Intelligent Design
jlynch | January 30, 2008Apparently there are some questions you just can’t ask. The cdesign proponentsists maintain that the truth is being stifled by their not being allowed ask "difficult" questions of evolutionary biology. Yet we need to remember that supporters of intelligent design have questions that they avoid, often by censorship of the kind they accuse mainstream science. Witness DaveScot over at Uncommon Descent:
Permutations of the question "Who designed the designer?" are trite, easily addressed, and if you read the moderation rules you’ll find that comments using this and other trite arguments are…
esiegel | January 24, 2008Evolution, creationism, and intelligent design are words that many people have extremely strong opinions about. Regardless of how you feel about why the laws of nature are what they are, which have evidently allowed us to exist, the evidence for the validity of the theory of evolution with one major mechanism being natural selection is absolutely overwhelming. That said, this is often very hard to communicate to people, especially those with strong biases against what they perceive as the implications of evolution, how evolution works, and why the case for it is so compelling.
Thankfully,…
jlynch | January 23, 2008Over at The Questionable Authority, Mike re-iterates something I've been saying for years about the DI's "Dissent from Darwinism" signatories, 700 individuals who the DI's flacks claim "have signed the list because it is their professional opinion that the evidence is lacking for the claims for the ability of random mutations and natural selection to account for the complexity of life.":
What basis does Douglas Keil, who is listed as having a PhD in "Plasma Physics" have for forming a professional opinion on evolutionary biology? How about Jeanne Drisko, "Clinical Assistant Professor of…
jlynch | January 13, 2008Elliot Sober has a new book coming out this year, Evidence and Evolution; The Logic Behind the Science. The book is divided into four sections: The Concept of Evidence, Intelligent Design, Natural Selection, and Common Ancestry. Below are the contents of the section on ID:
Darwin and intelligent design
Design arguments and the birth of probability theory
William Paley: The stone, the watch, and the eye
From probabilities to likelihoods
Epicureanism and Darwin’s theory
Three reactions to Paley’s design argument
The no-designer-worth-his-salt objection to the hypothesis of intelligent…
jlynch | January 10, 2008Cornelius Hunter expectorates:
In the life sciences one’s alternatives are to be a Darwinist or to be a Darwinist. Passing grades, letters of recommendation, graduate school admission, doctorate exams, faculty hiring, and tenure promotion all require adherence to the theory of evolution. The lists are long of otherwise qualified candidates who could not take that next career step because they did not conform to the Darwinian paradigm.
Long lists? Evidence please!
Hunter is not a Darwinist. Was he denied his PhD in biophysics?
Meyer, Wells, Behe, Marcus Ross, Kurt Wise? The signatories of the…
jlynch | January 9, 2008Over at the Pandas Thumb, "ThisIsPerfection" accuses me of using an argument from authority when I posted the composition of the 300 signatories of the DI’s "Dissent from Darwinism" list. I beg to differ. It is the DI itself that is engaging in such an argument. Witness:
More than 700 Ph.D. scientists have adopted a statement expressing skepticism of the core mechanism of modern Darwinian theory and urging a careful examination of the evidence (dissentfromdarwin.org). Those scientists include members of the national academy of sciences in several countries, as well as professors at Princeton…
jlynch | January 7, 2008Most readers are probably aware of the Discovery Institute’s "Dissent from Darwinism" statement which now has 700 signatories willing to claim
"We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged."
I have noted in the past that this statement does not, of course, imply that the signatories deny evolution and common descent and that it is almost certain that "random mutation and natural selection" cannot account for all aspects of the diversity…
jlynch | December 16, 2007Twelve months ago I offered a roundup of the "advances" made by the intelligent design movement in 2006, a month-by-month roundup which differed significantly from the assessment of John West. I had started to do the same for this year, but quickly realized that the ID movement achieved absolutely nothing over the past twelve months. They had achieved so little, I was actually not posting much on the subject. Seriously. Sure, I discussed West getting destroyed in public by historian Mark Borrello, and Frank Beckwith quitting the DI, but by and large the year was filled with ... nothing. The…
jlynch | December 15, 2007Births
1776 - Johann Wilhelm Ritter, German physicist
1882 - Walther Meissner, German physicist
1901 - Margaret Mead, American anthropologist
Deaths
1687 - William Petty, English scientist and philosopher
jlynch | December 14, 2007A couple of weeks back I noted I noted historian Mark Borrello’s engagement with John West regarding West’s particular spin on the history of eugenics. Now Mark has commented publicly.
Though I repeatedly e-mailed the coordinator of the event and he assured me that he was working hard to get a response from West, the material did not arrive until three days before the talk. Had this been the result of working down to the wire I would’ve understood. Instead, the file I received was a two-year old pdf entitled "Darwin’s Public Policy: Eugenics, Democracy, and the Dangers of Scientific…
goodmath | December 10, 2007 Astute readers will remember a couple of encounters I had with Sal Cordova from Uncommon Descent a few months ago (here, in the comments, and here). Not too long after that, Sal made a fairly big deal about the fact that he was returning to grad school, and had to stop blogging at UD because the dastardly darwinists would damage his academic prospects if he continued. He played the standard creationist-martyr role, poor guy, persecuted by
all the horrible non-believers. Naturally, it didn't last long. He's got his own blog now, called "Young Cosmos", where he writes his usually pathetic…
jlynch | December 7, 2007John Stockwell (among others) has suggested that there needs to be a baseline with which to compare Behe’s productivity as a scientist. Stockwell suggested Sean B. Carroll and, as always, I’m happy to oblige. (FYI, I’ve omitted Carroll’s review articles.)
Couple of things are of note here. Firstly, and most obviously, Carroll’s publication record makes (Full professor) Behe look like a piker, especially when you consider that Carroll’s papers appear in journals such as Nature, Science, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Secondly, we see the predicted shift from first-author…
jlynch | December 6, 2007Over at this thread, a reader asked for Behe’s publication record in a similar format to Gonzalez’s. Glad to oblige. (As always, click for a big ’un).
Note how his productivity drops off hugely once he gets publicly involved with ID in 1991. Much like Gonzalez, Behe’s most productive period occurs just before he embraces design and from then on, its all downhill.
Update: Readers might want to contrast Behe's record with that of Sean B. Carroll.
tqa | December 6, 2007
With all of the renewed fuss the Discovery Institute is trying to stir up over the Gonzalez tenure thing, this seems like a really good time to talk about the role of money in the tenure process. I'm not going to do this because the money issue is one that the Discovery folks are frantically trying to distract attention from (they are) or because Gonzalez's inability to land external funds means that he'd be a very weak candidate for tenure even if he wasn't involved in ID (it does). I'm going to look at the role of money in the process because it's hugely important, for more reasons than…
jlynch | December 6, 2007DI "policy analyst" Logan Gage tells us:
Michael Behe does biochemical research with his University of Pennsylvania Ph.D.; Jonathan Wells does biological research with his U.C. Berkeley Ph.D.; Stephen Meyer researches the history and philosophy of science with his Cambridge University Ph.D.; etc.
Not quite. Behe stopped being a productive scientist a long time ago. Wells has published a total of three peer-reviewed papers in the thirteen years since he got his PhD, the last of which in the scientific equivalent of The Onion. Meyer - to the best of my knowledge - has never published a peer-…
jlynch | December 6, 2007
If only to prove I have too much time on my hands as the semester winds to a close ... here is Michael Behe’s peer-reviewed scientific output over time (again, click for biggie). Remember, friends don’t let friends who were productive scientists become ID "theorists."
jlynch | December 6, 2007Over at Neurotopia the peer-less Evil Monkey has posted an excellent entry on Guillermo Gonzalez and how his productivity as a published scientist dropped off significantly when he began his tenure track at Iowa State and how - based on this alone - he would have probably had a rough time getting tenure.
EM provided a graph to back up his points; below is a prettified version (click for biggie). Feel free to use in any posts you might make on this issue.
The total height of any bar is the number of peer-reviewed publications Gonzalez had in a given year. Red indicates those for which he was…
jlynch | December 5, 2007In the past I have discussed Jonathan Wells’ paper "Do Centrioles Generate a Polar Ejection Force?", the journal in which it appeared (Revista di Biologia), and its editor, Giuseppe Sermonti. Steve Matheson over at Quintessence of Dust has seen fit to comment extensively on the paper and how it has fared in the years since publication. Wander over and have a read.
(Hat tip to Glenn Branch)
tqa | December 3, 2007
The Discovery Institute is currently making hay (again) over Iowa State's decision to deny tenure to Discovery Institute Fellow Guillermo Gonzalez. They've held a press conference and issued a press release claiming to have proof that Intelligent Design was "the" issue that resulted in Gonzalez not receiving tenure. I've read the release, and I'm unconvinced.
For starters, their release relies heavily on fragmentary quotes taken from emails that they obtained through an open records inquiry. Given the notorious track record of the entire anti-evolution movement when it comes to quoting…
jlynch | November 30, 2007Mark Borrello is a good mate of mine and an historian of biology. Greg Laden has an account of Mark publicly handing John West his ass regarding his expectorations re Darwin and eugenics.
PZ was there as well. Apparently West called him "America's Richard Dawkins"!
Nice job, Mark! It will be interesting tedious to see how the DI will spin this.
Update (12/1): And here comes the spin.
Update (12/2): And PZ responds.