It's just that I've seen this exact train wreck before, when Behe did it on the stand in the Kitzmiller trial.

I understand. If Behe was wrong and was just trying to backpedal his way out of a compromising situation, then I can understand your frustration with my re-presenting the topic.

In regards to the table included in DDB, you're right, Hageman factor is listed; but he listed all of the factors. Yes, he wanted to drive the point home about how complex this system is; but complexity is not the only variable with his main point (irreducible complexity). He doesn't need to qualify Hageman factor in the diagram because in the text he states the factors that constitute IC. I never interpreted this as "only these and nothing more"….. I interpreted it as "these…. for certain". Against surrounding text that admits a degree of ignorance to the necessity of the other components I feel that my latter interpretation is correct.

Behe says contradictory things in different places, repeatedly shows the diagram of the whole cascade which really does look quite complex because it involves far more than just 4 parts

Why does this have to be intrepreted as Behe trying to mislead? He's showing the complete cascade because those factors comprise the complete cascade. Stating that 4 parts of this complex diagram make up what he believes to be IC doesn't make him disingenuous.

explicitly includes Hageman factor in his detailed descriptions of just how complex the cascade is"¦and then goes out of his way to pick his narrowest possible definition

But Hageman factor is in the cascade, it should be included. Does he go out of his way to pick the narrowest possible definition of IC (4 parts) to be a thorn? Or is he just being honest with the general/scientific understanding regarding those 4 components compared to the remaining ones?
Nick, whether it's 4 components or 2 components…. IC would still be an issue for NDE.

Hi Nick,
Just to clear one thing up I'm not trying to be difficult by not admitting a contradiction.

It's just that I've seen this exact train wreck before, when Behe did it on the stand in the Kitzmiller trial.

Maybe you can clear this up for me. Why is it wrong for Behe to say that these components (fibrinogen, Stuart factor, prothrombin, proaccelerin) constitute IC components of a blood-clotting cascade"¦. then for him to also say that the relevance of the earlier factors (before Stuart factor) are currently unknown? Since their relevance is murky/unknown should one be surprised if he can't claim for certain "yes they constitute IC components" or "no they can't be consider IC" Behe states that the blood clotting cascade is an example of IC. He then shows 4 factors that he believes to be necessary for blood clotting to function properly. He also mentions other factors that have activation roles in blood clotting and states that he is not certain the importance of these factors.

The problem is that there is no reason to think he was doing any of this back in the 1990s when he made his original claims. The "murkyness" Behe was actually thinking about was actually (a) humans can be missing things like Hageman factor and be basically fine, except in extreme (but rather important) situations like childbirth, and (b) the exact functions of some of the proteins were not fully worked out.

If Behe had put a table in Pandas and DBB, which listed all of the components in the blood-clotting chart (the same chart in Pandas and DBB, which includes all of the parts including Hageman factor by the way, without any qualification), and then listed which ones were required, which were optional, which were ambiguous, etc., then you might have a point (although his argument would have looked far less impressive to the readers in the 1990s).

But instead, Behe says contradictory things in different places, repeatedly shows the diagram of the whole cascade which really does look quite complex because it involves far more than just 4 parts, explicitly includes Hageman factor in his detailed descriptions of just how complex the cascade is…and then goes out of his way to pick his narrowest possible definition in order to assert that Ken Miller is misconstruing Behe's argument, when Miller brings up the simple fact (known since the 1960s, by the way, but never mentioned by Behe until Miller brought it up) that Hageman factor is missing in whales (and that 3 components are missing in pufferfish, discovered when they published the pufferfish genome in ~2003).

To construct a table like the one I mentioned, Behe would have had to survey blood-clotting systems in multiple species, not just humans. But he systematically avoids doing any comparative biology in Darwin's Black Box, which is a central devastating flaw in his entire approach and a key reason why his argument is considered pseudoscience by biologists.

Maybe you can clear this up for me. Why is it wrong for Behe to say that these components (fibrinogen, Stuart factor, prothrombin, proaccelerin) constitute IC components of a blood-clotting cascade…. then for him to also say that the relevance of the earlier factors (before Stuart factor) are currently unknown? Since their relevance is murky/unknown should one be surprised if he can't claim for certain "yes they constitute IC components" or "no they can't be consider IC" Behe states that the blood clotting cascade is an example of IC. He then shows 4 factors that he believes to be necessary for blood clotting to function properly. He also mentions other factors that have activation roles in blood clotting and states that he is not certain the importance of these factors.
Nick, again - I'm not trying to be difficult, I just don't get why you believe those passages (that you had mentioned) to contradict each other.

But again (and I recently re-iterated this) my initial point was only with Hageman factor.

I don't recall Behe saying that the core IC components should be able to form a complete system, only that the core IC components are IC.

This stuff about the "core" was an ad hoc invention by Behe's followers after Darwin's Black Box, when it became clear that many of the parts of Behe's various systems were not actually always required.

But in Darwin's Black Box, you may remember this bit: "Any system missing a part is by definition non-functional".

If the 4 parts in blood-clotting can't function, then by definition they're not really The System, and Behe was wrong when he said Ken Miller should have only taken the DBB 4-parts passage as authoritative.

You are showing exactly why ID crashed and burned at the trial. You can't admit a simple mistake or contradiction, instead you endlessly invent improbable rationalizations to save the authority you are defending. Behe showed exactly the same trait at trial. It might work before a naive audience, but with people who are following things closely it just destroys your credibility.

There is no way to reconcile "the components of this system are fibrinogen, prothrombin, Stuart factor, and proaccerlerin" — which Behe emphasized was What He Officially Meant by "The System" at the Dover trial, as no less than The Reason Kenneth Miller Is Wrong on Blood-Clotting — with his Pandas statement that "We may try many smaller sets of components to get started "” [e.g.] fibrinogen, prothrombin, activated Stuart factor and proaccelerin" but that death is the "certain result."

What really happened is this: in 1993 Behe knew less. By 1996 he knew of some ambiguities that made him qualify some of his statements about clotting in some places in Darwin's Black Box. When Ken Miller pointed out that various parts are actually not required at the trial, Behe quote-mined part of his book (ignoring other parts) that said the reduced system was the real "irreducible" bit. Then Eric Rothschild pointed out that this contradicted Pandas, and Behe, rather than admitting he made a mistake either in Pandas or Darwin's Black Box, either of which would be highly damaging in court, invented yet another One True Definition of "The System."

All this leads to a pretty poor conclusion about the real definition of irreducible complexity, which is that it really comes down to this: "A system is irreducibly complex when Michael Behe says it is, unless he changes his mind later."

Same four parts, you will notice, but here Behe says those four parts form an incomplete system that is therefore fatal.

I don't recall Behe saying that the core IC components should be able to form a complete system, only that the core IC components are IC.

If there is no evidential support that all blood clotting needs are just those 4 factors (and I haven't read anywhere of a system that only involves those 4) then Dr. Behe seems to be within his epistemic rights to make that claim (the one you quoted from Panda's). And this claim isn't inconsistent with what he said in DDB.

Just for reference purposes Behe states this on page 86 of DDB. Word for word from the book: "the components of this system are fibrinogen, prothrombin, Stuart factor, and proaccerlerin."

Yes, Behe cited this exact sentence at the Kitzmiller trial, asserting that this was the irreducible system he meant, and therefore Ken Miller's citation of the missing Hageman factor in whales, and the fact that pufferfish are lacking three components, was all mischaracterizing his argument.

The problem, as Eric Rothschild pointed out on cross, is that in 1993 in Of Pandas and People, Behe wrote this:

We may try many smaller sets of components to get started — fibrinogen, prothrombin, activated Stuart factor and proaccelerin, or inactive Stuart factor or proaccelerin, or fibrinogen plus an imaginary protein that cleaves fibrinogen to fibrin — death is nearly always the certain result. (Of Pandas and People, 1993, p. 145)

Same four parts, you will notice, but here Behe says those four parts form an incomplete system that is therefore fatal.

Confronted with this contradiction on the stand, Behe could have just admitted that these statements were inconsistent that that he got it wrong in either Pandas or Darwin's Black Box, but instead he tried to rationalize his way out of it, and invented, on the spot, a third definition of "the system." This may have been good for salving his own cognitive dissonance, but in court it sure looked like Behe just modifies the definition of "the system" at will to avoid inconvenient evidence.

Now, I'm not saying Behe never claimed that Hageman factor, Christmas factor, proconvertin also constituted the IC components of blood-clotting. But, when reading critiques on Dr. Behe many of the critics (at least the ones I have read) are referencing DDB for their source of where they believe that Dr. Behe stated these factors (primarily Hageman) as being IC components to the blood clotting cascade.