Shallit Responds to Dembski

Jeff Shallit has issued a response on Panda's Thumb to accusations made (in lieu of a response) by William Dembski to his criticisms of Dembski's work. Dembski's response to the criticism of Shallit and Wes Elsberry is pretty standard stuff for him. Those of us who have followed his work and the responses of scholars have grown accustomed to his modus operandi when responding to criticism. In particular, he has three tendencies:

A. Claim that the critique only deals with some minor component and doesn't really have anything to do with the validity of his claims (in this case, he makes that claim and is completely wrong; Shallit's criticism cuts to the very core of Dembski's two most central ideas in this debate, Complex Specified Information (CSI) and his "Law of Conservation of Information.")

B. Claim that the person doing the critique is just trying to make a name for themselves by "parasitizing" his work. There is stunning arrogance in this claim, which he has made more than once. In his mind, he is so famous and such a prominent scholar that anyone who dares to criticize his ideas must be seeking only to bathe in his reflected glory. It's particularly amusing when he aims that criticism at Jeff Shallit, who has a far more significant track record of scholarship in his field than Dembski does.

C. Accuse them of attacking old things he's written that are now out of date - and never mind that he has never retracted anything found in them, or mentioned that he no longers stands behind them, or most importantly the fact that he keeps using those same papers in new projects despite being so horribly out of date. He did this to my friend Rob Pennock, who published one of Dembski's essays in a book he edited, along with criticism of that essay. Dembski literally threw a fit about it and started threatening lawsuits and one of his arguments was that they had used a paper that was three years old. But in fact, Dembski himself had just used that exact same paper almost word for word as a chapter in a book he had published.

D. Dissemble, dissemble, dissemble.

Shallit does a terrific job of dismantling Dembski's response here and showing that Dembski's arguments are merely an attempt to avoid actually answering his criticism. While you're at it, you can read this complete takedown of recent claims by Jonathan Wells by Ian Musgrave.