“Biological Information: New Perspectives”


That’s the title of an academic science book. It sure sounds sciencey, doesn’t it? It got accepted by Springer-Verlag for publication. And then inside it claims that one of their conclusions is that “conventional chemical and evolutionary mechanisms seem insufficient to fully explain the labyrinth of information that is life”. Oooh, more of that fancy science talk. It must be taken seriously!

Only, it turns out that this book was being peddled as a contribution to the category of “Engineering and Applied Science” rather than biology, because if it were proposed to Springer-Verlag as a biology text, it would have gotten reviewers who knew something about biology. And it was the product of a creationist conference held in a School of Hotel Administration at Cornell. And the editors are Marks, Behe, Dembski, Gordon, and Sanford, names well known for their affiliation with the Discovery Institute.

Once again, the ID crowd engages in some stealth creationism in order to get a line on their CV. Only this time, Springer-Verlag noticed, and the book has been quietly removed from their listings, pending further review.

Man, those guys at the DI are pathetic.

(Also on Sb)

Comments

  1. Reginald Selkirk says

    These dodges are typical for Creationists. The paper by Behe & Snoke (2004) “Simulating evidence by gene duplication of protein features that reequire multiple amino acid residues” was published in the journal Protein Science (volume 13, pp 2651-2664) – even though it is purportedly about population genetics.

  2. esmith4102 says

    Why can’t Lehigh University get rid of Michael Behe? He is a disgrace to any institution of higher learning.

  3. robro says

    Wow! Creationism and Hotel Administration. Now there’s a mix up of grand proportions worthy of Zippy the Pinhead.

  4. some bastard on the net says

    @robro #5

    Wow! Creationism and Hotel Administration. Now there’s a mix up of grand proportions worthy of Zippy the Pinhead.

    It does explain why the Vatican looks the way it does.

  5. raven says

    Once again, the ID crowd engages in some stealth creationism in order to get a line on their CV. Only this time, Springer-Verlag noticed, and the book has been quietly removed from their listings, pending further review.

    According to Pandas Thumb, Spinger didn’t notice.

    A lot of people pointed it out to them and asked them what they were thinking (or whatever goes on in that place where their brains should be).

    This is just a stealth attempt by the creationists to wrap themselves in the authority and prestige of science to…attack science.

  6. says

    Why can’t Lehigh University get rid of Michael Behe? He is a disgrace to any institution of higher learning.

    He’s got tenure, the whole point of which is to allow him to have unpopular views. If we disregard that we disregard the whole tenure system.

  7. says

    @robro:

    In defense of the Cornell hotel school: they do run a nice hotel and conference center, although it is a little expensive (I was at a very good planetary science meeting there three and a half years ago).

    I am a bit surprised that they didn’t do their homework and decide that any appearance of the university condoning Behe et al. was unacceptable. But I’m sure that the group had to paid well for using the space.

  8. truthspeaker says

    The Cornell hotel administration school is supposed to be one of the best in the country. When I was a wee lad applying to university, I toured Cornell, and the tour guide said that, because the Hotel Administration school did all the food service for students living on campus, the food in the dining halls was excellent, a far cry from the usual on-campus dining experience.

  9. mwalters says

    The Statler Hotel is run by Cornell School of Hotel Administration so it has an on-site facility to provide its student with “live” real-world experience and is a working hotel open to the public like any other hotel, complete with a restaurant and conference/meeting facilities. To put it simply, it’s a real hotel.

    Although the university does use the facilities for events which it officially sponsors or hosts, the conference and meeting facilities are also open to the public for rent. As such, I imagine that laws of public accommodation would open them up for a lawsuit if they even tried to refuse to to let them have their event at the hotel.

    Functionally, though, it’s no different than if they held their little conference at an airport Hilton.

  10. says

    @michaelbusch & robro.

    Ah!! The Statler! Well do I remember their chocolate covered strawberries: always wanted to order a Waldorf salad at the Statler.
    :-)

  11. says

    So by renting space in a hotel owned by the university they get to imply that their mutual admiration fest was approved by Cornell? How dishonest.

  12. eoleen says

    I guess they’ve been PHARANGULATED.

    The results as of this posting are:

    Vote Results
    Absolutely! 0.56%
    To a certain degree 1.54%
    Not at all 97.9%

    WHEEE!!!!! Voting is FUN!!!!

  13. DLC says

    So, in other words, Disco-Tute blew an assload of money on a conference exclusively out of creationists — how anyone could possibly be that horribly deluded and attain an honest PhD is beyond me — and then publish the minutes of their echo-chamber as a book, which they then tried to fob off on the technology section of a foreign publisher. This incredible bit of lies is what passes for scholarship ? Holy shit. No really… They’re a bunch of holy-men who’re spewing shit.

  14. scifi the first (formerly scifi1) says

    I first saw this in the Guardian website and commented on a debate with a YEC rellie.

    I think that, far from the likes of us giving the Dishonesty Institute air, it’s the clamouring for new and shiny armour from the YECs in their constant battle to bring us heathens the ‘trooth’ that supplies the oxygen to these maroons.

    Once they’ve worn out “but what about the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics” etc, there’s a need for a refreshing of the manure pile. The DI continue to bring the manure.