Fallout from the MacDonald/Philosophia trash trickles down

The journal Philosophia is only beginning to reap the consequences of publishing an anti-Semitic article by Kevin MacDonald. The editor is digging in, but one associate editor has already resigned over it.

Philosophia is edited by Asa Kasher (Tel Aviv). In response to questions about the publication of these articles, he wrote that the papers were refereed prior to publication, but that it was “a mistake” to publish them, explaining that he was “not aware of the general background of the debate” and that he is “sorry for treating the discussion as an ordinary philosophical debate.” He added that further comments from him may be forthcoming.

Yesterday, Moti Mizrahi (Florida Institute of Technology) who was until last night the associate editor of Philosophia, wrote on Twitter: “I had nothing to do with the publication of this [McDonald’s] paper in Philosophia. I’ve asked the EiC to reconsider its publication in Philosophia.” Later in the day, he announced his resignation from the journal.

The ADL has also denounced it. The author of the ADL’s article on MacDonald, Marilyn Mayo, has a good take on the issues.

“It’s not about censorship, but looking at what someone is saying and whether you’re validating views that are antisemitic or racist or promoting ideas that have proven to be conspiratorial and not true,” she continued. “Of course, in academia there is understandably a drive to present all different kinds of views, and that’s understandable — but it is also incumbent upon institutions and journals to vet what’s put out there or put it in context.”

“proven to be conspiratorial and not true” is the key phrase there. Academic freedom is important, but it’s not freedom to publish lies as if they are true.

Elizabeth Holmes goes down, but not as hard as she deserves

Huh. The jury actually found Elizabeth Holmes guilty on some of the counts.

A federal jury found Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes guilty on four of the 11 charges for a fraud scheme, delivering a verdict on the long-running controversy over her role in the now defunct blood-testing technology start-up and marking a big win for the government in its years-long probe into the entrepreneur.

The jury of eight men and four women returned their verdict on the seventh full day of deliberations. They found her not guilty on four counts and deadlocked on three counts. Holmes was acquitted on all counts involving patients. Holmes faces the possibility of jail time over the convictions, although a sentencing hearing has not been set at the time of the verdict.

That’s what I find interesting: she was found guilty of crimes against investors, but not crimes against all the people who were misled by Theranos’s claims. It was all those gullible Silicon Valley venture capitalists who were hurt, not all the people who went into Walgreen’s and got misleading, false test results. I guess that sort of makes sense, since Walgreen’s doesn’t care about their customers all that much — they sell homeopathic remedies, after all, and didn’t question the likelihood that a company with Henry Kissinger and George Shultz on the board might not have any medical competence.

I’m not surprised. It’s clear that the US government (even the judicial branch!) is in the pocket of the corporations, given their current policies which are all about putting the peasantry back to work no matter how sick they are. Even the Democratic party cares more about the health of Wall Street and Silicon Valley than of the citizenry.

Man, Holmes was such an obvious, unqualified phony from the get-go, yet she was briefly a billionaire. I am persuaded that Silicon Valley is mainly a pool of stupid people.

The Kent Hovind Challenge!

I got tired of Kent Hovind constantly demanding that I, and other people, debate him, so I offer an alternative.

If you don’t want to listen to the whole thing, you can get the gist from the title screen: I tell him to go read a book. Or you can read the script, down below.

Dang, he beat me to it. Hovind issued his own challenge this morning: it’s to have a debate, with idiotic creationist YouTuber Standing For Truth as the moderator. In other words, the same as he always does.

Forget it, my challenge is better.

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Easing back into the flow

You know, I’ve been crippled up with tendinitis for a while, but I got the pain managed fairly quickly, and have since been in heal and repair mode, avoiding putting stress and strain on my ankle. I have not been happy about this, as you might guess. Today I took the bold step — actually, a whole bunch of steps — bundled up, put on a pair of loose fitting boots, and walked a couple of kilometers in -20°C weather.

I made it! I’m in even worse shape than I was before, so I’m a bit worn out, but I didn’t break anything, no tendons ruptured, I’m feeling no pain. I’m on the road to recovery! I just have to keep walking regularly, and next thing you know…the spring field season! Spiders re-emerge! I’ll be out in the weeds again, finding spiders while the ticks find me. It’ll be fun! As long as I don’t break anything again.

Hello, your name is Kent Hovind, prepare to be laughed at

Kent is back, begging for attention. Here are a couple of comments he left on my YouTube channel. I’ll respond to them here and be done with him.

Of course you don’t recall, Kent — but I’ve got the receipts. Also, it’s Coyne, not Coyan, so I think it’s safe to assume you haven’t already read Why Evolution is True, which doesn’t surprise me at all. You don’t read anything about the science you disparage, let alone even popular summaries. You’re a know-nothing.

Why should I “debate”? I can talk about evolution and science without asking you to jump in and provide commentary from an ignorant point of view. You’re adding nothing to the discussion.

I accepted an invitation to debate in my callow, foolish youth five or six years ago, when you were getting out of prison for tax dodging. You didn’t accept my insistence that you couldn’t profit one-sidedly from it, and it was you that refused.

Again, you can’t respond in a debate on evolution. I’ve seen you at work. You’ve got nothing to offer other than mischaracterization (“you believe you evolved from a rock”, for instance), incredulity (“how can you believe you’re related to a mosquito?”…because the molecular evidence shows that we are, I’d say), and ignorance and stupidity. You have nothing to add. Nothing.

Fuck off, you vapid, clownshoe-wearing racist, misogynist, criminal fraud.

Hey, Kent, crazy idea here: you don’t need me, either. Go read Why Evolution is True all by yourself, and go through it, all by yourself, chapter by chapter, making video rebuttals. You know, kinda like how Aron Ra went through your videos chopping ’em up. Do it!

The Mystery of Silkhenge

If you have no idea what Silkhenge is, here’s a video:

It’s a curious ring of spider silk, with silk fenceposts, and then in the center, an egg sac with a silk spike coming off the top. It’s just weird, especially since it’s such an elaborate structure to house only a handful of spider eggs. It’s a lot of effort for a small reward. All we know is what the babies look like, no adults, and no observations of how it is constructed. Clearly, More Research is Needed.

The same people went back a few years later and found more examples, still no adults.

They’ve also been seen in Peru.

Do I need an excuse to visit Ecuador again? Will this do? (All exotic travel is pending the resolution of the pandemic, of course.)

What good is a lab without water?

That is my sad face. I went into the lab yesterday to get a bunch of things done, when I learned that the water to the whole building was shut off. Our science building is only about 20 years, but every year we have a battery of problems that shake out — rooms are too hot or too cold, the roof leaks, and come the winter, we often get pipes freezing and all the problems that causes. So no water for three days while the maintenance crew fixes everything.

This would have been catastrophic when I was working with fish, and it’s still awkward when working with spiders. On my list was the need to set up more flies so they’d have food in two weeks, washing spider poop out of their containers, and most tragic of all, I had set hundreds of vials soaking in soapy water the day before, and I was going to scrub ’em up and rinse them out and dry them yesterday.

Look! I even got a brand new bottle brush! I was so excited to be doing dishes, and then…crashing disappointment. I’ll have to wait until Thursday.

Christmas is finally CANCELED

An interesting local development: we were supposed to have a Division of Science & Math Holiday party back in December, but it got postponed to 13 January because of rising pandemic concerns. I was just notified that it has been outright canceled because those concerns have gotten worse.

I didn’t feel like a party anyway, and was planning to not show up.

We’re a bunch of scientists, you know. It’s not like we’re Boris Johnson.