Pharyngula::"Most infamous Lysenkoist"? Moi?

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Monday, November 21, 2005

"Most infamous Lysenkoist"? Moi?

PZ Myers • 23 Comments

Good thing Kieran Healy is quick on the blog—he caught Todd Zywicki saying this about me:

Scott Adams now has a blog, known apprpriately enough as Dilbert Blog … I also see that Mr. Adams has also already had the misfortune to cross paths with the blogosphere’s most infamous Lysenkoist. Welcome to the blogosphere, Mr. Adams.

As a biologist, I would have him know that we aren't particularly respectful of the Lysenko mentality (the man had good scientists shipped off to work to death in a gulag, you might recall), so calling me that particular term is especially odious and inaccurate. He must have realized this, since he quickly modified the post to read,

Scott Adams now has a blog, known apprpriately enough as Dilbert Blog … I also see that Mr. Adams has also already had the misfortune to cross paths with one unpleasant corner of the blogosphere. Welcome to the blogosphere, Mr. Adams.

And now it has been watered down even more, and all of the comments deleted, to:

I just learned from Joe Malchow that Scott Adams now has a blog, known apprpriately enough as Dilbert Blog. Joe points to this post explaining why a police officer is shown in one Dilbert strip firing a donut at a perp, rather than a gun.

I am immensely impressed with the integrity of the right-wing fruitcakes of the blogosphere. All that thrashing about, though, and he still misspells "appropriately".

Actually, I suspect he did the quick edits out of fear that I'd have him sent off to Gitmo.

I should mention that it is true that I was once very mean to Mr Zywicki. Poor baby.

Zywicki seems to be trying to defend himself in email with Ed Brayton. It reeks of desperation.

Trackback url: http://pharyngula.org/index/trackback/3403/tJt41Dz8/

Comments:

#50073: — 11/21 at 01:00 PM
Didn't you have a dustup with Zywicki over evolutionary psychology a while back? He must still be smarting from it.

#50075: — 11/21 at 01:03 PM
Why in the world would someone accuse you of being a lysnekoist???

#50079: — 11/21 at 01:29 PM
Why the heck did he even bother with the edits? I mean, sure, you disagree with him, but when did that EVER stop a blogger?

#50080: — 11/21 at 01:31 PM
Well, the flame wars of the blogosphere have used up all the recognizable slurs, so Zywicki is reduced to using orphan slurs that nobody under the age of 80 has ever heard before.

I wonder who the blogosphere's second-most infamous Lysenkoist would be?

#50081: — 11/21 at 01:45 PM
PZ,
You must be a Lysenkoist because you won't admit that some people are just inherently better than others, and "sound science" proves it. Because, you know, your ideology prevents you from accepting the new and completely unexpected "scientific" discovery that White European Men are genetically pre-destined and entitled to favored status in society. Oh, why won't you embrace modern science by affirming your own genetic superiority? (Did I mention it's "sound science"?)

#50085: — 11/21 at 02:22 PM
For a bunch of oafs who refuse to examine the question of whether intelligence was manipulated in the runup to the Iraq war, they sure are happy to throw around charges of closed-mindedness.

#50086: — 11/21 at 02:24 PM
That was a very "Lysenkoist" smackdown of Zywicki, PZ, and, although I enjoy reading through your archives, I now have another book on my to-read list ('Adapting Minds' by David Buller) that I wouldn't have right now if not for your links.

I've got quals to work on, dammit! I've got a thesis to be planning! I'm already wading through a backlog of reading materials learned about via pharyngula - I'm in the middle of 'The Inflationary Universe' thanks to someone's (I don't remember whose) recommendation in a thread on this site.

Damn you, thought provokers!

#50089: Scott Lemieux — 11/21 at 02:39 PM
Well, you know, clearly if you don't agree with the airtight, never circular and always well-supported claims of Steven Pinker, you're some sort of Stalinist...

#50091: QrazyQat — 11/21 at 03:13 PM
For the sake of anyone not already familiar with this, it's common practice, a tactic, among creationists and IDers compare those who think teaching science facts is a good thing to Lysenko. The tactic is to equate an insistence on facts with a rigid system of censorship. The ridiculousness of this position is well described at <a target=_top href="http://www.talkreason.org/articles/eandp.cf">this link</a> by Wesley Elsberry and Mark Perahk (Perahk has firsthand experience with living under the Soviet regime).

#50092: QrazyQat — 11/21 at 03:14 PM
Well, crappy html coding on my part there.

#50099: Jonathan Badger — 11/21 at 03:47 PM
"Well, you know, clearly if you don't agree with the airtight, never circular and always well-supported claims of Steven Pinker, you're some sort of Stalinist...".

*sigh*. I know. I can't help wondering if the ID crowd didn't get their idea of pouring the old wine of "creationism" into the new bottle of "intelligent design" from the "evolutionary psychologists" who did exactly the same thing earlier with their "sociobiology". I really wish that people who talk about the "genetic" nature of mathematical skill and so forth would actually point to the GenBank accessions of the relevant DNA sequences they believe are involved (no doubt on the Y chromosome according to Pinker and his buddy Summers). Genetic claims require genetic sequence as evidence. Otherwise it is just empty hand-waving.

#50100: Alon Levy — 11/21 at 03:48 PM
Zywicki calling you a Lysenkoist is like Bush calling Fitzgerald a liar.

#50103: — 11/21 at 04:07 PM
He can always fall back on the Dembki "street theater" defense: "Just yanking your chain! Made you look! Made you look!" This is a wonderfully versatile post hoc defense covering anything you care to spew (except under oath I guess). It beats even the old "My irony is a meta-level deeper than yours" defense popular in Usenet's glory days.

#50110: — 11/21 at 04:48 PM

Why the heck did he even bother with the edits? I mean, sure, you disagree with him, but when did that EVER stop a blogger?

Maybe this chickensh*t started to worry if he'd crossed the line into libel. I realize it's one of the hardest things to prove US courts, but PZ is not a public figure, and if it was thought that he accepted Lysenko's discredited theories, this could harm his career as a scientist. Note that PZ is not a Lysenkoist and can prove it, so truth would be no defense. By contrast, I'll gladly testify under oath that Zywicki is a chickensh*t for making such an attack and deleting it.

#50124: — 11/21 at 05:57 PM
Infamous? I'll say. I don't understand the analogy, or the metaphor, or whatever, but Dembski calls PZ "The Foghorn Leghorn of Evolutionary Thinkers" today:

http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/502

Other than the contrived title, he posts much of a PZ article, without comment, and let's his minions have at it.

Weird. Now you're an infamous Leghornist.

#50129: QrazyQat — 11/21 at 06:25 PM
Dembski: "That's a joke.. I say that's a joke, son!"

That's Dembski's method -- looks like yet another case of projection.

#50139: — 11/21 at 08:08 PM
It appears that Brad DeLong has figured out the real reason for this attack ...

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/

The link goes to Adams's version of a spat he (Adams) has been having with PZ Myers, of Pharyngula.... [W]hat I really want to know is, under what description of reality does PZ Myers (a biology professor at the University of Minnesota at Morris, and tireless rebutter of creationist and Intelligent Design arguments) qualify as a Lysenkoist, let alone the "blogosphere's most infamous Lysenkoist"? Does Todd have evidence that Myers fakes his scientific research? That he believes that species can be changed through hybridization and grafting? That he thinks genetics is a bourgeois pseudoscience? Or maybe Todd is suggesting that any scientist with left-leaning political views is, ipso facto some kind of fraud, and Myers is our most prominent example?...

The last is what I put my money on.

Posted by Brad DeLong on November 21, 2005 at 05:36 PM in Utter Stupidity | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Trackback: How to Seem to Skin a Darwinist while Being Skinned by One Tracked on: Acephalous (66.151.149.25) at 2005 11 21 20:57:47
Todd Zywicki's smear of PZ Myers (via Crooked Timber) works according to a familiar logic: Describe Darwinism Efface the Historical Record Show Countless Millions Starving Or Possibly Oppressed Or Certainly Dead Blame Darwinism Shoot Darwinists Drink Punch Eat Pie Dance

#50153: Matt McIrvin — 11/21 at 09:42 PM
The leading speculation seems to be that you're a Lysenkoist because you don't agree with Larry Summers about women in science. So I must ask: Mr, Myers, when will you stop using your dictatorial power to suppress the groundbreaking scientific research of Larry Summers?

#50169: — 11/22 at 12:19 AM
this one gave me a giggling fit... 'shipped off to gitmo'! poor guy...all that back-pedalling...

#50173: — 11/22 at 12:50 AM
Are we entirely certain that Todd Zywicki even knows what a 'Lysenkoist' is? Maybe it's some word he heard across a noisy room once and he thought it sounded cool.

#50219: — 11/22 at 09:10 AM
Lysenkoist, of all things! I wonder what he meant:

(a) The Biologist (PZ maintains that acquired features are inherited?), or
(b) The Ideologue (PZ applies scientific materialism in biology?) or
(c) The Agriculturalist (PZ forces farmers to grow oranges in the tundra?) or
(d) The Stalinist (PZ is implacably fighting opposing colleagues by transferring them to Arctic campi?).

I rather enjoy the idea of a fundamentalist expert in capitalist contract law like Prof. Todd Zywicky accusing an atheist leftwing biologist like Prof. P.Z. Myers of ... Lysenkoism. Sadly, not many of us are left to savour the irony.

Quod natura non sunt turpia

#50288: jre — 11/22 at 01:38 PM
I think CrazyQat intended to link here.

#50301: QrazyQat — 11/22 at 02:44 PM
Yes, jre, and thanks for fixing that to make it clickable. It helps explain just why this particular epithet is used by creationists and IDers (they make the claim that if you don't want their non-scientific ideas taught as science, you're engaging in censorship), and why they're 180 degrees wrong.

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Monday, November 21, 2005

"Most infamous Lysenkoist"? Moi?

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