Are Scientists really saying nice things about Doug Axe's new Book? Seriously?

One of the common themes the Discovery Institute is constantly rallying against is 'scientific consensus'.  Their group complains pretty loudly about how bad it is when scientists agree, because that is the path to intolerance and censorship . . . well you know the whine.  However, they also do like to publish claims about 'scientists' who agree with them.  Does anyone else find this amusing?  Scientific consensus is a bad thing, unless they are agreeing with us then it something to crow about!  But, as expected, what we are seeing here isn't really consensus among a group of actual scientists, all we have is typical DI spin.

Here's the post, by 'our favorite' little davey 'klingy' klinghoffer: "Axe and Undeniable -- What the Scientists Are Saying".  Before looking at the article, re-read the title.  The words that jumped out at me are 'the Scientists'.  So the question that follows is did a group of actual scientists say positive things about Doug's book on how intuition is more viable than rational thought when it comes to forming scientific conclusions?  Now read the article and you will find that there was no large group of scientists, there wasn't even a small group . . . what you have is several -- which is defined as more than two but not many.

As the Sensuous Curmudgeon pointed out, it's three . . . yes . . . three, which does meet the definition of several, but just barely.  I can see why they wouldn't accurately report it as "Few Scientists say nice things about Doug and his latest religious tract" . . . after all that would be a counterproductive spin.  But klingy implies more than just several by using 'the Scientists!

But here is the kicker, it's not just three . . . it's three who already agree with the DI and their many marketing schemes of the past.

• Michael Behe, who klingy forgot to mention is a Senior Fellow of the DI.  
• Marcos Eberlin, Professor of Chemistry at Brazil’s University of Campinas and the author of 'Life and the Universe by Intelligent Design'.  
• J. Scott Turner, Professor of Biology, State University of New York and someone previously identified as an ID supporter by none other than casey luskin himself.

Three current advocates of the DI and Intelligent Design (ID) support Doug.  That's a huge drop from the implied 'Scientists' to three already true believers, don't you think?  But it does repeat a common DI theme: one of the DI publishes a book and they gather a few of their current supporters and elicit comments they can publicize.  I remember commenting on this before, "That's it? An admission of failure?", where, if you recall, I listed a bunch of editorial reviews for one of Stephen C. Meyer's less laudable books -- although finding one that is actually laudable might be a stretch.  The list of 'reviews' was seriously stacked with DI and ID supporters:

•  Dr. Wolf-Ekkehard Lonnig, senior scientist emeritus (biologist) at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research.  Isn't he on the editorial board of 'Bio-Complexity', the DI in-house pro-ID journal.  He's written often for the DI and even been interviewed by casey luskin!  LOL!
• Dr. Mark McMenamin, paleontologist at Mt. Holyoke College and coauthor of 'The Emergence of Animals'.  And a long term critic of evolutionary theory.
• Dr. Norman C. Nevin OBE, BSc, MD, FRCPath, FFPH, FRCPE, FRCP; Professor Emeritus in Medical Genetics, Queen's University, Belfast.  Currently Nevin is President of the Centre for Intelligent Design in Scotland, sort of a low-rent version of the Discovery Institute.  I wrote about Nevin in "Intelligent Design, Sh** or get off the Pot!"
• Dr. Richard Weikart, Professor of History at California State University, Stanislaus; Author of 'From Darwin to Hitler'.  Did he forget to put on his resume that he's a senior fellow at the DI?
• Dr. Matti Leisola, Professor, Bioprocess Engineering, Aalto University, Finland (emeritus); Editor-in-chief, Bio-Complexity.  Bio-Complexity is the in-house journal of the Biologic Institute, a wholly owned subsidiary of the DI, in other words their pet lab.
• George Gilder, Technologist, economist, and New York Times bestselling author.  Who is, among other things a founding member of the Discovery Institute, a Senior Fellow at the DI, and also cited 129 times in the article database.

As you can see, the deck was stacked. You might also recall that Stephen [C. Meyer] was once claiming this about one of his ID books:

"First, the scientific community is not uniformly opposed to ID. My recent book on the subject received enthusiastic endorsements from many scientists not previously known as advocates of ID, such as chemist Philip Skell, a National Academy of Sciences member, and Norman Nevin, one of Britain's top geneticists."

I responded to this with:

"In my humble opinion Stephen C. Meyer is a liar. According to this quote Meyer states that Philip Skell and Norman Nevin were not previously advocates of Intelligent Design. Let's set the record straight, Skell is a Signatory of the very discredited "A Dissent From Darwinism", the list used in Discovery Institute intelligent design campaigns in an attempt to discredit evolution and bolster claims that intelligent design is scientifically valid by claiming that evolution lacks broad scientific support. Meyer is a liar, Skell may not have published a pro-ID fluff piece, but he is an advocate. Nevin is a supporter of "Truth in Science" a United Kingdom-based organization which promotes the "Teach the Controversy" campaign. It uses this strategy to try to get intelligent design taught alongside evolution in school science lessons. Meyer is once again, in my opinion, lying!"

What I find most amusing is that this time around, klingy could only round-up three?  What are the rest of them doing?  Trying to teach Donald Trump the intricacies of Intelligent Design?  Normally that would take about five minutes, but we are talking about 'the donald'.  The DI should be practiced at this, a while back they taught all of it to Ann Coulter, who then screwed it all up in another bombastic book.

In any event, there you have it.  The DI is really scraping up support for Doug and his effort to replace rational thought with feelings.  But instead of asking real scientists, maybe even objective scientists, they gather 'several' known ID supporters and stack the deck again.  And they wonder why real scientific journals don't take them seriously?

Dan Rather: Ignoring science isn't just a Republican problem. It's an American problem.

I was working on how best to build my own response  to some of the foolishness said by the Republican candidate wanna-bes and caught this from Dan Rather: "Ignoring science isn't just a Republican problem. It's an American problem."  Everyone should read it.  What he does isn't try and solve the issue, or even identify all the root causes -- although he does mention quite a few (loss of faith in authority, suspicion of big corporations, a general political balkanization).  He focuses on one of the reasons the anti-science feelings seem to be so prevalent, the one he knows intimately, as you would expect, journalism and how the press covers science.  He identifies some of the problems:

• Hyping certain "advances" that are more PR than science
• Shying away from covering important stories because they're "too complicated." 
• Don't even do a good job explaining how scientific research works
• Scientific issues don't lend themselves to simple soundbites for TV

He does mention one of my pet peeves, which got my attention [I added the underlines for emphasis]:

"And then there is the danger of false equivalency. Not every issue has two sides, or certainly two equal sides. Yet when you put two people on screen to tell both “sides” of the story, in the viewer's mind it immediately connotes 50:50, even if you say it doesn't. Giving someone equal time to explain their side doesn’t mean there is equal data, research and science behind their view. Often times, the “other side” of the story has very little data to support its very big exceptions to the rules." 

You might recall I have mentioned this a time or two, usually in regards to the Discovery Institute's lack of science and kennie ham's lack of anything.  He also had a link to a John Oliver video, which is a personal favorite.

I wonder if Oliver has done a show about Evolution?  I'm going to have to look!  Hang on a second . . . no, he hasn't addressed Evolution or Creationism, however his take down of Televangelism is a classic.  I would love to see his take on the Discovery Institute!  OK, back to Dan, who says:

"This is not to say that every science policy question has an easy or correct answer. There is a lot to weigh in how we should employ science and what we should fund. But it is not a debate we can afford to shy away from. I think that any politician who doesn't take those questions seriously is not fit to lead our country in the 21st century."

We need to ask our potential leaders more questions about science!  One of the things that has to be important is not only what the candidate says, but where are they getting their information -- from people who are actually doing the work or from folks with a philosophical axe to grind.  Trump failed badly on vaccines, Carson failed on so much!  You just have to love that last line 'I think that any politician who doesn't take those questions seriously is not fit to lead our country in the 21st century.'

I understand they are pandering for votes, but why are they pandering in such a way that makes them seem positively uneducated!  I thought Bobby Jindal and Rick Perry was bad, but Ben Carson and Donald Trump?  It's crossed the pandering line and reached epic stupidity.  Is Donald Trump or Ben Carson fit to lead us in the 21st century?  They certainly haven't shown it yet, have they?  I wonder which candidate kennie or the DI will back?