Science Blogger Sued for Unfavorable Book Review

tigerhawkvok writes "Recently, new author Stuart Privar provided Professor PZ Meyers of Pharyngula a copy of his book, Lifecode, for review. Over the course of the review itself and a few follow-ups, it became evident that the content was nonsense (including, among other things, ten-legged spiders and other phenomena strongly at odds with developmental biology). However, the common threat of lawsuits finally became a reality, and now Privar is suing Myers for $15 million. Can calling someone a 'classic crackpot' in the face of such incorrect data have any chance at making it to court, or even winning the suit?"

Comments

Re:When Wealthy Christians and Crackpots Attack!

[pimpimpim]

Not just in the US, in Netherlands the society against quacks had to pay a considerable amount to a quack, by court order! And because of the 'loser pays' system, even had to pay for this quacks lawyer costs :( Face it: stupidity has settled itself in all social layers and is international, no way to run or hide from it anymore.

the power of the web...

[apodyopsis]

Seems like word gets around, already the book reviews are flooding in....my word, he has really not done himself any favors here - I sense another internet laughing stock in the making.

from: http://www.amazon.com/LifeCode-Theory-Biological-S elf-Organization/dp/0976406004

I do not own this book. I do not propose to read it. My "rating" is based solely upon the fact that the author has chosen to sue a reviewer for "Injury - Assault, Libel, and Slander", because he didn't like the review. (Unlike the author, the reviewer is a professional biology professor who actually understands this subject.) No reputable scientist would react in this way - indeed the whole point of science is to prove things wrong! (As Richard Feynman wrote, "We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.") So caveat emptor...

A 164 page book for $60?
And from an author without any doctorate in the sciences he purports to write about? With a non-peer-reviewed 'theory'?
Don't waste your money.

The reviewer above wrote everything I intended to, but I just thought I would add my voice here. By sueing a critic of his theories, the author of this book threw away any claim he might have had to any kind of scientific credibility. A scientist might argue with his critics, but the fact that this author has instigated a lawsuit against someone for criticizing his theories suggests to me that even he is aware that said theories have no merits to argue.

Re:When Wealthy Christians and Crackpots Attack!

[Llywelyn]

So someone who belives in god (aka invisible friend) isn't a crackpot, as long as they accept science is the best way to the truth about the universe?

To quote Stephen Jay Gould:

To say it for all my colleagues and for the umpteenth million time (from college bull sessions to learned treatises): science simply cannot (by its legitimate methods) adjudicate the issue of God's possible superintendence of nature. We neither affirm nor deny it; we simply can't comment on it as scientists. If some of our crowd have made untoward statements claiming that Darwinism disproves God, then I will find Mrs. McInerney and have their knuckles rapped for it (as long as she can equally treat those members of our crowd who have argued that Darwinism must be God's method of action). Science can work only with naturalistic explanations; it can neither affirm nor deny other types of actors (like God) in other spheres (the moral realm, for example). Forget philosophy for a moment; the simple empirics of the past hundred years should suffice. Darwin himself was agnostic (having lost his religious beliefs upon the tragic death of his favorite daughter), but the great American botanist Asa Gray, who favored natural selection and wrote a book entitled Darwiniana, was a devout Christian. Move forward 50 years: Charles D. Walcott, discoverer of the Burgess Shale fossils, was a convinced Darwinian and an equally firm Christian, who believed that God had ordained natural selection to construct a history of life according to His plans and purposes. Move on another 50 years to the two greatest evolutionists of our generation: G. G. Simpson was a humanist agnostic. Theodosius Dobzhansky a believing Russian Orthodox. Either half my colleagues are enormously stupid, or else the science of Darwinism is fully compatible with conventional religious beliefs--and equally compatible with atheism, thus proving that the two great realms of nature's factuality and the source of human morality do not strongly overlap.

Re:When Wealthy Christians and Crackpots Attack!

[spun]

Thankfully, he has to prove that this review is knowingly false, written with intent to harm, and actually caused harm to prove libel. It will never happen. I read the review and NOWHERE does PZ Myers make ANY malicious claims about the author of Lifecode. He writes factual statements about the book only. He never called the author a crackpot. Even if he had, crackpot has an accepted definition that actually applies to this author.

He is, in fact, a crackpot. Saying so is not false. From wikipedia:

Pejoratively, the term Crackpot is used against a person, subjectively also called a crank, who writes or speaks in an authoritative fashion about a particular subject, often in science or mathematics, but is alleged to have false or even ludicrous beliefs If it can be shown that his beliefs are false, which is completely trivial to do, then the label of 'crackpot' applies and is not libel.