Come on, now. You don't really believe that nonsense, do you? It was a joke. Lighten up, Francis.
You may find the question "already ridiculous" but to simply claim that the signers are anti-science because they agree with its statement still begs said question by running afoul of the "No true Scotsman fallacy".
I didn't claims that the signers are anti-science. Your statement is, thus, an example of the "Strawman fallacy." (It is the Discovery Institute and those that wish to replace science in the classroom with fairy stories, creation myths or, to risk repetition, ID.)
It's one thing to say that ID isn't really science, and it is another to say that no true scientists endorse it. It's that latter claim that I think can't be made without committing the NTS fallacy.
I never said anything about the scientists who signed it, but about the DI, who are defrauding the public, and its tactic of lying about the supposed existance of a genuine controversy in the biological community about the validity of evolution.
Of the signatories, some are Moonies who were asked by "Father" Sun Yong Moon to pursue education and careers in biology to give the sort of legitimacy to his primative Genesisist beliefs that the DI is pushing. Some, if not most, are scientists who were duped into signing it, given the innocuousness of the statement, coupled with the signatory's ignorance of the DI and its tactics and goals. Finally, there are a bunch of scientists in non-biological fields who are born again Christians who, I believe, signed as an act of religious faith or obligation.
As for Stephen Jay Gould, I'm a little surprised you would describe him as "great". According to John Maynard Smith,...
Maynard Smith's entitled to his opinion of Gould, I'm entitled to my opinion of Maynard Smith. And anyone who wouldn't describe Gould as "great," even if they have academic differences with him, simply isn't paying attention.
Gould is well known for having written the Mismeasure of Man, a screed attacking the Bell Curve and its authors as pseudo-scientists rather than dealing with its facts and arguments...
LMAO! Referring to any of Gould's writing as a "screed" is utterly ridiculous. Gould may write many things, but "screeds" are not among them.
Uhhh... When I say, "you don't really believe that nonsense" that's I'm taking your joke as seriously as, being a joke, it deserves to be taken. But if you really want to be funny, you might ease up the "Francis" line--- it was probably funny the first fifty or so times it was repeated on this site but by now it's kind of played out.
http://www.google.com/search?q=lighten+up+francis+site:freerepublic.com&num=100&hl=en&lr=&as_qdr=all&start=100&sa=N&filter=0
Putting aside your ad hominems about the signers, each of which was irrelevant (aside from the criticism that some of the scientists were not in biological fields, which is a reasonable criticism), you stated that I should
"think of it as the scientists taking on the anti-science group with not only one hand tied behind their backs, but 99% of their body tied behind their backs..."
Now you're saying you didn't mean that the scientists who signed the document were anti-science, just the scientists at the Discovery Institute. That's fine, although I'd say that's more of a further clarification of a vague point on your part, not a strawman fallacy on mine.
Gould was a talented writer and I think most will give him credit for being correct about punctuated equilibrium as well as the number of genes in the human genome, which his neo-Darwinist critics thought would be far higher than Gould did.
That said, Gould was more than capable of writing screeds on occasion, given his penchant for insults e.g. "Darwin's lapdog" and he was neither a good enough nor intellectually honest enough writer to write polemics in the style of Mencken or Courter (the honesty about one's objectives in writing being what separates writers of polemics from writers of screeds).
Did you read the section on "the Bell Curve" in "the Mismeasure of Man"? Compare Gould's NYRB review of "the Bell Curve" to Thomas Sowell's review (also critical) of "the Bell Curve"
http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/Issues/bell-curve/sowell.html
Both are meant to be read by the layman, but one, I submit, is a screed; lines like
"It is a manifesto of conservative ideology; the book's inadequate and biased treatment of data display its primary purpose—advocacy. The text evokes the dreary and scary drumbeat of claims associated with conservative think tanks: reduction or elimination of welfare, ending or sharply curtailing affirmative action in schools and workplaces, cutting back Head Start and other forms of preschool education, trimming programs for the slowest learners and applying those funds to the gifted. (I would love to see more attention paid to talented students, but not at this cruel price.)"
are in fact, it seems to me, characteristic of screeds.
One would of course make a mistake to make ad hominem arguments about Gould's ideas about punctuated equilibrium, holism in biology and even IQ based on his Marxism simply because his Marxism influenced his openess to those ideas. However, it is fair, I think to note with Thomas Sowell that it is typical of those who adhere to the "unconstrained vision" to use insult as argument, as Gould often did, and that the fact that as an Gould was in fact an adherent to the unconstrained vision is not in doubt, e.g. in the "Ever Since Darwin" chapter on Angel's contribution to an understanding of the evolution of the human species, Gould states that:
"If we took Engels's message to heart and recognized our belief in the superiority of pure research for what it is-namely social prejudice-then we might forge among scientists the union between theory and practice that a world teetering dangerously near the brink so desperately needs."
A view like that in no way way invalidates his scientific ideas--- but it does explain why he took scientific disagreement so personally and often responded to those who disagreed with him in moral rather than scientific terms.