I’m rather peeved and disappointed, too. The Discovery Institute Media Complaints Division posts a rebuke of bad bloggers and scientists who are mean to their shills, and there’s a link in there to Pharyngula…and I thought for sure it would be whining about something I said.

But no. The link is directly to one of Scott’s comments.

Poor guy. Now he’s going to have Casey Luskin squeaking at him. The rest of you are going to have to work at catching up by hurting the DI’s feelings badly enough that they point at you and cry. (You’re going to have to really work to beat me out, though—they have invoked my unholy, fearful name in their fundraising literature.)

While we’re waiting for the Panda’s Thumb server to come back up, with some new material on Behe’s new book, I’ll recommend Blake Stacey’s dissection of the malaria mutants. This little fable that Behe summarized about the frequency of chloroquine-resistant mutations in the malaria parasite is the centerpiece of his book, and the important odds of 1 in 10²⁰ was the yardstick by which he measured evolution — it was the magic number, the limit to evolution, the likelihood that a fairly simple set of mutations could occur … and the whole story is bogus. The book has been out for only about a week and the whole thing is just crumbling to pieces already.

Not that it will matter in the slightest, of course. The Edge of Evolution isn’t a science book, it’s a propaganda piece — and the big lies are just fine for that purpose.

It’s an article titled “I love teaching evolution”…on the Chalcedon foundation page, in column on homeschooling, beneath a quote and a picture of crazy ol’ R.J. Rushdooney.

Evolution is a topic that repeatedly enters into our curriculum the same way that sin is a topic that gets covered in depth. How am I adequately educating my child if I fail to cover in detail the lies and deceptions that are prevalent in our humanistic culture? The Christian homeschooling parent must be prepared to understand, articulate, and refute the preposterous claims that currently serve as explanations for the origins of life and the presence of all creatures great and small. Fortunately, there are many good books and publishers that have taken the time to make this task much easier.

I think this one belongs to Greg Laden. I’m going to stagger off and rest my bedazzled, overloaded brains.

(thanks to Jesse for that horrible vision.)

Speaking of unqualified dimwits trying to pass themselves off as competent scientist, take a look at this affidavit Kent Hovind filed in 2005. It’s Hovind’s history as Hovind himself sees it.

In his literature and in his talks, one of the subjects Hovind always brings up as part of his qualifications is his history as a high school science teacher. If I made a list of the most important jobs in America, I’d put teaching science in high school way up near the top, so that’s always been a discombobulating and disquieting claim from the man. When you read his history, though, you’ll discover that he never had a moment’s training in science—he went through a succession of bible colleges, worked as an assistant pastor and pastor, and then, with no background at all, starts teaching his version of “science” at Christian schools and a Baptist college.

It’s both reassuring—that clown and fraud did not earn a position deserving of much respect—and disturbing—these Christian educational institutions apparently have very low standards if they’re willing to accept ordination in the Baptist church as a substitute for actual knowledge in a discipline for their teachers.

The other thing that’s amusing about this document is that it is so freaking god-soaked, you want to wash the anointing oil off your eyeballs after reading it. And in the middle he tries to testify about Creation “Science” to the judge reading it. It makes me wonder whether judges and lawyers get tired of testimonials from criminals that mention god and jesus in just about every sentence.

Looking for a job? Want to travel, meet people, promote good … uh, “science”? Then here’s your chance: the Creation “Museum” is hiring! They really, really want someone with a doctorate in geology to work with them and use their degree to lend them a little credibility (don’t worry, it won’t help them at all—but after you’ve worked there a while, your degree won’t have any credibility, so you’ll be able to use it as toilet paper).

To apply, they want a “resume” and a few other things that I don’t remember ever having to submit when I was on the job market.

• Salvation testimony
• Creation belief statement
• Confirmation of your agreement with the AiG Statement of Faith

I guess you don’t have to fill out an affirmative action form with AiG.

The Statement of Faith is an intensely loony document, and one of their beliefs ought to be posted outside their “museum”.

No apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record.

In other words, any evidence that contradicts their religious beliefs is rejected by definition. If I had a grad student trying to earn a Ph.D. in a science, I wouldn’t let them have it if they could endorse such an anti-scientific sentiment.

(via McCranium)

Nick Matzke has dug into the literature on evolution of chloroquinone resistance in a comment so substantial it ought to be a post on the Panda’s Thumb. This magic number of 1 in 10²⁰ as the probability that a specific two-amino acid change could evolve that Behe uses as his linchpin metric for evolvability throughout his book turns out to not actually describe the probability of a pair of mutually dependent mutations…

So it looks like resistance actually occurs by the gradual accumulation of several mutations, and that what you are seeing in the wild is not a few rare double-mutation events, but instead a few much-evolved strains that have accumulated a large number of resistance mutations.

…and the number itself is of rather shaky provenance.

The evolution of malaria really is the major theme running throughout the book, and it’s looking like he hasn’t gotten any of it right. I wondered how such sloppy scholarship could have passed muster, so I took a look at the acknowledgments page to see who had helped him out. Here’s the roster of great minds:

Lydia and Tim McGrew, Peter and Paul Nelson, George Hunter, David DeWitt, Doug Axe, Bill Dembski, Jonathan Wells, Tony Jelsma, Neil Manson, Jay Richards, and Guillermo Gonzalez read the manuscript, and Bruce Chapman, Steve Meyer, John West, and Rob Crowther provide support.

In other words, his reviewers were the gang of incompetent philosophers, theologians, and creationist ideologues who willingly associate themselves with the Discovery Institute, with nary a real biologist among them. No wonder such bad science could slip into publication.