Showing posts with label Dover trial. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dover trial. Show all posts

Monday, May 31, 2010

The market for creationism

Todd Wood of the Center for Origins Research at Bryan College has gotten around to doing what I haven't done, updating my analysis of the market for creationism that I did in early 2007.  He confirms some of the trends I noted, such as that the market for creationism has been growing and is dominated by Answers in Genesis.  His update goes further, and includes a comparison to the National Center for Science Education, noting that he market for criticism of creationism has grown along with the market for creationism.  He also points out that the groups involved got a boost revenue in 2005 during the Dover trial, that the AiG split from Creation Ministries International doesn't appear to have hurt AiG, and that "Godquest," formerly known as Creation Science Evangelism, the Hovind organization, is the #3 creationist organization for revenue behind AiG and the Institute for Creation Research.

Wood reports the following numbers for recent years:
2003:
$14.6 million market
AIG: 61.6%
ICR: 30.6%
*CEM: 4.2%
*CRS: 1.7%
*CM: 1.6%
*CSC: 0.4%

2004:
$15.8 million market
AIG: 65.7%
ICR: 26.8%
CEM: 3.1%
CRS: 2.0%
CM: 1.9%
CSC: 0.4%

2005: **
$10.8 million market
AIG: 50.4%
ICR: 40.3%
CEM: 5.1%
CRS: 1.0%
CM: 2.5%
CSC: 0.6%

2006:
$21.3 million market
AIG: 64.1%
ICR: 30.9%
CEM: 2.2%
CRS: 1.1%
CM: 1.3%
CSC: 0.3%

2007:
$25.6 million market
AIG: 69.5%
ICR: 27.6%
CEM: no data
CRS: 1.2%
CM: 1.1%
CSC: 0.3%
CMI: 0.3%

2008:
$33.3 million market
AIG: 68.2%
ICR: 26.2%
CEM: no data
Godquest: 2.8%
CRS: 0.7%
CM: 1.0%
CSC: 0.2%
CMI: 0.9%
Check out Todd Wood's post for more details.

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

The Amazing Meeting 6 summarized, part four

This is part four of my summary of The Amazing Meeting 6 (intro, part one, part two, part three, part five).

Phil Plait

Astronomer Phil Plait of the Bad Astronomy blog began by saying that the Internet is "a system for rapidly distributing sewage," but also for distributing astronomy. His talk went through the solar system from Mercury to KBO 2004 XR 190 a/k/a "Buffy," with interesting photographs and facts about various planets and moons along the way.

Mercury: The 2004 MESSENGER probe took photographs of the Caloris basin, the single biggest feature on Mercury, originally thought to be 1300 km in diameter but revised upward to 1550 km based on those photos. Because Mercury spins twice for every three times it revolves around the sun, this basin is directly under the sun, every other orbit. It's a gigantic impact crater that's 3.8 to 3.9 billion years old.

Venus: The hottest planet, a hell hole about the size of earth and with about the same amount of carbon and just a little bit closer to the sun, but it suffers from a runaway greenhouse effect. It's been photographed by the Russian Venera probes from 1962 to 1982 and by Magellan in 1990.

Earth: Plait spoke of an HD movie of Earth shrinking into the distance as MESSENGER departed.

Phobos: This moon of Mars has a giant crater--had it been hit by anything bigger, Phobos would have disintegrated. Phobos is apparently a captured asteroid, which orbits backward from other moons in the solar system. Unlike Earth's moon, it is gradually getting closer to Mars, and will collide with it in about the next 50 million years, causing an impact greater than the asteroid that created the Yucatan basin.

Jupiter's acne: The Great Red Spot (Cassini, named after Jean-Dominique Cassini, who first observed it in 1655), a 400-year-old hurricane, has now been joined in 2000 by another little spot. The new spot was white but has now turned red and is known as Oval BA (or Red Jr.)--it is as large as the Earth.

Iapetus: This moon of Saturn has one light hemisphere and one dark, and was recently discovered to have a 20 km high ridge almost perfectly around its equator. (I remarked that it looks like a Death Star.)

Uranus: It's tipped 98 degrees on its side in its orbit, likely as a result of an impact from something very large, perhaps Earth-sized.

Neptune: The other blue planet, it contains lots of methane and emanates 1.6 times the heat it receives from the Sun. It has 2,200 kph winds. Where is that energy coming from?

Pluto: It's not a planet, so we don't care about it.

KBO 2004 XR 190 a/k/a "Buffy": This is an odd trans-Neptunian object--where almost all objects in the solar system have very elliptical orbits, it is an object 8.5 billion km from the Sun--twice the distance from the Sun of Neptune--yet its orbit is circular.

Plait concluded by noting that he hasn't even talked about the Sun, Milleomeda (what the galaxy will be after Andromeda and the Milky Way collide), or countless other things that we don't understand. But this lack of understanding doesn't mean we know nothing. "The universe is cool enough without making up crap about it. That's why I'm a skeptic."

Adam Savage
Adam Savage of "Mythbusters" brought a box of about 1,000 ping pong balls which were used to raise a boat from the bottom of Monterey Bay, and gave them out to members of the audience, and signed his autograph on many of them. He then gave a talk entitled "My Maltese Falcon," about his obsession with recreating a precise replica of one of the two lead sculptures from the movie of the same name. He did extensive research into its measurements, even paying to purchase used auction catalogs from Christie's to examine photographs. Joseph Warner gave one of the two lead ones to Joseph Conrad, one which Humphrey Bogart dropped and put a dent in. He sculpted one based on photographs, sprayed it with 75 coats of auto primer, then buffed and sanded it. He freeze framed every still from the original film in a scene where the statue was rotated. Someone offered to cast it in bronze for him, and he had two made--but the casting process caused it to lose size, and so his bronze model is 3/4" shorter in height at the beak, with the result that he hates it. At a conference he met the man who purchased William Conrad's lead statue, which he hopes to be able to scan and use to make the most accurate replica ever, which he'll report back on next year.

He showed a couple of world premiere viral videos--one in which he and Jamie simultaneously solved Rubik's cubes, one while blindfolded and the other with his feet. The footage was actually reversed--they started with solved cubes and then just messed them up. In a second video, he inhaled some helium and spoke with a high voice, then inhaled some sulfur hexafluoride (which he informed us is very expensive) and spoke with a deep voice, and everyone laughed. He said that someone (a producer?) thought that the cube video was cool, but that the balloon stunt was obviously faked.

He took questions and answers from the audience; a few highlights were that they want to do a full 60 minute show on the JFK assassination, Discovery has said no to "21 grams" (do we lose weight when we die), the Cheney shooting, vinyl vs. CD, and speaker cable vs. coat hanger.

His segment concluded with some footage of "explosion porn" from the show.

Matthew Chapman
Matthew Chapman, great-great grandson of Charles Darwin, screenwriter ("The Runaway Jury" and nine other films), and author (Trials of the Monkey and 40 Days and 40 Nights, the latter of which, about the Dover trial, I am currently reading), spoke about three things: Science Debate 2008, his love of America, and "Darwin, creationism, etc." He began with his love of America, noting that he had grown up in the 1950s and 1960s, raised by parents who read the New Yorker and were fans of Woody Allen, Mort Sahl, and Lenny Bruce, and so he always wanted to be an American. He moved to the U.S. to get into the film business, and went to L.A. A woman he knew to be educated asked him what his sign was--he thought she was kidding, but she was not. Ever since he has been fascinated with Americans' fondness for pseudoscience. He was invited to a "shack" (of the $5 million variety) in Malibu to see someone channel "Basha," and he couldn't help but laugh out loud. A woman present asked the channeler, "I have a potential development deal at Warner Brothers. What is Basha's advice?"

When he expressed indignation at such expressions of irrationality, he was told, "Oh, you're so rational" or "you're so British." He felt alone until he came across the Skeptical Inquirer magazine, and he promptly purchased and read every back issue. (I had a similar experience in my life--I read Skeptical Inquirer while still a religious believer, and also ended up purchasing and reading every back issue from cover to cover.) He became enraged by Scientology, UFOs, spontaneous human combustion, crystals, telepathy, Shirley MacLaine (who he's met), Nostradamus, pyramid power, etc. etc. While in an elevator with James Randi at an event in UCLA, he asked Randi if he'd heard of some Brazilian paranormalist (a psychic surgeon?), and Randi responded by pulling a pen out of his ear.

Despite the far more voluminous "loony bullshit" in the U.S. than in Europe, he still loves it here, and became an American citizen.

He next spoke about creationism. His book Trials of the Monkey was about his visit to Dayton, Tennessee to learn about the Scopes Trial, and he found that the people there today are much the same as they were back then. His newer book, 40 Days and 40 Nights, was written during and after his observation of the entirety of the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial, which he witnessed from the jury box (where the press sat, since it was a non-jury trial). Through the Dover trial, he learned that it is possible to make science interesting to non-scientists.

Finally, he talked about Science Debate 2008. As the political debate season began, he watched all the debates, expecting to see questions about ozone, ocean health, climate change, etc., but only saw questions about lapel pins, religion, etc. There were more questions about UFOs than about global warming. He suggested the idea of a debate on science at the Atheist Alliance confernece, and Chris Mooney, who he had met earlier, got on board, along with his fellow Intersection Science Blogger Sheril Kirshenbaum. Soon thereafter, John Rennie of Scientific American became a backer, and Lawrence Krauss of The Physics of Star Trek (Chapman inadvertently said "Star Wars") also joined. They ended up starting an organization and collecting over 50,000 signatures, including the support of 51 colleges, 5 museums, 10 magazines, 112 science organizations, 14 Congresspeople, 7 presidential science advisors, 143 CEOs of science and technology companies, 28 Nobelists, 102 college and university presidents, PBS, Nova, the Franklin Institute, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and even Newt Gingrich. A Harris poll says that 85% of voters would like to see a science debate.

But so far, all of the candidates have said no or failed to respond at all. Chapman said that McCain was the most polite in saying no, and seemed to leave the door open.

They've now developed 14 questions and are preparing a new invitation to be sent to Obama and McCain.

Chapman then took questions, and someone asked if there was any opposition from scientists on the grounds that this is politicizing science. Chapman said he's had negative reactions from about three scientists, one of whom was present at this conference.

After Chapman's talk, I had a chance to speak with him briefly (he noticed the NCSE Grand Canyon trip T-shirt I was wearing, and commented on what great people Genie Scott and Nick Matzke are), as well as with his wife, Denise, who was also present at the conference. Denise Chapman, a Brazilian who has acted in television and film (including "Kiss of the Spider Woman" and Woody Allen's "Radio Days"), is the daughter of composer and musician Humberto Teixeira, started Baiao music and was the composer of the popular Brazilian song "Asa Branca" ("White Wing"). She was pleased to hear that some friends of mine named their African grey parrot "Asa Cinza" ("Grey Wing") in honor of that song. She has been working on a documentary film about her father that will be premiering later this month at MoMA.

Richard Wiseman
British psychologist Richard Wiseman spoke a little bit about his book Quirkology, presented a few optical illusions, and commented about his obtaining a videotape of Indian "God-man" Sai Baba in which he was caught engaging in sleight of hand, which he then showed to us. (Sai Baba was debunked well in a book by Dale Beyerstein titled Sai Baba's Miracles: An Overview, which describes some other instances of Sai Baba being caught in trickery.

He then showed his now-famous viral video of the "colour changing card trick," and followed it up showing a video of how it was made (it took many takes to get it right; he showed some amusing failures). This video, which has had over 2.5 million views, demonstrates the phenomena of "change blindness," and they've used eye-tracking to study viewers of the video to see if they are not looking in the right place or simply failing to register the changes, and it seems to be the latter. This video has apparently now inspired a routine in Penn & Teller's show.

This was followed up by a spoon-bending lesson from an expert--Teller. Teller explained that there is a method, the trick that deceives the eye, and there is misdirection, the trick that deceives the mind. The spoon-bending trick is based on a pre-stressed spoon, but to allay suspicion he only does the trick about once every five times he creates a pre-stressed spoon, because he waits for an opportunity to swap the spoon with a neighbor, and then only does the trick if the conversation happens to turn in a direction that makes it seem appropriate. He told the story of how Danny Hillis (of Connection Machine and Long Now Foundation fame) was invited to a posh party at the home of Courtney Ross (widow of Steve Ross, CEO of Time Warner). At dinner, the conversation turned to Rupert Sheldrake. Hillis had pre-stressed his neighbor's spoon, and put his own spoon on a plate so that the waiter took it away. Hillis borrowed his neighbor's spoon and did the trick, bending and breaking the spoon and dropping it into his wine. His hostess said, "I can't believe you did that." He made a comment to the effect that it was a trick, and she said, "No, I can't believe you did that." She was horrified that he had destroyed one of a fixed number of identical place settings by some famous designer which she had painstakingly collected over the years. And that, said Teller, made it funny.

Wiseman then came back and said that we would now make the world's largest spoonbending video for YouTube. We were given one run-through of the simple script, and then did it on video, all 900 of us (though there were only 800 pre-stressed spoons, so the 100 in the back had to mime). The video will make its debut at www.spoonscience.com (which as of this moment still says "coming soon").

Panel discussion on the limits of skepticism
Goldacre, Daniel Loxton, Radford, Savage, Novella, Hrab, Randi, Banachek, and Saunders assembled on stage for this panel discussion, which I don't recall actually addressing a subject that I'd characterize as the limits of skepticism. Instead, it seemed to be pretty much a free-for-all Q&A about skepticism.

At one point, someone spoke of "winning the war" against irrationality, and Banachek said he preferred to think in terms of making a mark rather than winning a war.

Randi commented on the famous quotation attributed to him by Dennis Rawlins' "sTARBABY" that "I always have an out," suggesting that his then-$10,000 and now $1 million reward for the successful demonstration of a paranormal event is not fair. He stated that this quotation was out-of-context, and that what he actually said was "I always have an out--I'm right." Dennis Rawlins, however, says that this is untrue, and that Randi has only recently started appending "I'm right" to this quotation. In 2000, when Matt Kriebel made his "sTARBABY mini-FAQ," Randi had a different explanation, stating that the "out" was about his stage act rather than his challenge.

Adam Savage observed that at the last TAM he mentioned that he was an atheist, and now that's appeared on his Wiki page.

In answer to a question about what's the worst thing you've ever been called, Richard Saunders said he had been accused of being "a mouseketeer of evil."

Savage made the statement that "You might think the world has color before critical thinking, but when you start thinking critically, it goes to HD."

It was mentioned that skeptical materials are appearing in other languages--"Mythbusters" is now in 145 countries and 9 languages, and Benjamin Radford is editor of the Spanish-language skeptical magazine, Pensar, along with the Skeptical Inquirer.

Sunday conference papers
The final session of the conference, Sunday morning until noon, was for presentation of conference papers.

John Janks on the Marfa Lights: I regret that I missed this, since I published two papers on the Marfa lights in The Arizona Skeptic when I was editor, but I made the mistake of assuming the session would begin at 9 a.m. like previous days--nope, it was 8:30 a.m.

Don Nyberg on "What Every Student Needs to Hear from Every Science Teacher": Nyberg, a physics professor who apparently plays a mean game of poker, said that he attacks pseudoscience, and especially "religious pseudoscience," in his classroom. Unfortunately, his talk didn't bother to define what he meant by this term, and his talk was a series of arguments by assertion, arguments from authority, and ad hominem that I thought was embarrassingly badly argued. He seemed to be arguing that anyone with a degree in science who expressed support for religion should have their degrees revoked, which prompted the moderator Ray Hall to ask Nyberg whether he thought that biologist Kenneth Miller, whose testimony helped produce the proper outcome in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case, should have his degrees revoked. Nyberg responded that yes, he should, if he's promoting his religious beliefs in the science classroom (a qualifier which hadn't been included in his earlier statement). I'd like to obtain a copy of Nyberg's actual materials to review, to see how they compare to his talk.

Steve Cuno: The head of an "evidence-based marketing company," he gave an excellent talk about myths in marketing. Such myths include:
  • We control your mind.
  • Creativity is magi.
  • No one reads long ads.
  • Awareness creates sales.
  • Focus groups are predictive.
  • Sales went up because of ads.
He gave some examples associated with each of these, and described some of the tests that his company had performed to test marketing campaigns to find what causes responses to direct mailings and what leads to conversions to sales. He suggested the classic book Tested Advertising Methods, and pointed out that he has his own book coming out in December, with an intro by Michael Shermer, titled Prove It Before You Promote It.

One of the questions asked was "is Seth Godin full of shit?" Cuno tactfully said that no doubt some of what Godin says is speculative.

Tracy King: She gave a talk on "The Most Popular Science Video in the World - How to Make Your Message Famous." She talked about Wiseman's "colour changing card trick" video, which got 80,000 views in the first two weeks and 2 million views by 18 weeks, and has now been seen by 80 million people on South American Globo TV, used in classrooms, and recreated by students.

She looked at other science videos that have been viral hits, such as the Diet Coke and Mentos videos, the first of which was uploaded in 2006 by Fritz Grobe, a juggler, and Stephen Voltz, a lawyer. They chose Diet Coke for its strong brand, and when it became a viral hit they received funding from Mentos to make more, and ultimately got a sponsorship deal from Coca Cola.

King pointed out that a lot of viral techniques are now illegal in the UK--you must be explicit about being paid to produce videos, for example.

She talked about the bogus popcorn/mobile phone video, which is one that would be in violation of the UK law today. It was created in multiple versions--English (where they're drinking orange juice), French (where they're drinking beer), and Japanese (where they have miso soup). These videos were made for Cardo Systems, a bluetooth headset manufacturer, and are clearly designed to encourage the idea that cell phones are dangerous to hold near your head. (Someone should make a viral video about bluetooth headsets.)

So what makes a successful viral video? There is no formula, but there are common themes--humor, surprise, fear/scaremongering, emotion, skill, embarrassment. One thing she didn't mention which I think was a factor in the success of the "colour changing card trick" video is that there were already multiple videos spreading widely with the exact same name, where the focus really was on that card trick. The Wiseman video was an interesting twist on what was already spreading virally, with the element of surprise and humor at the end. In essence, that video caught the wave of the other card trick videos, and then took it much farther. When I first saw the Wiseman video, I thought I was just seeing another version of that same trick.

And why do we pass on viral videos?
  • Reflected glory.
  • Being the first to know.
  • Being part of a crowd with similar tastes.
  • Being part of a shared cultural experience.
  • (Participating in the formation of) the language of your generation.
She mentioned Ray Comfort's "The Atheist's Nightmare" as something which has effectively spread virally, but didn't exactly get the desired message across.

She ended by encouraging everyone to make videos promoting skepticism and critical thinking, and offered the following suggestions:
  • Identify what your message is--don't be preachy or superior, which is a turnoff.
  • Determine what your objectives are--to build website traffic, tell friend, etc.? If you don't have a call to action, your message may be lost.
  • Find a creative concept--it may be explicit, subtle, or obscure.
  • Make the video.
  • Promote the video--it's not going to circulate itself, and professional seeding (e.g., making use of a company like hers that has relationships with bloggers, forum participants, etc. to promote things in a subtle, unobtrusive, and unspammy way).
  • And finally, she explicitly listed: don't spam.
She ended by saying that while she can't recommend or encourage a "Jackass" approach to skepticism, it's something she'd certainly like to see.

On to TAM6 summary, part five.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Intelligent design = creationism, NCSE video

The National Center for Science Education has a new YouTube video about how they proved in the Dover trial that the "intelligent design" in the book Of Pandas and People was simply old-school creationism under a different name.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

NCSE on Answers in Genesis schism

The National Center for Science Education has posted a brief report on the Answers in Genesis schism, with links to the coverage by The Australian, the Lexington Herald-Leader, the Duae Quartunciae blog, and this blog. In their report, they mention that
A piece by Lippard on the schism is to appear in a future issue of Reports of the NCSE; in it, Lippard concludes, "creationism continues to evolve in fascinating ways."
I encourage you to join the NCSE. The NCSE has long been the major force combatting creationism in the United States, including playing a significant support role for the plaintiffs in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case decided last year, and it works on a budget that is tiny by comparison to those of Answers in Genesis, the Institute for Creation Research, and the Discovery Institute.

Thursday, June 07, 2007

Montana Law Review symposium on Dover trial

The Montana Law Review has published an article by three Discovery Institute Fellows, a reply by Peter Irons, and a response by the DI Fellows (DeWolf, West, and Luskin). Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars has now published a reply by Irons to the short response from the DI Fellows; you can find all four contributions at his blog. I recommend starting with the first Irons reply, followed by the short DI Fellows response, followed by the Irons reply that Ed has published.

Friday, February 23, 2007

2006 AAAS Award for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility

Congratulations to Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, and to eight teachers from Dover, Pennsylvania who refused to read the anti-evolution disclaimer mandated by the Dover Area School Board that was the subject of last year's Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School Board trial: Brian Bahn, Vickie Davis, Robert Eshbach, Bertha Spahr, Robert Linker, Jennifer Miller, Leslie Prall, and David Taylor.

They are the 2006 recipients of the Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Monday, January 15, 2007

More Discovery Institute hypocrisy about Dover

Judge Jones' ruling in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case found the Dover Area School District's policy on intelligent design a violation of the First Amendment's establishment clause on two grounds. First, on the ground that it had a specifically religious purpose, and second, that intelligent design is not science but religion, and so the policy was an endorsement of religion. These are two of the three prongs of the "Lemon Test" for whether a state action violates the establishment clause.

The Discovery Institute has argued that Jones' ruling should only have used the "purpose" test and not the "endorsement" test.

Ed Brayton points out that this position is contrary to the position that creationists and intelligent design advocates have argued for the last three decades--that the "purpose" prong of the Lemon Test for violations of the First Amendment's establishment clause is unfair and should be abandoned. Ed observes that at least four DI personnel--Casey Luskin, Frank Beckwith, Mark Ryland, and David DeWolf--have all argued this way in the past.

His post also responds in some detail to the specific arguments made by Philip Italiano, a law student at Rutgers Law School, who is the latest to argue that Jones should only have used the "purpose" test.

Monday, December 18, 2006

Discovery Institute's incredible hypocrisy knows no bounds

The Discovery Institute has been trying to criticize last year's Dover decision on the grounds that Judge Jones followed common judicial practice by copying text from the winning side's Proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law in setting out the facts of the case in his opinion.

Now, it turns out that the Discovery Institute's David DeWolf, John West, and Casey Luskin (the first two of which are the authors of the critique of Judge Jones just referred to) submitted a paper to the Montana Law Review about the Dover case that was virtually identical to content in the DI's book, Traipsing Into Evolution, published in March 2006. This violated the journal's requirement that all submissions be original content, not previously published elsewhere, and the authors were forced to rewrite and resubmit--after this was brought to the journal's attention by a third party. The DI authors intentionally concealed this information.

More details at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

UPDATE (December 20, 2006): The editor of the Montana Law Review has responded, pointing out facts that absolve the DI folks of any deception.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Discovery Institute's latest attack on Dover decision

After a year of careful analysis of Judge Jones' decision in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, the Discovery Institute has determined that the Judge made considerable use of the plaintiff's Proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law when writing the section on intelligent design as science in his decision for the plaintiff. Somehow, they think that this common practice of using the Proposed Findings of Fact from the winning side in crafting a decision makes Judge Jones a puppet of the ACLU, even though he's a conservative justice appointed by George W. Bush.

The Discovery Institute has issued a press release touting their findings as though it discredits the decision's reasoning. This press release demonstrates that they are still smarting over the loss in Dover, still spending their time doing things that have nothing to do with scientific research, and that they have as much credibility on legal matters as they do on scientific matters.

More by attorney Timothy Sandefur at the Panda's Thumb. This press release by the DI was telegraphed by a talk given by Michael Behe earlier this month in Kansas.

UPDATE (December 13, 2006): Ed Brayton analyzes the DI report in more detail, including responding to its claims that Judge Jones incorporated "errors" from the ACLU into the decision.

UPDATE (December 14, 2006): More responses:

Timothy Sandefur, "Is John West Dishonest or Just Ignorant?" and "Casey Luskin--Not Too Bright" at the Panda's Thumb.

UPDATE (December 20, 2006): Wesley Elsberry has looked at how much of the plaintiff's Proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law was actually used in Jones' decision (and how much of that section of the decision came directly from the plaintiff's filing). Ed Brayton summarizes at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

Casey Luskin has attempted to respond with a defense, but as Ed Brayton shows, he just keeps digging a deeper hole.

Saturday, August 26, 2006

Ed Brayton fisks Seth Cooper

At Dispatches from the Culture Wars, Ed Brayton has an excellent fisking of Seth Cooper, former attorney for the Discovery Institute. Cooper tries to argue that Judge Jones (of the Kitzmiller v. Dover School Board case) displayed bias and hostility towards Jon Buell of the Foundation for Thought and Ethics both in his behavior and by refusing to allow the FTE to intervene in the case.

Brayton points out that there's no evidence of any hostility in the questioning of Buell and that the facts and legal precedent strongly supported the refusal of FTE intervening one month before the end of discovery. He points out dishonesty by Buell, who falsely stated that "Neither "Creationism" nor its synonym, "Creation Science" was ever used in any Pandas manuscript, as alleged."

The post is a pleasure to read, go see it here.

Friday, July 28, 2006

Luskin vs. Judge Jones on peer-reviewed publications supporting ID

Casey Luskin, responding to a point in a book review by John Derbyshire, argues that Judge Jones was incorrect in his decision in Kitzmiller v. Dover when he wrote that Intelligent Design is not supported by any peer-reviewed publications.

As Wesley Elsberry shows, Luskin's argument is not with Jones but with the defense in the Dover case, and in particular with the testimony of Michael Behe, who agreed in cross-examination that "there are no peer reviewed articles by anyone advocating for intelligent design supported by pertinent experiments or calculations which provide detailed rigorous accounts of how intelligent design of any biological system occurred."

Q. [Rothschild] Now you have never argued for intelligent design in a peer reviewed scientific journal, correct?

A. [Behe] No, I argued for it in my book.

Q. Not in a peer reviewed scientific journal?

A. That’s correct.

Q. And, in fact, there are no peer reviewed articles by anyone advocating for intelligent design supported by pertinent experiments or calculations which provide detailed rigorous accounts of how intelligent design of any biological system occurred, is that correct?

A. That is correct, yes.

Jones had to make his decision on the basis of the evidence presented in his court, not on the basis of Luskin's list of publications. Of the documents Luskin lists in refutation of Jones' statements, one of them, a paper by Behe and Snoke, was addressed specifically in the case, and it did not support intelligent design. As Ed Brayton and others have pointed out, in cross-examination in the Dover trial it came out that the Behe and Snoke paper actually is strong evidence against the existence of irreducible complexity. (The Ed Brayton post may also now be found at scienceblogs.com.)

Luskin's list of alleged peer-reviewed publications supporting intelligent design hasn't undergone cross-examination in court (except for Behe and Snoke, the treatment of which in the trial Luskin fails to address). Were the publications introduced into the trial, there is little doubt that they would similarly have been torn apart due to lack of proper peer review, lack of original research, and lack of support for intelligent design, as has already occurred at the TalkOrigins site which Luskin links to (but fails to engage with).

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

DI continues to lie about the Dover case

Now the Discovery Institute is claiming (via Michael Francisco, on the DI's EvolutionNews blog, reporting on an American Enterprise Institute article co-authored by former DI policy analyst, attorney Seth Cooper) that the newly elected Dover Area School Board intentionally cost the school district $1 million in legal fees by refusing to rescind the illegal policy in December, after the trial was over and before Judge Jones had issued his ruling. This is at odds with the fact that their rescinding the policy would not have changed the outcome of the trial or the awarding of legal fees, which is why they didn't do it until after the ruling came.

What's worse, they have attributed malice and conflict of interest (now retracted, to the original source's partial credit) to one of the new board members who was also a plaintiff in the lawsuit regarding this decision, even though he was not yet on the board at the time of the December discussion (there was no vote) on changing the policy due to a runoff election.

And further worse--on William Dembski's blog, someone who pointed out the facts had their comment deleted.

There's nowhere to place the blame for the $1 million in legal fees except on the original board who put the policy in place over the warnings and objections at the time that their action was unconstitutional--and perhaps to some extent on the Discovery Institute advisor who they initially spoke with about what policy to adopt, Seth Cooper.

UPDATE (April 5, 2006): Michael Francisco has revised the wording of his blog post, probably to make it less actionable under defamation laws. Ed Brayton points out the specifics of his revisions.

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Santorum flip-flops on Intelligent Design--again

After the Dover decision came down in December 2005, Sen. Rick Santorum resigned as a director of the Thomas More Law Center (which defended the Dover school board) and publicly stated that "I thought the Thomas More Law Center made a huge mistake in taking this case and in pushing this case to the extent they did."

This was his first flip-flop, as he had earlier in 2005 written an op-ed which supported the Dover school board.

Now he's flip-flopped again, writing a forward to a new book about Philip Johnson, Darwin's Nemesis. (Hat tip: Pharyngula.)

Friday, February 03, 2006

Eugenie Scott gives the Robert S. Dietz memorial lecture

Genie Scott of the NCSE gave a talk on "Creationism and Evolution: Current Perspectives" to a standing-room-only audience of several hundred at the ASU Physical Sciences building. This crowd came out to see her despite the fact that Jared Diamond was speaking at ASU at the same time, about his book Collapse.

The lecture began with a few words about Bob Dietz, who was a strong supporter of evolution and critic of creationism, and showed a few slides of him and his book, Creation/Evolution Satiricon: Creationism Bashed.

Genie gave an overview of creation science, comparing and contrasting it with evolution. She pointed out the logical flaw of the "two model approach" in assuming that evolution and creation are the only two possibilities and that falsifying evolution is all that's needed to prove creationism.

There followed a discussion of the Paluxy river mantracks, and how Glen Kuban's work led even the Institute for Creation Research to stop using them as evidence that humans and dinosaurs lived together. She talked briefly about some problems with the ark story and the misidentification of geological features as fossilized arks (another example which creationists themselves have refuted).

Genie described the NCSE Grand Canyon raft trips, pointing out how they teach both the evolution and creationist sides of the story, while the ICR raft trip only teaches the creationist version. She put up a photo of Steve Austin and his book Grand Canyon, Monument to Catastrophe, along with a photo of "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, pointing out that they should not be confused, even though the creationist Steve Austin does work on cold stone. (This reference worked well with the young audience--my expectation was for a comparison photo of Lee Majors as the "Six Million Dollar Man" as the joke.) She spent some time describing how the Grand Canyon is composed of thousands of layers of sediment which the creationists claim to have been laid down through repeated walls of water and sediment precipitation. This set the stage for Austin's claims about the canyons around Mt. St. Helens, where a 30' deep ditch was cut by water in seven days--thirty feet of unconsolidated ash and loose sediment doesn't compare to four thousand feet of individual layers of shales, limestones, sandstones, etc.

Since the event was at ASU, home of the Institute of Human Origins, she mentioned Donald Johanson tiring of correcting bogus creationist claims about Lucy's knee joint.

She then turned to intelligent design, or "creationism light," which she described as consisting of only a single philosophical claim--that you can detect the evidence of things that are designed and are the products of intelligence, and in particular the product of a divine designer. ID has proposed two concepts for identifying design, Behe's irreducible complexity and Dembski's design inference. She described the Discovery Institute and the Wedge Document, and pointed out that there are many criticisms of Behe's irreducible complexity and Dembski's complex specified information on the web. The structure of the ID arguments, she argued, is the same as that of creation science--that evolution can't do it, therefore it must be intelligent design. Michael Behe's favored example of the bacterial flagellum was shown in an animated slide, and Genie pointed out that they like to use examples of complex systems where we haven't yet developed full explanations, but they ignore other examples of apparently "irreducibly complex" systems where we do have full explanations, like the evolution of the mammalian ear (which she proceeded to illustrate).

She gave a history of the intelligent design movement and its roots in creationism--covering the 1981 McLean v. Arkansas decision, Jon Buell's formation of the Foundation for Thought and Ethics, and the publications of Thaxton, Bradley, and Olsen's Mystery of Life's Origin and Of Pandas and People. She described the science of the latter as awful, giving as an example its treatment of genetic distances between organisms based on cytochrome c, a demonstration that the authors don't understand evolution (a topic discussed in the Dover case).

Wesley Elsberry's work on word counts of "creationis[t/m]" vs. "intelligent design" in the sequence of manuscripts that became Of Pandas and People was graphically depicted, showing the former dropping to zero and the latter increasing to the level of the former in 1987, after the creationists lost at the U.S. Supreme Court in Edwards v. Aguillard.

She briefly commented on William Dembski's draft of version three of Of Pandas and People, which used "sudden emergence" instead of "intelligent design," and about the Discovery Institute's move to a "teach the controversy" position which it has held for a few years, and its model policy for school boards to teach the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution adopted by the Grantsburg, Wisconsin school board in December 2004.

She listed seven states that have introduced anti-evolution legislation this year (Alabama, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Utah), promoting books critical of intelligent design and creationism (including Young and Edis' Why Intelligent Design Fails, Pennock's Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics, Forrest and Gross's Creationism's Trojan Horse, Miller's Finding Darwin's God, Shanks' God, the Devil, and Darwin, Isaak's Counter-Creationism Handbook, and her own Evolution vs. Creationism, which she was pleased to announce had just been reviewed in the New York Times Book Review. She showed a screen shot of Amazon.com listing her book with a sales rank of #284, though she noted this is an hour-by-hour rank and she had to wait until late on Sunday night to get the shot.

In closing, Genie noted that Bob Dietz was a real scientific iconoclast who advocated views that were outside of the mainstream when he initiated them--that seafloor spreading occurs and is evidence of continental drift, that moon craters are asteroid impacts not volcanoes, that shatter cones are evidence of meteoritic impacts. He didn't respond to criticism by starting a policy institute, hiring a PR firm, and lobbying to have his theories taught in public schools--he responded by doing scientific work, by doing research, by writing and presenting papers. That's the work that needs to be done to get things taught in public school science classes.

Afterward, there was a small reception outside the auditorium, and Genie was swamped with people asking questions for quite some time. I was surprised that there were no obvious creationists or intelligent design advocates--those who were present (I'm sure there were some there) kept their views to themselves.

Monday, January 16, 2006

ID advocates temporarily back Saddam Hussein's astrologer

William Dembski stopped blogging at "Uncommon Descent," but then turned the keys over to Dave Scot and a few others. A recent post there, quickly deleted, gave a quote from Dr. Raj Baldev criticizing evolution. It was no doubt deleted once the poster became aware that Baldev is an Indian astrologer and swami who endorses palmistry, numerology, and "occult reading," and who gave private consultations to Saddam Hussein when he was in power.

Ed Brayton commented on this posting before it disappeared, and now "crandaddy" at Uncommon Descent has the nerve to criticize Ed for being "bigoted" in pointing this out.

As a commenter on Ed's blog has pointed out, Michael Behe did say in the Dover case that astrology would count as science under the definition of science that admits intelligent design.

Friday, January 13, 2006

Casey Luskin's lack of integrity

Casey Luskin offered a commentary (on the Discovery Institute's "Evolution News & Views" blog) on Kenneth Miller's testimony in the Dover case in which he expounded on chromosomal fusion and evidence for common ancestry between apes and humans. Mike Dunford and P. Z. Myers responded, pointing out numerous errors and misunderstandings in Luskin's argument. Luskin's commentary has been enshrined as a paper at the IDEA Center website called "And the Miller Told His Tale."

If Luskin or the Discovery Institute were serious about "teaching the controversy," they'd at least acknowledge the existence of these responses. But even the trackbacks for the blog entry remains empty...

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Phyllis Schlafly defends liars, by lying

Ed Brayton gives a rebuttal to what is perhaps the most egregiously dishonest critique of the Dover decision so far, by Phyllis Schlafly. John West of the Discovery Institute links to the Schlafly piece with approval.

Two examples which support the heading I've chosen: Schlafly writes of Judge Jones:
He smeared "fundamentalists," impugned the integrity of those who disagree with him by accusing them of lying and issued an unnecessary permanent injunction.
Judge Jones' accusations of lying were directed at two individuals who testified in the trial, Dover board members Alan Bonsell and William Buckingham, not at "fundamentalists" or "those who disagree with him." And he made the accusations because those two board members were lying, as I've previously described (about Bonsell here, about Buckingham here, and there's more in the decision here) and may end up facing perjury charges.

Schlafly further expands upon her misrepresentation of Jones' criticism of these two dishonest board members:
He lashed out at witnesses who expressed religious views different from his own, displaying a prejudice unworthy of our judiciary. He denigrated several officials because they "staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public."
Jones never mentions his religious views, and does not denigrate these board members for expressing religious views different from his own, but for lying. Here is the passage from Jones' decision that Schlafly is dishonestly commenting on:
It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy. (p. 137 of the decision)
Ed addresses more of Schlafly's dishonesty at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

Friday, December 23, 2005

"A half-century secularist reign of terror"

Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission was quoted in the Washington Post about the Kitzmiller v. Dover decision:
“This decision is a poster child for a half-century secularist reign of terror that’s coming to a rapid end with Justice Roberts and soon-to-be Justice Alito,” said Richard Land, who is president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and is a political ally of White House adviser Karl Rove. “This was an extremely injudicious judge who went way, way beyond his boundaries–if he had any eyes on advancing up the judicial ladder, he just sawed off the bottom rung.”
Apparently Mr. Land believes that 1965-2005 in the United States was something like Robby Berry's "Life in Our Anti-Christian America."

Timothy Sandefur rebuts Land's nutty comment at The Panda's Thumb.

UPDATE (February 6, 2007): An updated link for Robby Berry's "Life in Our Anti-Christian America."

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Errors in the Kitzmiller v. Dover decision

It's an excellent decision. I did spot nineteen errors, none of significance to the legal arguments (three are typos, one's a mistaken word choice, and fifteen are instances of the same erroneous character substitution, probably facilitated by the ever-helpful Microsoft Word). Will ID advocates find them and make rhetorical use of them? The typos are on pp. 51, 114, and 120, the mistaken word choice is on p. 96, and the three examples of the incorrect character are on pp. 104, 106, 117, 118, 120, 124, 129, and 130. Warning: Reading these pages (which I strongly recommend--in fact, read the whole thing) will expose you to documentation of dishonesty and sleaziness by Christian school board members, including taking a mural depicting evolution from the classroom and burning it.

Buckingham and Bonsell come across as sleazy, lying, manipulative bastards, and the rest of the board come across as ignoramuses rubber-stamping their actions. The citizens of Dover certainly did the right thing by voting out the entire school board.

The science teachers of Dover, however, come across as very reasonable people who made a few compromises with the board early on in order to get the textbooks they needed to teach, but who were unwilling to teach unscientific materials or read a misleading disclaimer to their students.

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Dover Decision: ID is religious

Judge John E. Jones III has issued his ruling in the Dover, PA intelligent design case--Dover's ID Policy violates both the Lemon Test and the endorsement test, and so the Dover Area School District must discontinue reading the statement at the beginning of the evolution unit about Intelligent Design and the availability of Of Pandas and People in the library. The decision covers much broader ground than this, and though the orders are only directed at DASD, this decision is likely to be influential in much the way Judge Overton's McLean v. Arkansas creation science decision was in 1982. Ed Brayton has the text of the decision and some key quotes and commentary up at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.