Some of us have been saying this for a long time: Michael Shermer is a poor excuse for a skeptic. Now John Hawks takes him out to the woodshed over a recent SciAm column, in which he spins out a violent fairy tale about the Homo naledi fossils.
But Shermer is wrong to ignore the evidence that already exists. The editor of Skeptic magazine failed to do the one thing that any journalist should do: simply ask someone whether he was missing some important evidence that might make him look like a fool. I’m very sorry that he has misled so many Scientific American readers about the nature of evidence about Homo naledi and how we approach the science of human origins.
Hawks, of course, is one of the primary investigators of the H. naledi work, and knows what he’s talking about. I have to wonder again why SciAm continues to keep Shermer on as a columnist.
do you also wonder why the History channel has programs about ancient alien civilizations?
people will pay for a juicy story, damn the relevant facts and evidence.
Shermer is a good enough writer to produce a juicy story.
This is what modern media realizes … sells.
speaking of that ancient alien civilization crap, the funny thing is that “Ancient Aliens Debunked” (you can find it on Youtube) is actually far more interesting to anyone with half a brain.
We’re not just doomed as a civilization, but as a species, if we expect the market to produce information that will actually move us forward, instead of backwards.
Oh, that was great reading, and fun, too! I have to say that my favourite kid’s hypothesis was this one: “What if they were really scared of lightning and went deep underground to be safe, but got stuck there?” That’s such a classic example of how kids think.
Shermer:
This was Shermer’s conclusion, and to say it’s mighty stupid is an understatement. I have to wonder if he’s aware of current, daily events at all. Here in the States, there seems to be little reluctance at all to admit and indulge in the violent side of our natures, what with people dropping dead bodies all over the place, out in the open, and in broad daylight, even! The cops have managed to kill 60 people since the 14th of December.* He makes it sound as though such violence is a thing of the very distant past.
*Article.
Caine:
Well, as we know, he spent a rather significant amount of energy denying what an awful human being he is, so I’m sure it’s convenient for him to abstractly “reflect” on “our darker nature” when “our” = an antecedent species of hominids. Whatever happens in the world, in the culture of which we are a part, or what things we actually do, if feels like the “darker nature” of the Easy Mode privilege set is somehow imagined as a complicated murder plot that happened on a Columbo once, or casually glancing at another woman for a half second while out to dinner with the SO. We never do anything wrong. Not really. I mean, not to anyone who matters…
@Caine: It’s a justification of war and violence.
Shermer is saying that our nature is violent and aggressive, we can’t do anything about that, and we’ve better learn to strike before our enemies do.
Basically, if you are a pacifist, you are just a hippie pinko who ignores reality.
F.O. #5:
Aha. I felt like he was being vaguely racist, but the way you put it makes more sense — the whole “nature, red in tooth and claw” mentality. It’s astonishing how many allegedly smart people make the mistake of thinking that their point of view generalizes to everyone.
Look, you can’t blame Shermer. Asking someone for help is more of a gal thing.
This does not surprise me. I used to be a fan of Shermer, too. Then he said “it’s more of a guy thing”. Then the grenade exploded. And then he just got even worse.
On the topic of Shermer (but not this specific topic)… I’d been telling everyone that post-Rebecca Watson SGU was actually really good… especially after Steven went on a pro-feminist rant (in support of his daughter) and even took a shot against patriarchy. I was so proud… until December 12th when the SGU interviewed Michael Shermer. It was a terrible interview, and of course they talked purely about skepticism… and practically fawned over him.
I had, and still feel the need, to apologize to everyone who might have started listening to them again because of me. What’s worse is others said they were uncomfortable with the podcast after Rebecca left, but I didn’t listen to them. I should have, because maybe I would have seen that coming.
I deleted the feed after that shitty interview… but man… I’m still pissed…
Caine @3:
I’m curious as to what it is about his statement that leads you to infer that he might think that such violence is a thing of the very distant past. I read the same statement you did, and no such inference occurred to me at the time I read it. Even after reading your comment I still do not see the justification for drawing such an inference. His comment does not seem to me to make “it sound as though such violence is a thing of the very distant past.” Why does it do so for you?
A violent person taking a deep look at violence…
If all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail….
From Shermer’s Essay
So, apparently our ancestors, down to the last hominid were very violent (I’d like to see his data on that. And NOT Pinker’s hack job) . To be honest violence was apparently sooo common it’s kind of the most plausible explanation. As if more people died of violence than any other cause. Which makes total sense in species that reproduce so slowly and are so utterly invested in their young….
The Sherm seems really interested in his little “people are inherently violent” theory. Almost as if he has something in his past he wishes to minimize by claiming that everybody would do it…
Unquoted here, so feel I must embed the closing of that fabulous take-down (bolding in original):
Ouch! :)
Son of a — it’s in the OP and I somehow just skipped right over it. Clearly not caffeinated enough today.
Oh well, it’s worth re-quoting anyway.
that’s gonna be the winner of this thread, pretty sure.
From the first edition, second printing of Shermer’s Why People Believe Weird Things © 1997:
Reginald Selkirk #16
That might explain a few things about Shermer.
He was grown in a pod?
Wha…so where do the other 50% of the child’s genes come from? And 6% from each of 4 grandparents is ~24%, so where do the other 75% come from?
It’s as if there is an infusion of mysterious new genes in every generation from an extra-parental source! Give him a Nobel!
Reginald Selkirk
I have a 2002 revised edition.
Where was that in the 1997 edition?
You don’t understand beautiful maths:
25% from parent 1 + 25% from parent 2 + 25% from all 4 grandparents + 25% from all 8 great-grandparents
I think Shermer there was trying to demonstrate, via his own experience.
I’m sure that’s what he would say… if you asked him.
Or maybe he’ll go Dawkinsian and claim he was making a larger point that was taken out of context… in his own book.
Let’s ask Mr Owl…
now, write that as an functional equation with an asymptotic solution.
what would be on the asymptote line?
Eve?
..the more I think about this, the more it puzzles me.
with the assumptions Shermer seems to be making about inheritance here, wouldn’t it functionally make more sense to say the parents ONLY contribution was whatever specifically unique mutations in their germ lines were added?
which would be nearly zero.
so then, we would say that as the contributors to one’s current genepool run into historical infinity, your individual parent’s contribution is entirely meaningless.
Is this not really what Shermer is implying?
I actually have a paperback original 1997 first edition print right here in front of me, but I have zero idea where to start looking for that quote.
If someone could give me an idea of which chapter it might be in, I can start scanning for it.
while we wait…
a bit more of skepticism about Shermer as good skeptic….
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2014/12/04/shermer-has-a-woo-experience-admits-there-may-be-something-to-it/
I decided to google the exact quote, to see if I could find someone who actually listed the page they got it from, and my googlefu did not disappoint:
Ivy Privy in comment #5 on this thread:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/01/27/spell-already-broken-and-i-hav/
is one of the earliest I could find.
they mentioned pg 83.
here is the EXACT quote from page 83:
“From an evolutionary viewpoint, 50% of a person’s genes live on in their offspring, 25% in their grandchildren, 12.5% in each grandchild, and so on.”
um…. the quote that Ivy made, and others… appears to be entirely a misquote of what Shermer actually DID say, which is not at all incorrect.
Also, it was said in a subchapter titled: “Science and Immortality”, where he was comparing the different mythologies of immortality to that of how one might view it scientifically… which he argues most would not find satisfactory, hence the mythologies are preferable to them.
I think, looking at this, we can safely put to rest the idea that Shermer was in fact proposing some bizarre new model of heredity.
Always check your sources, people.
always.
…just damned lucky my partner actually had a copy of the book on our bookshelf.
i’ve never even read it myself, and was clearly happy to accept that Shermer had made such a blunder.
lesson learned.
That what it says in the 2002 edition.
Looks like somebody just made up the stupid “quote”.
yup. not looks like, Chigau.
did.
someone made up the quote, and for YEARS, people at Scienceblogs and FTB have been repeating it as an attack on Shermer.
I’d be pretty fucking embarrassed myself, if I didn’t see your tipoff that something might be wrong and check it myself.
We were pretty damn happy to run with it… including PZ.
what does that say about us?
we’ve built a poison well. Skeptic Fail.
Ben Goren, over at Jerry Coyne’s: “Old Man’s Lawn” once said in the comments:
“I think chigau might be the only real skeptic left at Pharyngula.”
golly
:)
It’s still rather an odd way of talking about passing on your genes – talking about the percentage present in each individual. Surely if I have 2 or 4 or 8 offspring and they in turn are highly fecund, a much larger percentage of my genes will propagate in the population. It’s always been true Tha “evolutionarily” what helps propagating one’s genes is the number of successful offspring one has. But yeah it’s not half as silly as the misquote.
h/t and thanks to chigau and Ichthyic for checking.
=8)-DX
Also, in the end it boils down to a similar nonsense than the false quote. Even if all your descendants reproduce, past your children you have how much of your genome got passed on. Because you don’t actually pass on half the genes from mummy and half the genes from daddy. My kids could have any amount between 0 and 50% of my grandfather’s genes (technically and ignoring messy things like mutations)
Those calculations usually are made to demonstrate that within X generations all your precious genes are gone without answering the question whose genes people have then. In the end no one actually knows how much of my genes will still be present in my 3647 great-great-great-grandchildren…
‘Scuse me a second, but could you please specify which edition and which printing that is an EXACT quote from? Before you accuse me of lying? Because my quote was also EXACT.
First thing it says is that you owe me an apology.
You do realize that traditionally, paperbacks don’t come out until after hardcovers?
I’m saying you took it from someone else who posted it, like Ivy Privy, and assumed it was accurate.
I already mentioned what version it was from, 1st edition 1997.
no, I don’t.
Keep on digging.
yours:
mine:
1st edition, 1st printing.
I guess you somehow thought that hardbound editions always come before software editions, even when they don’t?
basically, what you’re trying to claim is that he had it right in the 1st edition, 1st printing, changed to something wrong and nonsensical in the second printing and then changed it back to right in the version that Chigau has.
all to avoid admitting you cribbed that quote from someone else.
that’s um… pretty pathetic.
so, NOW I can call you a liar, and a bad one.
last word on it:
let’s say, even though the probability appears to me to astronomically low (much much lower than than that of someone misquoting him and that misquote getting propogated), that indeed, somehow the wording of that entire sentence was changed between the 1st and second printing and then back again.
and has never appeared before or since.
Is it then right to imply this is how Shermer views basic heritability?
because, every basic high school biology text is going to describe heritability with nearly the exact same wording he appears to use in his 1st printing, and chigau’s, and the current version.
so, no matter HOW you slice it, even if I am in fact dead wrong and you really do have a version where it says what you say it does, the argument remains that it actually should STILL not be attributed to Shermer and is in fact, a case of poisoning the well.
Yes, I think that may be the case. Have you done anything whatsoever to convince me otherwise?
But I don’t feel a need to prove a chain of logic, I have the book with me right now (I post from work, had to bring it in this morning). It is still the W.H. Freeman hardcover, ISBN 0-7167-3090-1, “© 1997 by Michael Shermer”, “Second printing, 1997.” I look at page 83, and it says precisely what I quoted above. It has continued to say that since I first bought and read it before the turn of the century.
No, I am claiming to be in possession of the book I described above, with the contents as I described them. You seem to be reaching from your claim that hardcovers do not precede softcovers, without ever actually having made a case for it. I will go so far as to claim that if you ever find a first edition, first printing hardcover, it will probably read precisely the same as my first edition, second printing hardcover.
Mr. Straw-man, did I imply that? I relayed some factual statements (which you dispute). An alternate interpretation would be that Shermer is a gaffe factory, that he writes stupid stuff that he shouldn’t have written, and that an alert editor should have corrected. We are after all talking about the world’s foremost advocate of hydrogen fission.
I hope not. As =8)-DX #34 and Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk- #36 have already pointed out, that really isn’t a very good description, although “it’s not half as silly as the misquote.”* It’s almost as if some tried to fix an obvious error without screwing up the page formatting.
* Which I continue to insist is not a misquote.
So, you have now twice called me a liar. Maybe some day you will find a first edition, first or second printing hardcover in a used book store and see what I have seen. Until then, go fuck yourself.
So now I am utterly at a loss whom to believe, or if to believe both, because there is no way I can get my hands on those books editions. And I am extremely curious.
Ichthyic, Reginald Selkirk, would it be possible to momentarily forget how much you are pissed at each other and to scan/photograph relevant pages from those books and share them on the net?
The most interesting outcome would be if you are both right and can prove it.
Charly @ 45, scans would be interesting, but personally, I don’t doubt Reginald. Among my thousand+ books, I have a number of duplicate books, generally because the first one is falling apart, and I’ve noticed in some of them, there’s a small difference in printing, obviously, a revision, and if it’s a small one, it’s not generally acknowledged. Printing fuck ups happen, too. It’s more than possible that both books are being quoted correctly.
Yep, there’s no reason to doubt Reginald and yeah, I think people can be forgiven for believing that somebody who has a history of saying something stupid said something stupid
As I said, I have the book in my possession and could prove it to anyone who dropped by my office. The question would be how to prove it to you folks out there on Teh Interwebs with limited effort and expense. Also, I want to preserve my anonymity.
I could take photos of the book; presumably it would have to be with some method that was unfakeable, since I’ve already been called a liar multiple times. (e.g. Unmodified JPEG straight from the camera. Experts can tell.) I could send that to some agreed-upon third party. Or I could send the book itself. It would have to be relatively inexpensive, since really, who cares all that much? And maybe I would want the book sent back to me.
Or, one of you could buy a used copy of the book. I see a copy at Abebooks for not a whole lot. It even claims to be signed by Shermer, which mine is not. You would just need to verify the edition info (first edition hardcover, first or second printing), which is not always readily available.
I once discussed this with Jerry Coyne. He verified that the text I quoted is in the first edition, but not the second edition. I suspect he used the U. Chicago library, but I can’t find a link to this discussion so can’t verify it immediately. I don’t know if he would recall this discussion, I doubt that it is of huge import in his world.
Well I am not hypersceptic, I am just curious so a camera snapshot would satiate my curiosity enough (and I know how to recognise doctored jpg). I do think that in most probabiliyty you are both right and you are both correctly quoting different versions of the same book. Snapshots could be sufficient enough proof that you both stop
Both quotations are silly and nonsensical, even though one more so.
Reginald Selkirk @48: As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing you need to prove. But I did a bit of googling to try and make some sense of the nonsense, and came across a comment of yours from nearly three years ago, at Butterflies and Wheels. Looks to me like you might have played a role in the correction to Shermer’s silly sentence, which would add another layer of irony to the ones which have already manifested themselves in this kerfuffle.
Reginald @ 48:
You have nothing to prove as far as I’m concerned, as I said a few comments up there ^, I have books in my library which contain small revisions, but are not called revised editions, nor is there any note about said small revision[s]. It’s fairly common, from what I can tell, and in the case of Shermer, I can easily see him revising that one bit if it received criticism, or was questioned by a number of people, as he seems very sensitive about being questioned.
Nice to see things have been sorted out and h/t to Reginald Selkirk, I have no problem accepting your quote, because it seems Ichthyic has the mistaken idea that your hardcover “second printing” would follow after his paperback “first printing” (instead of logically in it’s own set of hardcover first/second/third printings, since a paperpack version is usually not a “printing” but a new “edition”, with it’s own cover/design/ISBN number). Thanks for clarifying you actually have the book in hand.
@Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk- #36
Yes exactly. It doesn’t seem to make much sense to me to talk about the average number of genes an individual will have, because every particular individual will have widely different actual numbers of genes from a given generation of (great)grandparents, and actual prevalence of a particular gene (or more precisely allele I guess) will depend largely on it’s general prevalence in the population (If Mum and Dad pass on exactly/essentially the same alleles of a given gene, it really doesn’t matter which parent it came from), and further down the line the reproductive success of not only one’s offspring, but also other people’s offspring sharing the same particular allele.
But then, would Homo naledi care?