They gave a gang of Discovery Institute hacks a free run to publish their delusions (bad). Then, under protest, they gave Jerry Coyne an opportunity to rebut (good). Now, after all that, they add another, final word to the whole mess…and guess who they published?
Perhaps you newbies to Pharyngula have never heard of the fellow, but he’s a wacky evolution denialist who got obsessed with me several years ago, and dunned me with email. (Actually, I think he might be one of the first kooks to inspire my “I get email” series.)
He’s got one note that he plays repeatedly and discordantly: evolution doesn’t matter. It’s a scam. Biologists just made it all up. You don’t need to use evolutionary theory to explain anything. Nothing has changed in his Forbes article, except that he must be on his meds now: he’s dialed back the crazy shrillness, but he’s still whining about the same silly point.
WIll Forbes get the message? They had to go to the Discovery Institute to find their initial mob of loons, and now to reply to Coyne (with a mass of irrelevancies, of course), they had to really scrape deep in the bottom of the barrel. Perhaps next they’ll give some space to Ray Comfort, or the Time Cube guy.
My reply to Skell’s article in Forbes was as follows:
The big wigs at Forbes must have some End of the World types poking and prodding them.
I think they’re stocking up their brownie points Pascal style just in case.
BTW, here’s the Skell article that Forbes published.
Glen D
“It’s a scam. Biologists just made it all up. You don’t need to use evolutionary theory to explain anything.”
What he does not think of is extending this line of thought to everything else. Gravitational theory is a scam, &c.
If you doubt this is possible, how is it there are PYGMIES + DWARFS??
No, really: if you take a look at the last link PZ puts up (“…skell_again”), you’ll see that Skell’s #2 discovery of all time that has nothing to do with evolution is “LITTLE PEOPLE.”
Proving that once again, with creationists, truth is funnier than fiction.
On his blog, Jerry Coyne writes:
To creationists, the answer to his question is yes: the only value of science lies in its ability to make us rich or cure our diseases. They make no distinction between science and technology. When a caveman made a better ax, that was science. Making computers is science. The bottom line is always “what can it do for us?”
“Understanding the world” is for religion, because its answers are more satisfying. Not “satisfying” in the sense of meeting the criteria for a good explanation, but “satisfying” in the sense of making us feel special, and cherished, and safe from uncertainty. The bottom line is still “what can it do for us?” It’s about meeting the demands of the consumer.
TIME CUBE PROVES FORBES’ EDITORIAL JUDGEMENT TO BE FICTION! EVERYONE IS LYING TO YOU, ESPECIALLY YOUR MOM! KELP IS EVIL HEMP IS EVIL THE TRILATERAL COMMISSION WANTS YOU TO SAVE STRING AND IS SECRETLY IN LEAGUE WITH THE CHICAGO CUBS AND IS EVIL AND THE CARE BEARS WERE EVIL AND YOUR MOM IS EVIL!! HELP, I’M TRAPPED IN A CABIN IN WISCONSIN AND MY WORD PROCESSOR’S EVIL GRAMMAR CHECKER KEEPS TURNING ALL MY DESPERATE EMAILS FOR HELP INTO INCOHERENT MANIFESTOS PRINTED IN RANDOMLY-COLOURED ALLCAPS SPRINKLED WITH LONG RUNS OF EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!!
(/Next issue of Forbes, cover story…)
AJ Milne: good one.
I don’t read Forbes mag. It is a Republican, Democrat, or bipartisan leaning magazine?
I believe what we are seeing at Forbes is an example of failures of belief systems. Specifically, as long as rational, intelligent people could be trusted to produce good economic models and advice, i.e. the economy improves, then they were more or less trusted on other matters.
When the economy began to tank, irrational fear began to rule the roost, and so the demographic began to shift away from smart journalism, what little there was to begin with. Many traders and businessmen are inherently superstitious to begin with, it helps to bolster their confidence in the face of the noisy system which is reality.
They will believe whatever system promises to deliver the goods.
I would pay significant cash to see an article by the time cube guy in Forbes…because then I would know that it was finally time to stock up on ammo and move into the woods.
“I don’t read Forbes mag. It is a Republican, Democrat, or bipartisan leaning magazine?”
From what I understand, it’s best used for lining a liter box or being recycled into something useful.
The next time you take your kids to the pediatrician, don’t miss the in-depth debate on Darwinism in Highlights.
Forbes is run by Steve Forbes, the flat tax guy.
I’m beginning to wonder if Steve Forbes has been hanging out with Ben Stein.
Don’t knock flat tax – it’s been a stupendous success in Latvia! See: Latvian debt is given junk status.
I would love to see the back and forth discussion between Gene Ray and the hapless soul tasked with fact and grammar checking his article.
Forbes: Timecube guy in your publicaion = subscribtion from me.
Do it!!!!
(Minor correction to #17:)
Almost any major magazine editor: Timecube guy in your publication = subscription from me.
The Time Cube guy rocks.
Steve Forbes and Jane Fonda have become born again christians.
They can interview Skell about biology when they interview tub girl about economics.
Time Cube makes my [atheistic] soul hurt, and intensifies my brooding misanthropy. How has that guy not died in an accident involving attempted consumption of his own head yet?
I lost all respect for Forbes (the magazine), its editors, and Steve Forbes after reading an opinion piece by SF himself about nationalized health care during the Clinton administration. Forbes (the man) railed about how it was not needed, how market forces will cure everything, yada yada yada. I wondered how many times SF had to wait to see a doctor, or had to wonder if he should take the kid to the emergency room or buy groceries, or hold off on filling that prescription, etc.
I have not bothered to read that rag since. It does not surprise me that a magazine that is controlled by somebody so removed from the real world would allow un-ID drivel to be published in his magazine.
Tin ear on the part of Forbes, definitely.
Sorta gives a whole new meaning to their old slogan, “Capitalist Tool.”
Back when his dad ran the magazine, the bent was still business conservative, but Malcolm S Forbes was a real larger-than-life character, balloonist, motorcyclist, outspoken on whatever he felt like. It’s like the kid ended up with no personality as a reaction to his father.
Let’s ask Mickey Rourke what he thinks.
Once upon a time, I had the opportunity to converse with Skell. I have to say that it was one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life. The man was totally incapable of hearing a single word spoken by someone other than Skell. And in turn, he expected the listener to sit patiently while he yelled at them. Nasty man.
Actually I don’t think Gene Ray would necessarily deny evolution. But I’ll bet his interpretation would add a bit of crazy racism in some unexpected and exciting way.
The gaps in the history of life are not a flaw, but an opportunity for dissertation subjects. Now could you God-botherers go do it quietly? Preferably out of ear-shot?
A few years ago the Globe and Mail (our ‘national’ newspaper in Canada) went through a pro-ID phase, including occasional editorials in support of ID and having Jonathan Wells and Michael Behe write a couple of articles and reviews. I suspect it was due to one editor with a bad scientific education and ‘conservative’ sympathies. I doubt such editors would be in short supply at Forbes…
I don’t quite agree with this. Evolutionary biology is critical in medicine and agriculture. For example, it predicts that emerging diseases will try to fill a huge new niche, monocultures of large primate bipeds overrunning the planet. It is estimated that 1/2 of all large animal biomass on the planet is human. Much of the rest is cow.
One new pandemic like SARS or H5N1 flu could kill millions or billions. We’ve already had one minor example, HIV/AIDS.
It is no simple task to feed 6.7 billion people. It is also estimated that 1/2 of the energy flow in the earth’s biosphere is used by humans.
Evolutionary biology only matters to people who eat and want to live long, healthy lives. It won’t explain gravity or crazy people like Skell, but so what.
Steven Forbes and Forbes are decending into crackpottery. Hard to say why. The print media is getting hammered by the internet, newspapers and magazines are going BK right and left. The TV is also struggling. Haven’t checked on Darth Murdoch’s empire lately but it might be struggling also.
It looks like the Death Cults and their political allies are regrouping as a large lunatic fringe of kooks. Their model of reality denial, deficits don’t matter, hate, hypocrisy, and facilitated corruption while looting the USA didn’t work very well. Their so called leaders like Palin, Sanford, Jindal, Forbes are mostly 10th rate intellects with the personalities and moralities of snakes.
They will either eventually fade away into irrelevancy or launch another perhaps successful attack towards their eventual goal, the destruction of the USA.
FWIW, Malcom Forbes was gay or bisexual. Gays, of course, are responsible for all the adverse events in our society except when they are their friends, or their relatives including parents and kids.
It’s all about the extremely rich furiously masturbating each other.
It favors the Republicans over the Democrats, but most of its writers seem to feel the tax plans favoured by Republicans are unconscionably arduous, especially for those poor unfortunate people who make billions of dollars a year. Forbes is also fond of publishing rants by global warming denialists.
Given that most of the comments I saw today regarding a Nouriel Roubini article were from people calling him an idiot and maintaining that the current economic crisis is a result of not enough laissez-faire capitalism, I am not surprised.
Yes, I do so love it when a person who at best would be a sales rep at a third-tier-market radio station if he weren’t a member of the Lucky Sperm Club tells us how the magic of the market will solve everything.
Steve Forbes might feel that if Forbes knocks real science enough and uses enough logical fallacies, it will stop global warming and he won’t have to worry about it. Hey, it’s worth a try!
Bryson, I was going to “correct” you, but then remembered that the Mope and Wail did in fact publish an article by Wells before he became notorious. Yeah, it was a piece of crap.
However, the other paper, the National Pest, still prints crap articles against evolution – although their Darwin anniversary stuff was OK.
I thought that the worst offender was Elizabeth Nickson, who wrote a truly air-headed article praising ID: http://elizabethnickson.com/darwin.htm
a few months before she was sacked for plagiarism.
Not that there’s any relationship there…
It’s all about the extremely rich furiously masturbating each other.
I’ll be in my bunk…
Forbes is an idiot, but an incredibly wealthy one. So he can take his strange beliefs and inflect them on the rest of us. I seem to recall that several years back he bought American Heritage mag. and turned it from a pleasant interesting history mag. to a right wing rag.
Thanks for reminding me what we have to look forward to. The Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 killed about 25 million people (in a population of what? 1 billion?). In spite of its fearsome reputation, it had a mortality rate of about 5% or less.
Opportunistic diseases are an evolutionary fact of life, so one of these or something like it will get rolling sooner or later. If I recall correctly, the mortality rates are roughly these:
* H5N1 flu around 50%,
* SARS around 65%
* Ebola pushing 90%
…and quite a bit higher for all of them if you’re over 55.
Ecology shows us that overcrowding is followed by disease spreading through the crowd, followed by a population crash. Some species of grouse are reduced by 95% every few years. Other animals have longer “boom & bust” cycles or less severe diseases. It used to happen to humans. Modern sanitation, food production, and medicine have held off our fate for 300 years — “coincidentally” since just after experimentation and evidence became part of science. Throw them away and we’ll be right back where we started, gathering roots and dying young.
Well, it won’t help them–I’m the only legitimate arbiter of those points.
I strongly desire for Forbes to either hire the Time Cube person, or even better, give them a regular column. You know, to teach the controversy.
Wait… I thought Ray Comfort was the Time Cube guy!
I think we need a new internet law similar to Godwins law.
As an internet discussion of science deniers grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Time cube guy, or Flat Earthers approaches one
I was looking at the email Skell sent to you long ago, and I found an example of you for the application of evolution to sewage engineering. In biological wastewater treatment research, they are trying to engineer the bioreactors and associated plumbing such as to favor the growth of ciliates and bacteria which clump together well, so that those particles can be settled easily and provide a better effluent water quality.
Also, some places add an extra tank/part of a tank which is an anoxic environment in order to reduce the growth of Nocardia, which causes undesired effluent behavior. They call the unit an “anoxic selector“.
skell says “Crucial to all fruitful experiments in biology is their design, for which Darwin’s and Wallace’s principles apparently provide no guidance.”
skell is a dishonest crook. he says this despite saying that understanding evolution is essentially worthless yet every nuance of an organism (which is a product of and can be deciphered by using evolutionary ideas) is fruitful if you look at their design. so what he seems to be saying is that only by agreeing that an organism is designed can you take anything useful from it. i imagine he also would agree that if you dont accept that god made you and tapeworms then your efforts of study are futile.
what a fucking prick. its simply incredible that such inept ramblings can be made by somebody in his position.
“Yet many popularizers of Darwin’s theory now claim that without the study of ancient biological history, our students will not be prepared to engage in the great variety of modern experimental activities expected of them. The public should view with profound alarm this unnecessary and misguided reintroduction of speculative historical, philosophical and religious ideas into the realms of experimental science.”
the man is totally insane. so using a framework of a 4 billion or so year history is worthless but looking at an organism and saying ‘oh, look it was made by magic’ suddenly gives you more insight into it??
misguided religious ideas????? hes the one positing a designer, what the hell is he talking about??
Isn’t FORBES primarily a BUSINESS magazine? I mean, WTF? I would think those cool-headed fiscal conservatives at FORBES would steer clear of the religious gobbledygook they use to delude and distract the masses with; In principle they depend on cool, dispassionate science as much as anyone else (they’d just rather funnel more money to DARPA rather than, say, the National Institutes of Health, or OSHA, or the National Science Foundation). Their readership has no use for creotard bullsh*t like this. Somebody let the McCain/Palin election campaign Kuturkampf nonsense mess with their heads over on the FORBES editorial board…
Steve Forbes, like Paris Hilton and much of the American overclass, is a good example of why there should be large and unescapable inheritance taxes. Winners of the “sperm lottery” (gonna save that phrase for the future) rarely make any useful contributions to the world, and should to earn their fortune, like their progenitors. No free rides anymore, and that includes legacy college admissions.
“No man ever made a million dollars by honest work” William Jennings Bryan (probably not the best source for a quote around here, and I’m not sure if that’s the exact wording)
T. Bruce: The Globe and Mail hired Behe to review Climbing Mount Improbable: he pulled his usual, ‘without a completely detailed account listing every mutation, its physiological consequences and the selection pressure(s) that favoured it, a natural-selection based account of the eye is just improbable speculation’ trick– of course, imposing similar demands elsewhere would lead to complete skepticism about history in general…Selective skepticism is very important to these people, Mr. Skell included.
Elizabeth Nixon is such a sad story– once the clown princess of the Canadian right, and still an occasional feature-writer (I think I’ve even seen her byline in the Globe and Mail), despite the crude plagiarism that cost her the regular NP column. I guess being ignorant and crazy is no bar to publication if you’re on the right side of things…
What do you mean? The PYGMIES + DWARFS stuff was meant entirely seriously. It comes from a deranged webcomic.
Stop right there.
Steve Forbes may or may not believe the stuff he allows Forbes to print, but my guess is that he’s giving the ID crowd so much ink because he wants to run for President again. He got votes from fiscal conservatives, but didn’t make a dent in the social conservative/religious right vote, so now he’s trying to shore up that base, and he’s using his magazine to do it.
I find it hard to believe that a lot of the people who promote the ID fig leaf really believe it. I think for a lot of them it’s got to be about holding on to power over other people.
What’s this about Jane Fonda being a refried christian??? That probably cured Ted Turner of any lingering heartache over their split-up!
Steve Forbes has zero chance to accomplish anything if he runs for president again. He makes Bobby Jindal look charsmatic. He’s bizarre for the Republicans. Neither the religious nuts nor the business folks want him and he’s never even tried to run for anything else. At least his father ran for governor of New Jersey to get that out of his system.
Steve Forbes put something like $18 million in self-funded into his Presidential campaigns in 1996 and 2000. The first time around he did well in Iowa and got some delegates from Delaware, but did not do so well the second time. Has ever so much money been spent in a campaign with so little result? He did get Sarah Palin onside in 2000 when she was the Mayor of Wasilla, though! Oh, and he was an advisor on the fabulous Giuliuni Campaign to Nowhere…
Steve Forbes put something like $18 million in self-funded into his Presidential campaigns in 1996 and 2000. The first time around he did well in Iowa and got some delegates from Delaware, but did not do so well the second time. Has ever so much money been spent in a campaign with so little result? He did get Sarah Palin onside in 2000 when she was the Mayor of Wasilla, though! Oh, and he was an advisor on the fabulous Giuliuni Campaign to Nowhere…
I don’t read Forbes mag. It is a Republican, Democrat, or bipartisan leaning magazine?
None of the above. It’s fiction, publishing stories pulled at random from the slushpile.
There was a Forbes magazine in the seat pocket in front of me on the flight I took on Monday. One article seared myself into my brain when it argued against government-run health care by exhorting the reader to read Ayn Rand to see how bad it would be.
I went back to my own copy of the Economist, heh.
As everyone already knows, today’s basic research is the foundation of tomorrow’s applied research.