Responding to Joe Carter on Sternberg and Coddington

Joe Carter of Evangelical Outpost has replied to my post that pointed out that none of the bloggers who jumped so eagerly on the Sternberg situation as proof of his martyrdom have bothered to mention the other side of the story, Coddington's denial of the accusations. He says:

While there are at least two different views to this controversy - Sternberg's claims and Coddington's rebuttal -- Ed appears to be claiming that both are to be considered equally credible. While there is no way for us to know exactly who is telling the truth, let's look at how each side's point of view was presented:

Sternberg filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC), an independent federal investigative and prosecutorial agency. By making the claims and signing Form OSC-11 (2-05) , Sternberg acknowledged that he was aware that making a false statement or concealing material fact would be committing a criminal offense punishable by a fine of up to $250,000, imprisonment for up to five years, or both. He also agreed to speak on record with a columnist who was writing an editorial for the Wall Street Journal, ensuring that his claims would be on public record in a national newspaper.

Coddington was offered a chance to present his side of the story in the WSJ article but chose not to do so. Instead, he thought it would be more appropriate to present his rebuttal in the comment's section of a blog.

Apparently, my friend Ed is accusing me of "confirmation bias" for assuming that claims made by a person who risks national embarrassment, a six-digit monetary fine, and a prison term, should be considered slightly more credible than a comment left on a blog.

Unfortunately, this is quite an obvious distortion of what I said. If I had said, "Coddington has denied the accusation and therefore Sternberg is lying", this response might be on point. But I didn't say that. In fact, I didn't take any position whatsoever on who is telling the truth in this situation. What I said, rather, was that neither Carter, nor any of the other bloggers who so eagerly jumped on the initial Klinghoffer article as incontrovertible proof of a "Darwinian inquisition" that was oppressing heretics, had even mentioned that there was another side to the story, as though the mere accusation was enough to justify the conclusion and any thought that the accusations might be false did not even warrant consideration. It's one thing to compare the relative strength of the two sides and conclude that you think one side has a stronger case at this point (as Joe attempts to do in his follow up); it's quite another to take one side's accusations, without bothering to even consider the denial or look at any evidence that either side might offer, and assume them to be true without even mentioning that there is another side to it. The first might be defensible, the second clearly is not. But let's look at Joe's arguments here a bit closer and see if they are justified.

Joe argues that the fact that Sternberg filed his complaint with the OSC, a procedure that includes a possible fine for making false statements, and talked to Klinghoffer so he could write his op-ed piece on it, lends extra credibility to his accusations. This strikes me as overclaimed, at the very least. First, by this reasoning, anyone who ever makes a criminal or civil or administrative complaint about virtually anything, all of which come with potential punishment for making false statements or perjury, must therefore be telling the truth. Yet we know, of course, that people file false reports all the time. Secondly, this argument presumes that the only two possibilities are that he's telling the truth or he's lying, and those are not the only two possibilities. Sternberg may well be telling the truth so far as he knows it, but overreacting to second hand stories that are themselves distorted, or mixing in his emotional reactions with the objective facts of the situation, or that Klinghoffer's article (which is the only statement of the accusations that is publicly available - no one has seen the actual complaint, only Klinghoffer's report about it) mixes those things together. Indeed, I think this is the most plausible explanation at this point, and I'll explain why.

Remember that Klinghoffer's article is not the same thing as the legal complaint that Sternberg filed. It is, rather, his own ideologically biased report of that complaint and his conversation with Sternberg. It is not subject to any fines for false or exaggerated statements, and a close reading of it shows that there is quite a mishmash of objective claims and highly emotional responses to those claims. For instance, Klinghoffer states that Sternberg has been "punished by the museum's Department of Zoology" and quotes Sternberg as saying, "I'm spending my time trying to figure out how to salvage a scientific career." But in fact, this whole thing has nothing to do with his scientific career. Sternberg's career, his job, is at the National Center for Biotechnology Information, not at the Smithsonian, and there is not even a hint in Klinghoffer's article of any threat to that career. His position as a Research Associate at the Smithsonian is an unpaid, non-employment position. It is little more than a courtesy given to a group of scientists employed elsewhere who want access to the collections of the Smithsonian without direct staff supervision. They are given keys to the facility and a workspace at the museum, but they are not employees of it. And the fact is that Sternberg still has exactly the same access to those collections that he has always had as a Research Associate.

Remember also that Coddington's denial of the accusations is also subject to the same potential fines for perjury. The most substantive accusation, the only one that really matters, is that Coddington took away Sternberg's space and access to the collections. But Coddington says that this was part of a larger reorganization that was begun before the PBSW situation took place involving 17 people and 20 offices. That is a claim that should be very easily proven true or false given the internal documentation that must accompany it, and the numbers of people involved. One could just as easily make Joe's argument the other way - why would Coddington make such an easily disprovable statement under the same threat of punishment for making false statements?

Joe also makes the argument that Coddington's denial should be taken less seriously because he "was offered a chance to present his side of the story in the WSJ article but chose not to do so. Instead, he thought it would be more appropriate to present his rebuttal in the comment's section of a blog." But this is an unjustified conclusion. Klinghoffer's article only says, "Neither Mr. Coddington nor Mr. Sues returned repeated phone messages asking for their version of events." It does not say that he "chose not to do so", it only says that he did not return phone messages. That could also quite easily be a result of having been out of town when Klinghoffer tried to contact him. We don't know how many times messages were left, or over what period of time, nor do we know that Coddington received them prior to the publication of the article, so it is unjustifed to claim that he chose not to do so because he preferred to respond in the comments on a blog. I am on the board of an organization with several scientists and academics, and believe me it is often difficult to get a response to inquiries for days and even weeks at a time because they may be out of town or deeply involved in a research project with an impending deadline. Consider also that there may have been a period of time, in the wake of Sternberg filing his complaint, when the Smithsonian's attorneys may well have told Coddington not to make any public statements until they had had a chance to review the evidence. Indeed, Coddington explicitly refers to limitations on what he can say publicly at this point in his response. So there are at least two more plausible conclusions to reach rather than assuming that Coddington chose not to respond to Klinghoffer's messages because he preferred to respond in the comments at the Panda's Thumb.

In summary, let me say this. I take Sternberg's accusations very seriously. If it is true that Coddington took away his keys and space and tried to deny him access to the collections - though it may not technically be a violation of the anti-discrimination laws because Sternberg is not his employee - then I think Coddington should be punished, perhaps even fired. His claim that Sternberg was never denied access to the collections and that he was merely moved as part of a larger reorganization of space should be easily proven or disproven by the OSC in their investigation of the complaint. If that is a lie, Coddington should be removed from his position immediately. But if it's true, then Sternberg will have no one to blame but himself for the demise of his career because that false accusation will follow him as well.

I don't know what the truth is at this point (though I do have some sources of information not publicly available at this point that make me lean toward the Coddington side), and neither does Joe. And that was my entire point, that intellectual honesty at least demands an acknowledgement that there are two sides to the story, not one, and that it cannot merely be presumed that the side that is telling the truth is the one you want to be telling the truth. To leap from the mere accusation to a conclusion that just happens to conform to the "Darwinist inquisition" meme that he and the other bloggers have a lot invested in is pretty clearly a case of confirmation bias. And I suspect that if the shoe was on the other foot, and similar accusations were made against, say, the folks at the Discovery Institute, those same bloggers would be saying the exact same thing I am saying about these accusations - that you should not jump to a conclusion without seeing the evidence for the accusations, not the accusations themselves.