Making Mountains out of Molehills, Discovery Institute Style

You are probably familiar with the idea of making mountains out of molehills.  If not, it's simply taking something relatively minor and turning it into something much larger.  You see it quite often when raising teenagers -- where every little thing is the end of the world!

I don't know if you are familiar with this story, but bear with me, there is a modern aspect to this story.  Way back in 1631 a printer was making reprints of the King James Bible.  Now if you are even slightly familiar with the technology of the day, the printing press.  It used something called 'movable type' to create the templates use for printing.  

What this means is that each line in the Bible had to be typeset into constructs like the above image.  Consider the intricacy and level of effort required.  Well, in 1631, the printer messed up and left out a word.  The word was 'not' and the place it was left out was on one of the Commandments, specifically the one that said thou shalt not commit adultery.  Yes, the Bible printed actually said "Thou shalt commit adultery".  About a year later, the publishers of this 'Wicked Bible' were called to the Star Chamber and fined £300 (£44,614 or $63,377, as of 2016) and deprived of their printing license.  Basically they missed one word and it cost them their livelihood.

Don't mistakes happen sometimes?  Charles I and the Archbishop of Canterbury was apparently pretty angry about it.  But as I said, mistakes happen.  Did they over react?  I don't know, but I do know that half of the issue in learning from your mistakes is how you and the people affected handle errors.

Today when books contain errors we have it much easier.  If the details are important to us, we can create and distribute an errata sheet.  In fact here is the errata sheet to something not particularly important to me, but I know it was important to the Discovery Institute.  It's the errata sheet for Stephen Meyers' Darwin's Doubt:

Yes, even the DI makes mistakes.  In fact Meyers' book was so loaded with them, they even published a sequel book called 'Debating Darwin's Doubt' supposedly to address the many errors pointed out in the original book.  There was quite a lot of criticism of the first book, as there should be when errors happen.  However rather than learn from them, the DI simply repeated many of them in the second book, especially the lack of involvement of anyone with a paleontology background to address a book primarily about . . . paleontology..

Currently we have another error to talk about.  It certainly falls under the heading of 'mistakes happen'.  You might have heard something about it.  Yes, there has been a lot of press about it.    Nature is reporting that an online science journal, PLOS ONE messed up.  Yes, they messed up, and they even admit it.  PLOS ONE is an online journal that is:

"PLOS ONE gives researchers a faster path to publishing in a high-quality peer-reviewed journal. All work that reaches rigorous technical and ethical standards is published and freely and immediately available to everyone."

Apparently, in a paper "Biomechanical Characteristics of Hand Coordination in Grasping Activities of Daily Living" by "Cai-Hua Xiong of Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China, and co-authors", contained:

"Hand coordination should indicate the mystery of the Creator’s invention"

When contacted Cai-Hua Xiong stated:

When contacted by Nature, Xiong said that he was discussing the issues raised with his co-authors and would respond as soon as possible. He added, “Indeed, we are not native speakers of English, and entirely lost the connotations of some words such as ‘Creator’. I am so sorry for that.”

So what this looks like is a translation problem.  The that, in all honesty, should have been caught before the paper was published by PLOS ONE.  But it wasn't.  It will certainly make people look askew at PLOS ONE for a while.  PLOS ONE has decided to retract the paper and review the policies that let it slip through the cracks, as should happen when such errors occur.  So far all other comments about the paper have been very positive and nothing identified supports Creationism in any way . . . except for the mis-translation. 

That's the molehill!  And now for the mountain!

Do you think it would be possible for the Discovery Institute not to say something about this?  Of course not!  They are trying to get plenty of mileage about this, claiming censorship, among other things.  Here are a few:

Mob with Pitchforks Forms as Science Journal PLOS ONE Acknowledges "Proper Design by the Creator"

The paper did not acknowledge 'proper design', it was a translation error.  But of course they can never agree to that.  The fact this paper was in an actual scientific journal is something they will be feasting on for a while.  

Censorship in Real Time -- PLOS ONE Retracts "Proper Design by the Creator" Paper

Does davey 'klingy' klinghoffer even own a dictionary?  Is their errata sheet for Darwin's Doubt censorship?  Since when is correcting a translation error censorship?  It's not, but remember . . . molehills aren't something to write much about . . . so hence the creation of this artificial mountain.  You can read klingy's posts if you want.  You won't actually learn anything other than the lengths the DI will go to inflate minor things into imaginary issues.  How many posts did they have about the United Methodist Church?  Way more than it deserved.  I wonder how many they will stop at before finding a new mountain to work on.  

Using the Discovery Institutes 'peer-review' process, This Blog is the 'Best Blog of 2015!' Really!

What I am talking about is this from the DI's Evolution 'News' and Views (E'N'V) site: "Happy New Year! Here Is #1 of Our Top Stories of 2015: A Scientific Debate that Can No Longer Be Denied".  The Discovery Institute has been re-hashing 2015 and re-running their top stories.  Before getting into the article itself, I have to share this with you.  Check out the note starting their top ten list (I added the underlining):

"Editor's note: Welcome to the traditional recounting of our Top 10 evolution-related stories of the past year, as compiled in a rigorous, peer-reviewed, strictly scientific manner by Evolution News staff. Presenting the most amusing, the most enlightening, and the most important news to come our way in 2015, the countdown culminates today. Happy New Year from your friends in the intelligent design community!"

Now what this shows me is that the Discovery Institute really has absolutely no idea what peer-review means.  Let's break this down a little bit.  The staff of E'N'V (yes, I put quotes around the 'N' in News because they rarely offer news, it's mostly Views), but it was the staff of the site who reviewed their own postings and self-determined the top story.  I have something that would be 'News' to them, but not to anyone who understands even a minimum of scientific methodology . . . That Is Not Peer-Review, not by a long-shot.  We've discuss their problem with comprehending peer-review just recently ("Is it Peer-Reviewed?").  Nice to have such clear-cut proof!

Seriously.  That's would be like me electing my small corner of the web as the 'Best Blog of 2015'!  Apparently, by their peer-review process, I can certainly do that!  I think I am averaging about 10,000 hits a year, pretty small potatoes.  Pharyngula, Pandas Thumb, The Sensuous Curmudgeon, and Exploring Our Matrix probably hit that in a day.  But by the DI's process, I can make this self-determination!  Since I am the only contributor to my blog, I can  . . . let me get the words straight . . .in a rigorous, peer-reviewed, strictly scientific manner by  . . . me . . .  I declare my blog the winner!  I plan on attending the obligatory award presentation with my tongue firmly embedded in my cheek!

As for the article itself, up to now I have been reading, and laughing, at the list but haven't felt the need to respond.  I was waiting for number 1, and here is it, the Re-boot of 'Darwin's Doubt'.  That's their top story for 2015!  So let me get this straight.  They released a book, 'Darwin's Doubt' that was so bad they had to follow it up with 'Debating Darwin's Doubt', an admission that the first book was so far off target they needed another 350 pages (half the size of the original) to address their critics . . . and yet still failed to address the actual criticisms of the original. I've posted about this before as well, "That's it? An admission of failure?", from this past July. 

I can't resist reminding anyone that the majority of the criticisms of the original book involved a severe lack of understanding of basic Paleontology.  Yet, for some strange reason, they didn't manage to find a 'Creation' Paleontologist to help them out.  You know, now that I think of it, I am sure kennie ham has one and he might have been willing to rent them out.  But unless they are planned on a third book to correct the problems with the one they wrote to correct the problems with the first book, I can't see them going to Answers in Genesis with their hat in their hand.

In short . . . we don't know!

Larry Moran, over on Sandwalk, asked several times for the Discovery Institute to explain Intelligent Design, preferably in such a way that makes any sense.  Rarely do they stir to make much of an effort, however recently Ann Gauger, you know the one with the make-believe lab over at the DI's pet Biologics Institute, made several long drawn-out attempts address Larry's question.

Basically Larry, to me, was asking for any pertinent details on how Intelligent Design happened or how it works.  I think he was after some explanation that would make sense all the recent posts trying to tie the use of intelligence as examples of Intelligent Design.  You know my position on that, in a nutshell the use of human intelligence IS NOT an example of Intelligent Design 'Theory' in action because there is no Intelligent Design Theory.  (Intelligent Design vs intelligent design) I think Larry is trying to get them to lay down something more like a real science theory. Did Ann Gauger succeed?  You tell me.

In the first she tries to make fun of Larry for even asking the question, "From Biochemist Larry Moran, More Gratuitous Misrepresentations".  She even implies that Larry didn't even read the book:

"If he's read the book, he should know by now what intelligent design theorists like Stephen Meyer really think."

I an pretty sure Larry read 'Darwin's Doubt', if he hadn't, it would have been quite hard for him to critique it so devastatingly.  I mean do these posts read like someone who failed to read the book?

• Darwin's Doubt: A Synopsis
• Darwin's Doubt: The Genes Tell the Story?
• The Cambrian Conundrum: Stephen Meyer Says (Lack of) Fossils Trumps Genes
• Stephen Meyer Says Molecular Evidence Must Be Wrong Because Scientists Disagree About the Exact Dates
• Stephen Meyer Says Molecular Data Must Be Wrong Because Different Genes Evolve at Different Rates
• Stephen Meyer Says That Constant Mutation Rates Are a "Questionable Assumption"
• Stephen Meyer Says that "Homology" Is a Problem in Molecular Evolution

Apparently Ann wasn't happy and had to follow-up with a post in which she tries to . . . well in a nutshell, and I am sure if she read this she would put it down to a mis-characterization, but she pretty well states that not only is there not a 'mechanism', but anyone who looks for one isn't going to find it.  Here is her post: "What's the Mechanism of Intelligent Design?"  And here a quote in which she summarizes things:

"We can't really say how our own minds work to interact with the world, yet we know they do. It is our universal, repeated, personal experience that shows us that our consciousness interacts with our bodies to produce information, but exactly how it works is not known. So why should we expect to know how the agent(s) responsible for the design of life or the universe may have worked? "

I disagree, I think we know a great deal about how our minds work, much more than 150 years ago.  But admitting that would be counter-productive to the marketing done by Ann and her pals.  Since they [the DI] claim we don't know, they can use that claim to justify as to why they cannot determine how a deity's mind works.  Oh, I'm sorry . . . agent . . . not deity :-)   It is true we do not know 100% of how the human mind works, but what Ann seems to be doing is just restated the 'God of the Gaps' argument.

In the third response she quotes Stephen C. Meyer from 'Darwin's Doubt', "More on the "Mechanism" of Intelligent Design"   I find this more ironic than anything else, here is my thinking why:

1. Larry Moran wrote a number of devastating critiques on Darwin's Doubt (as noted above).
2. The DI wrote a follow-up to 'Darwin's Doubt' called 'Debating Darwin's Doubt', which they claimed addressed the criticisms of the original 'book'.
3. "Debating Darwin's Doubt' failed to address the criticisms put forth by Larry.
4. Ann uses a long quote from Darwin's Doubt to address Larry's question.

Don't you find that ironic?  Maybe a bit of a circular argument?  If Ann is going to use Meyer to address Larry's question, wouldn't it be better to first address his critiques?  Well that would make logical sense to me . . . but apparently that's just me.


If Intelligent Design wishes to be taken seriously as science and as a scientific theory it has to offer more than conjecture and wishful thinking.  To date it has failed and Ann's rather verbose responses boil down to 'We Don't Know!'  Even more so, I think she pretty clearly states that the DI is never going to propose anything stronger than what they already have.  Oh I think they will continue to dress it up in different lab coats, but each effort will fail as dramatically as Darwin's Doubt -- or if you wish something more optimistic, I think each effort will be equally as successful as DD.  They have to keep up the effort or they might become as irrelevant a religious marketing group as they are a scientific organization.

Whose to say what we can or cannot do 100 years from today?

I was watching 60 Minutes following the Denver Broncos first loss of this season.  The article on the Large Hadron Collider was very interesting and at the very end of the article one of the scientists being interviewed said:

"Whose to say what we can or cannot do 100 years from today?"

His example before his concluding comment was, and I am paraphrasing because I am working from memory,

"Do you think someone 100 years ago would say about reaching into your pocket, pulling out a device, press a few keys and be talking to someone halfway around the world!"  

In that context, his closing comment makes perfect sense.

But I do have an answer, Creationists.

Isn't that exactly what people like the Discovery Institute, Answers in Genesis, and the Institute for Creation Research are trying to do?  Rather than allow science to do what has been pretty damn successful for decades now, they want to replace actual science with their religious beliefs.  Read Karl Giberson blog post, "Discovery Institute Still Undermining Science".  Using often discredited arguments, they keep attacking science, dressing philosophical arguments as if they are science for the express purpose of forcing the scientific community to stop doing science and validate their [the Creationists'] religious beliefs.  Look at their arguments:

• 'Teach the controversy', when there is no scientific controversy, but an artificial one created by marketing and politicking.  
• 'Teach the strengths and weaknesses', without having one actual weakness identified in evolutionary theory and spend time denigrating the strengths whenever possible.  
• 'Teach both sides and let students make up their own mind', sure teach religion as if it is science and that will make a level playing field for students to figure things out for themselves?  Yea, how well is that working in any subject?  

These arguments have nothing to do with actual science other than to undermine it in the minds of all too many people.

Just a few excerpts from Gilberson's post:

"Evolution is a remarkable theory. Its complexity and breadth guarantee that there will be ongoing debates and controversies about the details and scientific journals are filled with these debates. But these debates are not about whether evolution should be abandoned and replaced with appeals to a supernatural creative power. That question was resolved in the 19th century."

"The actual scientific controversies are not the ones that the anti-evolutionists want to see in America's public schools. We do our students no favor by pretending that religiously motivated objections to well-established ideas constitute genuine scientific controversies."

The one I personally like is:

"Even if you focused on one small subfield -- say fossils from the Cambrian era -- it would take you years to get to the point where you could deal with the data directly and draw your own conclusions."

Remember Stephen C. Meyer's 'Darwin's Doubt', which concerns itself with the Cambrian Diversification, colloquially known as the 'Cambrian Explosion'.  Do you think Meyer spent the time necessary reading and studying the existing data in order to draw his own conclusions?  Let me remind you that not only is Meyer not a paleontologist, but in addressing some of his critics in the sequel "Debating Darwin's Doubt", he failed to bring in an actual paleontologist to address the many criticisms, like this one from an actual paleontologist (here is the whole critique):

"Another common tactic of creationists is credential mongering. They love to flaunt their Ph.D.'s on their book covers, giving the uninitiated the impression that they are all-purpose experts in every topic. As anyone who has earned a Ph.D. knows, the opposite is true: the doctoral degree forces you to focus on one narrow research problem for a long time, so you tend to lose your breadth of training in other sciences.  . . ."

" . . . Meyer now blunders into another field in which he has no research experience or advanced training: my own profession, paleontology. I can now report that he's just as incompetent in my field as he was in molecular biology. Almost every page of this book is riddled by errors of fact or interpretation that could only result from someone writing in a subject way over his head, abetted by the creationist tendency to pluck facts out of context and get their meaning completely backwards."

Perfect example of what Giberson was saying!  If you want people to draw their own conclusions about complex scientific subjects, they need specialized training to even begin to understand the current state of knowledge on the subject.

Yes, people are entitled to their opinions, but opinions are not necessarily equal, especially about complex subjects.  In my own field I frequently hear customers offer opinions on how long it should take computer programmers to build even something that seems simple.  The problem is without an understanding of the underlying code and architecture involved, even simple things have level of complexity non-programmers are not equipped to understand.  Yet folks like the Discovery Institute, and others, want people to be able to make up their own minds about something as complicated as Evolutionary theory?  Hopefully food for thought!