Fox News really needs to fire this idiot. Look at this clip where Brian Kilmeade is, for some unknown reason, trying to dismiss a study that found that married people were at a lower risk for Alzheimer’s disease. I have no knowledge of the study, but his reasons for dismissing its applicability to Americans are bizarre.

BRIAN KILMEADE: We keep marrying other species and other ethnics–

GRETCHEN CARLSON: Are you sure they are not suffering from some of the causes of dementia right now?

BRIAN KILMEADE: The problem is the Swedes have pure genes. They marry other Swedes, that’s the rule. Finns marry other Finns; they have a pure society. In America we marry everybody. We will marry Italians and Irish.

WTF? Italians and Irish are not part of “we”? They’re a different species? Intermarriage between ethnicities is a problem?

This is something like 19th century racism. By the way, Kilmeade is a vocal conservative Christian.

I received Chris Mooney’s last two books as review copies, before the simple folk could get theirs, and I also gave them positive (and sincere!) reviews. I’d noticed that he’s got a new book out, but strangely, I hadn’t been sent a copy this time. I was wondering what was up with that, but now Ophelia Benson has read part of the book, and all is explained. He spends part of one chapter singling me out for criticism! Gosh, I guess he felt he wouldn’t get a friendly review this time.

The focus of his ire? Crackergate. He regards destroying a sacred symbol to be inflammatory and obnoxious, completely ignoring the insanity it exposed. That insanity — and I am not using that word casually — is what Mooney thinks the spokespeople for science in our country ought to treat deferentially. Here’s why he thinks we need to do that:

America is a very religious nation, and if forced to choose between faith and science, vast numbers of Americans will select the former. The New Atheists err in insisting that such a choice needs to be made. Atheism is not the logically inevitable outcome of scientific reasoning…A great many scientists believe in God with no sense of internal contradiction…[pp 97-98]

Ah, yes, the policy of cowardice. We are weak, and the loons are numerous and strong, and therefore we must avoid telling them the truth. If the masses prefer their silly religion to science, well then, we shall give them a neutered science, a weak science, an inoffensive science that does not challenge anyone’s beliefs.

If atheism is not the logical outcome of scientific reasoning, then let us pretend that gods that turn into a cracker that cures you of sin is logical and unquestionable and harmless…oh, wait, let’s pretend that belief doesn’t exist, and doesn’t poison minds. We’ll blame the American problem of unreason on the atheists, instead.

---

Sheril Kirshenbaum assures me that I will be receiving a review copy of their book; I’m not being intentionally snubbed, it is merely a matter of timing, and the review copies are only now being sent out. I look forward to it with grim anticipation. I am hoping that the rest of the book isn’t as awful as chapter 8, or I’ll have to be brutal.

Oklahoma’s bible-thumpingest congresscreature has issued a Proclamation of Morality.

WHEREAS, the people of Oklahoma have a strong tradition of reliance upon the Creator of the Universe; and

WHEREAS, we believe our economic woes are consequences of our greater national moral crisis; and

WHEREAS, this nation has become a world leader in promoting abortion, pornography, same sex marriage, sex trafficking, divorce, illegitimate births, child abuse, and many other forms of debauchery; and

WHEREAS, alarmed that the Government of the United States of America is forsaking the rich Christian heritage upon which this nation was built; and

WHEREAS, grieved that the Office of the president of these United States has refused to uphold the long held tradition of past presidents in giving recognition to our National Day of Prayer; and

WHEREAS, deeply disturbed that the Office of the president of these United States disregards the biblical admonitions to live clean and pure lives by proclaiming an entire month to an immoral behavior;

NOW THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that we the undersigned elected officials of the people of Oklahoma, religious leaders and citizens of the State of Oklahoma, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world, solemnly declare that the HOPE of the great State of Oklahoma and of these United States, rests upon the Principles of Religion and Morality as put forth in the HOLY BIBLE

Notice that the only solutions she proposes to her perceived problem of immorality is 1) pray for a day, and 2) read her holy book. Even if you grant that her declared problems are real moral problems (and I do not: I find it incredibly offensive and obtuse that she would lump same sex marriage together with sex trafficking) these are solutions that do not work. If you want to find a hotbed of divorce, illegitimate births, child abuse, alcoholism, etc.…just look for a high density of churches.

There are science crackpots, and then there are journalist crackpots. Suzan Mazur is a strange writer who runs about trying to convince the world that there is going to be a revolution in evolutionary biology…but her sources tend to be fringe figures like Stuart Pivar, or she relies on mangling quotes from people like Massimo Pigliucci or Richard Dawkins. Her theme, as you might guess from her fondness for Pivar, is that structuralist tropes are going to replace genetic/molecular explanations for development.

That is complete nonsense.

Apparently, she reads Pharyngula (hi, Suzan!), where, to her delight, she discovered Vincent Fleury, a fellow crackpot. She scurried off to procure an interview with Fleury, which turns into a weird complaint session about me mixed with boosterism for overhyped flaky science.

Suzan Mazur: PZ Myers, the Howard Stern of sciencebloggers, recently reviewed your paper Clarifying tetrapod embryogenesis, a physicist’s point of view, which was published in The European Physical Journal: Applied Physics. It appears Myers is increasingly doing a pas de deux with the physical approach to evolutionary science, trying to reposition himself now that a paradigm shift is afoot. In essence, so he can maybe say, well I knew it all the time.

Last week he praised D’Arcy Thompson and Brian Goodwin, saying he found Goodwin’s work “thought-provoking”. What is your response to Myers tactics?

Oooh, “the Howard Stern of sciencebloggers”…I’m going to have to renegotiate my contract with Seed so I can get $100 million/year, and once I do, I’ll start live-blogging strippers!

As usual, though, Mazur gets the science all wrong. There will be no paradigm shift. I am confident that there will be a gradual integration of more developmental biology into evolutionary theory, a process that is going on right now, but that this will require no radical re-evaluation of theory — evo-devo is exciting and opens up new areas of productive research, but it doesn’t turn the world upside-down. It’s a specific subset of evolutionary theory, not a replacement. As for structuralism, it has its place, too, and this isn’t some sudden ploy by me — you can find me writing about it in 2003 and 2004, for example. Again, it will not replace the molecular/genetic approach to development, but it can supplement it.

Look at this bit of amateur psychologizing:

Vincent Fleury: Well that’s fine. But I have a problem with this fellow. He uses a very rhetorical technique. He starts off with some smooth positive statement and then progressively trashes the paper. I’m not so sure it’s sincere.

Suzan Mazur: It’s his way of saying I love you. He knows he can’t maintain his present ground, so he’s increasingly introducing the newer evolutionary science, however he can. He projects himself as a bully so he won’t look like a sissy when he has no choice but to go with the flow.

There’s a simpler explanation than some strange conspiracy theory where all of evolutionary biology is trembling on the verge of collapse and I’m trying to dance on the edge of the avalanche. How about this one: Fleury’s paper was very poor. It proposes a mechanism that he does not support with any evidence, and implies that we need to throw out a huge and useful body of knowledge. It was far too long, and larded with superfluous information that he largely ignored in his conclusion. He relied on the fact that he published a paper on biology in a physics journal, where he could bamboozle a body of reviewers with no knowledge of the scientific discipline being discussed.

That’s why I trashed the paper — because it deserved to be trashed.

It’s really that simple.

And no, Fleury’s work does not represent the “flow” of modern biology. It’s more like a small stagnant eddy far from the major currents of research. If I were trying to position myself in the vanguard of science, I guarantee you that I wouldn’t be trying to cozy up to the likes of Fleury or Pivar or Mazur. That’s the crackpot club.

(via Wilkins, who is clearly angling to be my Baba Booey)

Last week, I received an ominous email from Stuart Pivar.

Dear PZ,

The work of my lab has been subject to questions and harsh criticisms, some reasonable, some not. The scientific ones are dealt with in a new book On The Origin Of Form, Evolution by Self-Organization, an alternative to the natural selection paradigm, This is a substantially expanded presentation of the self-organization model previously published.

I welcome your assessment. If you are convinced now of its plausibility, as are many others, I solicit your participation in the dissemination of the idea for further investigation. A copy is on its way. Meanwhile, please see www.ontheoriginofform.com
SP

Uh-oh. Pivar, you may recall, is the fellow who tried to sue me for FIFTEEN MILLION DOLLARS two years ago, all over my review of his book, Lifecode. That tends to damp my enthusiasm for any more books from him.

I did not reply. He sent me an update a few days later, anyway.

Dear PZ,

The new book presents a model of self organization amplified well beyond that shown previously, addressing, among many other issues, the reasons that the idealized models are inconsistent with parts of observed embryology. Many prominent scientists have now accepted the plausibility of the model.

If you plan to comment publicly kindly view this new material. You will probably find the premise plausible
as well.

see www.ontheoriginofform.com

Stuart

Plausible? It must have undergone significant revision, then, since in its earlier incarnation, it was best described as surreal and absurd. Then the book arrives in my mailbox; you can even preorder it on Amazon now, and just look at the encomiums published on the cover!

“Stuart Pivar’s book, On the Origin of Form, contains ideas that deserve full scientific scrutiny, especially in light of the turmoil roiling evolutionary biology at present. Pivar is presenting, in a series of brilliantly rendered graphical diagrams that show his interpretation of how modifications of a torus shape can generate a vast panoply of biotic form, a new theory of morphogenesis…. This is a seismic event for science. Conventional evolutionary biologists are right to be very worried about this, because it has the potential to trigger the complete collapse of Modern Synthesis Biology.”
–Mark A. S. McMenamin, PhD, Paleontologist, Professor of Geology, Chair of Earth and Environment, Mount Holyoke College

“This is the discovery of the connection between the laws of physics and the complexity of life.”
–Murray Gell-Mann, PhD, Distinguished Fellow, Santa Fe Institute, Nobel Laureate

Oh freakin’ boy.

[Read more…]

It’s a pleasant Friday afternoon, so you’ve got nothing better to do than listen to some tedious apologetic drivel, right? Terry Eagleton is interviewed on Canadian radio, and he repeats the same boring noise he droned out in his book. For all the times the atheists are accused of sneering at the stupidity of their opponents, it’s galling that pretentious defenders of the faith like Eagleton get a free pass: his entire interview consists of smug gibes at the smugness of Dawkins and Hitchens, dismissals of their ideas as ignorant and dishonest.

And of course he doesn’t say one clear thing about religion. Well, he does claim that the idea of god as an entity is something that no theologian believes in — that there has been a long and sophisticated debate about something or other, which he can’t define clearly, but that it sure hasn’t been about whether god exists, and he acts as if the question doesn’t even make sense. Probably because he can’t even begin to answer it. When he’s confronted with a question about whether believing in god is like believing in fairies, he simply insists that those are two very different questions, without explaining how. They just are. Therefore, anyone who asks for some reason to believe is simply stupid, afflicted with crude old Enlightenment values (which he uses as a kind of insult).

The telling point, though, comes at the end. The interviewer asks whether Eagleton prays. It’s a simple question; you can answer yes, or no. If I were asked that, I’d be able to say no without a moment’s hesitation, since it’s a simple question about what a person does, requiring no philosophical maundering. Can you guess what Eagleton’s reply might have been?

No answer at all. He laughs, and claims it’s too long and hard to answer. And mumbles on and on, and the interviewer is clearly getting exasperated at his evasiveness. It’s an astonishing performance, the Courtier’s Reply brought to life in a half-hour teleplay in which the courtier is even more vapid and even more serious than I could have imagined.

(via The Accidental Weblog)