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« Another blithering ignoramus against science: Roy Varghese | Main | But Darwin is still dead anyway »

Lifetime Award for Sleazy Creationist Quote Mining…

Category: Creationism
Posted on: May 3, 2007 11:30 AM, by PZ Myers

…goes to Sal Cordova.

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Comments

Lifetime Award

Wow, and he's not that old.

Posted by: quork | May 3, 2007 11:47 AM

Jack Krebs has appeared at UD to challenge our Sal. Sal's response was that he had provided the full link, "[a]nd also I edited out what was distorted picture of reality."

But ... but... there's some text from Sal left.

Posted by: Bob O'H | May 3, 2007 12:02 PM

The funny thing is, someone in the comment thread then attacked Jack Krebs for arguing with Sal on the basis of "mere quote mining." They don't normally admit to being liars so freely.

Posted by: april | May 3, 2007 12:18 PM

It's generally a bad sign when you end a quote just before either "yet" or "but".

Posted by: Josh | May 3, 2007 12:39 PM

"Nothing . . . makes sense . . . in . . . evolution."

--Theodosius Dobzhansky, noted geneticist and evolutionist

Posted by: B | May 3, 2007 1:11 PM

Sal's response was that he had provided the full link, "[a]nd also I edited out what was distorted picture of reality."

Actually, I believe the quote from Sal was: "I... distorted... reality." (That's "not 'falsely interpreting' but drawing logical conclusions from the articles implications - indeed from it's very existence.")

Posted by: dorkafork | May 3, 2007 2:19 PM

I like this circular bit of "reasoning" from Sal:

ask yourself, "why is it that a campaign has to be waged to teach Darwinism in science classes." Do we need campaigns to teach the theory of gravitation or the periodic table?

First off, this side of the Atlantic it isn't "Darwinism", it's biology. And yes, biology is worthwhile for med students to know.

Secondly, we need campaigns to teach science when overt or stealthy campaigns have perverted the teaching of science. Sal's "argument" is that because, for instance, geocentrism or evolution have been suppressed, they should therefore not be taught.

Thirdly, it hasn't just been idiots like Egnor who have kept evolution out, it really wasn't as important to medicine in the past. If it was obvious that bacteria, viruses, and eukaryotes had in fact evolved, there wasn't necessarily a whole lot at the "pathetic level of detail" which was known about said evolution. The increasing importance of evolutionary details to all of biology, including medicine, has become apparent in the past few decades.

The idea that the IDiots want to sell is that if a campaign of disinformation has been waged by pseudoscientists, this fact alone makes established science like evolution questionable. And Sal manages not to miss any of the dishonest tricks used by the IDiots.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/35s39o

Posted by: Glen Davidson | May 3, 2007 2:48 PM

Slimy Sal spins his latest lie:

If you are accusing me of suggesting MacCallum is arguing for Darwinism's irrelevance you are all wrong Jack.
The point was to show MacCallum is forced to admit Medical Doctors today find little use for Darwinism. Her article unwittingly demonstrates Egnor's point.

I was highlighting the irony of the fact that while MacCallum is saying Darwinism is fundamental to medical science, medical doctors in practice to day find it inessential. Her own article does a good job of refuting the very point she was attempting to make.

You totally misunderstood what I was trying to highlight.

http://www.uncommondescent.com/education/darwin-dissed-by-doctors-but-a-design-revolution-continues-at-mit/#comment-119699

Gee, I wonder what we were supposed to get out of this:

2 May 2007 Darwin dissed by doctors, and a design revolution continues at MIT scordova One of New York's foremost brain surgeons, Dr. Michael Egnor, has repeatedly pointed out why Darwinism is irrelevant to modern medicine. See: Why would I want my doctor to have studied evolution?.
And it turns out, Michael Egnor's claims are being supported by an uncomfortable admission by Catriona J. MacCallum, the Senior Editor at PLoS Biology. In the recent editorial Does Medicine without Evolution Make Sense? MacCallum writes:

Charles Darwin, perhaps medicine's most famous dropout, provided the impetus for a subject that figures so rarely in medical education. Indeed, even the iconic textbook example of evolution--antibiotic resistance--is rarely described as "evolution" in relevant papers published in medical journals. Despite potentially valid reasons for this oversight (e.g., that authors of papers in medical journals would regard the term as too general), it propagates into the popular press when those papers are reported on, feeding the wider perception of evolution's irrelevance in general, and to medicine in particular

Darwinists claim how important Darwinism is to science, but MacCallum's editorial makes an embarrassing admission of Darwinism's irrelevance to medicine. She also reports on the protests from medical students who find themselves forced to study Darwinism for no good reason. In reading the excerpt below, ask yourself, "why is it that a campaign has to be waged to teach Darwinism in science classes." Do we need campaigns to teach the theory of gravitation or the periodic table?:

[Emphases added]

So now ol' Slimy wants to claim that MacCallum was admitting that ignorant doctors considered evolution to be irrelevant to medicine. Well that's not at all what he wrote, he used MacCallum to back up Michael's egnorant arguments as to "why Darwinism is irrelevant to modern medicine," stating that "Michael Egnor's claims are being supported" by MacCallum. Egnor was not claiming that doctors diss evolution, he was claiming that doctors are correct to diss evolution, and MacCallum didn't in the slightest back up those lies, she refuted them.

OK, I know, it's all obvious, and Sal's a despicable lying hound. He's also ignorant, and couldn't argue intelligently against evolution even if evolutionary theory were wrong.

So I don't know just how much he conflates dissing evolution with the notion that it should properly be disrespected, but I don't think I want to try to disentangle Sal's dishonesty from his stupidity. These two aspects of Sal's foray into pseudoscience have a symbiotic relationship, which is the only important fact we need to know about Sal.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/35s39o

Posted by: Glen Davidson | May 3, 2007 3:08 PM

And it all comes so naturally to him. Its impressive. In one post of his, he quoted another ID Creationists article, without noting what the author wrote and what he was quoting, and the ID author being quoted was quote mining pop science articles pretending he was 'quoting' actual research.

I couldnt do that shit if I tried.

**standing ovation for Sal**

(link)

Posted by: ERV | May 3, 2007 4:03 PM

#10

On the other hand, I willingly admit that...this whole volume...is not strictly correct.
Charles Darwin
The Origin of Species

Posted by: horrobin | May 3, 2007 4:26 PM

#11

The emerging discipline of Systems Biology, a design-friendly discipline which investigates biology from a design perspective, will eventually dominate the way biology is done from now on. In contrast, the discipline of Evolutionary Biology (with the exception of fine fields like Population Genetics) will possibly decline in prominence.

or:

I...am...not...a...man.--Sal Cordova, 2007

(I also had to move letters around to make it work out, but Sal should be cool with that, as he knows that rearrangements, insertions, and deletions can't possibly add information or anything.)

Posted by: RavenT | May 3, 2007 4:53 PM

#12

as he knows that rearrangements, insertions, and deletions can't possibly add information or anything.

:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D

ROTFL!!!

Posted by: David Marjanović | May 3, 2007 8:12 PM

#13

Sal Cordova has an almost Charlie Wagner-like ability to highlight random shit as though it meant something. This:

We believe computer science is poised to become as fundamental to biology as mathematics has become to physics.

was in bold in one of the blockquotes. I don't know why. I can do that too:

As a quantized field theory, the Klein-Gordon equation describes mesons. The hermitian scalar Klein-Gordon field describes neutral mesons with spin 0. The nonhermitian pseudoscalar Klein-Gordon field descibes charged mesons with spin 0 and their antiparticles.

HAHAHAHAHAHA! U DARWINISSTS R SO BRAINWASHED TAHT U CAN NOT SEE THAT EVEN PHYSICS IS TEH SCIENCE OF DESIGN!!! LOL!

I'm off to send (another) application to the Discovery Institute. Wish me luck.

Posted by: Dustin | May 3, 2007 9:52 PM

#14

"The emerging discipline of Systems Biology, a design-friendly discipline which investigates biology from a design perspective"

and silly me, i though systems biology investigated biology from a systems perspective.

Posted by: miko | May 4, 2007 1:16 AM

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