Pharyngula

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Monday, February 21, 2005

They aren't just petty and mean, they're stupid

Digby makes a call to arms:

I don't mean to harp on this stuff, but I think that blogs need to publicize the fact that some of these alleged "mainstream" bloggers on the right are quite far out on the fringe. They will respond furiously that Atrios and Kos and others are America haters or "barking moonbats" but their own words speak for themselves. It's important that people see them, especially the mainstream media who are just beginnning to pay attention. They need to understand that Powerline is not just some nice lawyers and bankers who write about politics. They represent what Richard Hofsteder calls the paranoid strain in American politics. It's important that people begin to make distinctions.

I'll add to that…not only are they paranoid crazy, they're stupid crazy. Rising Hegemon dug up this tiny jewel of idiocy from Hindrocket from a few years ago:

Professor Volokh seemed to assume that someone who doesn't believe in evolution is a harmless crank, who should not on that account be barred from pursuing a career in, say, medicine. My own view is different. I think that Darwin's theory of macroevolution is plainly wrong, on strictly scientific grounds. So to bar a student from progressing in his career because he refuses to sign on to what is, in my view, a rather obvious fraud, which cannot withstand the mildest scrutiny, is really an outrage. It is no different from the practice in Soviet Russia of promoting only biologists who believed (or pretended to believe) in the theories of Lamarck, who argued that acquired traits could be inherited. But Darwinism is the official religion of the biological (and more generally, the scientific) establishment, and as such is rigorously enforced.

"On strictly scientific grounds"? Hindrocket doesn't know any science. The "macroevolution" canard is stock mindless creationism. The real outrage here is that a clueless nitwit like Hindrocket can claim that the entire field of biology is a fraud that cannot stand up to scrutiny; I'd be happy to mop the floor with him in a debate, if he wants to try.

Karl Popper argued long ago that Darwin's theory of evolution was never a matter of science; it was always about faith. As the empirical foundations of Darwinism have crumbled under attack by a new generation of biologists, especially microbiologists, its advocates have become increasingly shrill and sectarian.

I am one of the current generation of biologists, and I can assure you that his claim that evolution ("Darwinism?" Give me a break. Calling it "Darwinism" is clue #1 that you're dealing with an ignorant creationist) is under attack from us is a stinking pile of baloney. He's simply accepting the dishonest claims of the skulking creationists at the Discovery Institute at face value. The overwhelming majority of scientists support evolution…as they should, since it is the theory best supported by the evidence.

As for that remark about "especially microbiologists"…hilarious. It's obvious that Hindrocket doesn't even know what microbiologists are, or what they do, or what evidence his imaginary "microbiologists" are pulling out of their ass.

Time magazine really screwed the pooch when they named PowerLine "blog of the year"—they picked a site run by a few paranoid, extremist doofuses. People, please don't judge the good progressive state of Minnesota by these extremist clowns and Lileks.


Hey, all you charming and adorable powerline fans who are sending me e-mail and making phone calls: consider this fair warning. I will consider your messages fair game to post publicly. They will provide us all much merriment.


Oh, and here is my reply to Power Line.


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Comments:
#17201: CKL — 02/26  at  04:25 PM
P.S. There should be an "at least" between the "is" and the "better". Even mentioning Kent Hovind made me dumber....



#17234: — 02/27  at  01:18 AM
Regarding the original (= immediately post-inflation) very low entropy state of the universe, Brian Greene has a good lay overview in Chapters 6, 7, and 11 (especially pages 314ff) of The Fabric of the Universe.

RBH



#17236: CKL — 02/27  at  04:21 AM
PZ,

I just noticed another error in Hindrocket's post. He talks about Lamarck and his role in leading Soviet biology astray. I think Hindrocket meant Lysenko. Lamarck was wrong about acquired traits being inherited but he was French not Russian. Moreover, his views weren't pushed particularly hard by the Soviets. They pushed Lysenko's view of Marxist evolution. Then again I guess to Hindrocket France and the old USSR are the same because both are/were filled with pinkos and hate freedom so much.



#17237: CKL — 02/27  at  05:17 AM
P.S. I just realized that I should note that I'm aware that Lysenko holds some Lamarckian views, but he also added a lot of mumbo-jumbo to them as well. As such it is inaccurate to say that biology in Soviet Russia (prior to Kruschev) followed a Lamarckian paradigm. It followed a Lysenkoist paradigm, which made some similar claims to Lamarck's views.



#17242: — 02/27  at  07:16 AM
Besides, Lamarck and Lysenko aren't comparable, because Lamarck wasn't a crank. Lamarck is analogous to a geocentrist living in 1400, when there was still no observational evidence for heliocentrism, whereas Lysenko is more like a geocentrist living in 1850, when telescopes could regularly observe the parallax effect. It's too easy to dismiss people who held views that at the time seemed right but eventually turned out to be wrong or incomplete, such as Brahe, Newton, and Lamarck.



#17330: — 02/28  at  05:54 PM
i don't spose our hindmouse read a lot of popper. what i find amusing is the implied denigration of "faith". ok, i'm a rationalist, and i have faith the world will keep spinning (and wingnuts will keep whining). but surely in wingnutville, "darwinism" being a matter of "faith" rather than dirty contaminated reality-grubbing science is a BONUS and virtually gaurantees its truth?



#17332: — 02/28  at  06:16 PM
Just to put the record straight about those microbiologists. I'm one of them and my field is molecular evolution.

It was the arrival of this field that made Popper recant his assertion that evolution was not testable - now there was a direct way of testing the theory of evolution with solid evidence. And guess what? - the patterns seen within genes can't be explained by ID or creationism. The evidence of evolution is written all over microbial genomes in such glaring clarity that only a fool would reject (or avert their eyes from).

There are still questions about mechanisms, but evolution itself has solidified into a fact not a theory. The Cairns papers were debunked and could be explained by a raft of other, more plausible mechanisms than Lamarkian mechanisms.

While we are on the subject of Lamarck (who is unfairly judged by history), the result of Lysenko's rejection of what he called "the Bourgeios theory of Mendel-Morganism" was the death of millions by starvation. Mendel-Morganism was the early synthesis of molecular evolution. I guess Lysenko well-demontrated the cost of rejecting modern evolutionary thought.

Of the many microbiologists I know, there are none who belief in ID or creationism.



#17333: Alex Merz — 02/28  at  06:36 PM
I don't think it's fair to say that the Cairns papers were "debunked," as this implies that they relied on incorrect observations. The observations in question appear to have been correct, however, and it is Cairns's interpretation of the data that have been largely falsified, as the molecular mechanisms underlying "adaptive mutation" have been elucidated.



#17335: — 02/28  at  07:20 PM
OK - I'll buy that -delete the word "debunked".



#17352: Alex Merz — 03/01  at  01:16 AM
(I should have added that the rest of your post #210 is spot-on, Dr. Beaker.)



#19033: Lewis Moten — 03/17  at  09:45 PM
Such is the beauty of the media. We always knew that they were able to look at the camera and tell you a lie mixed with some truth. Now with the power of the blogosphere, we can get the real facts behind what these people are saying.



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