By all means, blast Dawkins or Harris if you ever catch them behaving as dishonestly as Dembski has. But don't hold your breath. Each of them is smart enough to recognize the value of reputation, and they're unlikely to give in to the silly temptations that Dembski seems unable to resist.

I'll file this comment in the memory bank. I take it you would not have voted for Senator Kennedy right?

One thing you need to be careful about Keiths, is personal criticisms because you appear to be sensitive to them when directed at those you admire.

Bradford,

As I've repeatedly said, personal criticisms are perfectly fine as long as they're relevant. I wouldn't engage the blogosphere if I were overly sensitive to them.

But these are not mere personal criticisms (Dembski's personal life is irrelevant anyway). Each incident I've mentioned is something that Dembski did in public, all but one of them on his own ID blog, and all of which directly involve ID. What could possibly be more relevant?

By all means, blast Dawkins or Harris if you ever catch them behaving as dishonestly as Dembski has. But don't hold your breath. Each of them is smart enough to recognize the value of reputation, and they're unlikely to give in to the silly temptations that Dembski seems unable to resist.

Bradford,

Somehow I doubt you'd regard them as "foibles" had they been committed by an ID critic, say Dawkins. (Talk about understatement).

I probably would. I'm not speaking for anyone else though. I do note that the Pandas and the DIs spend much of their time engaged in the politics of personal destruction. Sometimes their targets are deserving and sometimes they are right about particulars. A contributor at my blog had considered making Hector Avalos the object of a blog entry. I think Avalos has some sins of his own to account for but I'm not convinced our time should be focused on that. I persuaded him to look elsewhere for an idea. One thing you need to be careful about Keiths, is personal criticisms because you appear to be sensitive to them when directed at those you admire. This might be one of those occasions when even NAs could acknowledge the wisdom of the adage: Do unto others as you would have done to you.

Keiths, most of the Dembski sins are in the foible category in my view.

Bradford,

Somehow I doubt you'd regard them as "foibles" had they been committed by an ID critic, say Dawkins. (Talk about understatement).

Every offense I listed in that post has happened in the last year and a half — and the list is not exhaustive.

To relate it to the context of this thread: imagine if Dembski were up for tenure. Setting aside his pro-ID advocacy, who would say that Dembski's behavior meets standards of scholarly honesty? Who would want someone who behaved as Dembski has sitting in the next office?

Take a look at that list again.

More importantly, this incident is about what ought to happen and moral choices should never be based on popularity or interest.

Of course they shouldn't.

What's interesting is the DI's inability to fan the flames over this. As Red State Rabble put it:

Nothing is more telling about the declining fortunes of the intelligent design movement than the news media's collective yawn over Iowa State University's denial of tenure to ID activist and astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez.

Despite a frenzy of posts on Gonzalez at Discovery's Evolution News and Views blog and other ID outlets, almost no one has picked up the story.

This morning Red State Rabble did a Google search on the terms "Guillermo Gonzalez" and "tenure."

Two comments. First, since the ISU incident but prior to this comment, I goggled this myself but did not bother to add the word tenure. I suspect there were others. More importantly, this incident is about what ought to happen and moral choices should never be based on popularity or interest.

This morning Red State Rabble did a Google search on the terms "Guillermo Gonzalez" and "tenure." The search returned a paltry 65 results. Of those, 21 are from the Discovery Institute. Seven right-wing or religious websites such as Town Hall and Baptist Press also picked up the Discovery news release. Science blogs and the Chronicle of Higher Education published six, mostly skeptical, reports. The news of Gonzalez' tenure denial was picked up by just three local television stations: two in Iowa and one in Illinois. Six other reports — five of them in the Des Moines Register — round out the coverage.

To put news coverage of Gonzalez' tenure denial in perspective, the 64 hits returned by Google were nearly matched by 62 hits for a story about an elderly Chinese woman who says her cat "grew wings" after being sexually harrassed.

I replied, but my comment is in the moderation queue due to the number of links. Could you fish it out?

Thanks.

Keiths, I apologize. I meant to respond to your post and ended up clicking the edit button instead. If you can repost your Dembski offenses I'll do it right this time.

OK.

I was pointing out that Dembski does a fine job of demonizing himself, with no help needed from his critics.

I cited these incidents:

1. The "street theater" incident involving Jeff Shallit's deposition:

Dembski's Lack of Intellectual Honesty
Demsbki Finally Responds… Kind of
Will Dembski Continue to Embarrass Himself?
Dembski Finds the Transcript
Dembski's Orwellian Behavior

2. The Judge Jones fart animation fiasco:

Dembski as the David Seville of Information Theory

3. Calling Kevin Padian a racist:

More Dembski Delusions

4. Reporting Eric Pianka to the Department of Homeland Security:

Wingnuts in Full, Abject Retreat on Pianka

5. Claiming that Richard Dawkins had only a handful of scientific publications and citations. Then amending the post as its inanity became clear. Then, in a tawdry echo of the "street theater" incident, deleting the post altogether to erase the embarrassing evidence.

Original post
Revised post

Note that the post is now missing from UD.

6. And perhaps my favorite, posting an anonymous review on Amazon's website badmouthing Mark Perakh's book and plugging his own.

How he got caught.

If this is the kind of man whose character you want to defend, be my guest.

If I were you, I'd stick to defending his ideas, which are not really much more defensible than his character, but which at least have the virtue of being somewhat obscure.

The character issue is black-and-white.