Writeup on Eric Rothschild in the Pennsylvania Gazette

By Nick Matzke on March 6, 2006 2:07 PM | 98 Comments

A nice long writeup on Eric Rothschild, one of the lead attorneys for the Plaintiffs in the Kitzmiller case, has just come out in the Pennsylvania Gazette, the UPenn alumni magazine. The cover article is entitled “Intelligent Demise” and focuses on Rothschild’s dissection of ID arguments during the trial. Rothschild seems to come off slightly better than fellow UPenn alum Michael Behe…

A second article examines the role a UPenn commission played in debunking spiritualism in the 19th century.

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98 Comments

GvlGeologist, FCD | March 6, 2006 2:51 PM | Edit

As a Penn grad, I’m proud of Mr. Rothschild - and embarrassed by Dr. Behe.

Dizzy | March 6, 2006 3:48 PM | Edit

Nice and interesting article there…

Btw, you can find links to most or all of the Dover transcripts here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmi[…]al_documents

Rothschild’s cross-examination of Behe starts here and the amusing part re: evolution of the immune system is here.

I don’t think the transcripts really highlight the “drama” of the actual cross-exam with a huge heap of books in Behe’s lap, but some excerpts (emphases all mine):

Q. We’ll get back to that. Now, these articles rebut your assertion that scientific literature has no answers on the origin of the vertebrate immune system?

A. No, they certainly do not. My answer, or my argument is that the literature has no detailed rigorous explanations for how complex biochemical systems could arise by a random mutation and natural selection and these articles do not address that.

Q. So these are not good enough?

A. They’re wonderful articles. They’re very interesting. They simply just don’t address the question that I pose.

Q. And these are not the only articles on the evolution of vertebrate immune system?

A. There are many articles.

Q. May I approach?

THE COURT: You may.

Q. Professor Behe, what I have given you has been marked Plaintiff’s Exhibit 743. It actually has a title, “Behe immune system articles,” but I think we can agree you didn’t write these?

A. I’ll have to look through. No, I did not.

Q. And there are fifty-eight articles in here on the evolution of the immune system?

A. Yes. That’s what it seems to say.

…

Q. And I’m correct when I asked you, you would need to see a step-by-step description of how the immune system, vertebrate immune system developed?

A. Not only would I need a step-by-step, mutation by mutation analysis, I would also want to see relevant information such as what is the population size of the organism in which these mutations are occurring, what is the selective value for the mutation, are there any detrimental effects of the mutation, and many other such questions.

Q. And you haven’t undertaken to try and figure out those?

A. I am not confident that the immune system arose through Darwinian processes, and so I do not think that such a study would be fruitful.

Q. It would be a waste of time?

A. It would not be fruitful.

…

Q. I’m going to read some titles here. We have Evolution of Immune Reactions by Sima and Vetvicka, are you familiar with that?

A. No, I’m not.

Q. Origin and Evolution of the Vertebrate Immune System, by Pasquier. Evolution and Vertebrate Immunity, by Kelso. The Primordial Vrm System and the Evolution of Vertebrate Immunity, by Stewart. The Phylogenesis of Immune Functions, by Warr. The Evolutionary Mechanisms of Defense Reactions, by Vetvicka. Immunity and Evolution, Marchalonias. Immunology of Animals, by Vetvicka. You need some room here. Can you confirm these are books about the evolution of the immune system?

A. Most of them have evolution or related words in the title, so I can confirm that, but what I strongly doubt is that any of these address the question in a rigorous detailed fashion of how the immune system or irreducibly complex components of it could have arisen by random mutation and natural selection.

…

Q. I’m just going to read these titles, it sounds like you don’t even need to look at them?

A. Please do go ahead and read them.

Q. You’ve got Immune System Accessory Cells, Fornusek and Vetvicka, and that’s got a chapter called “Evolution of Immune Sensory Functions.” You’ve got a book called The Natural History of the Major Histocompatability Complex, that’s part of the immune system, correct?

A. Yes.

Q. And here we’ve got chapter called “Evolution.” Then we’ve got Fundamental Immunology, a chapter on the evolution of the immune system. A lot of writing, huh?

A. Well, these books do seem to have the titles that you said, and I’m sure they have the chapters in them that you mentioned as well, but again I am quite skeptical, although I haven’t read them, that in fact they present detailed rigorous models for the evolution of the immune system by random mutation and natural selection.

Q. You haven’t read those chapters?

A. No, I haven’t.

Q. You haven’t read the books that I gave you?

A. No, I haven’t. I have read those papers that I presented though yesterday on the immune system.

Q. And the fifty-eight articles, some yes, some no?

A. Well, the nice thing about science is that often times when you read the latest articles, or a sampling of the latest articles, they certainly include earlier results. So you get up to speed pretty quickly. You don’t have to go back and read every article on a particular topic for the last fifty years or so.

Q. And all of these materials I gave you and, you know, those, including those you’ve read, none of them in your view meet the standard you set for literature on the evolution of the immune system? No scientific literature has no answers to the question of the origin of the immune system?

A. Again in the context of that chapter, I meant no answers, no detailed rigorous answers to the question of how the immune system could arise by random mutation and natural selection, and yes, in my, in the reading I have done I have not found any such studies.

Then another great line of questioning later on that page:

Q. And then you stated in the Darwin’s Black Box that, “If the natural mechanism is to be accepted, its proponents must publish or perish.”

A. I’m sorry, can I see that phrase?

Q. Yes, could you go to page 185 and 186 in the chapter “Publish or Perish”?

A. Yes. Okay, and what are you referring to here, sir?

…

Q. You conclude the chapter called “Publish or Perish” by saying, “In effect, the theory of Darwinian molecular evolution has not published, and so it should perish,” right?

A. That’s correct, yes.

Q. And then all these hard working scientists publish article after article over years and years, chapters and books, full books, addressing the question of how the vertebrate immune system evolved, but none of them are satisfactory to you for an answer to that question?

A. Well, see, that again is an example of confusing the different meanings of evolution. As we have seen before, evolution means a number of things, such as change over time, common descent, gradualism and so on. And when I say Darwinian evolution, that is focusing exactly on the mechanism of natural selection. And none of these articles address that.

Q. Again at the same time you don’t publish any peer reviewed articles advocating for the alternative, intelligent design?

A. I have published a book, or – I have published a book discussing my ideas.

Q. That’s Darwin’s Black Box, correct?

A. That’s the one, yes.

Q. And you also propose tests such as the one we saw in “Reply to My Critics” about how those Darwinians can test your proposition?

A. Yes.

Q. But you don’t do those tests?

A. Well, I think someone who thought an idea was incorrect such as intelligent design would be motivated to try to falsify that, and certainly there have been several people who have tried to do exactly that, and I myself would prefer to spend time in what I would consider to be more fruitful endeavors.

Q. Professor Behe, isn’t it the case that scientists often propose hypotheses, and then set out to test them themselves rather than trusting the people who don’t agree with their hypothesis?

A. That’s true, but hypothesis of design is tested in a way that is different from a Darwinian hypotheses. The test has to be specific to the hypothesis itself, and as I have argued, an inductive hypothesis is argued or is supported by induction, by example after example of things we see that fit this induction.

steve s | March 6, 2006 7:45 PM | Edit

I love reading about ID’s Waterloo. here’s a great bit.

On the stand, Buckingham countered that neither he nor anyone on the board had ever used that word. “We’d say intelligent design and they’d print creationism,” he complained of the newspapers. In court, Pepper attorney Stephen Harvey ran a video of a Fox 43 television news report that showed Buckingham wearing a cross-and-American-flag lapel pin. In it, he told the interviewer, “My opinion [is that] it’s OK to teach Darwin, but you have to balance it with something else, such as creationism.”

Nick (Matzke) | March 6, 2006 7:50 PM | Edit

Yeah, those are some classic bits from the transcript. Here’s a fun part that came slightly later than most people miss:

Q. Professor Behe, isn’t it the case that scientists often propose hypotheses, and then set out to test them themselves rather than trusting the people who don’t agree with their hypothesis?

A. That’s true, but hypothesis of design is tested in a way that is different from a Darwinian hypotheses. The test has to be specific to the hypothesis itself, and as I have argued, an inductive hypothesis is argued or is supported by induction, by example after example of things we see that fit this induction.

Q. We’ll return to the induction in a few minutes.

A. Yes, sir. Mr. Rothschild, would you like your books back? They’re heavy.

Q. Help me get to sleep tonight.

A. Thank you.

(Brief pause.)

Reality does have some impact, apparently.

PS: I feel like I should mention that I personally dragged that stack of books from the Berkeley library, to my apartment, and then later walked them to the BART station, then BART to San Francisco International, then on the AirTrain to the right terminal, then flew with them to Harrisburg, then a taxi to the Harrisburg Pepper-Hamilton office. I think someone else took them over to the courthouse – Pepper had a documents-moving guy just to move the necessary boxes of exhibits back and forth each day.

Anyway, if only the Berkeley librarians knew how many miles those books had logged…

steve s | March 6, 2006 8:00 PM | Edit

I just got to that part of the Gazette story. Great stuff. We’re lucky we had such a good lawyer in Rothschild. Really good work there. (and of course everyone else involved)

Gerard Harbison | March 6, 2006 9:00 PM | Edit

The cover article is entitled “Intelligent Demise” and focuses on Rothschild’s dissection of ID arguments during the trial. Rothschild seems to come off slightly better than fellow UPenn alum Michael Behe…

Heh heh. Masterful understatement!

Sir_Toejam | March 6, 2006 9:07 PM | Edit

Anyway, if only the Berkeley librarians knew how many miles those books had logged…

the new biology library wasn’t yet complete when i left berzerkely;

how did it turn out?

Flint | March 7, 2006 9:08 AM | Edit

So the high point of the trial was when Behe was buried under more scientific literature than he could easily lift, all of which directly refuted his claims. And Behe’s response was (1) to admit he hadn’t read it; (2) to claim it couldn’t possibly address his requirements anyway; and (2) to write, after the trial, that “all the other side has is rhetoric and bluster”, (4) to admit that he has done no research of his own. Yet he insists this is science.

I got the impression that Rothschild could have clarified things a bit more in some places, but by and large did a very good job. And to be sure, Judge Jones understood completely and needed no further clarification. I hope Rothschild gets his wish, to prosecute a few more cases.

SHanley | March 7, 2006 9:22 AM | Edit

My favorite bit from the a