A commenter, J.L.S., at Retraction Watch scolds me about C. W. Howell, author of the New York University Press book Designer Science. Says J.L.S., “Your article,” referring to this one at Science and Culture, “seems unnecessarily rude and tenditious [sic, he means “tendentious”] towards Howell, as his explanation is completely believable.” The commenter goes on, “it is honorable of Howell to retract the entire book.”
Yes, let’s make Howell the victim here rather than Michael Behe, the person he defamed. That’s a classic tactic of deflection. Howell casts his error as a “mistake,” now thrown out. That is believable enough, though it’s also evidence of scholarly sloppiness, confirming all the other problems with the book that Casey Luskin has documented.
Contrary to the commenter’s implication, I’m not interested in questioning Howell’s honor. Howell maintains that the fabricated quote was unintentional, and I have no reason to doubt him.
But here is something Howell’s defenders need to understand: Defaming someone with a fabrication inflicts the same objective harm on the victim regardless of whether the fabrication was born of sloppiness or intention. And trying to refocus attention on the motives of the person who caused the harm rather than on the person actually harmed is an effort to minimize the harm caused by the fabrication.
The Smell Test
Speaking of the phony quote, why did it take Casey Luskin to come along before anyone realized that the quote “did not pass the smell test”? Which it obviously didn’t.
Howell, immersed in the subject of his true “History of Intelligent Design in America,” didn’t realize that Michael Behe would never say, in effect, that intelligent design is implausible unless you accept theistic belief beforehand. Nobody would say that about an idea to which his own name is prominently tied.
The fake quote, creating what Behe calls “an entirely fictional courtroom drama” in Designer Science, sounds more like ax-grinding. You want to make ID, and Behe, look bad, so you suspend your own skepticism in order to include a plainly implausible “damning admission.”
A Near Miss
Also, keep in mind that if Casey Luskin hadn’t read the book with care, the fake quote, and Howell’s false account of ID being pretty much frozen in place since 2005, would have passed into the historical record. Scholars and students would have checked it out from university library, accepted it at face value, taught from it in class, etc.
That was a near miss. What if there were no Dr. Luskin? If through carelessness you nearly missed running head-on into someone’s car, wouldn’t you apologize?
The Retraction Watch article doesn’t say anything about an apology from Howell, or from NYU Press, to Behe or to the entire ID research community. Behe confirms to me that he hasn’t received one. Now that — a sincere apology, not merely acceding to the will of NYU’s legal team — would be honorable. I sure hope Howell at least apologized to his editor.