The Discovery Institute's trademarked brand of science-by-press-release continues. In this press release, John West (a political scientist) claims that "[t]he key section of the widely-noted court decision on intelligent design issued a year ago on December 20 was copied nearly verbatim from a document written by ACLU lawyers" (the document being the findings of fact proposed by the ACLU). Tim Sandefur (a lawyer) notes that such documents "are proposed findings which a judge, if he or she agrees, then incorporates as his or her own findings. Both the school district and the plaintiffs filed proposed findings, and the judge went with the findings he found most convincing." Tim goes on:
The Discovery Institute is essentially complaining "Hey, the ID proponents failed to convince the judge of anything they were saying!" Sorry, but that ain't a story.
Predictably, the denizens of Uncommon Descent are on the story. Never one to take the high road, Dembski sees fit to say that "Jones is a narcissistic putz." (Interestingly, the RSS feed says "schlemiel" while the blog post itself says "putz". Go figure!) This is ID at the cutting edge, folks - the "Isaac Newton of Information Theory" hurling epithets like a sulking teenager who has been prevented from going out by his parents.
Stay classy, Billy, stay classy.
Update (Dec 13th): Ed Brayton's got two pieces up that are worth a read. The first is a fisking of the DI's study. The second takes on Larry Moran for his lack of knowledge of judicial procedure and claim that "[Judge Jones] is no longer the brilliant man who was able to grasp complex scientific concepts in the blink of an eye. He's able to discern who's right and who's wrong, but that's all."
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It's amazing to watch these guys. They're either breathtakingly ignorant, complete liars and decievers, or an unholy fusion of the two.
Unbelievable.
What a whiner.
I can expect better from my teenage students.
The Discovery Institute has descended so far since Dover that they are now basically reduced to being a ranting non-entity. They remind me of the neocons and their recent behavior with regard to Iraq, desperately flinging accusations left and right to shore up their catastrophic failure.
I seem to remember these findings being available before the decision was announced. It was one of the things that convinced me only monumental judicial activism could prevent the correct decision. The defence proposal was so laughably bad, I was half convinced it was a joke, whereas the plaintif's was well written, logical and made full use of the evidence
The defenses FOF are here - Jones could have cut and pasted from those as well, but he didn't. I wonder why?
I figure it like this: He can say anything he wants on his blog, which readers have to visit on purpose, but calling someone a dick over RSS, where anyone could just happen to read it, won't play in Peoria.
Of course he could have said "schmuck," which originally meant exactly the same thing but has more or less evolved in the general vocabulary to mean a stupid jerk. But in Orthodox circles it's still an obscenity.
The upshot of it is, he's covering his tuchis.
Dembski the Borscht-Belt comedian.
Now I've heard everything.
"Take my wife... PLEASE!"