Afarensis

I try to avoid linking to UD whenever possible, yet today we have some surprisingly stupid and hypocritical comments from Dembski on the recent article on Open Access in Nature. The article in Nature discusses the relationship between some of the big science journal publisher and Eric Dezenhall. It also mentions the possibility that these publishers maybe making use of the services Competitive Enterprise Institute to help them combat Open Access. It is, of course, all about money. The big publishers argue that Open Access threatens their livelihood. Open Access advocates argue that since most of this research is funded through taxpayer efforts the results of that access should be freely available to the public. A group of anthropologists, for example, is working hard to force the American Association of Anthropologists to adopt an open access model. You can read about their efforts at Open Access Anthropology

So what does Dembski make of all this? In a recent post over at UD Dembski says:

The big publishers of scientific journals are, not surprisingly, concerned about how open access to information on the internet is cutting into their profits. Apparently they are now hiring PR people to try to keep their market share, and the PR people are counseling that the very concept of open access needs to be undermined. With regard to our issues, who do you think stands to benefit more from such an anti-open-access campaign, the Darwinists whose propaganda engines are entrenched in the big publishing houses, or the ID proponents who are systematically excluded?

There are a number of things wrong with this statement. First, Dembski is complaining about the tactics used by the "big publishers" yet the Discovery Institute has hired the same group that brought you the Swift Boat smear campaign against Kerry. Over at UD, Dembski has made use of the same tactics against, say, Pianca and others (remember the Street Theater fiasco Bill?). To bemoan the use of Dezenhall and the CEI, while enganging in those same tactics yourself is the height of hypocrisy.

Second, Dembski somehow conflates the big publishers efforts to combat open access with some evil darwinian orthodoxy entrenched in power and out to keep the results of their research hidden from the public. Partially this is a conflation the producers of the journals with the folks who actually writes the content. Bill seems to think that because the big publishers want to squash open access, the scientists who actually write the articles that appear (and in a lot of cases work as editors) in those journals are against it as well. This is a questionable assumption at best. What about the contention that the evil "Darwinists" are out to squelch open access? I do not have any scientific data on the question. I do have some anecdotal evidence, most of the evolutionists I know of are for open access. We feel it is in our best interests to have the results of research into evolution freely available to the public. Speaking entirely for myself, I feel that open access to the scientific literature is the best way to prevent the public from being hoodwinked by flatulent street theater performing theologians.

Finally, Bill seems to think that open access will somehow help ID get published in peer reviewed journals:

...who do you think stands to benefit more from such an anti-open-access campaign, the Darwinists whose propaganda engines are entrenched in the big publishing houses, or the ID proponents who are systematically excluded [emphasis mine - afarensis]?

A little later he says:

I imagine that "ID pseudoscience" will be exhibit A in why open access needs to be limited.

Um, Bill, until such time as ID proponents actually do some experiments they will be excluded from the journals. Open Access won't help.

Added Later: Kambiz over at Anthropology.net gives his take on open access and paleoanthropology. As Kambiz points out:

Many of the publications that clearly document the process that conclusions are made in the paleoanthropological field, are closed access. Try Nature and Science, they have been both publishing a lot about Homo neanderthalensis sequence analysis, a topic that can change the way we consider species concepts and our understanding of human evolution, but the information is behind a locked digital door.

He also points out that some of the top journals in the field (AJPA, American Journal of Primatology, Journal of Archaeological Science, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, Journal of Human Evolution, Current Anthropology, Evolutionary Anthropology, American Antiquity) are behind closed doors. Part of the results of this locking of scientific information is a widespread misperception about how the science of anthropology works and what anthropology does. Granted, open access will not immediately correct all the misconceptions and "Indiana Jones" stereotypes it will help.

Kambiz also links to this great post the "Year of Open Access Anthropology".

Bill in case you have forgotten, or don't know, anthropology is an evolution based science, yet a lot of us are advocating open access. Why is that Bill?

Added Even Later: In comments to the thread linked to above Michaels7 asks:

Anyone know of online sources similar to NCBI for Fossils?

If you will look to the left under the category "Anthropology General and Technical Resources" you will find a long list of resources, including links to several sites that have pictures of hominids (one even has 3-D scans). Then go past the links the the webpages of 69 anthropologists with free down loadable papers to the section labeled "Paleontology and Geology". There you will find links to wide variety of searchable fossil databases...

Update: Josh at Thoughts From Kansas has joined the open access discussion with an interesting contribution. Josh points out that the scientific publishing business is making money off the scientists who do the research (and are charged by the science publishers to publish their results) and the readers of those results:

Scientists give those publishers their research, typically signing over copyright for that work to the publisher. In many cases those scientists also pay page charges to those same publishers, so that those publishers can have the privilege of taking those scientists' work from them.

Scientists are beginning to feel that this situation is not equitable, and that the restrictions on accessing those publications online hurt not only authors, but researchers in the field. Congress has heard those complaints, and is pushing for NIH funded research to be made available free of charge on some schedule.

Go read the rest, it will be worth your time.

You can also check out Open Access News for information on open access...