Intelligent design/creationism
tsmith | August 11, 2006Via Stranger Fruit, Panda's Thumb, and elsewhere in the blogosphere comes this Science paper discussing attitudes regarding evolution in a number of countries, including the United States. As noted in John's title, the U.S. comes in second....from the bottom. Only Turkey has a greater proprtion of citizens that doubt evolution.
People sometimes ask why I bother even writing about "intelligent design" and other such supposed "challenges" to established scientific theories. Evolutionary biology is so overwhelmingly supported by the evidence, why even take the time to address those who deny…
oracknows | August 9, 2006I got this in my e-mail the other day that may be of interest to folks interested in countering the pseudoscience of "intelligent design" creationism:
I would like to announce the birth of CommentsOnID, a Pile-blog and ask for support.
A Pile-blog is a blog intended to offer unmoderated comments and trackbacks space, related to blogposts from blogs where moderation/censure or even absence of comments and trackbacks is the rule.
This particular Pile-blog concerns pro-ID blogs/blogposts. It was setup to circumvent the censorship practiced at the time by Dembski and DaveScot and now by Denyse O'…
oracknows | August 7, 2006It occurred to me over the weekend that I hadn't updated my Medicine and Evolution series in a while. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a couple of clueless creationists who had wildly misinterpreted a recent paper about how the cornea prevents blood vessels from growing into it from the surrounding sclera as "evidence" against evolution, basing his conclusion on, in essence, a single sentence from the abstract of the paper. It turns out that my humble efforts attracted the attention of an editor for American Academy of Ophthalmology, who was kind enough to forward to me a fascinating…
oracknows | August 3, 2006Today, the Skeptics' Circle turns 40. Well, not exactly, but it is the 40th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle, and this time around it's being held at Daylight Atheism. Once again, it's time for an antidote for the rampant credulity in the blogosphere, where dubious stories travel around the world far faster than skeptics can apply critical thinking skills to them, this time by entering the Daylight Atheism Museum of Superstition and Pseudoscience:
The doors of the Observatory are closed, and an eager crowd has gathered before them, milling about anxiously to await the unveiling of the newest…
tsmith | August 3, 2006(The title should, of course, be hummed to the tune of "Strokin'...")
I'm out playing with cows again this afternoon. In the meantime, a few good posts from elsewhere:
Ed talks about the excuses Dembski's given for why research into intelligent design isn't being done.
Revere notes a cull of 50,000 dogs in China due to rabies. He notes:
We've gotten pretty used to the idea that if H5N1 appears in birds it is legitimate to slaughter birds wholesale within a certain distance of the infected flock. In the west, birds are kept as caged pets by some people but not huge numbers. In Indonesia…
tsmith | August 2, 2006In case you've not heard, several the pro-science candidates for the Kansas Board of Education were victorious in the primary election last night.
If current results hold, it looks like the creationists on the 10-member Kansas Board of Education have lost two seats in the Republican primary. The likelihood is therefore that the new Board of Education will switch from being a 6-4 pro-creationism majority to at least a 6-4 pro-science majority (depending on the November general election). This probably means the pro-ID/creationism science standards are history.
(Continued below...)
Pat Hayes…
tsmith | August 1, 2006So, msnbc has a story about a waitress who was given her own--previously stolen--driver's license from a customer who was trying to prove she was 21.
The 22-year-old waitress, whose name was not released, called police last week and said she had been handed her own stolen driver's license by a woman trying to prove she was 21. The woman, who became suspicious of the delay as the waitress went to call police, fled the Moosehead Saloon, but her companion provided her name.
Clearly, this is a case of supernatural intervention, aka "design," as evidenced by this quote from a local police officer…
oracknows | July 25, 2006Alright, now they've gone too far.
I thought I'd seen every specious and fallacious argument and example that creationists could throw out there to annoy scientists and be gobbled up by the credulous, but I was wrong. They're muscling in on my turf now! No, they're not making fallacious arguments about how chemotherapy resistance says nothing about evolution. Been there, done that, and I doubt I'd bother if I were to see yet another such post. No, they're not twist the fact that cancer is often due to mutations in oncogenes and tumor suppressors regulating cell growth and differentiation as "…
tsmith | July 24, 2006Evolutionary biologists sometimes think we microbiology people have it easy. "No one doubts the germ theory!," they claim.
Au contraire, mes amis:
Do some research Tara. Then you will be ready to start from scratch again, forget the germ theory nonsense and become a real scientist.
And I bet this insult will sound familiar to many used to dealing with the anti-science brigades:
Evidence is all around and you have as much evidence as I do. The sole difference between you and me is that you are still blindfolded by a century of dogmatic thinking and are not able to see the evidence.
You…
tsmith | July 24, 2006Just wanted to point y'all to PZ's post on Gallagher's editorial (as he notes, he's much less generous than I am) and make a few clarifications:
1) Gallagher didn't coin the term "spiritual left;" that's lifted from Silver's book. I know many of the comments strongly disagreed with that term, and to be fair, it's not of his invention.
2) I understand that most of the examples Gallagher mentioned are present on all sides of the political spectrum. I agree that the right has more political clout and funding, and I disagree with Gallagher with his statement that the left is a bigger threat…
oracknows | July 23, 2006Eh Nonymous has posted a first hand account of a speech by Judge John E. Jones III, who decided the Kitzmiller v. Dover case on "intelligent design" creationism in Dover. We need more judges like him. My only thought is: How on earth did this guy get appointed to the federal bench by the Bush Administration? He's way too reasonable and unwilling to let religion influence his decision-making process.
I'm sure it's a mistake the Bush Administration won't make again.
tsmith | July 20, 2006The name "Richard Gallagher" may be familiar to some readers. Gallagher is the editor of The Scientist, and last year, somewhat naively suggested that the evolution/creation "debate" was actually a good thing (you can find the text of his editorial at this site). Both PZ and Jason Rosenhouse took him to task for the editorial (and Gallagher replied, and PZ shot back). The next month, The Scientist then published a number of letters responding to the editorial, and Gallagher also wrote a reply (republished here by the Discovery Institute). Gallagher ended that piece with this quote:…
tsmith | July 15, 2006More interesting stories that I didn't get to this week...
Ewen is looking for volunteer producers for his radio show. If you're in his neck of the woods and would like to learn about science journalism, drop him a line.
Mike notes that MRSA is winning the war on drugs, due in part to dirty needles and a lack of needle exchange programs.
Orac discusses the latest Geiers drama (those would be the folks who've been most prominent in pushing the vaccination/autism link here in the U.S.) Turns out a court recently laid the smackdown on them, Kitzmiller-style.
More sequence information has been…
tsmith | July 14, 2006John and Jason [edited; and Ed] quote from a John Derbyshire article discussing the wearying business of aruging with creationists:
Basically, it is a game of Whack-a-Mole. They make an argument, you whack it down. They make a second, you whack it down. They make a third, you whack it down. So they make the first argument again. This is why most biologists just can't be bothered with Creationism at all, even for the fun of it. It isn't actually any fun. Creationists just chase you round in circles. It's boring.
It would be less boring if they'd come up with a new argument once in a while, but…
tsmith | July 10, 2006As I mentioned here, it looks like there is additional rumbling over Ohio's education standards. Sunday's Columbus Dispatch has more information on the topic, and something just isn't right:
Colleen Grady, a board member from the Cleveland suburb of Strongsville, wants to add guidelines to the state science standards for teaching on such topics as evolution, global warming, stem-cell research and cloning.
Grady said she views her proposal as a compromise to ensure that differing views are considered when teaching such hot-button issues.
"We would provide a template so schools would be…
tsmith | July 10, 2006...but luckily, I'm set straight over at Effect Measure, where Revere completely refutes my silly notion of mutations in H5N1 by citing this excellent guest commentary in the Greely Tribune (where their top story today is about a hot dog from 1952). The commentary is titled "Bird flu a lame claim to evolution theory" and written by one Mike Martin, former editor of Ag Weekly Magazine. He certainly demolishes my silly science-y notation of just what "mutations" (such as those discussed in the Nature article I cited use for analysis) are all about:
But now, "mutation" is being redefined to…
oracknows | July 8, 2006Not surprisingly, it comes from Ann Coulter:
Throw in enough words like imagine, perhaps, and might have -- and you've got yourself a scientific theory! How about this: Imagine a giant raccoon passed gas and perhaps the resulting gas might have created the vast variety of life we see on Earth. And if you don't accept the giant raccoon flatulence theory for the origin of life, you must be a fundamentalist Christian nut who believes the Earth is flat. That's basically how the argument for evolution goes [emphasis in original].
Fortunately, Robert Savillo over at Media Matters has provided an…
tsmith | July 7, 2006As I've mentioned previously, I'm an Ohioan, born and bred. I was living in the state when all the Discovery Institute shenanigans were ongoing, resulting in the addition of a "critical analysis of evolution" lesson plan (which was removed this past February). Of course, that hasn't stopped the anti-evolution folks in the state. RBH reports on the latest attack on science education in Ohio--and you may (or, may not) be surprised at what they're going after now:
Now, consistent with the creationist tradition of repackaging old trash, we learn that the creationists on the Achievement…
oracknows | July 6, 2006It's that time again, time for the 38th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle.
Thirsty?
Well, LBBP over at Skeptic Rant offers parched skeptics a fine assortment of beverages including Satire Cider, Quack Quencher, Woo Brew, and Creationist Tonic, among others. It's just the cool, refreshing dose of critical thinking to quench that skeptical thirst that's been intensified by the rampant credulity of society in general and the blogosphere in particular.
Drink deep!
And come on back for the 39th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle, which will be hosted by Mike over at (appropriately enough) Mike's Weekly…
tsmith | June 26, 2006This is big.
The world's leading scientists yesterday urged schools to stop denying the facts of evolution amid controversy over the teaching of creationism.
The national science academies of 67 countries - including the UK's Royal Society - issued a joint statement warning that scientific evidence about the origins of life was being "concealed, denied, or confused". It urged parents and teachers to provide children with the facts about the origins and evolution of life on Earth.
This is a nice foil to a recent post on the Discovery Institute's "Evolution News and Views blog," noting that…