “West makes its money by selling free, public information.” When one looks at the business model more closely, that is exactly what West no longer does. (Except to lawyers who have yet to adapt, I suppose.) Instead, what it really sells is the organization, signal-vs.-noise separation, and the “online help” of human editors who add value to the “free, public information” that is the foundation of West’s business.

Much as I love them, many other resources providing open access to legal materials facilitate that foundational access, but do not yet add the extra layer of value that is why people pay West and Lexis so much money. (Sometimes that extra value is not necessary, of course, so frugal lawyers should always consider when it’s worth paying for otherwise available materials.)

But, really, this is a strong, pro-business public-policy argument in favor of facilitating dissemination of foundational data and information: it makes it possible to create new business models based on adding value to that information. Google does this, although it frequently has to fight in various ways to keep its access to that information, as we have seen recently as newspapers – who perhaps are currently in the business of providing foundational information – have tried to limit Google’s ability to add value. Without the foundational data (like news, but also including all the other data out there via the Web), how can Google add any value?

Imagine how much less innovation we would have seen if linking constituted copyright infringement, and if “fair use” was eliminated – Google and all the value it adds would likely not exist. Whether or not copyright ought to exist in its current form, I think there are strong, pro-business reasons for allowing exceptions to its monopoly reach, and this article highlights that quite effectively through its examples.

In short, I say: (1) as a business, add value to survive and expand, (2) good public policy encourages innovating through new means of adding value, (3) similarly, good public policy makes foundational information (like legal decisions) widely accessible (either proactively or by allowing exceptions to copyright monopolies).

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