Intelligent design/creationism
oracknows | February 26, 2007I'm getting really, really tired of this.
You've all read my rants at the propensity of surgeons who clearly don't have clue one about evolutionary theory spouting off ignorantly about the alleged shortcomings of evolution as a theory while either explicitly or implicitly promoting the pseudoscience of "intelligent design" creationism. I don't think I have to expound much on just how much this phenomenon irritates me other than to repeat my desire to find a more permanent solution to the question of hiding my face in shame over the antics of my fellow surgeons on this. Perhaps it truly is…
tsmith | February 23, 2007Via From Right 2 Left, I see that U of Iowa physics professor. Fred Skiff, will be speaking on intelligent design next week:
At the next "Finding God at Iowa" Lunch Forum, Fred Skiff, University of Iowa professor of physics and astronomy, will speak on the theory of intelligent design. The forum will be held from noon to 1 p.m. March 2, in the Ohio State Room (Room 343) on the third floor of the Iowa Memorial Union.
Skiff will offer "A 'Fireside Chat' on Intelligent Design." He will discuss some of the questions underlying the debate over intelligent design in nature, such as: What are the…
tsmith | February 22, 2007 As I mentioned, I spent the latter part of last week and the weekend in San Francisco at the annual AAAS meeting. Unlike most meetings I attend, this one wasn't a research-heavy meeting, so instead I went to hear more about science education (and of course, how to improve it), as well as to find out the latest in anti-science circles from those on the front lines. My old friend Professor Steve Steve tagged along as well, meeting new friends and old and discussing evolution and challenges to its teaching. Much more after the jump.
Of course, no trip to San Francisco would be complete…
oracknows | February 19, 2007You know, I'm really tired of this.
I'm tired of my fellow physicians with a penchant for spouting scientifically ignorant "attacks" on or "doubts" about evolution. It embarrasses the hell out of me around ScienceBlogs, and I really wish they would stop it. Sadly, it seems to be an increasingly long list. Although I first noticed it when former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (who is a cardiac surgeon) voiced support for "intelligent design" back in 2005, this tendency among my fellow physicians to pontificate on their distaste for evolution didn't start to irritate me really seriously…
oracknows | February 7, 2007I happen to be in Phoenix today, attending the Academic Surgical Congress, where I actually have to present one of my abstracts. That means, between flying to Phoenix last night and preparing for my talk, I didn't have time to serve up a heapin' helping of that Respectful Insolence⢠you know and (hopefully) love. Fortunately, there's still a lot of stuff in the vaults of the old blog begging to be moved over to the new blog; so that's what I'll do today. I'll probably be back tomorrow, given that the conference will likely produce blog fodder. (Conferences usually do.) And, don't worry.…
oracknows | February 5, 2007Amazing!
I had thought that one of my favorite skeptical blogs, Photon in the Darkness, had gone the way of the Dodo. With no posts since last July, I thought Prometheus had given up blogging for good, never to be seen again. Hoping against hope that he'd reappear, I left his RSS feed in NetNewsWire, even as the months ticked by and the application labeled it a "dinosaur," signifying that it hadn't been updated in 60 days.
Amazingly, yesterday, I noticed a new entry. So please, let me be among the first to welcome Prometheus back to the blogosphere. Head on over and say "hi" for me, will ya?
oracknows | February 2, 2007I know, I know, I said last time that I probably wouldn't post on dichloroacetate and the hype some of the more credulous parts of the blogosphere are falling for over its being supposedly a "cancer cure" that big pharma is either willfully ignoring or actively suppressing. However, when DaveScot and the sycophants on Uncommon Descent join in with the "cure for cancer" hype and conspiracy-mongering (with apparently only one voice of reason trying to counter DaveScot's cluelessness), it's really, really hard for me to resist the urge to introduce the mutual admiration society over at UD to a…
oracknows | January 31, 2007There I was, puttering around the Internet trying to procrastinate while writing yet another grant, when I came across a truly inane article by Scott Adams arguing that the entire universe must be intelligent because processes that lead to products of intelligent (machines, books, etc., made by us) must also be intelligent. (At least I think that's what he was arguing; the argument was so poorly constructed and circular that it was hard to tell. No doubt Adams will retreat to his "I was only joking" or "I was only playing with your mind" defense.) I thought of having a little fun with it, but…
tsmith | January 31, 2007I suppose everyone has someone who they consider an embarrassment to their alma mater. I can probably think of a dozen just off the top of my head regarding my undergraduate institution (including a number of politicians who shall remain nameless). However, one who really sticks in my craw is the infamous Jonathan Wells of the Discovery Institute, who also happens to be a Yale alum (Divinity school--small comfort that it wasn't Yale College, at least).
So, Wells has been back polluting Yale lately, via the Opinion pages of the student newspaper, the Yale Daily News. Predictably, Wells…
tsmith | January 3, 2007It's a new year, and it will be a busy one here in Iowa when it comes to evolutionary biology. I want to highlight two upcoming events: Iowa City's first annual Darwin Day celebration featuring a lecture by Massimo Pigliucci, and an upcoming symposium on evolution and intelligent design, featuring John Haught and Wesley Elsberry. These events will be held in February and March, respectively; more information on both of them after the jump.
Event Number One: Iowa City's First Annual Darwin Day Celebration
About: A celebration of science in general and biology specifically, with events…
oracknows | December 5, 2006Apparently my handy-dandy Only Response You'll Ever Need To Choprawoo, written in response to the last volley of Choprawoo to hit the blogosphere, hit a nerve. Chopra sycophant and blog comment spammer extraordinaire "ChopraFan" was none too pleased with it.
Good.
I have to wonder if "ChopraFan" is either Chopra himself or whether he or she just works for Chopra, scanning the blogosphere for negative reactions to Chopra's woo that can be spammed with plugs for the latest installment of still more Choprawoo. Whatever the case, he/she/it led me to The God Delusion? Part 7 (also found here).…
oracknows | December 4, 2006Note: If you're not familiar with the Hitler Zombie, here are two posts to introduce you to the creature, with the most recent installment of his terror here, in which Orac narrowly escaped the creature.
And, now, the adventures (if you can call them that) continue....
PRELUDE: SEVERAL MONTHS AGO
It was a dreary, overcast day, as so many days were there, with the clouds seeming to reach down to engulf everything with a wet chill that went straight to the bone.
An eminent professor sat in his study typing. Gray-haired, bright-eyed, and very professorial in appearance and bearing right down…
tsmith | October 27, 2006Yesterday's Ames Tribune, the paper that originally carried Republican lieutenant governor candidate Bob Vander Plaats' comments supporting the teaching of intelligent design in schools contained an article noting Republican governor candidate Jim Nussle's dismissal of Vander Plaats' position:
Republican candidate for governor Jim Nussle and his running mate, Sioux City businessman Bob Vander Plaats, disagree on whether intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution in Iowa's science classrooms.
***
On Wednesday Nussle broke with his running mate.
"While I believe and I have taught…
tsmith | October 26, 2006I mentioned the situation with Lieutenant Governor candidate Bob Vander Plaats and his support of intelligent design last week (posts here and here). A group of us have put together an editorial discussing Vander Plaats' position and why it matters to Iowa voters (letter and signatories can be found here at the Iowa Citizens for Science site). Yesterday, a columnist for the Des Moines register also wrote up the story, and our response to it:
Town and gown are often mutual strangers when it comes to political involvement. But the Iowa governor's race this year is attracting the involvement…
oracknows | October 17, 2006...check out Ed Brayton's masterful fisking of some truly awful anti-evolution "arguments."
Note especially the way that the two bloggers who run the site, when faced with criticisms of their mangling of facts and attributing "holes" in evolutionary theory that really aren't, simply repeat the same fallacious arguments again and again in the comments and keep calling evolution a "conjecture" that is not supported by facts, even though it is arguably the best-supported theory in the history of science.
It's truly depressing to see such astonishing ignorance coupled with such overweening…
tsmith | October 14, 2006As one commenter at Aetiology pointed out, support for Intelligent design/creationism is included in the Republican Party of Iowa State Platform:
3.4 We support the teaching of alternative theories on the origins of life including Darwinian Evolution, Creation Science or Intelligent Design, and that each should be given equal weight in presentation.
What I don't know is if this is typical of other Republican platforms in other states, or how frequently each candidate uses these points in their own campaign. I've still not heard back either from Nussle or Culver regarding Intelligent Design,…
oracknows | October 14, 2006Here we go again.
The "scientists" at the Discovery Institute seldom miss an opportunity to shoot themselves in the foot by making specious arguments that anyone with a reasonable understanding of evolution can shoot down. It doesn't take an evolutionary biologist to thoroughly dismantle most of the "scholarship" that flows from the DI (which is indeed fortunate for me, given that I am not an evolutionary biologist). Leave it to the North Koreans, with their recent apparently successful test of a nuclear explosive device, to give the intrepid Don Quixotes over in Seattle the excuse to tilt at…
tsmith | September 29, 2006Via Dean and Science, Just Science comes this story about a new group trying to get ID into class in the UK:
Parents are being encouraged to challenge their children's science teachers over what they are explaining as the origins of life.
An organisation called Truth in Science has also sent resource packs to all UK secondary school science departments.
It promotes the idea of intelligent design - that there was an intelligence behind the creation of the universe.
On their website, Truth in Science notes that they've already sent " a mailing to all Secondary School and College Heads of…
tsmith | September 20, 2006 The seventh chapter of Wells' book could be summed up in a single sentence: "biology doesn't need no steeekin' evolution!" Wells argues that, because medicine and agriculture were already doing just fine prior to Darwin's publication of Origin, clearly then, these fields (and others) haven't benefited from an application of evolutionary principles in the time from 1859 to present day, and that Dobzhansky's "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution" is one big joke.
Wells focuses on medicine and agriculture because these are two fields that we all benefit from, and…
oracknows | September 14, 2006I never knew that puppies liked logic and critical thinking. I always thought that they liked running, playing, eating, sleeping, and being petted. But, according to Janet Stemwedel, there is at least one puppy who is a budding skeptic, and bad reasoning and gullibility make him sad. She explains in the introduction to the 43rd Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle:
Welcome to the meeting of the 43rd Skeptics' Circle! Good logic and critical thinking never hurt anyone, but bad logic, gullibility, and uncritical acceptance of questionable claims causes distress to small, furry animals. I'm not…