All-Too-Common-Dissent reports in “Brain Surgeon challenges Darwinism”:
Recently, the “Discovery Institute” has announced that it has recently added 100 more “scientists” to their list of folks that ‘doubt Darwin’ (see this for the requirements for signing).
One of the highlighted signatories is one Dr. Michael Egnor. Egnor is professor of neurosurgery and pediatrics at State University of New York, Stony Brook and a brain surgeon. WOW! Impressive, eh?
This is simply more of the ongoing saga whereby the Discovery Institute of Creationism and Evangelical Religious Propagation gets complicit scientists (or unsuspecting scientists … or stoopid scientists, or whatever) to sign on to this statement:
We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.
OK, keep that in mind, while we skip over to this other blog site, “desmogblog.com” which is a climate change site. Desmog has a post on “who are the sixty” (it’s really 61) looking at just who signed on to an anti climate change petition sent to the Canadian Prime Minister. Desmogblog.com has an interesting response to this:
We will report daily on their credentials and their connections (or their lack of connections) to the oil or tobacco industries.
So, let’s put two and two together here. It would make sense to “report on” the credentials of the signatories of the Discovery Institute statement. Now, chances are this has already been done and I’m simply unaware of it. Or it has been done in some partial way that could be expanded on. For instance, maybe someone has gone through the list and shown that most of the signatories do not speak English, and thus could not possibly have really understood what they were signing on to, or many of them are retired, and thus represent the last, not the current, generation of scientists, or most of them are chemical engineers or otherwise not biologists, so what do they know about evolution, etc.
I’ve seen and heard of such discussions.
What I’m thinking, though, is wouldn’t it be nice to have a general presence on the web … sort of like how we now have a growing list of “basics concepts” of little profiles of people who claim to be scientists but who are actually, like this guy “Spencer,” members of religious groups infiltrating the scientific for apparently nefarious purposes. Just so people can know.
A post here, a post there, and pretty soon, you get a lot of posts.
Please consider this.
See also: THIS
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This is very interesting. I agree. Anything can be manipulated.
I’m sure you’ve heard of the Project Steve.
Bonafide scientists don’t believe that simply having a longer list of scientists supporting your side’s view makes any sense and is patently absurd. However, this scientific body decided - completely tongue in cheek - to develop just such a list.
However, they restrict their list of people who believe in evolution ONLY to those scientists whose name is Steve or similar like Stephanie.
So when the Discovery Institute says they’ve got 200 scientists, the NCSE is up to 750. In fact, they claim if they limit it further, to only biologists named Steve or Steph, they’ve got twice the signatories compared to the Discovery Institute.
Mark,
Yes, project Steve is great fun. But consider this: Bonafide scientists have no clue how to support evolutionary biology at the social level or in the educational system. No clue.
There are way more bona fide scientists, as you point out, than DI signatories, and the large part of financially well endowed industry recognizes the importance of good science practice and good science education, etc. etc. etc.
Yet science in general and evolutionary biology in particular are at best in a stalemate against the creationists everywhere but in the courts. Were it not for the courts, creationism would be taught in public schools in almost every state in the union. so whatever bona fide scientists believe regarding tactics and methods of preserving rationality is pretty much of no interest and of no use!
Look at how successful the Discovery Institute has been with very few people and modest funding (compared to, say, the budget of the education system combined with the private and public agencies that fund science, etc.)!!!