We need more mathematical analysis to counter the claims of creationists, and here's a good one: Mark Chu-Carroll has started a new weblog titled Good Math, Bad Math, and it right now is an excellent post that takes apart Dembski's mangling of the NFL theorem. Recommended, and welcome to blogtopia!
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When I first saw that blog it took me about 10 seconds to decide it HAS to go in the Bloglines. Immediately. He does a fantastic job!
Speaking of creationist mathematicians, where's David Heddle?
We need his "expertise" to calculate the probability of the "DNA nebula".
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/03/16/helix.picture.reut/index.html
Sorry to go off-topic, but I'm liveblogging the Selfish Gene event live from London.
http://blogs.opml.org/tommorris/2006/03/16#liveFromTheLse
PZ writes
We need more mathematical analysis to counter the claims of creationists
I would use the term "debunk" rather than "counter." The term "counter" impliesw that creationists present sincere scientists with genuine claims or objectively reasonable arguments.
When is the last time that happened?
Barbie says, "Math class is hard!" Mark Chu-Carroll says, "I can explain." And he does! Mark knows the math well enough to explain it clearly and without the distortions that sometimes come from simplying a complex topic. Good, good work.
Scientists rule.
I bet Cohen cannot understand that post....
Another mathlete waging the good war for a long time:
Thomas D. Schneider.
Can you believe that spaz lists his letters to editors in his CV (which isn't so much a CV as a "Look! I'm a real academic, too!" kind of thing)? I was thinking about this today at the bus stop. It's really time for a coordinated take-down of this huckster. I'm not sure why it hasn't been done yet. I'm sure a big part of it is his refusal to make his terminology or notions precise enough to be debunked.
As soon as time permits, I think I'm going to grind my teeth on his law of conservation of information.
I think even before I get going on his make-believe law, I'm going to look into his credentials. It is inconceivable that he should have had such a long string of postdocs at such respected institutions and then have such difficulty landing a tenure track position somewhere in mathematics (and don't think he didn't try). That can only mean that his tour-de-post-docs gave up some extremely unremarkable results, if they gave any at all. And, as I've said before, I've seen associate professors at two-man math departments with publication records 10 times as long as Dembski's (and I'm talking about REAL publications in REAL journals, here).
Someone needs to teach this guy that, if he's going to run around flaunting his credentials, then they'd better be worth flaunting.
Great link!
Speaking of Great, I think that observation is good. The usual term is 'debunking' of pseudoscience. ID needs to be debunked!
On a related note, did everyone here see the recent commentary on the upcoming sequel to "What the Bleep do we know?" in the New York Times? It was good stuff. Now, if only we could make $11 million on a movie about *real* science, instead of new age crap. The second one is going to be even worse -- evidently, What The Bleep II is going to feature a woman who claims to be channeling a 35,000 year old spirit... from Atlantis. Now that's good science.
Didn't the first movie already feature Ramtha, as "channeled" by JZ Knight? (Hmmm, someone else using initials with a "Z" for a middle name...) Can't see how it could get much worse...
Couldn't say. I tried... I honestly tried to sit through that stupidity-fest.
I failed. I shouted a bunch of stuff about the generalized statistical interpretation and eigenvalues and such at the other people who were watching it, and stormed out of the room.
That arrogant ass. Read this:
http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/922
He's trying to take credit, a la Al Gore, for this:
http://www.ieee.org/portal/site/tionline/menuitem.130a3558587d56e8fb227…
I'd also bet a large sum of money that the mention of Dembski's name makes most of the people who have published in the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory turn purple.
I also just finished reading his papers over on his site. That was the most masturbatory pile of drivel I've ever read. When real scientists write something, they try to do it in either a pedagogical fashion or in a way that presents results and facts concisely. Sometimes they do both. Dembski does neither... I can only think he's scribbling a bunch of equations around and inventing terminology to stroke his own ego. Who does he imagine he's convincing? The people who can understand what he's doing can see right through it. I'm sure he can see through it himself. It takes a special kind of delusional maniac to lie to himself.
>.<