Posted on 08/18/2005 10:36:33 PM PDT by dervish
The Smithsonian Institution is a national treasure of which every American can legitimately feel a sense of personal ownership. Considering this, I'd imagine widespread displeasure as more Americans become aware that senior scientists at the publicly funded Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History have reportedly been creating a "hostile work environment" for one of their colleagues merely because he published a controversial idea in a biology journal.
The controversial idea is Intelligent Design, the scientific critique of neo-Darwinism. The persecuted Smithsonian scientist is Richard von Sternberg, the holder of two PhDs in biology (one in theoretical biology, the other in molecular evolution). While the Smithsonian disputes the case, Sternberg's version has so far been substantiated in an investigation by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC), an independent federal agency.
A lengthy and detailed letter from OSC attorney James McVay, dated August 5, 2005, and addressed to Sternberg, summarizes the government's findings, based largely on e-mail traffic among top Smithsonian scientists. A particularly damning passage in the OSC letter reads:
Our preliminary investigation indicates that retaliation [against Sternberg by his colleagues] came in many forms. It came in the form of attempts to change your working conditions...During the process you were personally investigated and your professional competence was attacked. Misinformation was disseminated throughout the SI [Smithsonian Institution] and to outside sources. The allegations against you were later determined to be false. It is also clear that a hostile work environment was created with the ultimate goal of forcing you out of the SI. Meanwhile, on the basis of the "misinformation" directed against him, Sternberg's career prospects were being ruined.
'snip'
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Yes. But more so, this fellow didn't espouse the conservative view, he simply allowed it to be one article in one issue of a magazine.
There is an Amen corner here for those who started this witch hunt.
They really are so obsessed with their own religious dogma and the evil boogyman of Creationists that they are incredibly lemming-like and callous to an incident such as this.
Most of all, they aren't even really interested in science except as far as they feel it reinforces their own religious world view.
No, I have not.
-- is evolution theory getting "stronger and stronger" or is it in danger of being undermined by second rate misrepresentors with little science to back them up? You can't have it both ways.
Since the two observations concern different realms, they are in no way contradictory.
Yes, the science of evolutionary biology has gotten stronger and stronger -- it has been validated by more and more evidence, more and more validation tests, and has survived more and more potential falsification tests.
Meanwhile, the public *perception* of it is under assault by creationist propaganda.
There's nothing contradictory about observing that the science itself has become more validated, at the same time that public *opinion* has gotten more muddled.
Was this really such a hard distinction that you couldn't grasp it on your own?
Second, the practical applications of evolution such as genetic modification, evolving resistance, etc. can be accepted by all without ever reaching the concept of a Prime Mover.
Tell that to the creationists who scream bloody murder over the very concept of evolutionary biology, and geology, and radiometric dating methods, and Big Bang physics, and... The list is a long one.
It is the religion of secularism that insists on putting its stamp of closed on that one.
Go tell it to someone who actually might "insist" on such a thing. I don't, and I don't know anyone (or any scientist) who does. Nor do I know anyone who subscribes to any paradigm that could in any way be accurately described as "religion of secularism". That term gets thrown around a lot, but it seems to be mostly a fantasy of the "nonsecular".
Further my point is that a closed mind is dangerous from whichever direction it comes.
And I agree.
If Meyer's article was so faulty why wasn't that the subject of the criticism and rebuke?
That *is* the subject of most of the criticism and rebuke. But since the creationists don't want to deal with *that* subject, they spend most of their time screaming about the few people who were personally obnoxious to Sternberg, and muttering about how he's the new Galileo. After all, it's *so* much better propaganda to beat the "suppression" horse to death, than it is to actually argue their "scientific" case on its alleged "merits".
How exactly do you "debate" with someone whose entire argument is based on a belief in a higher being? That isn't something any scientist should take on. That's not in our realm of expertise.
And you're ignoring the other half of this. Any scientific theory, as you so gleefully point out, must be open to refutation. If you wish to make ID a scientific theory, you must open it to the possibility of refuting it, and therefore, the existence of God. I think I could get a pretty good start on that just reading the daily headlines.
Now, if you say that you can't refute the existence of God, you're turning ID into a philosophical argument and a religious based idea, not a scientific theory. If that's the case, it doesn't belong in a science class.
What next? God makes things fall down, don't teach gravity?
This just confirms my thoughts that there are a lot of scientists for whom science is their religion. And they have a lot of zeal for their religion. It's funny to see them dismiss ID completely as hogwash, but then seem to be afraid to fight it out in the realm of ideas. Instead, you see a lot of baseless, ad hominum attacks and the crap mentioned in this article. There's no excuse for this behavior, whether you agree that this man should have allowed the ID paper in the journal or not.
The hell I do. Stop slandering me without cause.
The modern day academic equivalent of Galileo's heresy was the job harassment Dr. von Sternberg got.
Oh, puh-LEAZE...
Sorry, we don't burn at the stake today.
...you say, while you continue to utterly miss the point about how critical that difference is, and how laughable it makes your comparisons.
If the doctor worked in Political Science and espoused conservative views for which he was then harassed, would you feel the same way?
Yes indeed, I would continue to feel that it's ludicrous to equivalence such behavior to the kind, degree, and amount of abuse which science has been subjected to by the pious.
That's not the same as saying that I approve of any personal abuse of Sternberg -- I do not. But I do object to creationists trying to paint this one instance as somehow being a) equivalent in any way to real acts of censorship or suppression, or b) a sign that now it's science which is the "oppressor" and religion which is the "poor innocent victim", when there are still plenty of current and recent examples of inexcusable behavior by creationists in their continual attacks on science, scientists, and those who respect science.
One episode of bad treatment of Sternberg hardly wipes away centuries of suppressive behavior by creationists.
I will happily fight out my ideas. You start by answering one question: what in development demonstrates a higher power is at work?
Try and keep it scientific.
Obviously you're referring to the bigotry aimed at von Sternberg to suppress and punish him for his views, right?
This article is pretty close to that, what happened to this fellow
No, it isn't, but I've despaired of expecting a normal level of perspective from you.
and he is not even an advocate of "Intelligent Design."
You're as confused and wrong as usual. Sterberg certainly *is* "an advocate of 'Intelligent Design'". What hallucination led you to falsely conclude that he wasn't?
His great sin was apparently not working hard enough to suppress the heresy.
You keep talking, but all you can manage is strings of buzzwords.
What you don't understand is that science is not religion
Oh, I understand that just *fine*.
and your religious fanatcism
Wrong again.
is as detrimental, or more accurately trivial and superfluous, as the heretics you live to, and love to, battle.
You certainly have a colorful, dramatic view of me. You're a real drama queen.
There are you religious fanatics like you arguing about how many angels dance on the head of a pin. You say 13, they say 14. So one guy in the 14 camp lets one of the heretics write 14 angels can dance on a pin in an obscure and unimportant magazine that usually only publishes from the 13 view and the 13 camp decides to blackball him and destroy his livlihood.
You know, the decaffeinated brands taste just as good.
Let me know when your rant dies down and you get back to saying something that manages to resemble something I've actually said, or a position I actually hold.
It's all so pathetic. It reminds of libertarians, Ann Rand worshippers and also Cindy Sheehan type freaks.
Still waiting for you to wind down.
And there are those who are actually study the pins and learn and discover things. Look in to it.
Ooookay.
So does anyone actually want to discuss the science, or is tonight just going to be Galileo accusations, Cindy Sheehan slurs, and longwinded non sequiturs about pins?
What, for the umpteenth time we have to have this fight, as if those over the past several years left something out. Or the combatants weren't as smart or articulate as you?
Why not just reference the archives and Cut and Paste...it'll save you a lot of time...and sway about as many to one side or the other.
I've only been here a few months, so I haven't read the archives, and I doubt they are as awesome as I in the arguing and alliteration department. Here I am, answering a challenge to fight, and here you are telling me I shouldn't because I've already lost.
Interesting. Who is quashing whose dissent?
After the nasty dose of billingsgate in this thread, Fred Reed's column "The Metaphysics of Evolution" was a breath of fresh air. (do a Google search to find it; I would give a link, but ran across it at a Site We Are Not Supposed To Quote From)
Excerpt:
Intelligent Design
An interesting thought that drives evolutionists mad is called Intelligent Design, or ID. It is the view that things that appear to have been done deliberately might have been. Some look at, say, the human eye and think, "This looks like really good engineering. Elaborate retina of twelve layers, marvelously transparent cornea, pump system to keep the whole thing inflated, suspensory ligaments, really slick lens, the underlying cell biology. Very clever."
I gather that a lot of ID folk are in fact Christian apologists trying to drape Genesis in scientific respectability. That is, things looked to have been designed, therefore there must be a designer, now will Yahweh step forward. Yet an idea is not intellectually disreputable because some of the people who hold it are. The genuine defects of ID are the lack of a detectible designer, and that evolution appears to have occurred. This leads some to the thought that consciousness is involved and evolution may be shaping itself. I can think of no way to test the idea.
In any event, to anyone of modest rationality, the evolutionist's hostility to Intelligent Design is amusing. Many evolutionists argue, perhaps correctly, that Any Day Now we will create life in the laboratory, which would be intelligent design. Believing that life arose by chemical accident, they will argue (reasonably, given their assumptions) that life must have evolved countless times throughout the universe. It follows then that, if we will soon be able to design life, someone else might have designed us.
In Conclusion
To evolutionists I say, "I am perfectly willing to believe what you can actually establish. Reproducibly create life in a test tube, and I will accept that it can be done. Do it under conditions that reasonably may have existed long ago, and I will accept as likely the proposition that such conditions existed and gave rise to life. I bear no animus against the theory, and champion no competing creed. But don't expect me to accept fluid speculation, sloppy logic, and secular theology."
I once told my daughters, "Whatever you most ardently believe, remember that there is another side. Try, however hard it may be, to put yourself in the shoes of those whose views you most dislike. Force yourself to make a reasoned argument for their position. Do that, think long and hard, and conclude as you will. You can do no better, and you may be surprised."
Notes
(1) An example, for anyone interested, of the sort of unlogic to which I was exposed by evolutionists: Some simple viruses are strings of nucleotides in a particular order. In 2002 Eckhard Wimmer, at the University of New York at Stony Brook, downloaded the sequence for polio from the Internet, bought the necessary nucleotides from a biological supply house, strung them together, and got a functioning virus that caused polio in mice. It was a slick piece of work.
When I ask evolutionists whether the chance creation of life has been demonstrated in the laboratory, I get email offering Wimmer's work as evidence that it has been done. But (even stipulating that viruses are alive) what Wimmer did was to put OTS nucleotides together according to a known pattern in a well-equipped laboratory. This is intelligent design, or at least intelligent plagiarism. It is not chance anything. At least some of the men who offered Wimmer's work as what it wasn't are far too intelligent not to see the illogic – except when they are defending the faith.
(2) Many Evolutionists respond to skepticism about life's starting by chance by appealing to the vastness of time. "Fred, there were billions and billions of gallons of ocean, for billions of years, or billions of generations of spiders or bugs or little funny things with too many legs, so the odds are in all that time...." Give something long enough and it has to happen, they say. Maybe. But probabilities don't always work the way they look like they ought.
Someone is said to have said that a monkey banging at random on a typewriter would eventually type all the books in the British Museum. (Some of the books suggest that this may have happened, but never mind.) Well, yes. The monkey would. But it could be a wait. The size of the wait is worth pondering.
Let's consider the chance that the chimp would type a particular book. To make the arithmetic easy, let's take a bestseller with 200,000 words. By a common newspaper estimate of five letters per word on average, that's a million letters. What's the chance the monkey will get the book in a given string of a million characters?
For simplicity, assume a keyboard of 100 keys. The monkey has a 1/100 chance of getting the first letter, times 1/100 of getting the second letter, and so on. His chance of getting the book is therefore one in 1 in 100 exp 1,000,000, or 1 in 10 exp 2,000,000. (I don't offhand know log 3 but, thirty being greater than ten, a 30-character keyboard would give well in excess of 10 exp 1,000,000.)
Now, let's be fair to the Bandar Log. Instead of one monkey, let's use 10 exp 100 monkeys. Given that the number of subatomic particles in the universe is supposed to be 10 exp 87 (or something), that seems to be a fair dose of monkeys. (I picture a cowering electron surrounded by 10 exp 13 monkeys.) Let's say they type 10 exp 10 characters per second per each, for 10 exp 100 seconds which, considering that the age of the universe (I read somewhere) is 10 exp 18 seconds, seems more than fair.
Do the arithmetic. For practical purposes, those monkeys have no more chance of getting the book than the single monkey had, which, for practical purposes, was none.
Now, I don't suggest that the foregoing calculation has any direct application to the chance formation of life. (I will get seriously stupid email from people who ignore the foregoing sentence.) But neither do I know that the chance appearance of a cell does not involve paralyzing improbabilities. Without unambiguous numbers arising from unarguable assumptions, invoking time as a substitute for knowledge can be hazardous.
Try and keep it scientific.
I don't particularly adhere to either extreme. I'm convinced that evolution has been proven valid, however I'm not opposed to the idea that there may have been "nudges" given to the development of life and the universe. For example, I think that the Fine-tuned Universe idea is worth further investigation. I'm not so arrogant as to think that I have all the answers, and I think it is worth while to look at alternatives.
However, my main point is that the scientific community is acting like a bunch of thugs when they are reduced to trying to ruin a man's career because he does not toe the line with their thinking. I'd like to see you defend that.
They did say "credible". "Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington" is to the major peer-reviewed journals as a local church bulletin is to a papal encyclical from the Vatican. As a recent review has commented:
The Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington (PBSW) is a respected, if somewhat obscure, biological journal specializing in papers of a systematic and taxonomic nature, such as the description of new species. A review of issues in evolutionary theory is decidedly not its typical fare, even disregarding the creationist nature of Meyer’s paper. The fact that the paper is both out of the journal’s typical sphere of publication, as well as dismal scientifically, raises the question of how it made it past peer review.
But in any case, you're entirely missing the point, which is common for creationists. Getting something (*anything*) published in some (*any*) peer-reviewed journal is hardly a major step. It's not like a hypothesis has "arrived" when it has managed a single peer-reviewed publication. Indeed, that's just the very *first* small step. What was funny about "ID" is that despite long years of blustering, and many mass-market books, speeches, etc. about how it was somehow on the verge of bringing evolution tumbling down, it hadn't even bothered (or been able) to make even the VERY FIRST tiny step towards any sort of scientific legitimacy. It has been nothing but a PR campaign.
Thus, the scientific establishment's snickering about how ID claims to be "a new science", when it hadn't even been able to muster *any* papers worthy of publishing in the journals, *anywhere*.
Now, they've *FINALLY* managed to squeak a severely flawed paper into an obscure journal. Hardly a thing to be overly proud of. And, true to form, the IDers are beating the drums mightily over that small baby step, firing up the PR machines, and trying to imply that by gosh, *now* they've actually passed the most important kind of validation that really matters, they've been "accepted" as a "real science", and the rest is just detail work... ROFL!
Sorry, but it just doesn't work that way. But *you've* fallen for their propaganda, I see.
If someone who doubts evolution dared respond that the system is prejudiced to prevent such publication, the snickers began.
And very rightly so.
As can be clearly seen in this case, that prejudice not only exists, but exists and is acted upon with academic/scientific brutality.
Yawn. The only "prejudice" is that shoddy papers shouldn't make it through the review process, and when they have, it's time to find out why, and who's responsible for failure.
The evolutionists set out with clear intent of a career assasination of this man, and he's not even an ID proponent.
Where in the hell did you get *that* wrong idea? Yes, he *is* an "ID proponent".
He was simply the overseer of a magazine who, after the article was reviewed and deemed fit for publication by renowned scientists, dared to let those evil words of dissent be printed.
Try to stick to the facts, please. You're just repeating the spin so far.
The reaction he encountered is of course identical to what we see playing out on the issue from the non-scientist evolutionists, as well. A tiny sticker hidden in the front of a textbook must be shut down.
AHEM -- you're leaving out that what's being objected to is the REQUIREMENT for such a sticker. It's the *creationists* who are trying to get their way by force on that issue.
A thirty-second statement designed to be read in a class room must be silenced.
No, the REQUIREMENT of a false and misleading "disclaimer" must be resisted.
Any deviation at all from the Darwin Dogma must be crushed quickly and without mercy.
You creationists are *such* drama queens.
Back to the world of scientific publishing for a moment, there is no reason at all to believe that the attitudes uncovered here are somehow magically isolated to the Smithsonian. In fact, it's a total and utter violation of common sense to believe such a thing. It's starkly clear, and has been for a long time to many of us, that dissent is not welcome, indeed not tolerated. To even entertain the notion that evolutionists have it wrong is career suicide for the vast majority of scientists. Thus they keep their mouths shut, no matter what they believe, and the facade/lie of virtual unanimity is preserved.
Blah, blah, blah. Feel free to cite a *qualified* paper which somehow got unfairly rejected. I'm not aware of a single one, and I doubt you are either. Hint: Junk like Meyer's isn't qualified, and shouldn't have been accepted in the first place. People are rightly upset about the lowering of ordinary standards. (Again, though, this is not the same as agreement with the personal abuse that some have engaged in. Scientists should not stoop to acting like the creationists.)
Thankfully, more are speaking out and this is a welcome case of fighting back against the ridiculous scientific tyranny that has existed around this issue for so very long.
Yeah, those scientists, insisting that papers actually not be fatally flawed. How DARE them.
Look, it's not *OUR* fault the creationists haven't been able to produce anything *worth* publishing in a science journal.
As I've pointed out before, if evolution (as commonly taught) were a truly defensible theory,
It is.
its proponents would welcome the opportunity to publicly humiliate the other side through plain old debate and discussion of the issues.
We do. However, science journals are not the place for "plain old debate". They are the place for papers to be published which meet minimum standards, at least. Meyer's paper wasn't up to those standards, but it slipped through anyway.
It's not, so they behave exactly the way liberals behave regarding race or any other sensitive issue: Shout down the opposition, make them out to be fools for daring to offer up their ludicrous thoughts.
You have a vivid imagination. Yes, we point out when creationists are acting like fools. Unfortunately, there are so many targets. No, we do not "shout them down", unless you want to count burying them in evidence which supports evolution, and falsifies various creationist assertions.
Chuckle, chortle, and point, so the rubes will slink quietly away and think long and hard before daring to open their mouths again. If that doesn't work, scorch the very Earth they walk on.
Drama queening again...
Go ahead, feel free to discuss THE SCIENCE if you think you can. But the fact that most of the creationists prefer to instead whine and moan about a few folks being jerks to Sternberg, to the exclusion of just about all else, and conflate it into a Big Scientific Conspiracy, gives the strong impression that you guys really don't have any argument on the actual merits of the science.
Go for it, if you've got the time.
All I'm saying is that there have been some veeeery long and involved arguments on this topic on this Site (going on for days, with cheerleaders for both sides chipping in regularly), with a great deal of scientific referencing, etc. To the point that it often has sounded more like a pissin' match that anything else, and have raised complaints from some others that perhaps there are other Sites better suited for such discussions.
But hey, I'm not a moderator, and if they don't mind an encore, go at it.
I, for one, though will be scrolling past those posts for news. I've spent a great deal of time and effort arriving at a position that I'm at peace with on the matter, and my time is limited.
Sorry to sound like I was telling you you already lost a fight you're still itching to start. I'm sure your arguing and alliteration skills are considerable, and if you enjoy showing them off, please do so with my blessings.
I gotta get to bed...it's crazy late here. Have a good night.
Paul Simon....not Neil Simon....
sorry 'bout having to correct you, I just don't want you
to pass on false info....
Ciao...
Nor are they as humble as you, I bet.
Like evolution isn't about a theory. Pot calling the kettle black.
Then you misunderstand it.
And they have a lot of zeal for their religion.
It's not a religion, but it always amuses me that the worst insult that creationists can think of is to call science "a religion". Hey, if *you* think that's a bad thing...
It's funny to see them dismiss ID completely as hogwash,
For the most part, it certainly is.
but then seem to be afraid to fight it out in the realm of ideas.
Actually, what's really "funny" is that Meyer's article *has* been dissected minutely and countless errors and misrepresentations have been identified in it, BUT you guys will never know about that, because you spend ALL YOUR TIME WHINING ABOUT the personal stuff.
Haven't you ever wondered *why* the creationist propagandists spend most of their time waving around the "religious persecution" card, and so little time addressing (or even *acknowledging the existence of*) the vast numbers of rebuttals to Meyer's article?
Hint: They're playing you -- and you're being willingly played.
Instead, you see a lot of baseless, ad hominum attacks and the crap mentioned in this article.
You "see a lot of" that because that's what the creationists focus their PR on, to divert from the failures of their "science".
There's no excuse for this behavior, whether you agree that this man should have allowed the ID paper in the journal or not.
And on that I agree with you.
But don't pretend that the creationist side doesn't do it, and do it far more often.
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