Our old pal Kazmer Ujvarosy of the American Chronicle has a long and boring rant against the whole system of peer review. There’s nothing really new in it; we know peer review is flawed, and practically every scientist can give you gripes about cronyism and bad reviewers and yadda yadda yadda, but at the same time, no system is ever going to be perfect, and we work within the bounds of what is effective. Ujvarosy, of course, is peeved because creationism doesn’t get any respect in the science journals. Changes to the policies of review, however, won’t change the fact that Intelligent Design creationism is baloney.
What I find interesting in his cranky essay, though, is that he reveals two things that have emerged before, but that the creationists deny.
In the final analysis if the scientific community is to remain productive intellectually, a protective system must be provided for the creative minority, however erratic or zany their ideas may seem to the incomparably zanier Darwinists. A repressive evolutionist environment, forced upon the community of scientists by a secular and aggressive Darwinist priesthood, stymies creativity and literally fossilizes thought. Science writers contribute to this unhealthy state of affairs by tending to accept wholesale anything these quacks — no matter what credentials they have — spoon-feed them in the name of science.
“a protective system must be provided for the creative minority”…what he’s asking for is a kind of special-case protectionism where non-science is given a slot in the science publication process. Like Behe admitting that one of ID’s goals is to change the very definition of science to allow the supernatural in, that’s what Ujvarosy is also asking for — special treatment. A redefinition of peer-review that will remove the normal (albeit sometimes poorly implemented) quality control. A system that allows authors to replace the usual demand for rigor with his idea of being “creative” (read: “insane”).
Here’s another, uh, revelation:
In any case the theory of creation positing that our universe has a seed origin, which seed is Jesus Christ, is so heretical in scientific circles that no editor conditioned to the doctrine of Darwinian evolution from a simple beginning would touch it.
That’s what we need! A system for evaluating scientific work that gives special privileges to Christians!
I’m pretty sure that positing that the seed origin of the Universe is Jesus is heretical itself. Unless he was just making his entrance fashionably late.
Jesus created the universe? Well there’s a new one on me. Someone should make a “creation story of the week” calendar, and each week has its own creation myth associated with it.
People like Ujvarosy are insufferable, but one thing that sort of tends to give an inkling of hope is the insistent and irreverent practice on the part of creationiists of attacking the science community and its leaders as being of a sort of “priesthood”, harboring “zany” ideas that are “repressively” pulled to the forefront over “creative” (note the creation-creativity link). They can’t get their point across without verbally tarring, feathering and accusing others of malicious intent. Time and time again when they comment on evolution, it automatic victim mode.
My sense is there are some formerly-cowed people that aren’t going to take this sort of silencing any more, especially when creationists and pro-war apologists start pontificating.
Just as affirmative action seeks to create balance between whatever’s been defined as the majority and whatever subgroups we classify as oppressed minorities, IDists only seek to create the proper balance between generally accepted hypotheses and those that are discriminated against. How do we know they’re discriminated against? They’re so universally rejected and so rarely taught.
Just as affirmative action seeks to create balance between whatever’s been defined as the majority and whatever subgroups we classify as oppressed minorities,
The difference being that minorities are, in fact, discriminated against on principles that have nothing to do with capability.
Did people notice that he quoted John A. Davison at the end? That’s certainly the right person to ask….
Demonstrating that is difficult – which is precisely why people who can’t get support for merit immediately begin proclaiming that they’re being discriminated against.
There are only a few tricks scam artists have available to them. Sadly, people seem to lack the capacity to learn and react appropriately to them.
Last semester I taught two sections of Biology 101. The students had to give a 10 minute talk at the end of term. One student wanted to do Intelligent Design, and, when I said no, she asked why I wouldn’t approve the topic. I said that ID wasn’t scientific. She said she had papers to prove her case. I told her to bring them and we would discuss them. She didn’t follow through, but slammed me in the “student review” that there wasn’t any ID.
I killed myself working to make evolution accessible to these students. I used Penny Higgins’ brilliant “fish-ibian” slides (with permission and attribution), to no avail. I must say that some students were genuinely confused. They couldn’t adapt the concept of “microevolution” to the broader concept of speciation. I think this was a failure to understand the scope of evolutionary time. (it boggles my mind too).
Many students can’t understand why so many skeletons of fossilized similar animals don’t lead to a defined end. I used the analogy of the big cats. If we look at the skeletons of lions, tigers, cheetahs, pumas, etc, they’re all similar. Because the fossil record is largely bones, it’s hard to extrapolate to the actual appearance of the animals.
What do y’all think?
Thanks, SG
Not arguing for anything here, just clarifying. And not trying to pick an argument.
(1) He’s actually trying to get at something that is a part of traditional Christianity, although in a confusing way. That is the idea that the second person of the Christian trinity (the Son in Father, Son and Holy Spirit) is involved in creation. Look for instance at John 1: 1-3, 14. Or at the Nicene Creed: “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ … through him all things were made.” (As to when Jesus “made his entrance,” he says in John 8:58 “before Abraham was born, I am.”)
(2) Still, even for a believer, it’s crazy to view this as a scientific hypothesis, or something that science should take account of. (I expect criticism here for this: I expect some to say that if it were true, science would have to take account of it, and since science doesn’t have to take account of it, it isn’t true/it is meaningless — take your pick. Fine. I don’t propose to get involved in an argument with you.)
A repressive evolutionist environment…stymies creativity and literally fossilizes thought.
Literally? I think he needs to look up the meaning of the word “literally”.
Now let’s try to be fair: Science has all those pesky standards that restrict what can be considered as science. Ujvarosy is begging people to fix it so that he can play the game, too (with new rules, of course).
We already know that the Jesus-as-seed theory for the origin of the universe has no scientific evidence and therefore requires special treatment if it is to be sustained. Science ignores Ujvarosy’s pet theory, so he requires something like Science+, an expanded domain where it might be accepted. (The + can be read as “plus” or “cross”, which I’m sure would be fine by Ujvarosy.) Science+ is an anything-goes endeavor, so Ujvarosy would be right at home in it (that is, at least, until the Fixed Earth people use Science+ to advance geocentrism, or anything else that Ujvarosy might not accept; that would be bad).
Science+: Fewer facts, but many, many more theories!
OK, suppose we do accept the idea of Jesus Science – a new scientific discipline like say, optics, or astrophysics. Now tell us, oh blessed sceintists, what will your discipline discover? What could it possibly find out about the real world? Of what conceivable use could it be to humanity? And of what theories, apart from “Jesus is Lord”, would it consist?
Simple questions. Would anyone like to answer them?
One defintition of non-science (indeed of nonsense) is a statement that even if true could make no difference to our scientific understanding of our world. Jesus science absolutely fits that model.
Dream on, self-deluding fools.
Michael Kremer wrote:
(2) Still, even for a believer, it’s crazy to view this as a scientific hypothesis, or something that science should take account of. (I expect criticism here for this: I expect some to say that if it were true, science would have to take account of it, and since science doesn’t have to take account of it, it isn’t true/it is meaningless — take your pick. Fine. I don’t propose to get involved in an argument with you.)
Crazy? That’s the entire point of the Discovery Institute. They are arguing that ‘If God created the Universe, as described in the Bible, Natural Selection and Evolution are wrong (or at least insufficient), and there should be evidence supporting this.’
In this respect, the DI and many people here are in agreement. The difference between them is left as an exercise to the reader.
SG:
You said: “I think this was a failure to understand the scope of evolutionary time.”
I think that this is a large part of the problem. I used to teach junior high math – in a private school. Once a year I would give a lecture to the whole 7th grade on AGE. I would draw a time line on the board. I would indicate the present on the right edge and then, using a predetermined length for a decade, begin to work backward with events that they were familiar with; their age, their parents, grandparents, 1900, the Civil War, etc., back to Jesus. The point being to give them a beginning scale of how long ago things happened. This probably needs to be done every three of four years (that is with 10th grade, college frosh), each time extending how far back you go (and using a smaller scale each time) to give them an idea of relative lengths of time. Most people have, literally , NO idea how long ago a million years is, let alone 4 million, or 10 million – how many generations of development have occurred – how long evolution has had to operate.
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Thnks, bd
It’s still not as crazy as Ujvarosy’s proposed “cure” for cancer:
Apparently only men can cure cancer…
Wes – I thought I was above being grossed out by this blog, but as of 12:59 PM today, I see I was wrong.
I think I see potential for a new Darwinian pick-up line here…
Let’s hope he doesn’t trip over any fossilized thoughts on the way out!
If thoughts can fossilize, shouldn’t there be more of them and wierder ones?
Maybe that’s where those “outline of Mary in a potato” images come from.
Analogously, they’re trying to change the rules of basketball so that people who can’t dribble, shoot, pass or play defense can make millions in the NBA, too.
“Literally? I think he needs to look up the meaning of the word “literally”.”
My thoughts exactly. If I were in charge, I’d bar him from publication for that alone. Shows lazy thinking.
Seems to me that the whole purpose of ID is to create acceptance for something like “Science+” – accepting supernatural intervention as a causative agent. The thing that they haven’t demonstrated so far is how it actually adds anything to the discovery of how processes work in the real world, and how this helps us. Of course, other than to convince us that we gotta pray.
Of course not. That’s because you’ve got it backwards: As long as you do science, you are a scientist.
Science is coming up with testable ideas and testing them.
What “empirical studies” do you mean?
Of course not. That’s because you’ve got it backwards: As long as you do science, you are a scientist.
Science is coming up with testable ideas and testing them.
What “empirical studies” do you mean?
Hey Cocksnack! Good to see that your hibernation is over. See, there are a few things you fail to grasp with this idiot comment:
1. Not everything done by scientists is science. Sleeping is not science, breathing is not science, blogging is not science, and smacking down dipshits is not science. These things may be governed by science, but they are not science.
2. The reason that Intelligent Design is not a science is because it does not follow the basic rules of science. It rejects Occam’s Razor, it relies on the subjectivity of “what looks designed,” and it assumes the existence of the very thing it seeks to prove (i.e., a “designer”).
3. ID “scientists” are not scientists in the same way that margarine is not butter. It may claim to be, it may look like it, but it is missing something very fundamental to that claim.
There’s a large-scale assault on the very concept of standards, and what makes it worse is that it’s not organized or systematic. The hydra has a thousand heads, and destroying one does nothing about the others.
The tradition solution is to cauterize each wound with fire. How well do you think that would work on the Discovery Institute?
What empirical studies, Weapon? The ones that are magically repressed absolutely everywhere so that they show up exactly nowhere, not even MySpace pages? Heck, it’s hard to perform empirical studies when you don’t even have predictions to test. Or is all of this being done in sooper-sekrit DI labs? No one seems to be able to make up their minds about that.
Hey, Cocksnack! I just got word you were trolling here.
This one’s for you.
and literally fossilizes thought.
“…so that’s the T-Rex. Now, children, if you’ll come this way, you can see the fossil remains of creationism, a hilarious idea that survived all the way until just a few millenia ago…”
I’ve never been called “incomparably zanier” before…
I loved the blurb at the side of the page:
“Kazmer Ujvarosy is the founder of Frontline Science, an independent think tank, based in San Francisco.
“He is dedicated to the analysis of complex problems, and the development of realistic, concrete proposals on issues of global concern. His stance is independent, interdisciplinary, with an analytical rigor, and a view to the future.”
And the fees for this think tank are calculated per buzzword.
“He is uniquely qualified to help you understand what makes scientific sense, and what does not, based on cause-and-effect and systems principles.”
Unlike people like Richard Feynman, Alan Guth, Steven Weinberg, Olivia Judson, Richard Dawkins, both Sean Carrolls, or even a PZ Myers, all of whom are only trivially qualified to help us understand what makes scientific sense.
“A repressive evolutionist environment, forced upon the community of scientists by a secular and aggressive Darwinist priesthood, stymies creativity and literally fossilizes thought.”
I guess when he says “literally” he does not mean it literally.
I believe jesus is not a very welcome explicative mechanism in any field of science.
This guy may be right, though, in pointing out some dogmatism or “square-headedness” of the more darwinian. The sense of triumphalism and self-satisfaction of the neodarwinians in the 50’s was indeed accompanied by a phase of dogmatic hardening (according to Gould). And it was all the “official” evolutionary biology. I’ve met quite a few dogmatically darwinian scientists myself.I don’t need to be a creationists to react to them, for purely scientific reasons: Some do not ackowledge the importance of development, or flip their hand to phylogenetic systematics, to historical sciences… It’s all about the immediate mechanisms of population genetics.
There has been surprisisingly little acknowledgement of this “hard” darwinism in the past, or less even, that is still quite alive and doing very well. Specially in angloamerican culture, where it extended into fields such as “evolutionary” psychology (more like “ultradarwinian” psychology) and ultradarwinians are usually more heavily involved in the evolution-creation debates: They provide the interphase with society. Their own evolutionary thinking is there taken as “the” evolutionary science. All is kept quite in quite darwinian, soft adaptationist speculation. Even creationists will not have much trouble in pointing out some obvious problems or gross oversimplifications of “evolutionary biology”.
Of course, if creationists think that any of this implies that common descent is in risk, they simply fool themselves. Common descent is a universaly accepted fact in science, it is not debated. Rather, the debate is just how important is natural selection for evolution. This debate has been going on for ages within science itself.
Many scientists think it is the most important thing. What everyone needs to understand is that it is insufficient. People need to stop planting themselves in front of creationists as if it were.