Discovery Institute

P.Z. Myers of Pharyngula, who is actually featured in the dishonest Ben Stein intelligent design propaganda movie “Expelled,” was denied admittance to a screening and asked to leave the premises. His guest, however, was permitted to attend, and was apparently, quite astonishingly, unrecognized–Richard Dawkins. (Myers provides a few more details here.) The New York Times contacted “Expelled” producer Mark Mathis about it, and he claimed that Dawkins was intentionally allowed in and insinuating that Myers would cause trouble at the screening. (Anyone who has met Myers in person knows this is ridiculous.) Here’s video of P.Z. Myers and Richard Dawkins describing their respective experiences. Jeffrey Overstreet gives what appears to be the spin that will be used to respond to this event, based on the clearly mistaken description of Myers’ removal from student Stuart Blessman: I just happened to be standing directly in line behind Dawkins’ academic colleague. Management of the movie theatre saw a man apparently hustling and bothering several invited attendees, apparently trying to disrupt the viewing or sneak in. Management then approached the man, asked him if he had a ticket, and when he confirmed that he didn’t, they then escorted him off the premises. Nowhere was one of the film’s producers to be found, and the man certainly didn’t identify himself. If a producer had been nearby, it’s possible that he would have been admitted, but the theatre’s management didn’t want to take any chances.Myers points out: ...

The Discovery Institute is behind an attempt to gather signatures and push state legislation to defend “the rights of teachers and students to study the full range of scientific views on Darwinian evolution.” “The full range of scientific views on Darwinian evolution” is apparently the new code phrase for creationist misinformation and nonsense. The proposed legislation prohibits termination, discipline, denial of tenure or other discrimination against K-12 teachers who lie to their students by teaching them creationist nonsense. The promotion is tied in with the dishonest film, Expelled. ...

Daniel Brooks has written a fascinating summary of a 2006 conference put together by intelligent design advocates as a retrospective of the famous 1966 Wistar conference on evolution that is often cited by creationists who haven’t bothered to understand what actually happened at that conference. (It was an example of what happens when you try to come up with models for phenomena you don’t understand well enough to formulate models for.) The ID advocates invited numerous prominent scientists to the conference, including Brooks, whose book with E.O. Wiley, Evolution as Entropy, is a classic on evolution, thermodynamics, and information theory of the sort that creationists ignore except to quote mine (e.g., as Duane Gish did in his Creation Scientists Answer Their Critics). My favorite part of the summary is this paragraph, which ends the summary of a talk by ID advocate Ann Gauger: She was then prompted by one of her colleagues to regale us with some new experimental finds. She gave what amounted to a second presentation, during which she discussed “leaky growth,” in microbial colonies at high densities, leading to horizontal transfer of genetic information, and announced that under such conditions she had actually found a novel variant that seemed to lead to enhanced colony growth. Gunther Wagner said, “So, a beneficial mutation happened right in your lab?” at which point the moderator halted questioning. We shuffled off for a coffee break with the admission hanging in the air that natural processes could not only produce new information, they could produce beneficial new information.Quick–time for an emergency coffee break, and let’s just forget that last question… The ID advocates repeatedly evaded tough questions from the scientists, and at the end of the conference… A few days after the meeting ended, we all received an email stating that the ID people considered the conference a private meeting, and did not want any of us to discuss it, blog it, or publish anything about it. They said they had no intention of posting anything from the conference on the Discovery Institute’s web site (the entire proceedings were recorded). They claimed they would have some announcement at the time of the publication of the edited volume of presentations, in about a year, and wanted all of us to wait until then to say anything.So it’s left to the real scientists, not the ID advocates, to publicly discuss their conference and its implications. Read the full summary at The Panda’s Thumb, as well as some revealing exchanges in the comments between ID advocate and young-earth creationist Paul Nelson, Dan Brooks, and Nick Matzke. John Lynch also has a nice brief summary. There is one notable error in Brooks’ summary, and that is his erroneous claim that Richard von Sternberg was fired as editor of the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. Sternberg is actually a false martyr who hasn’t actually lost any jobs, positions, or status as a result of his opinions.

John Lynch has looked up the backgrounds of the 300 signatories to the Discovery Institute’s “Dissent from Darwinism” statement who signed in 2004 (it’s now up to 700, which he plans to also examine). He reports on the backgrounds of the individuals who signed, finding that “Chemists, physicists, engineers, bench jockeys, doctors and mathematicians account for over 200 of the 300 signatories” but only five organismal biologists. He also notes that there’s also at least one soccer coach and a home-schooling mom in the list. The comments are worth reading as well. UPDATE (January 27, 2008): John Lynch has a further post on this statement, and commenter Ken, below, points to his analysis of the religious beliefs of signers at his Open Parachute blog. UPDATE (May 14, 2008): A YouTube video documents further Discovery Institute deception with regard to this list. ...

In an excellent blog post at Quintessence of Dust, Stephen Matheson patiently examines the details of DI Fellow Jonathan Wells’ only attempt to engage in scientific research in support of intelligent design by putting forth a hypothesis to be tested. By doing more of the work that Wells himself should have done, Matheson shows that Wells’ efforts were far below expectations for scientists and that his hypothesis has subsequently (but with no thanks to ID theorists, who did no work on the subject) been falsified. (Via Pharyngula.) ...

Chris Comer, the director of science curriculum for the Texas Education Agency, was forced to resign from her position. Her offense? Forwarding an email from the National Center for Science Education announcing a talk by philosopher and intelligent design critic Barbara Forrest, and adding the text “FYI." The call to fire Comer came from Lizzette Reynolds, formerly at the U.S. Department of Education and former deputy legislative director for Texas Gov. George W. Bush. She wrote in an email to Comer’s supervisors that “This is highly inappropriate. I believe this is an offense that calls for termination or, at the very least, reassignment of responsibilities." The movie “Expelled” makes a big deal about cases like the Sternberg affair, where nobody lost a job or responsibilities, and the denial of tenure to Guillermo Gonzales, whose publication record didn’t merit tenure. But here’s a case of someone who appears to have actually been removed from her position for sending out an announcement of a talk critical of intelligent design–a subject which the courts have already ruled is unconstitutional to teach in the science classroom. TEA officials claim that Comer was removed for “repeated acts of misconduct and insubordination,” which Comer describes as really meaning her concerns about teaching creationism in schools. The Texas Republican Party platform explicitly advocates teaching intelligent design in public schools. Wesley Elsberry has more about the Comer case at the Austringer blog, where he wonders whether the Discovery Institute will decry Comer’s firing, since they’ve been willing to stretch the facts to complain about cases with far less substance to them: Will the Discovery Institute come forward to say that the TEA is repressing Ms. Comer’s free speech rights? Will they urge her to become the star of the “Expelled” movie? After all, she did actually lose her job over her stance on evolution in education, as opposed to various people noted as being featured in the film who did not. But the DI is unlikely to do so because Ms. Comer is on the opposite side of the issue from them. They aren’t defending a principle, they are pushing a particular line of propaganda.I agree with Wesley. The Discovery Institute has a long record of misrepresenting facts (and not just about science) in order to promote its views. I suspect they will either remain silent or try to defend Comer’s removal. Pharyngula also comments on Comer’s removal, including the following explanation from Comer’s boss: the forwarding of this event announcement by Ms. Comer, as the Director of Science, from her TEA email account constitutes much more than just sharing information. Ms. Comer’s email implies endorsement of the speaker and implies that TEA endorses the speaker’s position on a subject on which the agency must remain neutral. Thus, sending this email compromises the agency’s role in the TEKS revision process by creating the perception that TEA has a biased position on a subject directly related to the science education TEKS.As P.Z. Myers comments: “Whoa. The Texas Education Agency is neutral on the subject of teaching good science? It’s bad if the TEA takes a position on the subject of science education? Apparently, TEA members are supposed to close their eyes and maximize ignorance before making decisions. I really feel sorry for Texas." UPDATE (December 2, 2007): And more, from Texas Citizens for Science (via Pharyngula). UPDATE (December 4, 2007): The New York Times editorializes on this subject. UPDATE (December 6, 2007): DI Fellow John Mark Reynolds agrees that TEA is in the wrong here. UPDATE (December 12, 2007): The Society for the Study of Evolution has sent an open letter to “Texas TEA." UPDATE (December 20, 2007): Glenn Branch has written a nice blog post about his email that cost Comer her job. UPDATE (July 3, 2008): Chris Comer has filed a lawsuit regarding her termination. ...

When law professor (and President of the Evangelical Theological Society) Francis Beckwith converted from evangelical Christianity to Catholicism earlier this year, he made somewhat of a public splash. When he subsequently resigned as a Fellow of the Discovery Institute in July, neither DI nor Beckwith made any public comment. But law professor Peter Irons writes at Ed Brayton’s Dispatches from the Culture Wars blog: Beckwith, who is a recognized scholar on church-state issues, has made no public statement on the reasons for his resignation (and his private comments on those reasons, while revealing, are not for publication, at least now). After Beckwith resigned, the DI quietly removed his bio from its website, and he just disappeared into the ether.Ed Brayton’s blog post is reporting on the addition of a new Discovery Institute Fellow, movie reviewer and culture critic Michael Medved, an intellectual lightweight who believes in Sasquatch. (The link here also includes criticism of Medved for an article about American slavery, but I actually think Medved’s article is better than the critique of it.) As Irons notes in his comment, “In replacing Beckwith with Medved, the DI has traded intellectual substance for Hollywood glitz." And Medved isn’t even a good movie reviewer. ...

ERV has found that William Dembski (and apparently other DI fellows) have misappropriated a computer animated video of the cell from Harvard and XVIVO, replaced the narration with their own, and presented it as though it’s their own work without giving credit to the original source. Her blog shows the original video and a presentation of the video at a lecture by William Dembski. The Discovery Institute really is shameless. (Via Pharyngula.)

Young-earth creationist and Discovery Institute Fellow John Mark Reynolds has written a pair of articles arguing that Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling’s outing of her character Dumbledore as gay doesn’t make him so, since the text is silent on the issue. I actually think he makes a reasonable argument, except that he heads in a personally dangerous direction when he writes: What if Rowling writes a guide to her characters in which she gives new “back story” to the characters? ...

P.Z. Myers comments on a couple of professors defending the literal existence of angels and demons. Intelligent design advocate and Discovery Institute Fellow William Dembski on angels: Peter Williams’ The Case for Angels is about…the theological rift between a Christian intelligentsia that increasingly regards angels only as figurative or literary devices, and the great mass of Christians who thankfully still regard them as real (a fact confirmed by popular polls, as Williams notes in this book). This rift was brought home to me at a conference I helped organize at Baylor University some years back. The conference was entitled ‘The Nature of Nature’ and focused on whether nature is self-contained or points beyond itself. The activity of angels in the world would clearly constitute on way nature points beyond itself. Why is it important to know about angels? Why is it important to know about rocks and plants and animals? It’s important because all of these are aspects of reality that impinge on us. The problem with the secular intelligentsia is that they deny those aspects of reality that are inconvenient to their world-picture. And since the intelligentsia are by definition intelligent (though rarely wise), they are able to rationalize away what they find inconvenient. This is what Bishop Sheen was getting at with the previous quote when he referred to the intelligentsia rationalizing evil, and this what Williams is so successful at unmasking in the intelligentsia’s rejection of angels. ...