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Joshua Rosenau spends his days defending the teaching of evolution at the National Center for Science Education. He is also a graduate student at the University of Kansas, completing a doctorate in the department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. When not modeling species distributions or battling creationists, he writes about developments in progressive politics and the sciences.
The opinions expressed here are his own, do not reflect the official position of the NCSE. Indeed, older posts may no longer reflect his own official position.
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Policy and Politics:
Category: Creationism
Todd Wood is a creationist. He is a professor at Bryan College, named for William Jennings Bryan, who prosecuted John Scopes in 1925. He is, in particular, a professor of baraminology, the creationist notion that his particular Christian God created the "kinds" in the first week, and that by careful measurement, he can identify those "kinds." He thinks the earth is less than 10,000 years old. He thinks evolution is wrong, but he also freely acknowledges that it is the very best scientific knowledge available, and has been on a minor crusade to move other creationists away from the absurdities...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 9:50 PM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Policy and Politics
Martin Cothran – fellow traveler with the Disco. 'Tute, shill for James Dobson's crew, and generally unpleasant person – thinks the dissent of 162 members of American Physical Society disproves a scientific consensus. Alas for Cothran, the APS has 47,189 members, so the dissent of 162 hardly undermines a claim of consensus. Bonus shorter Martin Cothran – A sad story: Guilt by association is wrong. It might lead you to criticize someone for endorsing the racist, eugenic arguments of racist eugenicists, or to criticize an event promoting sexual health and safety for being sponsored by a group which sells novelty...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 4:05 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Policy and Politics
For some reason, people are only now realizing Christopher Hitchens' distaste for Mother Teresa. It's like they started paying attention to the world a week ago....
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 11:15 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Creationism
There's been much ink spilled lately about the latest work from the authors of Freakonomics. I should say before getting into this that I haven't read their last book, and don't plan to read the sequel. I also haven't read any of Malcolm Gladwell's books, for largely the same reasons (note that the Freakonomists apparently acknowledge that they cut one section of their latest book because Gladwell scooped them). Basically, I see these sorts of books as attempts by minimally-informed dilettantes to insert themselves into complex topics by applying a canned methodology and pretending that the naive solutions resulting from...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 8:04 PM • 19 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Norman Levitt was a great man, a leonine defender of science against the trendy pablum advanced under the guise of post-modern critique. This defense was most famously advanced in Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science, co-authored with the indomitable Paul Gross. He also assisted in an amicus brief in Kitzmiller v. Dover and reviewed a book about Dover by sociologist Steve Fuller, who testified in defense of ID (arguing, for instance, that ID deserved "affirmative action"). Levitt passed away over the weekend, and his widow has asked that, in lieu of flowers, donations be sent to...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 2:02 PM • 15 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture Wars
Jason Rosenhouse, criticizing Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum's reply to Jerry Coyne's review of their book in Science, ends with this thought: You can not consistently argue that one side hurts the cause every time they open their mouths, but then object that you are not telling them to keep quiet. Free speech has absolutely nothing to do with this, as has been explained to M and K many times. No one thinks they want the government to come in and do anything. To be honest, I'm baffled that M and K persist in getting so irate on this point....
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 9:09 PM • 90 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Policy and Politics
You may recall Martin Cothran from our fight over whether Pat Buchanan is a racist and a Holocaust denier, and from his guest-blogging gigs at the Discovery Institute, and through his other attempts to abuse logic for partisan purposes. Not content to push creationism with the Disco. 'Tute and other forms of evangelical Christianity through Kentucky's affiliate of Focus on the Family, he now is promoting Charles Murray's eugenic pap. Murray, for those who don't recall, was a co-author of The Bell Curve, a book widely criticized as racist and eugenic in its implications. Murray and co-author Herrnstein argued that...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 4:13 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Creationism
Slacktivist is talking sense. He notes a common problem in dealing with creationists: I find I'm unable to communicate with them -- not just because I'm less fluent in the language of science, but because when they start talking about science then words no longer seem to mean what they mean for the rest of us. They use familiar-sounding words, but you quickly realize that they're using these familiar words in unfamiliar ways, using them to communicate vastly, irreconcilably different things.In particular, they use the word "theory" in ways that don't reflect the term's actual meaning in science. The "just...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 6:27 PM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Policy and Politics
In a radio interview today, George Herbert Walker Bush complains about the "lack of civility in politics": The Republican elder statesman said, "It's not just the right." He complained, "there are plenty of people on the left." While he said he does not believe in personal name-calling, he singled out MSNBC personalities Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow calling them "sick puppies." "The way they treat my son and anyone who's opposed to their point of view is just horrible," Mr. Bush said. "When our son was president they just hammered him mercilessly and I think obscenely a lot of the...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 9:25 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture Wars
Don McLeroy, erstwhile head of the Texas Board of Education, doesn't like the National Academy of Sciences. At least not on even-numbered days. During the science standards fight, he praised the NAS definition of science. Then again, he endorsed a crazy, self-published pamphlet declaring that the NAS is "sowing atheism." And of course, he dismissed the good advice of the NAS and other science groups when they asked him not to undermine evolution education, telling the Board "Someone has to stand up to these experts." And now McLeroy has decided to attack the NAS in social studies standards. In a...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 3:56 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
