Nick Matzke has just published a very amusing analysis of American anti-evolution efforts. Evolutionary biology has all these tools that allow one to, for instance, assemble trees demonstrating lines of descent for molecular characters, which are ultimately just strings of letters. And what is a law but a string of letters? We can relatively easily map out patterns of similarities and differences, and catalog which bill was modeled after which other bill.
So Matzke put together the history of creationist efforts to adapt their legal strategies.
The analysis of dozens of bills introduced in state legislatures around the country reveals how a single innovation from a small Louisiana parish (population 156,325) was incorporated into 32 subsequent bills through a process the study describes as “descent with modification.” Two of those 32 bills became law and now “negatively affect science education” for students throughout Louisiana (population 4.7 million) and Tennessee (population 6.5 million).
It’s also being discussed on the Panda’s Thumb.
Oh, but most entertainingly, you can tell that the Discovery Institute is furious. They’re trying to claim now that it was a criminal misuse of NSF funds.
A more serious issue is whether Matzke misappropriated taxpayer funds in order to write his article. Matzke discloses in the article’s acknowledgements that his research was funded by two National Science Foundation grants. But if you look up those grants, they appear to have nothing to do with the article he published.
Indeed, NSF Grant 0919124 is a $422,000 grant intended to “develop bivalve molluscs as a preeminent model for evolutionary studies….” And NSF Grant DBI-1300426 is a $12 million+ grant for the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis, which told the NSF it would “provide scientific insights into problems such as the control of invasive species, limiting impacts of infectious diseases, and suggesting new methods for drug design.”
Neither of those awards are directly to Matzke. The larger funds an institute, the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis, which by its nature would support diverse projects. The smaller one includes citations to 5 papers with Matzke as an author, all relevant to the grant, so there’s certainly no evidence that he’s been neglecting his responsibilities.
Creationists: science doesn’t currently endorse slavery. A grant award buys you a piece of a person’s time and effort, but does not give you full-time ownership of their brain. In fact, granting institutions encourage awardees to explore new ideas creatively, because that’s what will lead to the next research proposal. That a scientist has found a way to use his skills and his tools in a novel way, without compromising the funded specifics of a grant, is always a big plus.
So once again the Discovery Institute reveals their total ignorance of how science works while reaching for excuses for their own failure. No surprise there at all.
(My emboldening.) Whilst I had a nice vin at lunch, I still suspect that either that “anti-” is incorrect, or the “creationism” should be something like “evolution” or “Darwinism”. HIC!
It also reveals their Neo-con roots. I was looking into the background of DI recently and not too surprisingly it’s founders and some of the key figures I could find info on are noted Neo-cons. Carping about the (mis-)use of NSF and NEA grants is a common theme among such folk. Oh, and several of these key people are rich. Rich, conservative, and white. Why is that combination not surprising?
The irony is that Disco Tute Westie fails to recognize “academic freedom” when it’s right in front of him. Of course, we all know that to the Tooters “academic freedom” is simply an anagram of “Jesus.”
“strong evidence of bill-to-bill copying and ‘descent with modification,’”
LOL!!
What’s the term to use instead of ‘money shot’?? Because that’s what that is!
What do AGW denialists call it? The “Funding committment?”
How hard would it be to do this to the entire corpus of laws around the world (or at least the Anglo common-law world)? I bet that would be really neat!
It’s pretty reminiscent of building language hierarchies I guess.
Sounds like that’s exactly what Matzke did with that article. I mean, what else are creationists in politics but an invasive species propagating an infectuous brain-rotting disease?
Remember the Wedge Document? That’s the very description of an invasive strategy.
Marcus Ranum @ 4
I believe in this context, it’s the “cdesign proponentist” shot.
Something similar was done with chain letters, and an interesting paper published about it. The paper is called “Linking Chain Letters”, by Charles Bennet (IBM), Ming Li and Bin Ma (U Waterloo). A quick google search also told me I’d read about that in Scientific American in 2003, that article might be online too.
You knew I’d love this, didn’t you. ZOMG if there’s a nerd alley this is up, I must have a controlling interest in the alley’s voting stock or there’s been an issuance without pro-rata offering contrary to the statutes regulating distributed corporations and I’m going to have to file for remedy under RSBC c57, s229. Heck, this is so my thing, you could argue harm to corporation if I’m not on the BoD of this Nerd Alley and file a derivative action under s223!
i’m going to go examine our registry of senior officers, because if Matzke hasn’t been made CTO already, I’m giving the guy a promotion.
OMG I love this.
A few years ago I did a seminar of this type- looking at creationist (and especially DI) papers and arguments as a way of teaching evolutionary principles. Worked well for co-evolution, co-option, mimicry, and of course, transition forms. DI representatives never like historical data.
@#9:
Heh. The beginning of “Linking Chain Letters”:
PDF of paper, and archive of letters by one of the authors.
Seems perfectly apt if that funding was put to use countering creationism with science.