This day in history

This is Easter, the day Christians everywhere set aside to celebrate the day they were hoaxed by a gang of Middle Eastern charlatans into believing a local mystic rose from the dead. Zeno finds that this year it’s also a day to remember another flop: the cold fusion debacle.

It’s been 19 years since Pons and Fleischmann announced their purported discovery of a mechanism for generating energy from a room-temperature fusion cell. Unlike the resurrection, I was actually there for that one. I was a post-doc at the University of Utah at that time, in the building right next door to where Pons and Fleischmann worked, and I attended the various events associated with the “discovery”.

Even then, there was reason to doubt: I remember being mystified that they’d chosen to announce it via press release rather than a scientific publication (a strategy that you’ll notice the Discovery Institute has expanded upon), and when I attended Pons lecture on the phenomenon, I was bothered by the lack of mechanism and the uncontrollable variability in the experiments — it was basically a laundry list of experiments done, some of which did nothing, some that got a trickle of excess energy output, and others that exploded. It was exciting and interesting, and we all hoped that this was real, but it wasn’t science yet.

And it still isn’t. I guess some people are still puttering away at it, but it’s still an inconsistent phenomenological collection of anecdotes.

If only Pons and Fleischmann had thought to make a religion of it, that wouldn’t be a problem.

Oh, no! My most subtle asset, exposed!

This is terrible. I’ve kept her under the radar for so long, and now this recent incident has blown her cover.

Shocking information has reached us that PZ Meyers trophy wife (paid for by the tax payers of state of Minnesota) was taking names of the movie goers to, and I quote her words, “be put first in line for the gas chambers once we overthrow the Constitution”. That is correct, this state funded mistress was making a list of local Christians for eventual extermination.

All that money invested in her ninja training, wasted.

Still straining to find an excuse

The New York Times has weighed in, and they contacted the producers of Expelled…and what do you know, they’re still scrambling to find a credible story. They haven’t succeeded yet.

Mark Mathis, a producer of the film who attended the screening, said that “of course” he had recognized Dr. Dawkins, but allowed him to attend because “he has handled himself fairly honorably, he is a guest in our country and I had to presume he had flown a long way to see the film.”

Unbelievable. So basically it’s a baseless implication that I would be a troublemaker, and the arrogant and absurd assumption that Dawkins flew to Minneapolis from Oxford to see their preview of the movie.

Lying is just a reflex for them at this point. He also claims that he made Dawkins “shrink” in the Q&A, which is total nonsense. Mathis is a shrill and frightened man when he’s confronted; back in November, I called in to a radio interview he was doing, and he practically broke down in hysterics. He ended the “debate” by yelling into the phone, “Go to his website! Myers is an atheist! He’s an atheist!”, classic ad hominem.

I wouldn’t go so far as to claim Mathis was afraid of me — he was on home ground yesterday with a friendly audience — but it’s clear that he really, really dislikes me. The simple explanation for what happened at the screening is that he spotted me in the line, let his irrational venom get the better of him, and he had me evicted while he retreated back into the theater, and therefore missed spotting Dawkins. Everything else now is transparent spin to hide the fact that they were hypocritical about expelling me, and screwed up big time in allowing a more prominent critic slip by.

As for the implication that I’d be a horrible, disruptive presence, here’s one excerpt from the movie; it’s also on a DVD that they were giving away at a table at the screening*. Look what a horrible, malign ogre I am.

I heard that people in the audience gasped in distress at my comment that I want to see religion reduced to a “side dish” instead of the “main dish”, but seriously — I saw that and thought that gee, I’m awfully conciliatory on screen.

Socratic Gadfly takes on the NY Times article in more detail; I’m getting a little tired of the story myself, after spending much of the afternoon with reporters. I think I’ll spend more time at the American Atheists meeting tomorrow, and look forward to our gathering of pharynguloids tomorrow night.

The story is now also on Salon.

By the way, one of the other things I’m doing here is taping some conversations with Richard Dawkins. Our discussion of our experiences at that movie are now on the web.

*By the way, another interesting thing is on the DVD. They’ve got excerpts from the Inner Life video. Creationists are certainly drawn to stealing that work, aren’t they?

A late night quick one

People are asking me to tell them more about the movie, Expelled. I can’t! I was thrown out!

Let me clarify a few things. This was a private screening with no admission charge, and you had to reserve seats ahead of time; you also had to sign a promise that you wouldn’t record the movie while you were there, and they were checking ID. Everyone in my family reserved seats under our own names, myself included. There was no attempt to “sneak in”, although apparently the producer, Mark Mathis, accused me of doing so in the Q&A afterwards (Mathis, of course, is a contemptible liar). We followed the procedures they set up, every step of the way, and were completely above board in all our dealings.

Mark Mathis was there at the screening, and apparently spotted me and gave instructions to the guard to throw me out. I asked the guard why I was being evicted, and he explained directly that the producer had given him that instruction.

They were well within their rights to exclude anyone. When I was told I would not be allowed in and threatened with arrest, I told the security guard that I would not cause any trouble. I stopped to talk with my family when they came over with a theater manager to evict me; again, I left peacefully. Apparently, the guards were talking about carrying out further measures when they saw me standing outside the theater, and speculated that I was going to harass other attendees. This was not true; I’d just had to leave my friends and family behind, and all I really wanted to do was tell them where I’d be. The last thing I wanted to do was spend two hours hanging around a movie theater.

This account is a complete fabrication. I was not disturbing anyone, was not trying to make a scene, and was only standing quietly in line. When I was taken aside by the guard, it was a complete surprise.

I was the only person evicted. The people I was with, which included my wife, my daughter Skatje, her boyfriend Collin, Richard Dawkins, and the entire staff of the Richard Dawkins Foundation, were overlooked. I was the lucky one.

Afterwards, we went out to eat and have a beer or two, which is why I didn’t give you all a more complete summary right away. We laughed over the movie, which I hear is not only boring and poorly made, but is ludicrous in its dishonesty. Apparently, a standard tactic is to do lots of fast cuts between biologists like me or Dawkins or Eugenie Scott and shots of Nazi atrocities. It’s all very ham-handed. The audience apparently ate it up, though. Figures. Christians have a growing reputation for their appreciation of dishonesty.

There are plans afoot for rebuttals. It’s hard to come up with much motivation to do so after discovering how bad this movie is, but yeah, both NCSE and the RDF will be doing something. Dawkins is going to mention it at least briefly in his talk tomorrow. He may write up a review, too, although I don’t think he considers it a high priority (did I mention what a piece of dreck this movie is?).

Kristine was there. You can read her summary.

The RDF crew are a fine bunch of people and we had a good time after the crappy movie. Which I have not seen. Apparently, I’ve been given a fair amount of time in the movie, too.

This outcome so far has been absolutely perfect, as far as I’m concerned. The hypocrisy of the Expelled makers has been exposed by their expulsion of one of the people they filmed (final lovely irony: I’m also thanked for my contributions in the credits), they’ve revealed their incompetence by throwing me out when Richard Dawkins was right next to me, and I didn’t have to waste two hours on a bad movie.

I’ve also got a story to tell: when the creationists saw me and Dawkins in a lineup, I am the one that had them so frightened that they had to call for the guards. I feel mighty.