Pharyngula

And the DI wants people to take them seriously as a scientific institute?

Posted by: jaakko | April 1, 2007 11:42 AM

And the DI wants people to take them seriously as a scientific institute?

Well, who says they can't have a little fun. The problem is that many creationists took them seriously as well. At one forum I frequently visit, creationists and self-described IDers were actually defending the caricature.

Posted by: John | April 1, 2007 11:47 AM

I was surprised though that they changed the website to Evolution Views & News.

Oh well they realy got us there, though of course if you ask me the hallmark of a good april fools prank is thats its so convoluted that even the admission of the prank looks like a prank itself.

Posted by: Pascal Leduc | April 1, 2007 11:53 AM

Well I hope you can do better than this next year P.Zed. To good to be true is one thing but impossible is the word that sprang to mind by the time I'd read to the end of the title.

Posted by: Aero | April 1, 2007 11:57 AM

You see, this joke was shooting fish in a barrel. It's really not that funny to act ignorant all year and then act slightly more ignorant and say, "Ha, I got you!" How is one supposed to tell ignorant from slightly more ignorant?

Posted by: Ric | April 1, 2007 12:00 PM

I hope all of you at scienceblogs.net are suitably contrite.

Posted by: steve_h | April 1, 2007 12:05 PM

This is just odd. What have they gained from this? Presumably they'll be chasing down all their creationist supporters who've been citing Egnor in their arguments in order to tell them it was all a "joke"?

Seems plausible to me that he was indeed serious but that they're disowning him. I don't know, it just doesn't make sense.

If it was a prank then surely the joke's on them? The guy was indistinguishable from actual creationists. Oddballs.

Posted by: Dylan Llyr | April 1, 2007 12:06 PM

Nice one, PZ. And/or Panda's thumb. I admit I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop:

http://gregladen.com/wordpress/?p=622

Posted by: Greg Laden | April 1, 2007 12:11 PM

also if the "Glass" ad is shown above, go to the 24th or 26th second and repeatedly click on the bar to repeat the one or two second clip...

hilarious!

Posted by: Kevin | April 1, 2007 12:14 PM

Who is really the prankster here and who are the April Fools? Did anyone else notice:
1. the URL, with the site root as www.evolutionnews.net not www.evolutionnews.org
2. the "Main" link at the top of the post does take you to evolutionnews.org, which has a completely different post from Egnor for April 1, and,
3. the error in the banner at the top where it says Discover Institute (no y).

So who is playing this joke now? I suspect PZ is in on this?

Posted by: Madhu | April 1, 2007 12:15 PM

Oh, and I also just checked www.evolutionnews.net and, of course, got a "404 - Not Found" error!

Good one! :-)

Posted by: Madhu | April 1, 2007 12:18 PM

Only one complaint: To really qualify an April fools prank takes place on April 1st, not the previous decade or so. That said, The Discovery Institute is really the all time greatest April Fools joke of all time. With the millions spent on the set up, the building lease, staff hired and expenses incurred....I am Stunned. The jokester behind the DI needs to take a bow! All that nutsy stuff they have said for all these years! The testimony in court in Pennsylvania takes the joke to a whole new, and unprecedented level.
KUDOS DI!

Posted by: Norman Tabernackle | April 1, 2007 12:19 PM

"Our arguments are so dumb you can't tell when we're serious!"

Posted by: ceejayoz | April 1, 2007 12:22 PM

in my defence it did pass midday five and a half hours ago here

Posted by: Dylan Llyr | April 1, 2007 12:23 PM

Indeed, I can hear it too, Greg - and hope I didn't ruin the joke by revealing it too early (well, at least here on the west coast, it is a bit early on a Sunday morning!). I should have read the comments on PT to realize that you and one or two others had figured it out too.

Posted by: Madhu | April 1, 2007 12:27 PM

aww! that "THIS IS A JOKE!" part completely ruined it for me. PZ, you should have put that under a fold. I normally scroll down to read the posts in the order they were posted, so that part popped up at me, reminding me it was april fools, and I didn't take a single word you said seriously. lol

It WOULD have been funny though...

Posted by: TAW | April 1, 2007 12:34 PM

Wait, so what's changed?

Egnor: Sorry fellas, but it was all an elaborate ruse! I was playing an outlandish character, and you all fell for it!
Discovery Institute: Ha ha ha!
Panda's Thumb: Oh, phew! Wow, are our faces red or what? Nice one, guys.
Discovery Institute: Thanks. Boy, you guys sure are gullible.
PZ: Heh, yeah.. So, wait - Dr. Egnor, does that mean you accept that the papers we and the folks at Panda's Thumb cited DO represent research into real evolutionary change?
Egnor: ...Oh, heavens no!
PZ: ...

Posted by: Robert Maynard | April 1, 2007 12:41 PM

Wait.. nice one!
*smacks forehead*

Posted by: Robert Maynard | April 1, 2007 12:44 PM

Oh, this was a good one, but I managed to get it before the comments tipped me off.

It wasn't until I scanned PZ's post again when I understood who exactly I'd been had by (yes, the big red THIS IS A JOKE finally sunk in).

Still, I had to check to see if there was a real "Michael Egnor" to make sure.

I guess I was too early with my April Fool's joke on Friday when I managed to convince one of my Michigander friends that people in Illinois really do pronounce the 's' at the end of 'Illinois'. It's funny how being fooled is o.k. if you've managed to already fool someone else...!

Posted by: Frank Anderson | April 1, 2007 12:47 PM

April 2nd 2007,

Posted on Pharyngula:

Hahahaha! I fooled ya all! I really do believe in ID!
Betcha ya never would have guessed it.

PZ Myers.

Posted by: Fernando Magyar | April 1, 2007 12:50 PM

Look at all the blog posts "Egnor" has inspired:

http://monado2.blogspot.com/2007/03/michael-egnor-revisited.html

Hmmm.... does this mean the D.I.'s list of 100+ scientist dissenters is nothing but a creation of Luskin's brain?

http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=660

Hmmm.... maybe this means the entire D.I. is an April Fool's joke. It sure seems like one.

Posted by: CalGeorge | April 1, 2007 1:01 PM

We did know better, but then again, how is one supposed to distinguish between real stupidity and fake stupidity?

Posted by: Science Avenger | April 1, 2007 1:04 PM

Beautifully done.

Posted by: Epistaxis | April 1, 2007 1:07 PM

SOME people in Missouri say 'Missoura'.

Posted by: jimmiraybob | April 1, 2007 1:12 PM

It also helps to read the source code:

!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"
html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" id="sixapart-standard">
!-- Disclaimer: This is a parody and in no way connected to the Discovery Institute.-->

Posted by: CalGeorge | April 1, 2007 1:22 PM

Yeah, who is this Miohael Eqncr fellow?

Posted on April 1, 2007 12:19 AM

Posted by: CalGeorge | April 1, 2007 1:38 PM

Indeed ... he seems to have something in (or on) his eye.

Arggg..

Posted by: Greg Laden | April 1, 2007 1:43 PM

But did you notice that the Panda on the Panda's thumb site is wearing a crucifix around it's neck?

Posted by: Greg Laden | April 1, 2007 1:46 PM

PZ: I didn't see it at first, even when looking! Hehe.

Posted by: Brock Tice | April 1, 2007 1:47 PM

The most visible and absurd use of Scientism (see 6b,6d) invading curricula is Intelligent Design.

I have a 2nd order Philosophical (not 1st order Scientific) analysis in the terms of my 100+ page paper on Axiomatizations of Occam's Razor, out of which 2 published conference papers have been excerpted so far.

This follows up on a conversation I had on the question: "Is Intelligent Design a SIMPLER theory than Darwinian Natural Selection and/or the Neodarwinian synthesis?"

Let me put this in the context of Alan Baker's
brilliant survey of the Philosophy of Simplicity: "A
distinction is often made between two fundamentally
distinct senses of simplicity: syntactic simplicity
(roughly, the number and complexity of hypotheses),
and ontological simplicity (roughly, the number and
complexity of things postulated).[3] These two facets
of simplicity are often referred to as elegance and
parsimony respectively...."

(1) Intelligent Design hypothesizes one new entity:
GOD (although it sneakily avoids saying so
explicitly);

(2) In return for "multiplying entities" in apparent
violation of Occam's Razor, it claims to reduce other
entities, such as Natural Selection as a cause-effect
system, and the actual mechanism of Heredity (which
Darwin was forced to postulate, not knowing of Mendel, let alone of later-doscovered DNA, etc.);

(3) Intelligent Design is TOO simple, in that it has
zero explanatory power and is only falsifiable at the
fringes;

(4) The hypothesis of the existence of God, despite
many clever arguments over the millennia (i.e. the
Ontological Argument, etc.) is NOT a falsifiable
hypothesis until, hypopthetically, once has died and
entered Heaven or Hell, by which time it is rather too late to publish.

(5) Intelligent Design has Syntactic Simplicity
(roughly, the number and complexity of hypotheses),
and can be stated and explained in many fewer words in a school curriculum, and in fact, is syntacically too simple to be useful outside of the realm of politics and propoganda; but KISS principles (Keep It Simple, Stupid) account for some of its appeal;

(6) hence I state that Intelligent Design (and other
theological systems of causation) are:
(a) Ontologically Quantitatively Parsimonious if and
only if one accepts that the introduction of the God
entity results in eliminating at least one other
entity; [definition: "Ontological Parsimony
Perhaps the most common formulation of the ontological form of Occam's Razor is the following: 'Entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity'"];
(b) Scientism, i.e. pretending to be Science, for
persuasive effect; hence giving the appearance of, but not the value of, Naturalistic Justifications of
Simplicity.
(c) Pseudorationalism, pretending to apply
Justifications via Principles of Rationality, claiming that it is irrational to hypothesize structure coming randomly from chaos [paradox: there may be no non-circular answer to "why should one be rational?];
(d) Mere "Intrinsic Value" Justifications, smuggled
under scientism, i.e. depending on the psychological
position that it is intrinsically justifiable to
believe in God;
(e) an attempt at Metaphysical Justifications [i.e.
One approach to justifying simplicity principles is to embed such principles in some more general
metaphysical framework], not in itself a bad idea;
(f) most deeply, in the words of Baker, "Theological
Justifications: The post-medieval period coincided
with a gradual transition from theology to science as
the predominant means of revealing the workings of
nature. In many cases, espoused principles of
parsimony continued to wear their theological origins
on their sleeves, as with Leibniz's thesis that God
has created the best and most complete of all possible worlds...";
(g) dependent on A Priori Justifications of
Simplicity, (which work only if one a priori accepts
God).

My paper, as a long Word document, is available on request. The recent mathematical results on Minimum Description Length are important, not widely known outside of Information Theory, let alone the Philosphy of Science, Philososphy of Biology, and Phislosophy of Mathematics.

Posted by: Jonathan Vos Post | April 1, 2007 1:57 PM

Register.com says:

domain: evolutionnews.net
owner: Wesley Elsberry

Posted by: BC | April 1, 2007 2:08 PM

PZ, I'm disappointed.

When I "Whois"ed, -Evolutionnews.net-, I expected to find your name as the registrar, not Wes E's of PT.

My Hero Worship has been brutally crushed. You are only partially responsible for this great April 1st Joke.

Posted by: Jody | April 1, 2007 2:11 PM

Ummm....I'd characterize that as not particularly funny at all, myself. This condescending tripe:

http://www.evolutionnews.net/2007/04/april_fools.html#entry-070401

...makes me want to smack that retard.

Har har, you guys are so dumb for not knowing that these particular dumb things we said weren't the normal dumb things we say. Hee Hee.

Barf.

Posted by: Michael | April 1, 2007 2:33 PM

I knew something was odd when I read about Dembski and Luskin wagering alchohol. Don't you folks know that with these hardcore evangelicals a party consists of two-litre bottles of Vess, hot dogs on soft white Wonder bread, and the lights on at all times!! The real joke is that Egnor is not just a sick joke.

Posted by: Pattanowski | April 1, 2007 2:44 PM

Great joke! Thanks for the laugh.

One of things I really love about this blog is that the posts and comments are often so funny.

Posted by: Paguroidea | April 1, 2007 2:49 PM

Got me! Superb...

First I thought it was a joke by PZ. Then I read the article and realized it was being presented by the DI , and thought - hand on, that's

1. Quite a good joke
2. Really at their own expense

Knowing that the DI are a po-faced bunch who take everything they do *way* too seriously...

But the confusion does underline the point that Egnor's ranting really are inseperable from a joke...

Posted by: Tryptamine | April 1, 2007 2:57 PM

The jokes are endless!

http://aprilfools.urgo.org/

Posted by: CalGeorge | April 1, 2007 3:01 PM

"Good night and God Bless."

The Red Skelton close should also have clued me in.

Posted by: Mike Haubrich | April 1, 2007 4:10 PM

Brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant. Fooled me.

Kudos to Wesley Elsberry, but I think that PZ was in it as well. My bet first was on Marc Chu-Carroll (has the computer literacy and the humor), but the meanness of describing someone's actual views as April jokes.. well, I smell octopus.

Now I have to wait for at least one hour until my blood pressure goes down again.

Posted by: zabong | April 1, 2007 4:34 PM

Damn it, PZ, ya got me. But is was quite believable with Dembski's "street theater" mentality.

Posted by: Ric | April 1, 2007 5:22 PM

This reminds me of the great April Fools stunt perpetrated by the New Mexicans for Science and Reason a few years ago. They planted a dinosaur fossil with a partially eaten human fossil in its jaws. And did the fundies bite!

Posted by: Bob Carroll | April 1, 2007 5:49 PM

Best April Fools in a while - and you even had me the believing the first few seconds, before remembering to check the site. (Unfortunate force of habit - PT is serious business, right? Apparently not always... [Adjusts clue meter.])

Kudos to the crew behind, and may they sleep uneasily before the next April Fool's day when the comeback ensues.

Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson | April 1, 2007 8:08 PM

So has there been a response from the ID folk?

Posted by: khan | April 1, 2007 9:59 PM

While pretty much everyone has already caught on, I thought this in particular was an amusing additional detail:

whois evolutionnews.net

   Domain Name: EVOLUTIONNEWS.NET
   Registrar: COMPUTER SERVICES LANGENBACH GMBH DBA JOKER.COM
   Whois Server: whois.joker.com
   Referral URL: http://www.joker.com
   Name Server: A.NS.JOKER.COM
   Name Server: B.NS.JOKER.COM
   Name Server: C.NS.JOKER.COM
   Status: clientDeleteProhibited
   Status: clientRenewProhibited
   Status: clientTransferProhibited
   Status: clientUpdateProhibited
   Updated Date: 09-jan-2007
   Creation Date: 09-jan-2005
   Expiration Date: 09-jan-2009

Posted by: Owlmirror | April 2, 2007 12:03 AM

This reminds me of the great April Fools stunt perpetrated by the New Mexicans for Science and Reason a few years ago.

A friend of mine posted this on her blog earlier:

Alabama Changes the Value of Pi

The April 1998 issue of the New Mexicans for Science and Reason newsletter contained an article claiming that the Alabama state legislature had voted to change the value of the mathematical constant pi from 3.14159 to the 'Biblical value' of 3.0. Before long the article had made its way onto the internet, and then it rapidly made its way around the world, forwarded by people in their email. It only became apparent how far the article had spread when the Alabama legislature began receiving hundreds of calls from people protesting the legislation. The original article, which was intended as a parody of legislative attempts to circumscribe the teaching of evolution, was written by a physicist named Mark Boslough.

Posted by: Kseniya | April 2, 2007 12:10 AM

When the world can't tell your outrageous fake from a genuine creationist, I think you have a credibility issue.

Posted by: Rockingham | April 2, 2007 1:56 PM

They think we're gullible because we think they're idiotic?

The fact is, sadly, that an awful lot of people reading PT and Pharyngula have proved that they are gullible and are idiotic for believing the incredibly implausible claim that Egnor was just faking it.

When the world can't tell your outrageous fake from a genuine creationist, I think you have a credibility issue.

Sigh. There was no outrageous fake. Egnor was, is, and will probably remain a creationist.

Posted by: Popper's Ghost | April 4, 2007 11:25 AM

"Our arguments are so dumb you can't tell when we're serious!"

No, actually, it's easy to tell -- when the arguments are dumb, they're serious. When not so dumb, as with the evolutionnews.net post, it's not them at all.

Posted by: Popper's Ghost | April 4, 2007 11:42 AM