Dover Lawsuit
stcynic | June 20, 2005I reported yesterday about William Dembski, John Campbell and Stephen Meyer being withdrawn as expert witnesses by the Thomas More Law Center in the Dover lawsuit. There is now developing some contradictory explanations for that withdrawal. The York Daily Record reported that the TMLC refused to allow the three Discovery Institute (DI) fellows to have their own legal representation present during depositions because it was a "conflict of interest":
Dembski, a mathematician and scientific philosopher, said the Thomas More Law Center, which is defending the school board, basically fired him…
stcynic | June 19, 2005This story has finally been made public so I can talk about it. Within the last couple weeks, three of the main experts for the defense in the Dover ID trial - William Dembski, Stephen Meyer and John Campbell - have all been withdrawn as expert witnesses in the case. The York Daily Record reports:
Dembski, a mathematician and scientific philosopher, said the Thomas More Law Center, which is defending the school board, basically fired him because he wanted to have his own attorney present during the depositions.
He said he's puzzled and frustrated by Thomas More's refusal to let him…
stcynic | January 19, 2005Here's an interesting aspect of the Dover, PA intelligent design lawsuit. In sworn depositions, three school board members and the school superintendant have either denied or said they don't recall any discussion of creationism or Christianity during the school board meetings at which the ID policy was debated. But those comments were reported by two different newspapers, and one of the school board members repeated those sentiments in a television interview after one of those school board meetings. At issue is whether the board was motivated by a desire to get creationism or Christianity…
stcynic | January 14, 2005When I saw this breathtakingly ridiculous guest op-ed on the Dover situation, from two people claiming to be scientists, I shook my head in disbelief that two people with scientific training could be that utterly clueless about how science operates. I was going to sit down and demolish it line by line, but PZ Myers beat me to it. The only thing he didn't go after was their absurd, elementary school-level caricature of science that says that there is a ladder of certainty that goes from hypothesis to theory to "law". And the wife in this two-headed hydra of nonsense claims to have a degree in…
stcynic | January 9, 2005Richard Thompson, chief counsel for the Thomas More Law Center, has replied to the open letter written by a group of scientists and philosophers from the University of Pennsylvania to the Dover school board. See Thompson's letter here. It is amazingly vitriolic for something written by a lawyer and the head of a major public advocacy group. It begins with this astonishing statement:
If the level of inquiry supporting your letter is an example of the type of inquiry you make before arriving at scientific conclusions, I suggest that at the very least, your students should get their tuition…
stcynic | January 8, 2005Two interesting developments over the last few days. First, the science teachers have banded together to ask that they not be required to read the ridiculous statement that the school board passed as a disclaimer to their students. From the York Daily Record:
All but one teacher in the Dover Area School District's high school science department signed a letter Thursday requesting that they be allowed to "opt out" of reading the "Intelligent Design Theory" statement meant for students.
"We do not believe this is science," said high school science teacher Jen Miller...
"We believe that…