Slashdot Mirror

Well, there is the case of Richard Sternberg, who holds two Ph.D.'s, one in Molecular Evolution and one in Theoretical Biology. He was formerly the Managing Editor of the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington (published by the Smithsonian Institute). After publishing a politically incorrect, yet fully peer reviewed article, he was ostracized. There were two government investigations that you can read about here and here.

Amazingly, if you google for his name, you will be hard pressed to find out the truth about this incident. You will be hard pressed to find out about the two government investigations, neither of which found him guilty or any wrong doing.

But you will find plenty of libel and slander against him.

So, yes, there are other areas in science which are subject to serious ethics violations, especially areas in which there is significant public controversy.

The word "dare" implies boldness. To "dare" is to face any persecution, including ridicule. Darwin, for example, was a daring man. So, it seems, is a Dr. Richard Sternberg, who tried to do just as you suggested and challenge the scientific community:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Sternberg

"The rumor mill became so infected," James McVay, the principal legal adviser in the Office of Special Counsel, wrote to Sternberg, "that one of your colleagues had to circulate [your résumé] simply to dispel the rumor that you were not a scientist."

Sounds awfully like persecution to me.

For more information on Sternberg, here is a link to his site:

http://www.rsternberg.net/

If you say anything critical of darwinian evolution around on /. - you'll oft be modded a troll, for example linking the fossils that appear to challenge the darwinian evolution timeline
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v18/i4/di nosaurs.asp
http://www.bible.ca/tracks/tracks.htm

Darwinian evolution is supposed to be a well grounded theory on origin, not a philosophy.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/20 05/05/01/evolutionary_war/

The rise of ID or creationism, can be seen as a challenge to the humanist/atheist adoption of darwinian evolution.

Merely giving a voice to ID supporters, can be dangerous to your career in the scientific community.
http://www.rsternberg.net/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/08/18/AR2005081801680.html
http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110006220

There are arguements to be made in favor of teaching ID
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?articl e_id=4761

I take a more dialectic approach, instead of one based on censorship or herd mentality.

"Dembsky's work is not accepted as valid by most scientists. See more on wikipedia if you're curious."

So it passed peer review (your requirement), but isn't seen as valid by people who agree with you (wow I'm surprised). I did in fact meet your challenge whether one or a million scientists agree with this work.

"No, it didn't. But it's always nice to play the martyr persecuted by the establishment."

Actually, if you read the statement, it agrees with my views. (a) it passed peer review. Noone is questioning that. (b) the reason given was simply topical. (c) the reasons for not discussing it further is one of policy of another organization, not because of anything implicit in the paper.

Notice that the statement did not critique the paper in any way, shape or form, but was merely a policy statement saying "we don't do that kind of stuff here". I suggest that you also look at what the editor in charge had to say about the event.

What you're seeing in Kansas is two competing beliefs or faiths, Atheism and Christianity. That's the heart of the matter.

Atheism must be founded on something like evolution is it is to be taken seriously (hence Richard Dawkins' famous comment on the matter). Christianity (and in principle also Judiasm and Islam) must be founded on creation if the core deity is to have any authority. Anything else is temporary and will sooner or later devolve to one alternative or the other.

Atheism is so entrenched in science (in its "Materialism" persona) that postulating any alternative causes swift excommunication for heresy, just ask (for example, there are many others) Richard Sternberg about that one.

To blindly replace Atheistic assumptions with Christian assumptions would be exactly as wrong, but that's not what's being asked for. Nor are they, if you read the wording carefully, asking to teach alternatives to Neodarwinism. They are asking to be able to teach that alternatives exist.

Of course, for the moment at least, the publicity being fanned by the controversy is doing just that anyway.

Hopefully, the end result is that the Materialistic blinkers will be at least loosened so that science can get on with its job of investigating observations - all observations, not just the ones that happen to be politically correct today. Otherwise, just like a blocked-up kettle, the end result will be a destructive overshoot.

Where were the answering articles presnting the powerful case for scientific creationism?

Why were we so unwilling to suggest that dinosaurs lived 6,000 years ago[?]

or that a cataclysmic flood carved the Grand Canyon?

"You can see this happen on a small scale with bacteria becoming resistant to anti-biotics. The changes in the bacteria are very physical. But I suppose this is not macroscopic enough for you."

I know of many ways that bacteria become resistant, and I don't think any of them qualify as evolution.

1) Natural selection -- the resistant bacteria live, the non-resistant ones died. No new information, in fact we're losing information within the population.

2) Plasmids -- antibiotic resistance can be transferred between bacteria through plasmids. These plasmids are already in existence, and no new information takes place.

3) Removal of a pump -- if a mutation of a gene causes a bacteria to _lose_ the ability to pump a large class of material in, some of which happens to be antibiotic, this can hardly be qualified as the kind of evolution required to go from minimal complexity to maximal complexity, because we're going the wrong way. If instead you showed that brand new kinds of cellular pumps were being generated in response, and not as the result of plasmids or any other pre-programmed response, that would be something.

"I don't suppose you believe all the 'historical' accounts of ancient gods and goddesses, atlantis, fantastic creatures like cyclopses, etc etc?"

As I pointed out, the difference is that there is agreement among cultures that the event happened, and for a long time artifacts of the event remained in public viewing.

"in which case you would have to claim that all our dating methods, and huge amounts of other research are false"

There are many reasons to believe that is the case.

"Scientists have looked honestly at evolution. There is no other possibilities."

There are many scientists who disagree. Or do you think Jonathan Wells, Michael Behe, Ariel Roth have done nothing scientific in their entire careers? Why did the Smithsonian's peer-reviewed biology journal include an article on Intelligent Design? If the editor was biased, how did such a prominent scientist come to be biased towards Intelligent Design if all the evidence points away from it? This whole "the argument is closed" idea is nothing more than a power grab.

"Your own link has shown that at least one creationist 'evidence' is full of dishonest reporting."

You don't think that evolutionists are capable of dishonest reporting? This is silly. The fact that there exists one or many dishonest reports from creationists does not invalidate creationism. The same is true of evolutionists.

"As I've said before, creationism does not make any usefull predictions."

The fact that Brutus killed Caesar does not make any useful predictions. The question is if it is true. Creation, by its very definition, is speaking of one or multiple singular events. To say that singular events don't happen because they aren't subject to mathematical reasoning is silly.

"Scientists love any break in current theory because it always gives insights to improved theorems. If they were outraged, it would be because of the quality of research."

Read for yourself Richard Steinberg's account. For fairness, I'll give you Panda's Thumb's Rebuttal.

The statement of the Biological Society of Washington is amusing at best. Instead of criticizing research methods or other scientific grounds, they simply announce that now it is a matter of policy not to publish ideas that are counter to the status quo. They said that it is outside their normal scope (Taxonomy) which Sternberg fairly easily repudiates in his answer.

"Scientists love any break in current theory because it always gives insights to improved theorems. If they were outraged, it would be because of the quality of research."

I love it when people say "scientists can't be wrong because they are scientists. It makes them superhuman with regard to the influences that happen to mere mortals."

The only reason our friend would have trouble addressing those arguments would be if he was undereducated in the sciences himself.

Where, unfortunately, "undereducated" means we think anything which breaches our a priori assumptions about the nature of the universe is dumb.

By that standard, most people, most scientists are "undereducated". For the longest time geology avoided anything that smelled of catastrophism, paleontology avoided anything that smelled of a flood, and astronomy avoided anything that smelled of structure.

For good scientific reasons? Not a bit of it. Because they were afraid of being labelled as one of the enemy, those insidious creationists, and ostracised like J Harlan Bretz was for 40 years.

A very highly qualified scientists have been brave enough to state outright that they are not impartial, like Richard Lewontin and his famous "cannot let a Divine Foot in the door" statement, but they are the exception.

The result in each of the above cases was that the science in question was held back by decades.

Meanwhile, one D Russell Humphreys had made some fairly specific predictions (in 1984) about the magnetic fields Voyager would find in the outer planets, which turned out to be both bang on the money and well wide of any other expectations when those fields were measured two years after publication. One of the more spectacular demonstrations that this "alien" and "impossible" perspective has predictive, scientific merit.

Anyone wondering why more such papers don't appear in the mainstream scientific press need only turn to the furor which exploded when the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington published a carefully peer-reviewed paper from well-known Intelligent Design advocate, Stephen C. Meyer. The then-editor, Dr. Richard M. v. Sternberg (a double PhD with many published articles himself), goes to great lengths on his website to explain that every positive scientific and journalistic step of the process was followed for the paper and had been independently verified and approved by highly qualified scientists before publication.

It is quite clear that the paper is being criticised on political/philosophical grounds, not because of any scientific merit or demerit.

The Origins show is based on philosophy, not on science. This is well and good except that it is presented as being purely based on science.

I need hardly point out that such misrepresentation is in itself unscientific, a meta-flaw under which to group all of the unscientific teleological statements about features "appearing" (ex nihilo, apparently) and organisms having "figured out" and "striving" to achieve "goals" without any guiding hand. Nevertheless, it will go ahead, and millions of viewers will be taught that random numbers have hidden intelligence and/or miracle-working ability which repeatedly transcends mere statistics, and introduced once more to a capricious goddess who goes by the name of Nature - all the while suffering the constantly asserted doublethink mantra that there is no supernature.

Meanwhile, back at Reasons , Hugh has had the more obvious inconsistencies and contradictions among his theories publicly pointed out to him