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

Real scientists don't sue

[pzs]

This may not be true in all cases, but people who actually know what they're talking about don't usually need the law to back up what they say.

The other case of this was "Dr" Gillian McKeith a "nutritionist" who sells a lot of books about how you should eat less chips and more salad. This is all very well, but of course it also includes a bunch of quakery about eating leaves so that their photosynthesis can oxegenate your gut. As the article I link points out, that wouldn't work too well unless you had a torch up your arse.

Naturally, McKeith is mighty litigious at people who point out that she bought her doctorate from the web.

Peter

Professor's mistake?

[aadvancedGIR]

I really don't want to support Stuart Privar, but didn't Professor PZ Meyers made a mistake by accepting to review that book, apparently at the request of Stuart Privar or its publisher, without the security of a contract?

I feel a class action suit coming on...

[Analogy Man]

If a reviewer can be sued for an unfavorable review, can the poor suckers that go to the "Movie of the Year - five stars!" file a class action suit against the lame-o reviewer for their $7.50 + $1M in emotional anguish?

Re:Libel is about incorrect factual statments.

[pimpimpim]

Just check out the link I posted somewhere earlier on in this thread: a similar case in the Netherlands worked out all wrong. The "society against quacks" called someone a quack who wrote a book with very dubious statements about human psychology (even going into nonsenical racial disciminations). This society lost their defence when being sued for libel because the higher court took the definition of a 'quack' as someone who *intentionally* promotes wrong ideas. The court probably assumed the author was just stupid and therefore not knowing about how wrong she was. She wrote the nonsense without intent of writing nonsense, this didn't make her a 'quack' and therefore calling her a 'quack' an incorrect factual statement: libel!

This happened in 2007! A sad 0:1 in the competition of reason versus idiocracy, the defeats keep on coming :(

Lysenkoism, Progress, and other Anti-Darwinianisms

[billstewart]

This guy's theory, as far as I can tell without reading the book, has nothing to do with Creationism - it's that biological development is all about different shapes of Donuts. He's a businessman, so obviously the explanation for his theory is that he's spent too much time in boring meetings, doodling while waiting for a break so he can go get another donut and some more coffee, and perhaps we could speculate about what's in the brownies at afternoon meeting-break time.

There have been other major origin theories competing with Darwin's theories besides Creationism and its relatives, UFO cults, Scientology scames, and pre-Darwin attempts at science. Lysenkoism is one of the best-known - it's important because of the damage it did to Russian science.

But the worst of them tend to come from people who *say* they believe in Evolution but Just Don't Get It. Most of them are either a view of "Evolution" as "Progress", or a view of "Survival of the Fittest" as a moral imperative and an excuse for anything from self-congratulation to racism and sterilizing the UnFit. The "Progress" types are at least friendlier - they're mostly wooly-headed liberals who believe that we're all getting Better and Better, though one technology columnist I like did refer to us evolving into something even cooler. The Social Darwinist types are generally nasty.

And both of these types are teaching in our schools, confusing kids about how evolution works and providing handy strawmen for the Intelligent Design movement. Unlike Creationists, who school boards can generally recognize for what they are, these guys get in without getting caught.

There are milder forms of these errors as well - the "slow, steady gradual evolution" model tends to be popular because it fits our worldviews the way Donuts fit Pivar's, and Gould's punctuated-equilibrium arguments are important counterweights to them. And people tend to mix up Darwinism with things we've learned later, like Mendel's genetics, details embedded in DNA, etc. Darwin's _actual_ work had a lot of big holes in it and occasional wrong assumptions. There's a lot of room for criticizing the Original Darwinism, and because it's a scientific theory, that's just fine. Knee-jerk defenses of Darwinism don't do it any favors - if anything they make it easier for the Creationists.