Recently in Kitzmiller Ruling Category

Congratulations go out to PBS and Nova for winning the Peabody Award for “Judgment Day”, the episode documenting the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case.

Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial NOVA/WGBH Educational Foundation, Vulcan Productions Inc., The Big Table Film Company

The centerpiece of this thoughtful, topical edition of NOVA was the recreation, verbatim, of key testimony and argument from a six-week trial in Pennsylvania that served as a crash course in modern evolutionary theory, the evidence for evolution and the nature of science.

We had most of the plaintiffs’ side of the case on hand to view the broadcast last November. We gathered together at Lauri Lebo and Jeff Pepper’s beer can museum near York, Pennsylvania. We were companionably squeezed in there for the broadcast. (Note Prof. Steve Steve near center…)

(Original and two more pics at the Austringer.)

During the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case in 2004 to 2005, Lauri Lebo covered the story for the York Daily Record. Lebo was one of the most consistent journalists writing on the topic anywhere; she certainly demonstrated a facility with the facts of the case and was not afraid to write about what they implied. She has a book to be released shortly, “The Devil in Dover”.

(Originally posted at the Austringer)

On Uncommon Descent William Dembski claims that Richard Dawkins has admitted that life could be designed and thus wonders: “Is ID therefore scientific?”. As I will show this is a logically flawed conclusion.

First of all lets point out Intelligent Design does not claim merely that life is designed but that such design can be detected via scientific methods. In this aspect if differs from science which admits that design always remains a logical possibility, however science also accepts that if such design is ‘supernatural’ no scientific method can detect such design.

Casey Luskin, continues his “assaults” on Judge Jones’ devastating ruling for Intelligent Design while conveniently forgetting the Discovery Institute’s Amicus Curiae to the case.

Luskin argues that, based on an statements made by Judge Jones on the “Lehrer Newshour”, the ruling by Jones should be considered flawed:

Luskin Wrote:

First, Judge Jones admitted that a key question his ruling answered was whether intelligent design was “good science,” and he states that “after six weeks of largely expert testimony, I came to the conclusion that it simply was not good science” (emphasis added). This proves his judicial activism because it shows that, in his mind, a key question was not the constitutionality of Dover’s policy in particular, but rather a broad sweeping question about whether ID is “good science,” something that is totally inappropriate and unnecessary for the federal judiciary to answer in such a case over the constitutionality of a science curriculum.

Why is this claim so ironic? Well, if you read the submissions of the Discovery Institute to the judge, they argue that since ID is science, it cannot be ruled to be unconstitutional. In other words, they insist that the judge resolves the issue of ID being science. When he actually does this and he rules contrary to their expectations, the judge suddenly becomes an activist judge.

The Discovery Institute’s own website demonstrates that their amicus brief was submitted to argue “… about secular purposes for teaching about the scientific theory of intelligent design”” (October 31, 2005)

So what was the argument of the Discovery Institute which forced the judge to rule on the issue of ID being science?

NOVA has released a Press Release outlining the exciting new program. For more information visit NOVA Judgement Day Companion site or the Pressrooms at pbs.org/pressroom or Pressroom.wgbh.org The show will air on November 13, 2007 at 8pm ET/PT on PBS.

Check your local listings and spread the news

The date is nearing when the PBS/NOVA program “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on trial” will air and not surprisingly the Discovery Institute is not pleased. On EvolutionNews, Robert Crowther, director of media and public relations, complains that:

Robert Crowther Wrote:

The trailer for the program shows that PBS has turned to the usual suspects to advance their agenda.

Yes, such people as “Father of Intelligent Design” Philip Johnson or Steve Fuller did participate and what is even more ironic is that many more Discovery Institute people were asked to participate but they declined.

Yes, they declined!!!

In the post about my review of Behe’s The Edge of Evolution, many complained that they couldn’t access the full text without a university subscription or paying a huge fee. I have checked Elsevier’s policies on this. Authors are not allowed to post the published PDF to their websites (you have to get that from Elsevier), but they can put up the unformatted, submitted preprint version of their articles, as long as they include the reference and DOI to the published version. So here is the reference: Nicholas J. Matzke (2007). “The edge of creationism.” Trends In Ecology and Evolution, In Press, Corrected Proof, Available online 24 October 2007. ScienceDirect, doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2007.09.004.

…and the full text is below the fold. Note that the unpublished version has a few minor differences from the published version. For example, it has more emphases which were kind of my way of jumping up and down on the smoking ruins of Behe’s core arguments in The Edge of Evolution.

Gordy Slack was on the radio in the Bay Area yesterday and the show is now online. I haven’t listened to the whole thing yet but I’m sure it was good, since Gordy is quite a thoughtful guy. Gordy is also doing a reading at Books Inc. Opera Plaza, 601 Van Ness Ave. SF, CA, on Monday, 7/16. 7:00 pm – I might go myself if I get the chance…

Fri, Jul 13, 2007 – 10:00 AM Author Gordy Slack Listen (RealMedia stream) Download (MP3)

(Windows: right-click and choose “Save Target As.” Mac: hold Ctrl, click link, and choose “Save As.”)

The show welcomes author Gordy Slack for a conversation focusing on his book, “The Battle over the Meaning of Everything: Evolution, Intelligent Design and a School Board in Dover, PA.”

Host: Dave Iverson

Guests: Gordy Slack , author of “The Battle over the Meaning of Everything: Evolution, Intelligent Design and a School Board in Dover, PA.”

From NOVA Upcoming Summer & Fall 2007 Programming:

NOVA shows on PBS on Tuesdays @ 8 pm ET/PT (check local listings):

Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial (w.t.) November 13, 2007 at 8 pm ET check local listings

One of the latest battles in the war over evolution took place in a tiny town in eastern Pennsylvania called Dover. In 2004, the local school board ordered science teachers to read a statement to their high school biology students. The statement suggested that there is an alternative to Darwin’s theory of evolution called intelligent design, the idea that life is too complex to have evolved naturally and therefore had to have been designed by an intelligent agent. The science teachers refused to comply with the order, and alarmed parents filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing the school board of violating the separation of church and state. Suddenly, the small town of Dover was torn apart by controversy, pitting neighbor against neighbor. NOVA captures the emotional conflict in interviews with the townspeople, scientists and lawyers who participated in the historic six-week trial, Kitzmiller, et. al. v. Dover School District, et. al., which was closely watched by the world’s media. With recreations based on court transcripts, NOVA presents the arguments by lawyers and expert witnesses in riveting detail and provides an eye-opening crash course on questions such as “What is evolution?” and “Does intelligent design qualify as science?” For years to come, the lessons from Dover will continue to have a profound impact on how science is viewed in our society and how to teach it the classroom.

Produced by NOVA WGBH Science Unit and Vulcan Productions, Inc. Additional production by The Big Table Film Company.

The PNAS Early Edition webpage has just posted a series of papers from the December 2006 National Academy of Sciences Sackler Colloquium, “In the Light of Evolution: Adaptation and Complex Design,” organized by Francisco Ayala and John Avise. The series of papers, on topics ranging from color vision to beetle horns, is now available (I will post the list below the fold). Eugenie C. Scott (aka Genie) was invited to speak at this meeting about evolution education and the history of opposition to it, and the speakers wrote papers to be published in PNAS and a forthcoming NAS volume.

Genie brought me on as a coauthor on the paper she was asked to write. This became:

Although many have read the transcripts of the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial (HTML version | PDF version) and found them interesting, reading the transcripts does not give the full sense of what it was like to be in the Kitzmiller courtroom. In real life, in addition to the witness answering questions, the lawyers and witnesses were constantly referring to exhibits that were digitally projected onto a large screen on the right wall of the courtroom. Usually the exhibits were just documents, but when the science witnesses testified, their powerpoint presentations contain fossils, flagella, and everything else in between. I think it is safe to say that the testimony is much easier to understand when read with the demonstrative exhibits available (the exhibit lists and a few exhibits are available online).

However, it takes a lot of work to convert the slides to web format, add captions, embed them in HTML, etc. But as a first step, I and others at NCSE have done this for Kevin Padian’s testimony (testimony+slides | just slides).

I have been forgetting to mention that Darwin descendant Matthew Chapman‘s book 40 Days and 40 Nights: Darwin, Intelligent Design, God, OxyContin^®, and Other Oddities on Trial in Pennsylvania has just appeared in the bookstores. Here is the publisher’s website with background material, an interview with Chapman in New Scientist, the Amazon page, a review, and Chapman’s February 2006 article on the Kitzmiller trial in Harper’s.

This just in:

I was recently interviewed by Karl Mogel for his podcast show The Inoculated Mind. Topics include flagellum evolution and Kitzmiller v. Dover, and Casey Luskin’s inability to admit error. Have a listen if you get a chance.

Tomorrow, Talk of the Nation/Science Friday is doing a show with Edward Humes, author of Monkey Girl (blog, website), Randy Olson, director of Flock of Dodos, and yours truly, author of this spiffy blogpost.

We are in the second hour, so it should be on from 12-1 Pacific time. Apart from the radio, NPR is streamed live from many websites, and the Talk of the Nation archived shows are put online a few hours later.

Those of you who can’t get enough of the Trial of the (21^st) Century are very lucky. This spring, three books are coming out about the Kitzmiller v. Dover case. Out yesterday was Ed Humes’s Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America’s Soul. On April 1, we will have 40 Days and 40 Nights: Darwin, Intelligent Design, God, OxyContin^®, and Other Oddities on Trial in Pennsylvania by Matthew Chapman. And on May 18 we will have Gordy Slack’s The Battle Over the Meaning of Everything: Evolution, Intelligent Design, and a School Board in Dover, PA. Yet more books/documentaries/movies are in the offing.

A literary genre, “stream of unconsciousness”, flows from the pen of Casey Luskin. A recent instance of this concerned responses to me, Ed Brayton, and Tim Sandefur concerning Luskin’s claims that legal principles would cause higher courts to “disapprove of” the Kitzmiller decision because of the amount of text Jones copied from the plaintiffs’s proposed findings of fact. I take a look at Luskin’s response and point out some problems in Luskin’s accuracy of recount, structure of argument, premises, and show that Luskin’s asserted “errors” on Jones’s part are either nothing of the sort or don’t signify anything that a higher court would find to be reversible error.

Check it out on the Austringer.

Back in November I was interviewed and photographed by the San Francisco Chronicle for the “Facetime” section of their Sunday newsmagazine. A month or two went by without anything coming out, so I figured I’d been dropped as an uninteresting nerd or some such. Well, I figured wrong, the article is out and my soul is laid bare, including my two cents on religion if anyone’s interested, and the influence of my dear beloved grandmother, college roommates (but see below), and this very group of Panda’s Thumb bloggers on my somewhat strange life. The reporter, Sam Whiting, conducts the “Facetime” interview by asking rapid-fire questions for 20 minutes, and then they excerpt the juiciest bits, resulting in a short piece that really cuts to the chase. Mission accomplished, I’d say.

The well-known liberal rag the National Review has a column from John Derbyshire on Kitzmiller plus one year. It’s worth a read:

Barbara Forrest has written an article that will supposedly appear in January’s print edition of Skeptical Inquirer but is available online now. Titled, The “Vise Strategy” Undone, it’s a recount of the events leading up to and including the Dover trial. And it contrasts William Dembski’s pre-trial fantasies about forcing “Darwinists” to testify under oath (his self-described “vise strategy”) against what actually happened, which is that pro-science testimony carried the day while Dembski and most of his crew chickened out.

Although we’ve all been inundated with tales of Dover for the last year, this article contains a lot stuff that was new to me. This part was my fave:

Dover’s problems actually started in 2002. Bertha Spahr, chair of Dover High School’s science department, began to encounter animosity from Dover residents toward the teaching of evolution. In January 2002, board member Alan Bonsell began pressing for the teaching of creationism. In August, a mural depicting human evolution, painted by a 1998 graduating senior and donated to the science department, disappeared from a science classroom. The four-by-sixteen-foot painting had been propped on a chalkboard tray because custodians refused to mount it on the wall. Spahr learned that the building and grounds supervisor had ordered it burned. In June 2004, board member William Buckingham, Bonsell’s co-instigator of the ID policy, told Spahr that he “gleefully watched it burn” because he disliked its portrayal of evolution.

That’s so wrong on so many levels that I don’t even know where to begin.

(Cross-posted to Sunbeams from Cucumbers.)

The University of Kansas Hall Center for the Humanities has put online the videos from this fall’s “Difficult Dialogs” series. Included are talks by Ken Miller, Judge Jones, Richard Dawkins, Eugenie Scott, and Michael Behe. We had some previous discussion of the Behe talk here. (Apparently Behe was the ID guy who “discovered” that lawyers file a lot of paper with the court before, during, and after a trial, including Proposed Findings of Fact, which of course would be obvious if one had looked at the Kitzmiller documents archive that NCSE has maintained since the trial began.)

The funny thing about the Discovery Institute’s Media/Judge Jones Complaint Division is how it deals with defeat. Oftentimes we will see weeks and weeks of vigorous posting about this or that political fight – but then, if they lose, they often just completely ignore it, like nothing happened.

Today the magazine The Lutheran has made its interview with Judge Jones freely available on its website. October’s cover story is on science and religion, and includes a series of stories on the Lutheran perspective on the evolution/creationism issue. My parents get The Lutheran, so now my strange job has landed in their mailbox. There is no escape!

The Jones interview is notable for including some details on Jones’s experience in becoming a judge – quite an involved process – and on his religious upbringing, which has not been treated in depth elsewhere. We also get some more on his views on the relationship between the judiciary and politics, which Jones has made into a bit of a personal quest following the post-decision claim that Jones had “stabbed in the back” his political allies.

Reference: Mark A. Staples (2006). “‘Not science’: Judge John E. Jones: Lutheran tells about his history-making, intelligent design decision.” The Lutheran, October 2006.

Well, this is probably a slight to revolutionary minds everywhere, but Seed magazine has seen fit to include me in their “Revolutionary Minds” series that they are starting in the October issue which just hit the newsstands. See the NCSE writeup for more. Here is Seed‘s description:

Revolutionary Minds: Portraits of young, visionary iconoclasts who operate in a world in which cross-pollination and the synthesis of ideas are the norm.

Check out the introduction to the “Nine Revolutionary Minds” article:

Every generation has its salon, its emblematic gathering of emergent thinkers. The 20s saw the likes of Matisse, Pound, Hemingway gathered in Gertrude Stein’s Paris apartment. The 50s saw Paul Bowles’ “Tangerinos,” with giants Allen Ginsberg, Truamn Capote, and William Burroughs taking up resident in Tangiers. In the 60s there was Andy Warhol’s Factory, the studio where his iconic silk screens were produced and where Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, and so many others could be found on any given New York night.

OK, OK, just what the heck is a guy like me doing here? Well:

Nick Matzke will gladly give a quick tutorial about evolution and history of creationism – even if it means lecturing at 3 a.m. while strolling along the banks of the Susquehanna River in Harrisburg, PA. It was there, last November, that Matzke helped the plaintiff’s lawyers cream for their final corss-examination of intelligent design (ID) proponents.

This is, in fact, a true story.

Well, it’s only Monday, but I think I’ve already got the Silliest Thing I’ve Heard All Week: that the creationist/cdesign proponentsist/intelligent design textbook Of Pandas and People is banned from libraries.

In addition to watching the news on Kansas, we have been meaning to post these to PT but haven’t quite gotten to it, so here is a collection of recent commentary on ID/creationism, Kitzmiller, etc. Much of this has already been noted on the NCSE News page.

Coultergeist – Jerry Coyne reviews Ann Coulter’s book Godless in The New Republic, with about as much respect as she deserves (pass-through link, free registration required). I can’t claim responsibility for the science in Coyne’s essay like Dembski did for Coulter, but I did get to comment on a draft, and Coyne (who is personally targetted repeated by Coulter) did tell me that TNR wanted the review of Coulter’s book to be in the same style that Coulter herself wrote. So that explains the invective (although it appears to me that Coyne wasn’t able to turn his scientific side off completely, there are some low-invective zones). If you want to give the ol’ irony meter a spin, check out this post from an ID blogger who is defending Coulter from Coyne:

I think Coyne might have over-reacted just a tad to the part about Ann Coutler “attacking” him. But again, fact-distorting and insult-hurling have always been favorites for Coyne and the evolution community.

Folks may find these online videos or recordings interesting:

The DI’s David DeWolf in April, complaining about the Kitzmiller decision and ignoring all of the substantive points made by Judge Jones.

Joel Cracraft, Nick Matzke, Barbara Forrest, and a creationist guy in February at Columbia University in February. See especially my talk, where I give the 20-minute version of the “how I helped out in Kitzmiller” lecture I have given various places.

The American Enterprise Institute Forum that took place last October during the Kitzmiller case, and where TMLC attorney Richard Thompson took the DI to task for changing their tune. These videos were temporarily online at CSPAN but the AEI has a permanent archive and supplemental materials.

An April meeting of the San Francisco Commonwealth Club with a matchup of Casey Luskin and Cornelius Hunter vs. Eugenie Scott and Eric Rothschild, with two other guys providing constant distractions. Listen especially for Luskin’s admission that ID lost big in Kitzmiller, and Eric Rothschild’s dissection of various vague nonanswers by Cornelius Hunter.

An online “webinar” put up by Pepper-Hamilton, the law firm that contributed major pro bono support for the Kitzmiller case. Participants include Eric Rothschild, Steve Harvey, and Kenneth Miller.

York Daily Record columnist Mike Argento, who some say is H.L. Mencken reincarnate, takes on Ann Coulter here.

The schedule for the special symposium on “Intelligent Design on Trial: Lessons from the Kitzmiller v. Dover creationism case,” on Monday, June 26, 2006 at the Society for the Study of Evolution meeting at SUNY-Stony Brook has been updated (see below).

Further update: Rob Pennock informs me that the symposium will be videotaped, with the intention of putting it on the internet after the meeting.

In other news, although some helpful suggestions have been made, I am still seeking housing for June 24-27, since I was invited only after dorm housing had closed. Like I said, I’ll pay my share and bring a sleeping pad or something. Surely there is a penniless grad student out there somewhere. Email me: matzkeATncseweb.org. (Update: found housing and received several kind offers. Thanks very much.)

Also, I just noticed that in just one day PT became the top google hit for “SSE 2006”, while the actual meeting website is ranked #6.

Update: just see the newer post for the revised schedule. (Update: I have added the info on the keynote speakers for June 26, and we are going to try and get the event recorded.) Alrighty, who is coming to the 2006 meeting of the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), the Society of Systematic Biologists (SSB), and the American Society of Naturalists (ASN), aka SSE 2006, aka Evolution 2006 at SUNY Stony Brook?

Well, it looks like I am going (Note: I may need to bring a sleeping bag and crash on someone’s floor, housing looks fully booked – see my note and contact info) – because someone or other recently realized I ought to be there for this:

Monday, 26 June – Sessions. Symposium title: Intelligent Design on Trial: Lessons from the Kitzmiller v. Dover creationism case. Organizers: Robert T. Pennock, Michigan State University and Brian Alters, McGill University List of Speakers

* Robert T. Pennock , Michigan State University, “The Ground Rules of Science” * Barbara Forrest, Southeastern Louisiana University, “On Being a ‘Hybrid Expert’: Detailing the Intelligent Design ‘Wedge Strategy’ in Federal Court” * John F. Haught, Georgetown University, ŸEvolution and Faith: “What is at Stake?” * Brian Alters, McGill University, “But is it Good Pedagogy?” * Brian Rehm, Kitzmiller Plaintiff & Current Dover School Board member, “From parent and teacher to plaintiff and director” * Kenneth R. Miller, Brown University, “Fossils, Genes, and Mousetraps - The 21^st Century Case for Evolution” * Lauri Lebo, Lauri Lebo, Lead Local Reporter in Dover, “Beyond ‘He said, she said:’ How to be fair when the debate isn’t balanced.”

Format: Morning Session: 60 minute slots (45 minute talks / 15 min Q&A). Afternoon Session: (30 min, 60 min, 30 min talks, then 30 min joint Q&A). This will be a full day event.

Monday, June 26, 7:00-8:30 pm – SSE Education Committee Public Outreach Lecture

Speakers: Eric Rothschild & Steve Harvey, Pepper Hamilton LLP. Title: “In Defense of the First Amendment: An Up-Close Look at the Landmark ‘Intelligent Design’ Case of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District”

In other words, we’re getting the band back together!

The Anti-Defamation League has put up the transcript of a fantastic speech given by Judge Jones back in February. Jones gives his perspective on what it was like to be the judge in the Kitzmiller case, and then uses it as a platform to talk about the larger issues of judicial independence, legal precendent, and separation of powers. It’s quite a read – I don’t think the creationists have yet realized how much they marginalize themselves with kneejerk attacks on a class act like Jones.

It’s always risky business to divine what the founding fathers might think about current developments, but I’m certain, I’m entirely certain, that by deciding the Dover case the way that I did, I performed my duties as a district judge in exactly the way that the founding fathers had in mind when they created the Federal Judiciary in Article III of the Constitution.

In fact, I will submit to you that had I decided the Dover matter in a different way, I would have then engaged in just the kind of judicial activism which critics decry. That is, to have ruled in favor of the School Board in this case based on the facts that I had before me at the conclusion of the trial, I would have had to have overlooked precedents entirely and thus impressed upon the facts of the case my sense or the sense of the public concerning what the law should be, and not what it is.

This is ad hoc justice based upon either my preferences or biases or the perceived will of the majority. Taken to its extreme, it is anarchy at any level that to rule in such a fashion represents the true work of an activist judge. And so the real criticism of my decision, and this is one which I will readily accept, is that I did not render an activist decision.

See also the NCSE news story summarizing other recent news coverage on Jones.