This is not a Polish joke

Doesn’t it make you happy to see people wanting to help other people?

“This is a service which is sorely needed,” said Jankowski, who holds a doctorate in spiritual theology. “The number of people who need help is intensifying right now.”

What service is Jankowski providing? That he claims to have a doctorate in “spiritual theology” is one clue. That he claims theological support from the Vatican and his Catholic archbishop is another.

Yeah, he’s an exorcist. A professional expert at casting out imaginary demons.

The article goes on to claim that this is a growth industry. They’re busy building a new Exorcism Center to treat the flood of people who need evil spirits dispelled.

I’m feeling a little sick myself — maybe I’ve caught a wee little ghostie.

One author responds

I’ve received email from one of the authors of that bafflingly bizarre paper on mitochondria. I’m still confused.

Dear Dr. Myers

First of all, I am very sorry for that trouble for you.
I found the serious mistakes in the paper during the process of edits, which I confused between the early drafts and the latest versions: I did not check the use of the sentences in the references (more than 200 references). Finally I made serious error to make the final version.
In order to rectify an error, I requested to retract the paper to the editorial office of Proteomics.
Thank you very much for indicating this carelessness.
Based on this good experience, I will study science and prepare a manuscript with caution.
Again, I am very sorry for that trouble for you.

With best regards,

Jin Han

The author is clearly not a native speaker of English, but I can’t criticize that — his English is far better than my Korean. The explanation that this was just a confusion of an early draft simply doesn’t work. We are talking about a peculiar title and a specific, grammatically correct assertion made in the abstract that is not supported in the text, except by a claim of a “mighty creator”. Where did that come from? One of the authors? Someone who assisted them in polishing the language? The instance of plagiarism are also left dangling.

It also doesn’t address the other concern here. If we accept the idea that Warda and Han made a clumsy mistake and submitted the wrong draft, one that was full of errors, we’re still left with the question of how that mess made it through peer review to the stage just prior to publication. Something broke somewhere, and one unfortunate consequence of the retraction of the paper by the authors is that we may not find out what.

The authors don’t need to apologize, especially not to me. All I’m interested in is tracking down how a paper that is so thick with warning signs could get so far through the review process.

A compromise: maybe they could operate with their feet?

So…Muslims want special foot washing stations so they can tidy up in order to pray, but at the same time, Muslim doctors don’t want to have to wash their arms before they plunge them into my guts. “No practising Muslim woman — doctor, medical student, nurse or patient — should be forced to bare her arms below the elbow,” they say.

A belief system that prioritizes washing up before mumbling at an invisible man over sterile technique in surgery does not require accommodation. It needs to be the target of laughter and contempt.

Carnivalia and an open thread

Carnivals for this week:

A call has been put out for Darwin Day posts. Get it together and put up something celebrating Darwin Day. I’ll try, but my schedule is once again bubbling over chaotically — I’m giving a short talk to an education conference on Monday, and I volunteered to do a talk here at UMM on Darwin Day — I’ll have to see if I can maybe wring something out of that.

My Darwin Day talk isn’t so much about Darwin, though, as it is about the contemporary fruits of his theory, and an attempt to explain evo-devo to a diverse audience.

The Obama failing

Apparently, Barack Obama did well in the recent primaries, increasing the chances that he’ll be the Democratic candidate for president. Right away, we’re seeing an old video of an Obama speech (transcript here) being refloated. This is the same speech that prompted me to say I would never vote for Obama. It really is a ghastly exercise in self-delusion and post hoc justification of religious bigotry; I’d say he was pandering to his audience, except that I think he really believes the nonsense he was spouting.

Just reading it again pisses me off, it’s so full of stupidity. Look at this:

And by the way, we need Christians on Capitol Hill, Jews on Capitol Hill and Muslims on Capitol Hill talking about the estate tax. When you’ve got an estate tax debate that proposes a trillion dollars being taken out of social programs to go to a handful of folks who don’t need and weren’t even asking for it, you know that we need an injection of morality in our political debate.

Good grief. We need Christians, Jews, and Muslims to “inject morality” into Capitol Hill? Capitol Hill is full of nothing but believers, and it’s the loudest and most fervent of those believers who passed the regressive taxes we have now. To make it even worse, he turns around a few sentences later and says this:

So the question is, how do we build on these still-tentative partnerships between religious and secular people of good will? It’s going to take more work, a lot more work than we’ve done so far. The tensions and the suspicions on each side of the religious divide will have to be squarely addressed. And each side will need to accept some ground rules for collaboration.

You want to build bridges to the secular part of the nation? Then don’t assume the godless are the amoral, unethical, venal part of society that you need to discipline with a ruling majority of religious saints in government.

There’s much more in that speech that grates. For instance, he praises Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech for it’s religious content, which he claims was necessary. NO. Read it again. King was a minister, and of course his religious tradition informed his speech, and the cadence of the speech is straight from good ol’ sermonizing, but the religious references are nothing but little fillips on a call for social justice, for equality and freedom. If you read that speech and come away thinking it’s a paean to religiosity, you’re missing the point. Atheists and other secularists are moved and inspired by that speech; the religious content is background, not purpose.

So let’s be clear here: I despise Obama’s faith. I think it has the potential to be a major hindrance to any accomplishments of an Obama administration, and I worry that it would further promote the desecularization of our government. If Obama is elected, I will not be a cheerleader, but a constant critic.

That said, though, in the recent caucus, I made myself a liar and voted for Obama. If he’s the Democratic candidate, I’ll vote for him in November. (I hope I don’t regret it.) I would remind him, though, that the last liberal Christian candidate who made his faith a matter of public discussion was Jimmy Carter, a wonderful human being who was also a one-term president. Piety is no substitute for accomplishment.

I do not aspire to the complete disenfranchisement of all religious people, and I always have to hold my nose and press that lever for some Christian — as an atheist in America, I have never had the opportunity to vote for any candidate in any election who was willing to admit to disbelief. (Think about that—as a group, we lack representation in our government, but it’s the other side that is always claiming discrimination.) So there’s nothing new in having to swallow my pride and vote for a compromise candidate who represents my views so poorly.

In this election, I’m confronted with a moderate Republican in Democratic clothing (Clinton) who I don’t see advancing secular government in a progressive direction; a weak progressive (Obama) who is tainted with religious delusions, but I’m hoping will focus on more practical issues, and the religiosity will not be prominent in his administration; and a mob of flaming lunatics on the Republican side who promise nothing but catastrophe.

I’m reluctantly voting for Obama, but as I said last time, someday I want to vote for a freethought president. I have a dream! Of course, I seem to still be waiting for a chance to vote for a freethought city councilman, so it may be a while.