Expelled

The assets of Premise Media, including rights to “Expelled,” are going up for auction. The Talk Origins Foundation plans to bid for the film, which includes production materials. Their stated plan seems to be just to determine what interesting information might be in the production materials or raw footage and make that known, not, as I’ve suggested, make an “MST3K”-style version, or a version that points out and corrects the errors. UPDATE (June 28, 2011): The winning bid for “Expelled” was $201,000. My guess is that the film would only be worth that much to somebody who plans to promote it as-is without any significant re-editing, and thinks they can extract at least that much value out of it–perhaps via charitable deduction by giving it to a creationist organization. There was a bidding war at the end between two bidders that drove the price up this morning from $43,000 (last night’s high bid) to $201,000, which caused the bid to be extended 10 minutes beyond it’s scheduled end time in one or two minute extension increments. It was at $122,000 at the original auction end time, so that last $79,000 increase occurred in the last 10 minutes. ...

Premise Media Holdings LP is in bankruptcy, and its assets are going up for auction online between June 23 and 28. Those assets include the film “Expelled." Perhaps a few of us should get together and buy it, and reissue it in a “Mystery Science Theatre 3000” format? UPDATE: As Damian Howard and Bob Vogel pointed out on Facebook, this adds financial bankruptcy to the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the film.

In what may be the most entertaining review of “Expelled” yet, Roger Ebert gives Ben Stein what for in the Chicago Sun Times: This film is cheerfully ignorant, manipulative, slanted, cherry-picks quotations, draws unwarranted conclusions, makes outrageous juxtapositions (Soviet marching troops representing opponents of ID), pussy-foots around religion (not a single identified believer among the ID people), segues between quotes that are not about the same thing, tells bald-faced lies, and makes a completely baseless association between freedom of speech and freedom to teach religion in a university class that is not about religion. And there is worse, much worse. Toward the end of the film, we find that Stein actually did want to title it “From Darwin to Hitler.” He finds a Creationist who informs him, “Darwinism inspired and advanced Nazism.” He refers to advocates of eugenics as liberal. I would not call Hitler liberal. Arbitrary forced sterilization in our country has been promoted mostly by racists, who curiously found many times more blacks than whites suitable for such treatment. Ben Stein is only getting warmed up. He takes a field trip to visit one “result” of Darwinism: Nazi concentration camps. “As a Jew,” he says, “I wanted to see for myself.” We see footage of gaunt, skeletal prisoners. Pathetic children. A mound of naked Jewish corpses. “It’s difficult to describe how it felt to walk through such a haunting place,” he says. Oh, go ahead, Ben Stein. Describe. It filled you with hatred for Charles Darwin and his followers, who represent the overwhelming majority of educated people in every nation on earth. It is not difficult for me to describe how you made me feel by exploiting the deaths of millions of Jews in support of your argument for a peripheral Christian belief. It fills me with contempt. ...

Guillermo Gonzalez, one of the proclaimed victims of oppression and infringement of his academic freedom in the film “Expelled,” has taken a job at Grove City College, a Christian liberal arts college in Pennsylvania. The school has been under censure by the American Association of University Professors since 1963 for its failure to respect academic freedom. A report by the AAUP Investigative Committee concluded “the absence of due process [in the dismissal of professors at Grove City] raises…doubts regarding the academic security of any persons who may hold appointment at Grove City College under existing administrative practice. These doubts are of an order of magnitude which obliges us to report them to the academic profession at large." More at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

In a decision issued today, the judge in the case of Yoko Ono against Premise Media ruled against Ono’s motion for an injunction against the film, on the grounds that Premise Media and its attorneys at the Stanford Fair Use Project were likely to prevail on a fair use defense. So “Expelled” will be able to be released in Canada with its excerpting of “Imagine” intact. This is an outcome I suggested would occur, and hoped for, despite the dishonesty of the defendants in this case. It remains to be seen if Ono will continue with the lawsuit and potentially set a useful precedent for copyright law. (Via Pharyngula.)

Brown University biology professor, textbook author, and Catholic Ken Miller has written an op-ed about “Expelled."

Bush’s head of the Office of Special Counsel at the Department of Justice, Scott Bloch, has had his offices and home raided by the FBI. The FBI raided his offices in D.C. yesterday, seizing computers and shutting off email. Bloch himself was interviewed. It’s not clear exactly what prompted the raid, but Bloch has long been under fire for refusing to investigate claims of discrimination based on sexual orientation. There are also allegations that he has retaliated against employees and obstructed investigations. Bloch also has a tie to the Sternberg case, the crown jewel of “Expelled,” in that one of his like-minded appointees, James McVay, a man with no previous experience in employment law, whistleblower law, or federal sector work, took on the Sternberg case and wrote a preliminary report on it despite having no jurisdiction. His preliminary report managed to draw conclusions in contradiction to the actual evidence. UPDATE: The New York Times also covers the story. UPDATE (October 27, 2008): Scott Bloch has been fired. UPDATE (March 30, 2011): Scott Bloch has been sentenced to a month in jail for destroying evidence on his computer. ...

Intelligent design advocate Michael Behe was interviewed for the film “Expelled,” and even included in one of the trailer previews, but does not appear in the final film, even though he has been one of the most prominent ID advocates. Why not? There are several likely explanations: 1. He is a counter-example to the claim that intelligent design advocates are being persecuted by academia. He is an intelligent design advocate who is also a professor at Lehigh University. (Point due to Tegamai Bopsulai.) 2. He has become something of a heretic in intelligent design circles as a result of his latest book, The Edge of Evolution, in which he affirms common ancestry, he calls using the Bible as a science textbook “silly,” he doesn’t think intelligent design is necessary to explain lower taxonomic levels of life such as species, genera, families, and orders, and he doesn’t see the need for continued miraculous interventions into the process of evolution by God. (Points due to Larry Arnhart.) 3. His latest book conflicts with the idea of The Fall when he argues that malaria was intentionally designed to kill people. (Where’s Ben Stein on this one? Point due to RBH.) It appears that ID’s big tent has become too small to allow Michael Behe to remain inside. Via: Larry Arnhart at Darwinian Conservatism Brian Switek at Laelaps John Lynch at Stranger Fruit ...

In an interview in Christianity Today: I believe God created the heavens and the earth, and it doesn’t scare me when scientists say that can’t be proved. I couldn’t give a [profanity] whether a person calls himself a scientist. Science has covered itself with glory, morally, in my time. Scientists were the people in Germany telling Hitler that it was a good idea to kill all the Jews. Scientists told Stalin it was a good idea to wipe out the middle-class peasants. Scientists told Mao Tse-Tung it was fine to kill 50,000,000 people in order to further the revolution.In an interview on the Trinity Broadcasting Network with Paul Crouch, Jr. (video is available if you follow the link): Stein: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [i.e. biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you. Crouch: That’s right. Stein: …Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people. Crouch: Good word, good word.Note that he offers no qualifiers. He doesn’t say science must be complemented with ethics. He doesn’t say that science (like any knowledge of truths about the universe) may have negative as well as positive consequences. He simply says that science leads to mass murder. If Stein really believes this, then he must be a genuine opponent of the practice of science, and his promotion of “Expelled” can be seen as an aspect of that anti-scientific attitude, despite the fact that he certainly takes personal advantage of many of the positive contributions of science. If he doesn’t genuinely believe it, then he’s not only engaging in a defamatory slur against scientists, he’s also dishonest. Either way, he’s demonstrated that he is a despicable character. And some people claim not to understand why scientists are angered by this film and its creators. Others on this subject: John Lynch at Stranger Fruit Larry Moran at The Sandwalk P.Z. Myers at Pharyngula Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars ...

Ross Anderson, journalist and former Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute, gives an interesting history of the founding of the organization. He describes how DI got into the intelligent design business, which has proved to be its major source of funding. About two years ago, the Discovery Institute founded the Biologic Institute to perform scientific research. At long last, they finally have a website up, and its cast of characters contains many names recognizable from the film “Expelled.” Still no scientific theory of intelligent design, however.