Have a querulous Paul Nelson Day!

The new generation of creationists has been doing something rather remarkable. Flaming anti-scientific religious nutcases like Wells and Dembski have been diligently going to real universities, not the usual hokey bible colleges, and working hard to get legitimate degrees in actual fields of science and math to get themselves a superficial veneer of credibility. It’s basically nothing but collecting paper credentials, though, since they don’t actually learn anything and never do anything with the knowledge they should have acquired, other than use it to razzle-dazzle the rubes.

One other example is Paul Nelson, and today is the anniversary of an infamous interaction. You see, Nelson likes to flaunt the pretense of being knowledgeable about developmental biology. Several years ago, he invented this mysterious metric called “ontogenetic depth” that he claimed to be measuring, and which he claimed to have used as evidence that the Cambrian fauna did not evolve. He even dragged this nonsense to professional meetings where he was ignored, except by vicious anti-creationists. I harshly criticized the entire vacuous notion. (I also expressed sympathy for the poor graduate student Nelson had lured into this waste of effort…it was Marcus Ross, remember him?)

He said he’d write up a technical summary that would explain exactly what ontogenetic depth was and how it was measured. He gave us a whole series of dates by which he’d have this wonderful summary. Every one of those dates sailed by without a word. And ever since we have commemorated Paul Nelson Day on 7 April, one of the dates in 2004 that he promised us an explanation. Here’s my anniversary timeline from last year.

I was just reminded that last year at this time I announced an anniversary. In March of 2004, I critiqued this mysterious abstraction called “ontogenetic depth” that Paul Nelson, the ID creationist, proposed as a measure of developmental and evolutionary complexity, and that he was using as a pseudoscientific rationale against evolution. Unfortunately, he never explained how “ontogenetic depth” was calculated or how it was measured (perhaps he was inspired by Dembski’s “specified complexity”, another magic number that can be farted out by creationists but cannot be calculated). Nelson responded to my criticisms with a promise.

On 29 March 2004, he promised to post an explanation “tomorrow”.

On 7 April 2004, he told us “tomorrow”.

On 26 April 2004, he told us he was too busy.

On 13 January 2005, he told us to read a paper by R Azevedo instead. I rather doubt that Ricardo supports Intelligent Design creationism, or thinks his work contributes to it.

Ever since, silence.

This year he is apparently off in Brazil, proselytizing his lies and fake science to the people there, so I’m assuming he won’t get around to explaining his magic metric tomorrow, either. Isn’t it amazing how creationists can make stuff up and get a career speaking at exotic places all around the world?

Oh, and get a day named after them! In his honor, we should all make it a point to ask people “How do you know that?” today, and the ones who actually can explain themselves competently will be complimented by being told that they’re no Paul Nelson.

We’ll celebrate it again next year, I’m sure.

Happy Monkey, Paul Nelson! It’s been six years now

It’s Paul Nelson Day, the yearly event in which we make ludicrous pseudo-scientific claims and promise to back them up tomorrow, as celebrated last year.

Nelson, some of you may recall, is a creationist who made up this wacky claim of “Ontogenetic Depth”, saying he had a way of objectively measuring the complexity of the developmental process in organisms with a number that described the distance from egg to adult. Unfortunately, he forgot to tell us how one calculated this number, or how it actually accounted for the complexity of a network, or even how we’d get a number that was different for a sponge and a cat. But he did say he’d get back to us with the details tomorrow…six years ago.

We’ll keep waiting. We’ll also keep making accurate predictions. Last year I predicted that we’d still be waiting in 2010, and look! We are!

I’ve put on a turban, closed my eyes, and am waving my hands over a crystal ball, and predict…we’ll still be waiting in 2011. Check back next year and let’s see if I’m right!

It’s been five years, Paul Nelson!

Once upon a time, a creationist invented a brand new pseudo-scientific term, which he even presented at a scientific conference. It was a very, very silly idea called “ontogenetic depth”. I criticized the idea publicly and viciously, pointing out that the concept had no explanation, no methodology, and had produced no results, which prompted the creationist, Paul Nelson, to promise to present us all with a detailed explanation “tomorrow”.

We’ve been waiting for a little while for tomorrow to get here. Paul Nelson promised us an answer tomorrow 5 years ago.

Ever since, we celebrate Paul Nelson day every year on 7 April. Richard Hoppe jumped the gun and announced it last week, which is OK — Nelson did drag out the promises for quite a while, and the 7th was a somewhat arbitrary choice. Last year, I suggested a simple and appropriate way to commemorate the event.

In his honor, we should all make it a point to ask people “How do you know that?” today, and the ones who actually can explain themselves competently will be complimented by being told that they’re no Paul Nelson.

It’s kind of like the folk tradition of chasing away demons on certain days of the year, only what we do is terrify creationists by roaming about demanding that they fork over evidence, at which time they scurry away and hide. Have fun!

By the way, I said something else last year.

We’ll celebrate it again next year, I’m sure.

I’m a prophet. We’ll have another chance next year, too.

Judgment Day liveblogging

The new PBS documentary on the Dover trial, Judgment Day (optimistically reviewed by NCSE! The Discovery Institute in frantic denial!) starts here in the midwest in about a half hour. I’ve got my diet coke, I think I’ll pop some popcorn, and maybe I’ll take a stab at liveblogging the show. Let’s hope it’s lively!

Feel free to chime in with comments as we go.

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Paul Nelson in Norway

A reader sent along a few notes on Paul Nelson’s grand tour of Norway—I’ve got to say that his strategy and his talk sounds awfully familiar, right down to the vacuous thought-experiments and god-praising screen-saver that conveniently kicked in during the Q&A. Most significantly, the Norwegian audience of scientists had little patience for his nonsensical arguments, just like our audience of students.

I really wonder how Nelson gets these travel invitations. Did the Scandinavian creationist groups pay his expenses, or is the Discovery Institute funding his missionary work? I think I need some atheist organization sugar daddy to front my junkets to Trondheim and other exotic locales in my ancestral homeland—I’d willingly go into a Norwegian church to lecture on godless evilution and get hammered on by the fundies if it meant I got to visit some interesting people and places.

The summary of his talk (in English, you’ll be relieved to know) is below the fold.

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In which I (partially) agree with Paul Nelson

It feels good to see the IDist crackpots beaten back a little bit in their bid to control the Kansas school board, and I think it is necessary to keep up the pressure and prevent them from getting a better grip on public school education. However, Paul Nelson actually has a point with his little parable. It’s not the point he thinks he’s making, but it’s important to keep in mind anyway, and I’m going to dash some cold water on any sense of triumphalism on the pro-science side.

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It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy

No, really, I’m not being sarcastic. Paul Nelson is a nice guy. But he’s afflicted by an obdurate wrongness and he’s convinced that he’s got the intellectual chops to show he’s right…and he really doesn’t. He’s a young earth creationist and an intelligent design creationist, and he wrote to challenge Jerry Coyne, with much hubris. He said, in part:

Readers who already know about the thinking of workers such as Eric Davidson, Michael Lynch, Andreas Wagner, John Gerhart & Marc Kirschner, or Scott Gilbert (all of whom, among many others, have recently expressed frank doubts about selection) must discount what you say about the centrality of natural selection to evolutionary theory — because they know that just isn’t so.

I know the work of all those people — I could tell you that they don’t discount the importance of natural selection, but they do also consider other mechanisms important. Coyne knows them better — Lynch was even at the University of Chicago that day giving a lecture — and he wrote to them all and asked them personally if they agreed with Nelson’s summary of their position. The results were hilarious: all of them said no way.

Nelson made the big mistake of dragging in living scientists and claiming that they all supported his claim that evolution was on the ropes. Didn’t he get the memo? It’s best to cite long dead prominent scientists, especially ones who died before the middle years of the 19th century.

But then it gets sad. Read into the comments, and you’ll find Nelson commenting, trying to reassert that really, all those people are mistaken, and he knows better than they do, that they really expose a weakness of evolution — that because they understand that many features have a non-adaptive origin (hey, didn’t I just make that argument?), that they are therefore questioning the importance of natural selection. He’s relying on quote mining to make arguments from authority. It’s pathetic. It’s dismal. It’s self-destructive. It’s disgraceful. It’s a typical creationist move.

Stop digging, Nelson, stop digging!

P.S. Oh, no! I forgot to celebrate the 8th Paul Nelson day last April! (Note that I even predicted that I might forget.) Remind me in a few months.

Creationists are liars, part MCLXVII

Sometimes I get requests for assistance with creationists. Usually, it’s because some unwarrantedly confident ignoramus has been lying his butt off. Here’s a perfect example:

I have a quick question concerning an encounter I had with a man last night who claimed he was a scientist (although, foolishly, I didn’t ask him what field).

He made the claim that the majority of biologist do not “believe” in evolution. (He also pulled out the standard canards of “no macro biology” and “evolution requires faith”; I’m not wasting my time or your with this.) He claimed he has a “list” of all the biologist who “disbelieve” in evolution. and the many books he has read show this to be true.

I know this false. I told him so, but really didn’t want to get into this. He claimed the media made it seem as if biologists accepted evolution.

I cannot for the life me understand exactly where he is coming from. Do you know anything about some “list” circulating apologists of biologist who supposedly don’t accept the theory of evolution. I know a few do, but isn’t the scientific consensus something on the lines of 95%?

I’m curious if you’ve heard similar claims before and what you make of them. Next time I see this made I would like to be able to simply, flatly explain to him that he is wrong. (When a “scientist” tells me that evolution is random chance, my BS meter goes off like you wouldn’t believe. But since I’m not a scientist, he can try to claim some sort of argument from authority over me, and I don’t want to be hypocrite and claim my own argument from authority.)

Of course I’ve heard of this list: it’s the infamous Discovery Institute list of “scientists who dissent from Darwinism”, parodied by the Project Steve list, and which contains a few hundred names, many of whom are not scientists — the list leans towards dentists and engineers and such. It is a tiny number of people…if the majority of scientists rejected evolution, it would be rather easy to get tremendous numbers of names signed on, don’t you think?

Even easier, though, pick a biology department, any department anywhere. Go in and ask the faculty what they think of evolution. You’ll discover impressive unanimity — virtually 100% of every department will tell you that evolution is true and useful. You will find an occasional exception, though: the Lehigh University biology department comes to mind, and even there, they post a disclaimer stating that Michael Behe is the sole dissenter who rejects their unequivocal support of evolutionary theory.

My correspondent’s mysterious “scientist” was that extremely common phenomenon among creationists, the guy who has no evidence and relies on blustering falsehoods, a complete fraud.

Speaking of creationist liars…how about Casey Luskin? The primary reason so many biologists accept evolution is that it simply works: it’s a useful theoretical tool that guides research successfully, and helps scientists get work done and published. If the ID crowd actually had a model that helped us understand the world better, we’d be flocking to it. In an email debate, a fellow named Rhiggs engaged Luskin on just this topic, asking for sources to positive evidence and experiments backing design. Luskin tosses out the usual creationist handwaving, and attempts to hijack the work of legitimate, non-creationist scientists as supporting ID…but completely fails to produce any of that primary research literature that Rhiggs is asking for.

There are quite lengthy exchanges going on there, with Luskin always evading the main point (I could have said this was a futile effort: Luskin is no scientist, and his ignorance is legendary). Finally, though, he gives an excuse:

I assure you that I don’t ignore arguments. You don’t know me and I am not that kind of person. In fact, I’ve been traveling a lot for work lately, but in the last week over the course of 2 long plane flights I’ve managed to find time to work on replying to you. I’m nearly done with the reply and I hope to finish it on another flight I have later this week. FYI, my reply is already over 5000 words, and it begins by saying, “Greetings after an undesired delay on my part. I appreciate the time you took in your extensive reply. Because you put in so much time, you deserve a reply. I apologize that it took a while to reply–I’ve been busy a lot over the past couple weeks, including much traveling, and in fact I’m finally getting some free time now that I’m on a flight.” Thanks again–I hope you will hear from me soon.

“Soon” is 13 months ago. Maybe I’ll have to post reminders to him on Paul Nelson Day — this is becoming expected behavior from that gang of propagandists.

Intelligent Design 3.0?

What? I’ve been so neglectful of the ID gang that I completely missed an announcement five years ago that they were establishing something called Intelligent Design 3.0. Seriously, you can’t rely on me for news about the Discovery Institute because I fucking don’t care anymore. They shot their wad 20 years ago, and right now they’re a limp, exhausted pseudo-movement that thinks raising a number on their label makes them innovative.

Here’s what they announced in 2019.

After the Discovery Institute staff Christmas lunch last week, Stephen Meyer sat down with me for a quick video discussion of an extensive research project that, until now, has been deliberately kept from public. It’s Intelligent Design 3.0, an effort not to make the scientific case for ID directly but, instead, to use design insights to open up avenues for new scientific discoveries. It is being supported by the Center for Science & Culture, thanks to the generosity of our donors:

That’s it. That’s all they had then. They declare that they are making an effort not to make the scientific case for ID directly, so that’s the non-news…but the really important news is that they have generous donors. So it was a gimmick to raise money.

In 2024, they are now claiming major advances. The first is that they made their annotated bibliography longer.

It’s a talking point for evolutionists that in the past two decades, intelligent design has stalled. Hardly! On the contrary, I’m delighted today to share with you two very impressive measures of how much ID has advanced in that time. One is the latest update of our “Bibliography of Peer-Reviewed and Peer-Edited Scientific Publications Supporting the Theory of Intelligent Design.” Go to the link to download the full bibliography, with annotations, which is the length of a book — 186 pages in total. That’s not bad for such a young field.

It’s pretty bad when you take into account that a lot of the articles are from their in-house fake journal, BIO-Complexity. I also notice that they still have a huge number of articles by the prolific David L. Abel, head of the Department of ProtoBioCybernetics and ProtoBioSemiotics, Origin of Life Science Foundation, Inc.. It’s easy to pad a bibliography if you have no standards and no quality control.

Their second major accomplishment is…they’ve created an Intelligent Design 3.0 website! If you’re wondering what’s on it, they’re bragging about publishing more garbage papers. They don’t have any real revelations, but just list a lot of legitimate fields that they claim to have contributed to.

The third and current phase of ID research extends ID 2.0 to new systems and fields, showing the heuristic value of intelligent design to guide scientific research. This research includes not only testing the origin of new systems, but also using ID to answer questions and make novel contributions in burgeoning fields, such as epigenetics, synthetic biology, systems biology, genomics (e.g., investigating function for junk DNA), systematics and phylogenetics, information theory, population genetics, biological fine-tuning, molecular machines, ontogenetic information, paleontology, quantum cosmology, cosmic fine-tuning, astrobiology, local fine-tuning, and many others.

I looked deeper to see what they claim to have innovated in one topic, junk DNA, and this is it: one paragraph, plus two citations to papers by Richard Sternberg and James Shapiro, published in 2002 and 2005.

Evolutionary scientists have long-claimed that the vast majority of our DNA which does not code for proteins is useless genetic “junk.” Intelligent design theorists, on the other hand, have long-predicted that much of this non-protein-coding DNA likely has important biological functions. This prediction flows naturally out of the fact that intelligent agents typically design things with function and for a purpose. Because of this ID prediction, quite a few ID proponents have been involved in research investigating function for non-protein-coding DNA—what was previously considered “junk.” Many of these scientists are part of our Junk DNA Workgroup, a collaboration of scientists who are seeking function for “junk DNA.” Many of these researchers are in sensitive positions so we do not list their names or publications.

They’re doing this research, but they can’t tell you who’s doing it! Yeah, I am filled with confidence.

I can at least praise their synergy: one goal is to pad their bibliography, and their second goal is to name a bunch of fields and buzzwords that they can use to pad their bibliography. Empty filler for the win!

They do have a long list of contributors to ID3.0, but it’s almost entirely the same old tired faces that have long been associated with the Discovery Institute. There’s a lot of rehashing of the same moribund nonsense.

I was amused to see Paul Nelson’s name listed again. One of his projects is “waiting time” and I will concede that he’s an expert on making people wait, but he’s not doing any research at all.

Follow-up on ID at conferences

The other day, I posted about the Discovery Institute’s end of year wrap-up. One of the things that bugged me about it was that while Brian Miller said, In 2022, I participated in several conferences and private events in which I interacted with prominent scientists, he failed to mention any of these conferences or the names of these prominent scientists. That’s a striking omission! Waving vaguely in the direction of unspecified conferences and scientists is the opposite of persuasive. So I browsed through the archives of the Disco Institute to see if he mentioned any of them at the time they occurred.

This is not definitive at all — these are just the conferences he mentioned on Evolution News & Views. Maybe he was jet-setting around the world attending an international conference every week, but then it’s peculiar, given the braggadacio of his year end post, that he never brought them up before. Here is just the 2022 conferences he mentioned. There weren’t many of them.

  • In November, he attended a Catholic conference on creation.

    I’m back now from a conference this past week at Notre Dame, titled “‘And It Was Very Good’: On Creation,” hosted by the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. The Center described the conference as follows:
    In the created world, Pope Francis writes, we are able to perceive “a grammar written by the hand of God” (Lumen Fidei). If creation is a language, what can we discern regarding the creator? The de Nicola Center’s 22nd annual Fall Conference will explore the many facets of the created world and the act of creation, including questions of cosmology, teleology, natural ends, natural law, the Imago Dei, creaturely status, ecology, stewardship, cocreation, recreation, redemption, and more.
    The organizers accepted my abstract for a talk titled “The Return of Teleology to the Natural Sciences.” I presented the talk as part of a panel with two other scholars, and it seemed well received.

  • In September, he mentioned a conference, but it’s not clear that he attended.

    As an engineering professor at Bristol University and Cambridge, Stuart Burgess has researched biomechanics for nearly thirty years. He is one of the leading engineers in the UK. Earlier this year, he presented a talk at the Westminster Conference on Science and Faith titled, “Why Human Skeletal Joints Are Masterpieces of Human Engineering: And a Rebuttal to the ‘Bad Design’ Arguments.”

  • In May, he was at a conference on science and faith.

    At the recent Dallas Conference on Science and Faith, Discovery Institute physicist Brian Miller gave a great talk on the convergence of biology and engineering. It’s up now on YouTube and eminently worthy of being shared. Miller’s theme is that “you see the same engineering principles in human engineering as you see in life.”

    (Yes, he wrote the article, and is referring to himself and the great talk in the third person. Weird.)

  • I don’t know that this one should count, but in March he was promoting a Disco Institute summer seminar. He doesn’t say, but I assume he participated in this yearly event in 2021? Maybe?

    In 2016, I attended the Center for Science & Culture’s annual Summer Seminars on Intelligent Design, and that fateful week pulled me into the epicenter of the design debate. For years, I had studied and lectured on the evidence for design in nature.

I’m being generous in noting the conferences he talked about, but note: none of these are professional conferences, and they all have a religious agenda. It’s not that religious people can’t be excellent scientists, but these are not events that would attract a diverse group of scientists — all the attendees would have had a certain bent towards favoring creationist explanations to varying degrees. It makes his implication that he was reasonably representing the views of many prominent people in the sciences a bit suspect. Talk to creationists, you tend to find they like creationism…news at 11.

He may have also attended real, secular, professional conferences as well that he didn’t tout, but I have reservations about that, too. He has a Ph.D. in physics. Not to demean physicists, but few of them have the kind of knowledge of biology to be able to appropriately assess the evidence for evolution, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that some brilliant minds in physics are part of the crackpot fringe in biology.

I suspect that a creationist who wanted to present his theorizing on gods and design at a physics conference would get the same response Paul Nelson got at a biology conference — uninterested neglect. Lonely indifference.He sure wouldn’t have cause to brag about his reception.