Jerry Coyne has unearthed a few maggoty tidbits about Rod Dreher, the Templeton director of communications. It seems the Templeton Foundation has been padding his credentials a bit, claiming that he is a 7-time nominee for a Pulitzer Prize. Dreher? A Pulitzer? Has the prize become that worthless now?
Only it turns out the operative word in that phrase is “nominee”. Anyone can be a nominee: heck, somebody could write a letter nominating me for a Pulitzer, which, if the committee has any standards at all, would go nowhere. Much like Dreher’s nominations.
The real revelation, though, is much more amusing. Dreher had one of those Templeton Fellowships, and toddled off to England to learn about the intersection of faith and science. Here’s his short summary of the experience:
The truth of the matter is that I turned up in Cambridge knowing a lot about religion, but not much about science. What I saw and heard during those two-week seminars, and what I learned from my Templeton-subsidized research that summer (I designed my own reading program, which compared Taoist and Eastern Christian views of the body and healing) opened my mind to science. It turned out that I didn’t know what I didn’t know until I went on the fellowship.
Rod Dreher is completely ignorant of science. I’d like to know how doing a compare-and-contrast essay between two clueless aboriginal superstitions gave him any exposure to scientific thinking at all. Gosh, I think I’ll go read a book about organometallic chemistry to open my mind to Zoroastrianism.
It turned out that I didn’t know what I didn’t know until I went on the fellowship.
ahh, the first step in dealing with Dunning-Kruger syndrome.
If he died of a serious accident he could also be a Darwin Award Nominee. Please, if there is any just irony in the universe. :p
So which is it – four pillars or a stack of turtles? They can’t both be right!
kiki,
It is obviously four pillars of turtles.
on an unrelated note…
Happy International Women’s Day!
now go out there and kick some fookin’ ass!
Well, he might not have learned anything about science, but it seems he’s learned a bit about pseudoscience. Everyone seems to prefer that these days anyway.
People who are into “spirituality” tend to blur the distinctions between the inner world and the outer one: they denigrate so-called Western science (and Western religion) for being dualistic, and not looking at everything as one undivided, indistinguishable Whole. Everything is experience, and therefore adding up your experiences is science. If other people have had the same internal experiences, then that’s confirming data. The person who has the experience, is invariably the very best person to interpret what it means.
I suspect Dreher learned that he can apply the word “science” to things he didn’t think he could apply it to. How broadening!
No no, you should read a book about organometallic chemistry ’cause it’s freakin’ awesome!
The holy powers of divine backbonding command thee!
Wait, you mean that the Foundation that gives fellowships on journalism isn’t reporting things with all the necessary context? But surely that isn’t possible! I mean, what sort of example of responsible journalism would they be providing if that were actually true?
Where wishful thinking gives way to evidence-based data?
If a scientist publishes a paper they are required to declare any possible conflict of interests. For example a climate change scientist publishing on AGW should declare any funding they received from organisations that take a position on the subject, be it for or against.
Are journalists under a similar obligation ? Should Dreher declare that he was a Templeton fellow, and is still connected to the Templeton organisation in any article he writes on science and religion ?
The only sensible thing to do is to make sure that PZ is nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Journalism every year from now on for his diligent efforts to blog the hell out of the internet.
Heck, let’s nominate him for every possible Pulitzer award. How fast can we give him more “credentials” than Dreher?
Mmmmmmmm organometallic chemistry…
….{drool}….
Anyway,
The Templeton Foundation is one of those things that, as I find out more about it, I like it less. It’s an organisation with pretty invidious aims as far as I can tell (sincerely expressed nonsense doesn’t make it less nonsensical) and a big budget. It makes me feel icky all over.
Oh well. I’m not in line for a fellowship, so I’m clearly bitter. ;-)
Louis
As a journalist and the son of a journalist, I can absolutely assure you that Pulitzer “nominee’ is utterly meaningless. You, for example, could bundle up a handful of gracery shopping lists and send them to the Pulitzer committee and call yourself a “nominee.”
My late father, L.T. Anderson, was a two-time first runner-up. Now that’s something you can actually brag about.
But nominee? Nuthin’.
FYI, something similar is true of “Nobel Prize nominees.” You can be nominated for the Peace Prize by, among others, “University professors of history, political science, philosophy, law and theology”
What I Lerned On My Summer Vacation, by Rod Dreher, 8th grade.
I told my dad I wanted me two lern how to play the gitar. We went to a muzik shoppe (ha-hah, thats how they speld it I rote it done to make shur.) I lissened two a guy play the gitar. Then, so I culd lern how two play the gitar, my dad took me two a church. It was empty. Dad said, “Lissen son here how its quite? Just lissen two the silence. Thats how you play gitar.”
I love to play the gitar! When my dad gets home from work tho I have two play it like in the church. Im reelly good.
I wanted to lern how to cook to so my mom said shed teech me. She shode me how to tern on the oven and said “Go outside and dig in the mud Roddy hony. Thats how you lern how to cook. Make me a big butiful mud pie!” I reely like two cook! I think I want to be a shef when I grow up and Ill cook and play gitar for my customers.
Thats what I lerned on my summer vacation.
I wanted to lern how to cook
That should be spelled cuke, Nigel. A-.
I really want to make a ferrocine/iron-age thinking joke but its just not coming to me and probably wouldn’t be funny anyway.
As alukonis and Louis drooled earlier, organometallics is way cool. My best college chem class ever. The Zoroastrianism is interesting in its own historical way but it will take a lot of drugs to connect them. I recommend against that.
The next summer he seems to have spent in Cambridge.
Heh.
Ah saw whut you did thar.
Sheesh, I want a one of those Templeton
VacationsFellowships!Sry all, not “a” above. -R
I know! I wonder if I could poe my way through one. I’d autogenerate a paper and submit myself for publication. Hey, it’s been done before.
I’d hate to smear the good name of nigelTheBold, so I might have to go with my real name.
That’s some wishful thinking right there.
He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know and doesn’t understand what he does know.
sqlrob, one lives in hope, even though it’s frequently dashed.
The tentacled overlord said:
Why not take a home course:
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Chemistry/5-44Fall-2004/CourseHome/index.htm
Why take a book when you can read a laptop:
http://www.ilpi.com/organomet/
Once you have got the fundamentals there are eBooks of one of the key Journals produced by the Royal Society of Chemistry:
http://www.rsc.org/publishing/ebooks/series.asp?seriesid=68
Plenty of really good mind-opening stuff.
Keep us in touch with what you are learning about Zoroastrianism. You maybe onto something!!
(Or you may not …)
Sorry PZ, but I think you’re being too hard on Taoism. I’m an atheist and a skeptic, but I do believe there is something to the outlook of Taoist teachings. That’s not to say I subscribe to their explanations of our origins or how things work, but I’ve done some reading about it and I find that Taoism is more about holding a certain outlook on life than explaining how things came to be. In that respect it’s more of a philosophy than a religion, and, like all philosophies, has flaws, but also has merits. Even Christianity gets a few things right.
Woah, on another note, my handle is “notvenerant”. Moveable Type is taking liberties with spelling.
What someone said above about being nominated.
In an English class in college, I had to review a woo book that had “twice nominated for a Nobel Prize” prominently featured next to the author’s name. I got curious, looked it up, and turned in my review with a nomination letter from a prof down the hall.
#29 – I consider myself to be a taoist atheist. It’s important to remember that there are really three different kinds of Taoism: one is essentially a philosophy with only a small bit of woo (this is the one I associate with, and the one I assume you’re refering to). The second one is more like a traditional religion, with lots of woo. The last is probably best described as an “Eastern medicine” sort of thing, and its useful points can essentially be boiled down to “eat healthily and exercise”. It sounds like Dreher was talking about the last kind of Taoism in his quote, so I can’t blame PZ too much for calling it out as bull.
Well, it would open your mind to the wonders of Palladium, that most divine of metals.
Bow before mighty Palladium, which tranfigures alkenes through the mystery of Metathesis !
Even in this I was scooped?!
Damn you, Pharyngula! You have become too big for my tiny wit to shine.
“… intersection of faith and science.”
For a second there I thought this was going to be about Mooney’s blog.
If you go to http://www.pulitzer.org/files/entryforms/2010jentformbutton.pdf you can fill out the form and nominate yourself or anyone else for a Pullet Surprise.
Yeah, the sign at the crossroads of faith and science is ‘Yield’, not ‘Merge.’
Considering that Dreher is a technophobic luddite, I doubt he learned too much science in the two months he spent at Cambridge.
One of the problems of having these “fellows” at Cambridge is that there is the risk they will run into Simon Conway Morris. He is good palaeontologist, but has some seriously odd ideas about the inevitability of the evolution of humans.
It is a fair bet though that Dreher never spent time anywhere near the Sanger Institute. They know a bit about genetics there.
Dude, you win the internet and a virtual cookie for that one.
The Templeton Foundation seems to have the unwritten rule that “when science and religion conflict, science loses and ignorance wins.”
“Happy International Women’s Day!
now go out there and kick some fookin’ ass!”
Hmm, it’s already 8:30 PM where I am. Maybe I’ll go drape coathangers from the anti-choice protest signs outside the local Planned Parenthood office.
“No no, you should read a book about organometallic chemistry ’cause it’s freakin’ awesome!”
Only if it can teach me how to create my own Project Metalbeast.
Organometallic chemistry…
how coincidental. Just finished preparing some ferrous heme in lab. Apparently Zoroastrianism smells like burnt hair. Either that, or it’s the DTT.
The Pulitzer ceased all worth the moment it was awarded to Maureen Dowd.
PZ, I submitted the form nominating you for a Pulitzer in all 14 categories.
I hesitated for a bit, as the committee requires that work submitted must adhere to “the highest journalistic principles”, and I know that’s too low a bar for Pharyngula, but I braved on and sent it in.
If you win in all categories, you can see an extra $140,000 in your pocket–good enough to get tipsy a few times.
Now you too are a Pulitzer Prize nominee (if my submission doesn’t get lost in the mail.)