The NCSE has a new executive director, Ann Reid (everybody say hooray, I’m sure we’ll be seeing much more of Dr Reid in the future), and of course the Discovery Institute had a snide post about it, which Ed Brayton has already mentioned, but he missed the real face-palm moment, maybe because it comes at the very end, and he couldn’t bear to read that far. Look at the parting shot they take at the fabulous Eugenie Scott:
Ann Reid, who worked most recently as director of the American Academy of Microbiology, has a serious background as a real scientist compared to her predecessor. Arguably, design in biology is more clearly revealed at the micro level even than it is at the macro. We hope her past employment and studies will serve her well in presenting the scientific evidence to the public with greater objectivity than we’ve been accustomed to from the NCSE.
Eugenie Scott has a Ph.D. in physical anthropology from the University of Missouri, and taught in her discipline at the University of Colorado and at California State University Hayward. She is far more qualified to discuss evolution and biology than any of the pretentious twits employed by the Discovery Institute.
If they’re clinging to a forlorn hope that a microbiologist is going to favor their vague and unscientific hypotheses about an ‘intelligent designer’ more than would an anthropologist, they are going to be disillusioned once again, and are also going to be widely mocked as completely out of touch with science.
You could just title this post “The Discovery Institute” and leave it at that. We would understand.
Maybe one day the DI will actually honestly answer the question “how many bits of microevolution are required for it to be called macroevolution? But then, using honesty and DI in the same sentence is creating an oxymoron.
As soon as I read “snide”, I knew without looking that it had to be more of that idiot David Klinghoffer’s scribblings. He’s an intellectual coward who never comes out from behind the protective skirts of
his mama’sThe Dishonesty Institute’s cute little blog’s no comment policy to fling his feces. Klinghoffer’s never displayed even the merest scintilla of evidence that he’s ever looked inside a real science book, much less understood a word of what’s in there, but he’s more than willing to insult every legitimate scientist he can, as long as there’s no opportunity for rebuttal.Credentialism? From the Disco Institute? Surely that’s not a game they can compete in.
Uh, Behe wrote a whole book about that. Sure it’s nonsense, but he did try.
These bozos think that intelligent design is *revealed* at a micro level? Microbiologists see natural selection in action all the time.
Yes, that “serious background” statement was the one that really leapt out and made me gag too. The irony is rich, coming from an institution that uses Casey Luskin as an all-purpose scientific critic.
I would guess (because guesswork is as close as I want to get to the minds of the I.D.iots) that the ‘thinking’ (scare-quotes used because, well, I.D. and thinking don’t usually belong in the same sentence without ‘non’ preceding ‘thinking) is that microbiology has a better chance of showing the mechanisms behind evolution, which to the I.D.iots is the same thing as showing how goddidit.
As a life member of NCSE I was wondering how that organization would ever replace Eugenie, but Ann Reid looks like a great choice, and I am enthused, and will do all I can to help, including throwing them another biscuit in my will. Thanks for the publicity, PZ.
If anyone could register a complaint about Eugenie Scott it would be for her reticence and timidity in promoting science education. I’m sorry I tried to sound as stupid as that article and just couldn’t quit pissing myself laughing.
This one sentence is a full day of laughter and pain, at multiple levels:
hahahahasplatouch
And I think the trick is this: They already know she won’t espouse their line… but by insinuating that she’s more qualified, and thereby contriving a false hope that her qualifications – if real – should lead her to endorse “correct” conclusions, they will later be able to point to her intellectual (or moral) failure in not doing so. And they will be able to do this with the condescension via pity and piety that plays so well in their circles, along with a reiterated despair for the effects of the “scientific establishment” and scientific education in general. And the setup here allows it all to occur within the arc of a tragic story of willful disobedience.