Science Reporting

On Friday, March 23, 2007, the Royal Statistical Society, the British Society for the History of Mathematics, and the British Society for the History of Science will sponsor the Karl Pearson Sesquicentenary Conference to mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of one of the founders of mathematical statistics.

The papers to be presented are a cornucopia of praise. The abstracts describe Pearson as a “Renaissance man” who created “the modern world view.” Yet several of Pearson’s most important contributions to the modern world view get no notice at the conference.

The Darwin vs. Design conferences will kick off at the Knoxville Convention Center this coming Saturday, March 24th. Here is an updated agenda for the day’s events. If you haven’t registered yet, you can still do so online before Noon EST Wed., March 21. Otherwise, you’ll have to try and purchase tickets the day of the event, but if it’s sold out you’ll be out of luck. It’s better to get those tickets now while you still can. See below for the full schedule.

This is your assignment. You are to read the mind of someone named “Lucy.” Actually, you are to find out where Lucy’s mind came from. You can’t meet Lucy. She’s been dead for 3.2 million years. Your only data will be a fragment of Lucy’s fossilized skull and genetic analysis of some apes, men, and lice.

This isn’t a bad dream. This is an exciting new branch of evolutionary biology, and it’s on the cover of Newsweek magazine. And they’re serious.

Darwinist blogger and computer scientist MarkCC (why don’t they use their real names?) called me a lot of names a couple of days ago. The most profane was that I am a ‘bastion of s***headed ignorance.’ Profanity seems to be a particular problem with the computer-math Darwinists. A dysfunctional clad, perhaps. They’re dysfunctional because, as Aristotle wrote, effective rhetoric has three characteristics: logos, ethos, and pathos. Effective rhetoric appeals to the best in reason, ethics, and emotion. When I’m called unprintable names merely for expressing my skepticism about the relevance of Darwin’s theory to the practice of medicine, I’ve already won the ‘ethos’ and ‘pathos’ skirmishes. I can concentrate on the logos.

How many Darwinists Does it Take to Have a “Debate” over Intelligent Design? Only one, as the Daily Democrat reports in an article entitled “Evolution vs. ‘Intelligent Design’ debated.” According to the DD, only Dr. Maureen Stanton, professor and chairwoman of the UC Davis Department of Evolution and Ecology, will “debat[e]” intelligent design vs. evolution. Apparently that’s the meaning of debate to some Darwinists.

Daniel Dennett was right, in a way. Scientific naturalism, like Darwinism, is a corrosive acid, eroding every crevice of our society. It’s now seeped into our sulci.

Jeffrey Rosen, in a March 11th New York Times Magazine essay “The Brain on the Stand; how neuroscience is transforming the legal system,” tells of the influence of neuroscience on legal concepts of culpability. He quotes Harvard neuroscientist Joshua Greene: “To a neuroscientist, you are your brain; nothing causes your behavior other than the operations of your brain. If that’s right, it radically changes the way we think about the law.” And, of course, it changes the way we think about everything. It isn’t surprising that a leading neuroscientist would cloak a philosophical assertion in a scientific assertion. It’s the currency of scientific naturalism.

Dear High School Students,

The folks at the Alliance for Science have sponsored an essay contest for high school students. They ask students to write an essay on ‘Why I would want my doctor to have studied evolution.’ First prize is a copy of Darwin’s Origin of Species. Second prize is two copies of Darwin’s Origin of Species! (Just kidding.)

Really, it’s a funny question. Think about it. Would anyone sponsor an essay contest on ‘Why I would want my doctor to study anatomy’ or ‘Why I would want my doctor to study physiology’? Of course not, because we all know that these kinds of science are important to medicine. Is evolutionary biology important? If it is, why do they have to ask the question?

Some Darwinists have a tendency to assume that anything coming from the ID camp must be a mistaken attack on them. This can lead to a Darwinist choosing not to read the pro-ID article, then responding to the (still unread) article by misconstruing basic facts, like the name of the website hosting the article, pro-ID books discussed in the article, or even the central argument of the article. Joseph Campana of ResearchID.org exposes these errors in the responses from Pamela Thompson of the John Templeton Foundation and William Grassie of Metanexus to his article, which demonstrated that the New York Times invented claims that Templeton asked for research proposals which “never came in.”

The Darwinist thought cops in Idaho are at it again. A while back it was the president of University of Idaho issuing a dictum banning the discussion of intelligent design from science courses. (See here, here and here) Now the Idaho Science Teachers Association has put its big hairy foot down and forbidden its teachers from discussing intelligent design in science classes.

Late last year senior fellow Jonathan Wells visited Japan to deliver two speeches on intelligent design and evolution.

Photo source: Discovery Institute.

Dr. Wells’ first lecture (in English, with simultaneous translation into Japanese) was to an international philosophy conference. More than 150 people attended, including scientists and scholars from Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, India, Taiwan, Greece and Mongolia. A few Americans were present, along with participants from Bangladesh, France, Bulgaria, and the Czech Republic (who brought along a copy of the new Czech edition of Icons of Evolution). According to Wells, the audience was polite, the questions were penetrating and the Q&A was lively.