PZ Myers on The Daily Kos
by KrauzeDarkSyde from The Daily Kos has an interview with biologist Paul Z. Myers, titled "Interview with a Mad Scientist". PZ runs the blog Pharyngula, where his gentle being and incisive analyses have won the hearts and minds of everyone here at Telic Thoughts.
But before we get to the interview, DarkSyde has some nice words about The Daily Kos in the very first paragraph:
One of the really neat things about this new media and especially The Daily Kos, is ordinary folks like us can share ideas, debunk propaganda, and promote expertise with hundreds of thousands of people, faster than media pros can vomit up the next wing-nut talking point.
These self-congratulatory statements are even funnier if you recall that it was the Daily Kos that spread false rumors about a professor being beaten to "within in inch of his life", which the writer later had to retract.
Anyway, the interview was good – no, I really mean it this time. As I've said before, I think PZ does a great job at describing current developments in science, despite his tendency to fly off the handle when commenting on almost everything else. And considering that he spends the majority of the time talking about his own field of developmental biology, and how it interacts with the fields of evolution and ecology, I couldn't help enjoy it.
However, the discussion also verges into other topics, on which PZ's pronouncements are equally entertaining (though in a different sense of the word). Speaking of his political views, he writes:
We can only be not liberal enough. Being liberal means one is for civil liberties, equality, social justice, fairness. We work to improve the world, not maintain the status quo, and especially not to enrich those who already have too much. How can someone be too liberal?
Civil liberties, equality, and fairness; noble goals, indeed. So let's see how well PZ actually honors them in practice. Being asked about Stephen Meyers' article about intelligent design in the journal Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, PZ replies:
Well, first of all, sometimes real crap gets published in peer-reviewed journals, and sometimes really great stuff has to struggle to get the approval of other scientists. … Meyer got a piss-poor review paper (no original research in it at all) published in a small journal with the collusion of a cooperative editor; it would have had no impact on science at all. What made it something of a cause celebre, though, was that the DI wanted to use this for propaganda purposes. Normally, we'd let this kind of debris slide and sink without a trace, but the fact that there was a PR machine that was going to exploit it to push bad science on schoolkids and politicians meant we had to push back hard. [My emphasis]
So let me get this straight: Meyer's article isn't the only bad article published in a peer-reviewed journal, but because of socio-political concerns, PZ and the rest of the ID critics had to single it out for a hard push. Is that what "equality" and "fairness" is about?
January 7th, 2006 at 3:26 pm
What does Mirecki's beating by anti-Mirecki people have to do with Doc Myers?
And, if Kos retracted the post, your link above doesn't note it.
Comment by edarrell — January 7, 2006 @ 3:26 pm
January 7th, 2006 at 3:59 pm
Whatever happened with Mirecki, anyway?
Comment by Douglas — January 7, 2006 @ 3:59 pm
January 7th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Hi Ed,
"What does Mirecki's beating by anti-Mirecki people have to do with Doc Myers?"
The interview was preceeded by DarkSyde boasting about how The Daily Kos could "debunk propaganda", so I injected a piece of reality by pointing out that it was the Kos which had been spreading misinformation regarding the Mirecki case. It's all there in my post.
"And, if Kos retracted the post, your link above doesn't note it."
From the post:
"UPDATE: This diary was written when news on the attack was sketchy at best – turns out the Prof isn't in as bad shape as I made out above."
Comment by Krauze — January 7, 2006 @ 4:47 pm
January 7th, 2006 at 4:53 pm
edarrell:
I think the context is quite clear, a comment about how the Daily Kos bloggers are often quite loose with facts and consumed with ideological fervor. Which, as a left-wing political blog site that enjoys the status of most active such site on the internet, is not very surprising.
Today DarkSyde has another blog, as scathing in its character assassination of an ID leader as yesterday's blog was enthralled with PZ's brilliance. Know Your Intelligent Design Creationists: Phillip Johnson. Comments to the blog are 'the usual' religion-bashing encouraged generally by the Kos community, where even the mildest comment that isn't rabidly anti-ID (or ad hom about IDers) is immediately raked over the evangelical atheist coals and subsequently dogged right out of any left-leaning political or sociological views he or she might otherwise have entertained.
All in all, quite entertaining. There was one odd paragraph in the blog that not only appears to be a psychological projection by its author, but relates in no way to any paragraphs above or below per the actual topic of the blog. As if it was magically plopped right into the midst of the article by an entirely different personality. From the blog:
"Despite suffering a mild stroke in 2001, and another just recently, Johnson and his writings remain a potent anti-science force. (I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea here about the strokes: I disagree with Johnson sharply and consider him a rightwing religious extremist. But I'm not happy about his misfortune or hoping Johnson suffers a lingering death or a serious handicap by any means. There are few people in the world I would wish that on, and Phil Johnson isn't anywhere close to being on that list. We all have the right to try and change public policy through legal means and Johnson is well within his Constitutionally Protected Rights in pursuing his goals with respect to science. I by no means rejoice in the knowledge of his health problems, and I sincerely wish him the best possible recovery.)"
The odd intrusion of a psychological defense complex (that looks a lot like a guilty conscience) in a fairly lengthy article is something I've seen before. It could indicate that more than one person did in fact contribute to the article, and neither writer is a good enough editor to have recognized the discontinuity of thought and theme. Or, as encountered far more often in the anonymous ether of cyberspace, there is a single author used to playing multiple roles (and getting them confused when writing a long single article instead of just a short snippet or comment in the guise of several different posters). PZ himself has written things that struck me just the same way, so perhaps his fan "DarkSyde" learned this habit from his hero. Who knows?
Comment by Joy — January 7, 2006 @ 4:53 pm
January 10th, 2006 at 3:51 am
How does opposing crap in research — standing up for truth, in short — make PZ opposed to fairness? Fairness doesn't require that untruths be counted as useful and good as truths. Myers points out that Meyers' article had an ignoble political goal, and he stood against it.
I suppose next you'll be asking that we listen to the moneylenders explain their side of the story about why they should be allowed to conduct business in the temple?
If your view is that Meyers' article had value, defend that view. PZ has a good case to the contrary, and that case does not mean he's unfair, but instead that he's fair.
Truth wins in a fair fight, Ben Franklin observed. That's one of the reasons we have evidence rules in federal courts. And it's one of the reasons creationism of all stripes does so badly in the courts. PZ's defense of such rules may be a bias, but it's a godly bias.
Comment by edarrell — January 10, 2006 @ 3:51 am
January 10th, 2006 at 3:47 pm
I see that's time for yet another hit-and-run job from Edarrell. He completely ignores the problems with his previous comment, only sticking his head in for long enough to shout some ID critic slogan.
"How does opposing crap in research – standing up for truth, in short – make PZ opposed to fairness?"
Obviously, Ed only bothered to skim through my post, finding some isolated string of words that he thinks supports his stereotypes. Had he bothered to read and understand my post, he could have saved himself the trouble of asking this leading question.
You see Ed, it's too late. PZ already let the dog out when he wrote: "Normally, we'd let this kind of debris slide and sink without a trace, but the fact that there was a PR machine that was going to exploit it to push bad science on schoolkids and politicians meant we had to push back hard."
So, PZ wasn't concerned with "standing up for truth"; he was concerned that a PR machine was going to use the Meyer article. Indeed, there are lots of bad articles published in obscure journals. Why aren't Ed and PZ out there, pushing hard against those?
Comment by Krauze — January 10, 2006 @ 3:47 pm
January 11th, 2006 at 4:05 am
PZ is indeed standing up for truth — and I resent the "hit and run" comment, when you know darn well I was commenting on the original post. Must I mention Mirecki now to stay on topic? Last week you guys were all over me for straying with the thread as it moved.
The dog PZ lets out is the hound of truth. Normally we let crap sink in the cesspool, he says — but in this case, it's the sort of crap that somebody's PR machine will pick up and fling at innocent school kids. In the interests of public health alone, then, he posts a warning.
And was PZ wrong in any way? No. Why don't we highlight every crappy article with a day-glow orange sticker? Because they aren't all written by fellows of the Discovery Institute with its $2 million PR arm. What was it, 48 hours between the time the obscure journal was published and the first press release from DI claiming that the article was, instead of crap, the holy grail of peer-review that had been denied ID? Or was it less time than that?
Look at the article, look at the press release, look at the subsequent statement from the society that the article was inappropriate for the journal and in other ways not up to the standards of the society . . . PZ got it right.
One of the things I learned early in law is that crooks and cons always bray about unfairness when they get cross-examined with a judge in the room. I don't see this as much different, except that the court is the court of science opinion, which is much less rigid in its evidence rules. PZ's right either way.
Comment by edarrell — January 11, 2006 @ 4:05 am
January 11th, 2006 at 8:32 am
Edarrell didn't like my comment about his "hit-and-run job". But as everyone who has followed Ed's behavior since he started commenting here would know, this is completely accurate: Ed only sticks around for long enough to dispense with some of his polemics (in this case, about the "hound of truth" and the "innocent children"), then runs away as soon as people start asking him to back up his claims.
As usual, Ed's reliance on simplistic stereotypes has him misunderstanding the issues. This time, his stereotypes have him imagining a press release from the DI less than 48 hours after the Meyer article had been published. In reality, the first public mention of the article, more than a month after its publication, was at…. The Panda's Thumb.
Ed continues to demonstrate that he isn't really concerned with "standing up for truth"; there are plenty of bad articles published in the peer-reviewed literature, which Ed has no absolutely no intentions of doing anything about. In fact, let's use a particular article as an example:
Gregory Paul's article on the correlation between religion and societal dysfunction was published in The Journal of Religion and Society and featured in The Times. As was shown here on Telic Thoughts, Gregory Paul's article suffered from many of the same problems that Ed is complaining about in the Meyer article. So why aren't Ed and all the other ID critics out there, criticizing this article?
Comment by Krauze — January 11, 2006 @ 8:32 am
January 13th, 2006 at 3:46 am
There are lots of bad peer-reviewed articles I don't even know about. That's not really the issue.
You suggest that, in a world of crap, we should allow the Discovery Institute mavens to pose false claims, and ignore their trumpeting of such false claims as true, because we cannot possibly police all false claims.
Bizarre.
Find the truth and hold to it. If ID cannot survive except that good people ignore the falsehoods used to support it, there is surely nothing praiseworthy or of good report in ID.
Why shouldn't that be pointed out?
What other crap are you worried about, Krauze? Expose it. There is more stupidity in the universe than we can possibly deal with in a lifetime. Your choice is to give up?
Comment by edarrell — January 13, 2006 @ 3:46 am
January 13th, 2006 at 10:02 am
Edarrell wrote:
"There are lots of bad peer-reviewed articles I don't even know about. That's not really the issue."
But I just told Ed about a bad peer-reviewed article, namely Gregory Paul's article in The Journal of Religion and Society. Why is Ed unwilling to stand up for truth when it comes to this article?
"You suggest that, in a world of crap, we should allow the Discovery Institute mavens to pose false claims, and ignore their trumpeting of such false claims as true, because we cannot possibly police all false claims."
Considering that Ed is perfectly willing to allow Gregory Paul to pose false claims, I don't think he has much room to take the moral high ground.
But let's take another example. In his last comment, Ed claimed that the Discovery Institute had issued a press release about the article, less than 48 hours after it had been published. Question: Was this a false claim?
Comment by Krauze — January 13, 2006 @ 10:02 am
January 13th, 2006 at 1:09 pm
Krauze,
I don't support PZ Myers, or edarrell, in this, but in order to perhaps cut short a potentially long and fruitless exchange, how about I argue on edarrell's behalf? Okay, here it goes:
The difference, Krauze, is that none of that other crap is likely to be used to support much more dangerous crap.
Comment by Douglas — January 13, 2006 @ 1:09 pm
January 13th, 2006 at 2:01 pm
Douglas:
There's no need. Krauze just challenged ed to back up a fact claim. As anyone familiar with ed knows, that is generally his cue to leave the conversation.
Comment by Deuce — January 13, 2006 @ 2:01 pm
January 13th, 2006 at 2:33 pm
Hi Douglas,
"The difference, Krauze, is that none of that other crap is likely to be used to support much more dangerous crap."
In that case, ID critics ought to drop the pretense of "standing up for truth". Rather than posing as if their criticism of the Meyer article is simply a concern for accuracy in science, and as if the article is so exceptionally bad that it required duplicity on the part of the editor to have it published, they should make it clear that they're engaged in a political struggle to prevent certain changes that they consider bad.
Of course, I would also ask them to supply the evidence that the Meyer article will have consequences that can be considered "dangerous". Thought scenarios about the coming theocracy don't count, just as thought scenarios about Dawkins using the Gregory Paul article to have a religious upbringing labelled as child abuse by the government doesn't count as evidence that the Gregory Paul article is dangerous.
Comment by Krauze — January 13, 2006 @ 2:33 pm
January 13th, 2006 at 8:04 pm
Krauze,
You realize I agree with you on these points, right? (Just want to be sure there isn't any misunderstanding.)
Comment by Douglas — January 13, 2006 @ 8:04 pm
January 13th, 2006 at 8:40 pm
Hi Douglas,
Yes, I figured you were playing Devil's Advocate.
Comment by Krauze — January 13, 2006 @ 8:40 pm
January 14th, 2006 at 7:44 pm
Am I off by a few hours? What is your count, Krauze? How long did it take for DI to issue a press release?
Comment by edarrell — January 14, 2006 @ 7:44 pm
January 14th, 2006 at 9:21 pm
Hi Ed,
"Am I off by a few hours?"
Didn't you read my comment?
"In reality, the first public mention of the article, more than a month after its publication, was at"¦ The Panda's Thumb."
Comment by Krauze — January 14, 2006 @ 9:21 pm
January 21st, 2006 at 6:56 pm
Krauze, your chronology is incomplete. Meyer's article was published on August 24, 2004. The now-almost-impossible to get thread on Meyer's article was trumpeted on the ARN website on August 25, 24 hours after publication. Discovery Institute originally offered a .pdf of the article within 48 hours, on August 26.
When DI got around to posting a .html version of the paper, on about the 26th or 27th, it featured an introduction that billed it as real, peer-reviewed stuff — an excellent press release puff, and I say that from by background as a p.r. flack. Also, by August 26 von Sternberg was on his way to Finland for a DI-flacked affair, "Evolution, Intelligent Design, and the Future of Biology."
Now that we've established that DI was anxious to trumpet the article as good, peer-reviewed science, will you defend it as such? P. Z. Myers makes the case that it's cheap political tricks, and not good science. So far you've taken after me, but you've not defended the science value of Stephen Meyers article. Regardless of who was first to find the stinking thing, my point stands that P. Z. Myers was right to criticize the article and all the shenanigans that went into getting it into print. P. Z. Myers' accurately labeling the article as bad stuff is neither unfair nor tending against anyone's civil liberties. Meyers managed to sneak the article into print. It became a fair target for criticism then. That it does not stand up to scientific scrutiny is not the fault of P. Z. Myers, who offers the criticism, but is instead the fault of the author of the paper.
Comment by edarrell — January 21, 2006 @ 6:56 pm
January 21st, 2006 at 7:17 pm
Hi Ed,
"Meyer's article was published on August 24, 2004. The now-almost-impossible to get thread on Meyer's article was trumpeted on the ARN website on August 25, 24 hours after publication."
No, the Meyer paper was published on August the 4th. Discovery Institute, being the eager-beavers that they are, waited almost a month (the "more than a month" was a mistake on my part) for Panda's Thumb to break the news. Yup, real anxious.
"Now that we've established that DI was anxious to trumpet the article as good, peer-reviewed science, will you defend it as such?"
No, as I haven't trumpeted the article. In fact, I've never made use of it, as I don't claim that intelligent design was involved in the origin of bodyplans. My question is simply this: Why, among all the other bad articles that PZ acknowledged have been published, is the Meyer paper singled out for criticism? Why does an article like the one by Gregory Paul not receive a similar treatment? Is that something you can answer, Ed?
Comment by Krauze — January 21, 2006 @ 7:17 pm
January 21st, 2006 at 11:27 pm
Krauze,
Is it possible that Meyer and Myers are siblings, and neither of them knows how to spell their own last name? This would explain a lot, of course. You know how bad sibling rivalry can get, don't you?
Comment by Douglas — January 21, 2006 @ 11:27 pm
January 21st, 2006 at 11:28 pm
(Evidence seems to suggest their REAL last names would be "Meyers", obviously.)
Comment by Douglas — January 21, 2006 @ 11:28 pm
May 16th, 2006 at 3:56 pm
The Intelligent Design Community…
While researching my interview with Stephen DarkSyde, I discovered plenty of intelligent design devotees attacking evolutionary science on web. Like DarkSyde, I do not endorse intelligent design. However, I love watching these sprawling debates….
Trackback by ThePublishingSpot — May 16, 2006 @ 3:56 pm