Pharyngula

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Thursday, November 17, 2005

Open Thread

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This is not going to become the all-Scott-Adams blog, and this will be my last post on the subject, but he has put up another comment—a request that people write in and show specifically where he was wrong. Of course, Adams moderates his comments, and is going to use this as an excuse to whine editorially. For instance, there's one comment there that says that "Scott claims that the Darwinism/ID debate is scientific", and that ID doesn't meet the standards of science; Adams says he didn't say that and dismisses it. But of course, what Adams did do was assume parity of the scientific and creationist arguments, and present the ID arguments against evolution as if they had some legitimacy. You can tell that he's just going to hide behind his excuse of "I'm a humorist just reporting what some people have said," and that thread is going to go nowhere.

So, instead, I'll take advantage of the open thread mechanism here and invite you all to put your rebuttals here. Remember, take specific things Adams has said and explain why they are wrong.

It is really silly and hypocritical for Adams to be doing that. My original comment on this business was a list of specific things Adams got wrong with explanations for how they were wrong, and he just ran away and said he didn't say any of it. Expect much hairsplitting from him.

Anyway, here's the short list of things I said in that first post. Add some more!

  • Adams claims the Designists only differ from us in answering the question of how change occurred. I pointed out that they don't try to answer the "how" question, and asked him to list some specific hypotheses.
  • Adams made a vague statement that "Darwinism" was full of flaws; it sounded much like the usual Discovery Institute claims, most of which are cataloged in Wells' Icons of Evolution. I linked to a refutation of the book.
  • Adams made a specific claim that all hominid fossils would fit in a small box. I gave a link and a quote from a source that shows that is wrong, and also mentioned that it was irrelevant—ID creationists argue against evolution of properties common to all chordates or all eukaryotes.
  • Adams made claims about biologists that are completely wrong. He says that "90%+" of all scientists think Darwin got it right; I pointed out that this is not the case at all, we are well aware of parts that he got wrong, and this is why we object to the silly business of calling us "Darwinists".
  • Adams says that it is a "not-so-kooky argument" that scientists are so specialized that they don't understand the big picture, that all scientists are thinking their own fields lack evidence for evolution, and we're all cluelessly assuming the other guy has the data. This is not true at all for most of us. He seems to reject the arguments of scientists, though, because they are scientists. Apparently, cartoonists are supposed to be better able to understand what scientists know than scientists themselves.

(Oh, and since this is an open thread, feel free to say anything else you want, too. I agree that Adams is rather boring, and I'm sorry that recent server problems have limited what I can post.)


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Comments:
#50348: — 11/22  at  07:22 PM
jaimito -- If your auto mechanic is convicted of fraud and sent to jail, though, wouldn't you be able to conclude that he's not the right guy to work on your car, regardless of your grasp of the specifics.

If you even *suspected* your mechanic of fraud, you wouldn't want to take your car back there.

And that's the credibility analogy. Which, admittedly, is rather tangential to the point.



's avatar #50383: — 11/22  at  11:41 PM
murphy - I am argueing that biology and evolution are "mechanical" and many of its mechanisms have been worked out in detail and are well understood by experts. Some of these mechanisms are even manipulated like reducing blood pressure by adding beta-blockers.

My point is that challenging the experts on some specific point of there sphere of expertise is risky, since they actually know about what they are talking. I would never challenge Prof. Myers about zebrafish pharyngula, because I never have seen one while his butchers it daily on his lab table. Scott Adams challenging evolution was not less grotesque.

Regarding the expert being convicted of fraud, it does not disqualify him or her in his specific trade. Only if the fraud was done in the field of his expretise, and was cought, would I doubt his qualifications. Because by being cought he proved to be an incompetent, and worse, an incompetent in his own field. That is imperdonable in an expert.

Quod natura non sunt turpia



#50475: Kagehi — 11/23  at  03:53 PM
Unrelated: One other thought occurred to me on the subject of credibility. Someone suggested that we shouldn't or wouldn't challenge experts, giving the example of an auto mechanic. Well, as we all know, there are crooked and incompetent auto mechanics.


Yes, the problem here is that the incompentent and crooked PHDs in biology are working with who? Yep, the ID people. Some of them are merely prone to say things that the ID crowd misrepresents, (more than likely 90% of them), *but* ones like Dembski, Behe and others *do* have degrees, at some point used to do some sort of science, if nothing else that just to get their doctorate, but have since proven incompetent and crooked. So your absolutely right. And like all such people, they claim its everyone else that is lying or trying to cheat you.

Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proved innocent - Robert A. Heinlein



#50495: — 11/23  at  07:32 PM
Kagehi - I agree, completely.

Now if only we could get PZ to start *acting* like the credible party rather than a crooked auto mechanic.



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