New NAS book on Evolution & Creationism

Um … it looks like the summary brochure is available for the free download; the book still costs money. Not that I begrudge the NAS having a revenue stream.

Just [SIGN IN] under “PDF”.

Shouldn’t that be FrumiousBandersnatch? You’ve conflated The Hunting of the Snark with Jabberwocky.

Joel:

Shouldn’t that be FrumiousBandersnatch? You’ve conflated The Hunting of the Snark with Jabberwocky.

The Boojum tree is in the Hunting of the Snark, right?

No doubt the Discovery Institute will respond with its usual blather.

Right on schedule:

www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/01-03-2008/0004730355&EDATE=

They say that the report “exaggerates the success of evolution” and then they equivocate by dredging up their list of 700 dissenters from “Darwinism” and their one NAS member, Phillip Skell, as if that balances out the ledger.

You may giggle at will, Gridley …

Some more reaction from opponents of evolution:

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/s[…]5&EDATE=

The NAS exaggerates the success of evolution, hyping it as “the foundation for modern biology.” This outrageous claim continues to meet a growing skepticism from scientists around the world. Over 700 doctoral scientists have publicly declared their disagreement by signing a list dissenting from Darwinism, including National Academy of Sciences member Phillip Skell.

Instead of treating evolutionary theory as an area open to further scientific inquiry, the NAS report canonizes evolution as perfect and immutable, “so well established that no new evidence is likely to alter it.”

“Under their definition, a theory is not a testable area of science but rather an unquestionable dogma,” said CSC program officer Casey Luskin.

Of course, this should come as no surprise, given the NAS’s bias against intelligent design, which challenges Darwinian evolution on scientific grounds. Rather than addressing the science of ID, the report misrepresents the theory as an untestable religious belief. While the report ignores what design theorists actually claim, it chooses to cite the Kitzmiller ruling instead, apparently trusting a judge who copied the ACLU and disregarding the academic freedom of the scientists who stake their reputations and careers on the scientific merit of intelligent design.

At bottom, this report does little more than reveal a tired and weary voice of an establishment unwilling to actually address the scientific claims or the thoughtful skepticism of a growing number of scientists who disagree.

There was a report on this story on BBC News 24 last night via ABC news. A brief interview with Ken Ham at the Creation Museum (I think David Menton also gave an opinion and accused science educators of running scared) showed how silly YECism really is (Ham didn’t have to do anything to look silly).

I’ll expect AiG to pick up on this over the next few days.

I took a close look “Dissent from Darwin” list in October. Of its 704 signatories, 314 (45%) self-report being in a life sciences field. Only 159 (23%) were in a life science directly related to the study of evolution.

I started a similar analysis of the Project Steve list but never finished. I looked at 126 of the PS signatories. 84 (67%) were in the life sciences and 58 (46%) were in a field directly related to evolution.

Long time, non-biologist, layman lurker here.

Recognizing P.T. Barnum’s observation, there may be little the NAS nor other well intentioned organizations nor individuals can do to quell the yapping terriers of ignorance. No one can force them to change their minds - they have to do this on their own and it may help a little for them to reap the consequences of their misguided political and social activities: leave them to their own devices and allow more Kitzmillers to occur.

Dave

2Hulls said: …there may be little the NAS nor other well intentioned organizations nor individuals can do to quell the yapping terriers of ignorance. –

I think the scientific community needs to start hiring publicists.

By the way, I managed to catch blurbs about this book on two of the three old-line networks last night. NBC and ABC seem right, but I can’t be sure.

I thought that both were fairly good, if quite short, reports, telling of the scientific acceptance of evolution and the perceived need to combat antievolutionists. Sure, they had the detractors come on with their pablum, but I didn’t think that they appeared especially convincing to anyone who wasn’t sure about the issue (and I was trying to see it from the viewpoint of the populace). I was pleased to see it hit the news despite the hoopla over the Iowa caucuses.

Then again, those reports probably had less of an impact, due to the caucuses, than they’d have had on a more usual night. I can’t blame the networks for that, though, and I wonder if the timing of the release was very well planned.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7

The NAS exaggerates the success of evolution, hyping it as “the foundation for modern biology.” This outrageous claim continues to meet a growing skepticism from scientists around the world. Over 700 doctoral scientists have publicly declared their disagreement by signing a list dissenting from Darwinism, including National Academy of Sciences member Phillip Skell.

I always thought that “700” seemed an odd number, but after buzzing through the television channels last night, I think I may have found the main source of those “700” signatures.

The 700 Club

Having lived in Va. Beach (location of CBN, 700 Club, etc) in 1985 when Pat Robertson “turned” hurricane Gloria away from the coast via prayer, I and others figured out the true origin of the name, “700 Club.” It’s because membership is limited to those who scored less than 700 (combined math and verbal) on their SATs.

Little know trivia: when it was pointed out to Pat that after bypassing Va. Beach, Gloria made landfall on Long Island, he was asked, “Why didn’t you help those folks as well?”

Pat: They’re Catholics.

Frank J:

How dare you steal my line!

Students don’t steal from their gurus Frank, they learn

Anyway, I thought I will do some surfing from the names and see if any of those who signed the dissent have published any papers on evolution or on design, or used a design argument instead of natural selection argument etc.

Started with Lyle H Jensen at scholar.google.com

Author “Lyle H Jensen” Check mark “return articles in bio only”

(LH Jensen picks up another author too, so could not check it out quickly.)

Five hits, the first one, 1962 paper on Bacterial Ferridoxin has impressive 168 citations. Add “evolution” to the filter and got 0 hits. Found no publication after 1988.

Is there a place where we can do some kind of community literature search and share the notes? I don’t want to pollute threads in PT with such things. I want us to be able to counter DI and their shills “Of that 700 only xx have published any research on evolution and only yy have used design perspective instead of MET perspective in their research. And zz of them have actually used MET in their publications, despite their (alleged) dissent”.

If enough lurkers contribute we can find the values for xx, yy and zz and document how we arrived at the values.

For anyone who believes that the NAS exaggerates the success of evolution, be aware that evolution is alive, well, and increasingly successful in the scientific literature.

AiG has indeed picked up on the release of the book:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/art[…]ttle-resumes

This was the news report that i referred to earlier and it was Menton that I saw being interviewed on the report:

On the news broadcast, Dr. Menton was seen asking: “Why are the evolutionists so defensive? If their ideas are so compelling, I would think they would welcome a challenge.”

Still, this coming from a YEC such as Menton is ironic. YEC science is just plain nonsense and doesn’t stand up to scrutiny at all.

The fact that the creation museum has gotton away with it so to speak, I wonder if scientists should call their bluff ?

This book will not make one iota of difference to the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have visited the museum, and the millions more who reject all forms of modern science.

Furthermore, I just wonder what will happen to science standards in the US if Mike Huckabee were to become president (in light of last night’s result in Iowa this could now be a real possibility) ? Will he endorse Ham’s museum ?

Glen Davidson:

We should come up with a list of scientists who doubt the standard model of physics. They could even be all physicists, since, of course, most physicists think it’s inadequate.

Despite all of the doubts of the sufficiency of the standard model, however, there would be almost nobody against teaching it, because it’s the best empirical account thus far.

It really would be a good thing if this were done, you know, because not only would it put “doubts” about evolutionary theory into perspective, it would educate the public about what science is–contingent, practical understanding of the world, which doesn’t pretend to deal with the claims of religion (and only does so accidentally, if it happens to overlap with religious notions). Likely it wouldn’t require a great amount of work, either.

Glen D http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7

Read this thread in my Evolution Education discussion group: http://www.care2.com/c2c/groups/dis[…]&posts=6

It should be clear once you read that how much damage Creationists intend to do once they are through rewriting biology and natural history. Turning back the clock to a simpler version of science should also lead us to eventually living in caves again, if we wish to be consistent.

heddle:

If I could do it all over, I would not sign the list of dissenters. Even when I signed it, I realized that what I was signing was a neutered statement—that it was a political statement not a scientific one. However, at the time I didn’t know much about the ID movement. In particular, I didn’t know about the Wedge Strategy. And I didn’t know about the unscientific “big tent” and its third rail: the question of the age of the earth. I didn’t foresee the unseemly zeal with which ID Inc. would embrace victimhood status. I didn’t appreciate the unbiblical ends-justify-the-means strategy of the movement. And I didn’t recognize the considerable shortcomings of the ID leadership. I believed that I was signing on with a group of like-minded Christians/scientists who believed (as I still do) that science will never fully explain the origins of life—even though it should keep on trying. In short, I didn’t do my homework until after I signed, and have no one to blame but myself. My bad.

So, have you asked to have your name removed from the list? Do you think that the list is being honestly portrayed by the Discovery Institute? Just use this latest NAS example. They seemed to have duped you into doing something that you regret getting involved with.

I have often wondered why anyone would sign such a list when they had to know that the Discovery Institute perps were not on the level, but you claim that you were ignorant of the double dealings and dishonesty. Didn’t the fact that the list didn’t address the issue that you believed should be addressed give you a moments pause? Isn’t it a namby pamby inaccurate portrayal of what you don’t think is quite right?

How did you get the list to sign? You admit that you knew that it was a political statement, so how did you know that? How was the list portrayed by the Discovery Institute? Did they portray it as a scientific issue or a political issue?

What do you think about the whole bait and switch scam that ID became? “Shortcomings” seems to be an understatement. Do you really believe the IDiot claims that they really want to teach more about evolution, when they are the same perps that got you to sign this list and perpetrated the teach ID scam?

Who do you think is a person that you can still trust in the ID movement? Are there any?

I saw Johnson give his speel back in 1994, and have watched the whole sordid affair blow up in the IDiot’s faces. When did you sign this list? The first list was sort of a joke, but they did go after a second round of signatures, and seemed to be more careful about who they acknowledged signed it.

Ron Okimoto

Torbjörn writes about a Swede who has signed the Dissent from Darwinism list - Sture Blomberg. Here is another one, Professor Lennart Möller, Professor of environmental medicine at “Karolinska institutet”, Stockholm. Googling shows that he has also been criticized in “Folkvett” for pseudoscientific activities.

Yes, in the article I translated for example. I checked that Möller was still on the list at that time, but I didn’t want to put up yet another comment on the blog at that time.

I should check him out.

I find one Norwegian, Øyvind A. Voie, who works with environmental questions at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment. When he writes about the genetic code in the journal “Chaos, solitons and fractals” he uses his home address.

Here is what a computer scientist writes about Voie’s misuse of math and information theory:

[…] Overall, it’s a rather dreadful paper. It’s one of those wretched attempts to take Gödel’s theorem and try to apply it to something other than formal axiomatic systems. […]

He starts off by providing a summary of the incompleteness theorem. He uses a quote from Wikipedia. The interesting thing is that he misquotes wikipedia; my guess is that it’s deliberate. […]

The reason that I believe this removal of the footnote is deliberate is because he immediately starts to build on the “truth” of the self-referential statement. For example, the very first statement after the misquote:

Gödel’s statement says: “I am unprovable in this formal system.” This turns out to be a difficult statement for a formal system to deal with since whether the statement is true or not the formal system will end up contradicting itself. However, we then know something that the formal system doesn’t: that the statement is really true.

The catch of course is that the statement is not really true. Incompleteness statements are neither true nor false. They are paradoxical. […]

And now, the crowning stupidity, at least when it comes to the math:

In algorithmic information theory there is another concept of irreducible structures. If some phenomena X (such as life) follows from laws there should be a compression algorithm H(X) with much less information content in bits than X [17].

Nonsense, bullshit, pure gibberish. There is absolutely no such statement anywhere in information theory. […]

This stinker actually got peer-reviewed and accepted by a journal. It just goes to show that peer review can really screw up badly at times. Given that the journal is apparently supposed to be about fractals and such that the reviewers likely weren’t particularly familiar with Gödel and information theory. Because anyone with a clue about either would have sent this to the trashbin where it belongs.

So, yet another non-biologist, and yet another creationist who abuses information theory and math.

The catch of course is that the statement is not really true. Incompleteness statements are neither true nor false. They are paradoxical.

Maybe I should hasten to add that there seems to be at least 3 popular ways to describe incompleteness. The same CS describes it as a “no win” situation whenever he has to describe it, as invariably someone will protest the used description.

Apparently Tarski’s undefinability theorem is equivalent, and it is perhaps easier to describe unequivocally: informally, a formal systems concept of truth can’t be defined within the formal system.

This seems to be what Voie denies, he wants incompleteness statements to use the truth concept as defined (how?) within the system on a larger system (“we then know something that the formal system doesn’t: that the statement is really true”).

[As I recently learned that truth is such an iffy concept in logics, I’m quite happy that I’ve been satisfied with observable facts and testable theories for a long time now. And it makes dogmatic Truth even more absurd.]

Stacy S. :

Anono-mouse:

The difference between intelegent design and Evolution is that intelegent design has a basis where Evolution is merely an asumption. It no longer has its once fairly good foundation. Athiests are worse then creationists. You can no longer cling to this dis proven theory. You must have more faith than christians to be able to believe this. Keep looking evolution is not true.

Do you realize that you just called Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Mormons, and many more religious people - athiest? What’s wrong with you? No one can POSSIBLY be that much of an Idiot.

Well, maybe only Morons protest “that intelegent design has a basis where Evolution is merely an asumption”. So they might qualify as IDiots.

Or perhaps learn to spell, among other things.

Once they learn how to learn, that is.

Heddle:

Thank you for the reply. It is more than I expected.

They really just sent out the statement and asked people to sign it? There must have been some context. It sounds like you got swept up in the second wave. The original list was supposed to be against the PBS show Evolution (around 2001), but they just had their anti “Darwinism” statement.

I would like to know how they sold the later list.

Stacy: As stated above, I would commend the articles in Wikipedia, but the Wikipedia “evolution” article is less accessible than the article “Introduction to evolution” or even the Simple Wikipedia article “ Evolution”.

On the fraction of ID supporters in science inferred from the Dissent list: From “Level of support for evolution, there are well over 1 million biologists and geologists in the US according to a 1999 US government estimate, and at most, only about 1/4 of the 700 signatories of the DI list are in relevant fields, and even fewer are in relevant fields and in the United States, so the 700 represent a fraction of 0.01% of the scientists in relevant fields. The Wikipedia article on the DI list includes several examples that demonstrate that the list is not really what it purports to be.

Professor McEnnis,

Is there any chance that an apology is in the offing?

If you are looking for an apology on the tone of my post, for example using the word yahoos, then I would be more than happy to offer one. But I suspect you are asking for something more substantive, an apology regarding the gist of the post. That I am afraid I cannot provide, with a caveat, which I’ll explain below, if you are interested.

First a slight clarification: my view on ID has not changed. My view has consistently been: 1) ID is not science 2) ID should not be in the science curriculum 3) ID is about religion and 4) the purpose of ID is not science education but Christian apologetics—that is, I use ID (Cosmological) in an attempt to teach Christians that science is not our enemy. At no time did I view the DI as a positive for science education. My most favorable view of the DI would have been that they were a collection of interesting Christians that were interested in the religion/science intersection. So it is only my view on the ID movement that has changed—from naively thinking that I had found a group of like-minded individuals to coming to believe that they are, as the worst of several offenses, practicing evangelism by deceit.

As for the case of Brian Leonard, in a nutshell this is how I viewed the case:

1. He was writing a thesis more or less defending the “teach the controversy” viewpoint.

2. There was a technical problem with the makeup of his committee.

3. That a letter to the dean made its way to Inside Higher Ed.

4. That the problem with the committee (while legitimate) was in fact a red herring. Why? Because the decision to have the battle fought in the court of public opinion made it clear that the real issue here was the fact that this was a pro-ID thesis, with the scare tactic that OSU was on the verge of awarding a Ph.D. to someone who was pro-ID. The technical violation was nothing more than a convenient rope with which to hang him—the real issue was ID.

5. The question of the risk to Ohio State’s reputation was also a red herring. University libraries contain many bad and even embarrassing theses, and yet I have never once heard a prospective grad student say something along the lines of, Sorry, I can’t come to Berkeley because Jonathan Wells went there.

In judging your actions, I must have done what I always would do, which is to use myself as a yardstick—which is what I think everyone does. I feel as strongly about the proposition that science and Christianity are compatible as the PT crowd feels about the proposition that ID should not be taught in science class. What would I think if my university (hypothetically speaking—we don’t award Ph.D.s) had a grad student presenting a thesis on the incompatibility of science and Christianity? Well I’d be very interested, that’s for sure. What if he stacked his committee with “new atheists?” That wouldn’t concern me, because I generally believe that faculty members will act responsibly. (Your actions indicated you believed he had rubber-stampers on his committee. That is, you had no confidence that those faculty member would carry out their duty.) What if his committee was in technical violation? That’s a tougher question, because I am the type that wouldn’t know the regulations. But if I did, I would probably not care. If I did care, I go to his advisor, privately. If he told me to get lost, I’d go to the chair. If he told me he was OK with the committee, my attitude would surely be—well if he doesn’t care, then that’s OK with me. I doubt I would go to the dean—and if I did, nothing from that meeting would have made it to Inside Higher Ed and I would not have fought the fight, or allowed others to fight it, on the blogs.

Honestly, what I would have done is to have some balls. I would have gone to the defense and asked the toughest questions I could. I would have been disappointed, not pleased, if his defense was cancelled. I would have thought—well, he completed the coursework, he went through the checks and balances, and maybe technically the system failed, but who cares? I’ll go do what the system accommodates and what tradition supports—I’ll grill him when the public is invited to question the candidate. I may not be able to prevent him from getting a Ph.D—but again, who the hell cares? Ph.D.s are a dime a dozen. But I can try to make him look bad. Of course that entails some risk—he might be smarter and better equipped than I thought.

The bottom line is I think (my opinion) that you took an unscholarly and, for lack of a better word, sissy route. You fought the battle publically and politically. To me that puts you in the same category as Hector Avalos—and just like petitions are not a scholarly way to express disapproval of a faculty member’s scholarship, neither are public political fights. You should have, if it is really so important to you, countered his thesis with your own scholarship.

The caveat I mentioned is that if there is information that convinces me that I have this all wrong, substantively speaking, then I will be happy to post an update and state that I was wrong.

By the way, stacking the deck of you committee is not at all uncommon. And it doesn’t always work, either. I did a nuclear theory thesis. My committee included a nuclear experimentalist and a high-energy theorist. The former didn’t worry me—because of the naïve (and oh-so wrong) theorist-grad-student view that theorists are in a different league than experimentalists, while the high energy theorist scared me to death. But as it turned out, the experimentalist asked the hardest questions.

Some people who are commenting on this blog may be doing so without having had the opportunity to read our book, “Science, Evolution, and Creationism.” This conversation might be enhanced and clarified by reading the book online or downloading it in pdf for free at http://www.nap.edu/sec.

Professor McEnnis,

If you could elaborate on just one point: I recall the letter raised the possibility of unethical behavior and human experimentation on Leonard’s part. To what, precisely, did that refer?

heddle:

Professor McEnnis,

If you could elaborate on just one point: I recall the letter raised the possibility of unethical behavior and human experimentation on Leonard’s part. To what, precisely, did that refer?

Ron’s comment above is accurate. In our letter we wrote (this was also quoted by Inside Higher Ed)

There are no valid scientific data challenging macroevolution. Mr. Leonard has been misinforming his students if he teaches them otherwise. His dissertation presents evidence that he has succeeded in persuading high school students to reject this fundamental principle of biology. As such, it involves deliberate miseducation of these students, a practice that we regard as unethical.

Note that this was an experiment, not just an observational study.

The student’s testimony before the Kansas Board of Education made it clear that the lesson plan referred to by Ron (see here) was being used.

For any institution involved with human subject research, the Department of Health & Human Services requires that it establish an Institutional Review Board (IRB) to review proposals and to approve research protocols. We requested in our letter (immediately after the section quoted above) that the University investigate whether this research fell within the guidelines of its IRB protocol. I do not know how that turned out.

I dunno why IDC wants to saddle up with YECers, but I guess they have to scrape the barrel.

Maybe that comes from them being over a barrel? :p

Henry

Anono-mouse Wrote:

The difference between intelegent design and Evolution is that intelegent design has a basis where Evolution is merely an asumption. It no longer has its once fairly good foundation. Athiests are worse then creationists. You can no longer cling to this dis proven theory. You must have more faith than christians to be able to believe this. Keep looking evolution is not true.

Not only is this barely coherent, it is utterly wrong in every single aspect.

ID is the mere wishful thinking of “creation science” dressed up in some different terminology.

Evolutionary theory has a solid basis in millions of facts and logical inferences from those facts.

What does atheism have to do with the issue at all?

Not only is evolutionary theory not disproven, but there is not one fact that can be used logically to argue against it.

Faith is the problem, mate. When people put faith above empirical facts, you end up with people like you believing a load of nonsense like ID.

Evolutionary theory is, even if not the absolute truth, a very close approximation of reality.

Taking scientific criticisms against creationism and parotting them back at us as if they were relevant to science only maks you look childish. That “refutation” is the usual ignorant garbage like this:

“Even if they were right, all they found was a virus changing into a virus, which says nothing about how viruses might have evolved into virologists. It also says nothing about how viruses could have originated in the first place.”

In other words, evolution among cats doesn’t count until we show cats morphing into dogs, and derive the very first cat. [YAWN]. Criticisms like that only illustrate the extent of your ignorance. They will not persuade anyone with the slightest understanding of evolution.