Expelled

John Lynch has discovered an unintentional irony in “Expelled." While the movie tries to argue that Darwinism led to Hitler, one of the anti-Darwinists interviewed in the film, Maciej Giertych, also happens to be an old-fashioned anti-Semite who thinks that Jews intentionally create ghettos to live in, are unethical swindlers who do not have any moral respect for the law, and who move to rich countries in order to exploit them. One commenter points out that Giertych has also praised Spain’s fascist leader Francisco Franco (who is still dead). Another observes that Giertych is, in at least a small way, a Holocaust denier, denying that gentile Poles carried out the Jedwabne pogrom of 1941. Giertych has also been published by Answers in Genesis’ Creation magazine, in 1995, and is a signatory to the Discovery Institute’s “A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism” statement. Clearly, racism does not require a belief in evolution. ...

Wesley Elsberry points out that Ben Stein has reported in an interview that he was approached for the “Expelled” project, described more or less as it finally came to be, back in 2006. Part of the pitch was that he was shown XVIVO’s “Inner Life of the Cell” video. Yet in April 2007 (a month after the “expelledthemovie.com” domain was registered), Mark Mathis obtained the cooperation of Genie Scott, P.Z. Myers, and other participants by pitching the nonexistent film “Crossroads,” about the intersection of science and religion, from “Rampant Films,” which had an innocuous website and an address at an empty apartment complex in Los Angeles. Stein’s interview provides further evidence that “Crossroads” was a dishonest subterfuge and that the “Expelled” crowd fully intended to use XVIVO’s film in their movie and did not commission their copy until after William Dembski was sent a cease and desist notice in September 2007, delaying the film’s release from February to April. See Wesley’s Austringer blog for more details.

ERV reports that Mike Edmondson, who was listed as the animator for “Expelled,” has left his employment with Premise Media and asked to have his name removed from their website. (UPDATE: It looks like Edmondson probably was responsible for the “Beware the Believers” YouTube video, but not the ripoff of the XVIVO film. Good for him for cutting ties with these liars and thieves.) (UPDATE April 21, 2008: It’s been confirmed that Edmondson made “Beware the Believers.") She also points out that it is William Dembski who observed that “Expelled”’s producers set aside budget for copyright infringement lawsuits. And that Jonathan Wells is helping with the foot bullets by claiming that “Expelled” produced their version of the XVIVO film in 3 months with one guy (where it took XVIVO a team of people 14 months). Looks like ERV is the blog to watch on this issue. She’s also the one who documented that William Dembski knew well that he was violating XVIVO’s copyright.

At Richard Dawkins’ blog, David Bolinsky of XVIVO explains the extent of the copyright infringement and reveals a previous copyright infringement action against William Dembski: To the anti-ID community which is giving XVIVO support in our ideological battle against the microcephalic apostates of “Intelligent Design”: XVIVO created The Inner Life of the Cell for Harvard, through fourteen months of painstaking examination of how a myriad of systems, functional structures and proteins in a cell, could be depicted in a sweeping panoramic style of animation, reminiscent of cinema, that fundamentally raised the bar on the visualization of molecular and cellular biology for undergraduate students. In depicting what we did, other than merely maintaining the intent of the syllabus, we needed to edit like mad. A cell has billions of molecules, millions of active functional proteins and tens of thousands of structural elements separating, sequestering and joining compartments and systems into a functional whole. An initial foundational decision process of our creative vision, consisted of editing out 95% of the contents of our cell in order to gain, for our virtual camera, a vista to visualize what elements we left in. The decisions we made blended aesthetics with science. They were not made lightly, nor were they made without extensive consultation with researchers at Harvard, and an extensive body of literature, including protein data libraries and new findings by Harvard researchers. Given the vast number of structures to be removed, and given the structures remaining “on camera”, whose positioning and relationships, both aesthetic and functional, needed to remain true to the function and beauty of molecular biology, it is inconceivable, mathematically, that the animator hired by EXPELLED’s producers, independently and randomly came up with the same identical actin filament mesh XVIVO depicted in one scene, which had never before been rendered anywhere in 3D! It is astonishing that among well over a dozen functional kinesins from which an animator might choose, we both chose the same configuration of kinesin, pulling the same protein-studded vesicle, on the same microtubule! Can YOU believe we coincidentally picked the same camera angles and left in the same specific structures in the background, positioned with the same composition? Equally astonishing is the “Intellgent Design” treatment of these and other proteins surfaces, which XVIVO derived using procedural iso-surface skinning of the PDB cloud data of our proteins’ atom placement. There are an infinite number of possble “correct” solutions to that problem. Coincidence? Given their “access to the same literature” we had, where Graham Johnson at Scripps so brilliantly worked out the real motion of kinesins, I am simply blown away that the “Intelligent Design” animators slavishly made the hands of their kenesins move exactly as we did, even though we intentionally left out the stochastic Brownian motion which actually characterizes the tractive force and periodic pedicle placement of these tiny motivators. We simply did not have the time or budget to render these, and a dozen other details, to the level of insanity we would like to have done! This was, after all, an underfunded proof-of-concept piece. The cellular biology that serves as “filler” material, between scenes copied from Inner Life, is riddled with biological errors. Imagine “Intelligent Design’s” depiction of protein synthesis without ribosomes! To Mr. Dembski: The only reason I am involved in this discussion is because I do not want the reputation of my company, hard-earned as it is, to be sullied by even oblique affiliation to your sort of smarmy ethics, if only through works of ours, purloined to fit your agenda. Last year you were charging colleges thousands of dollars to give lectures showing a copy of The Inner Life of the Cell, you claimed you “found somewhere”, with Harvard’s and XVIVO’s credits stripped out and the copyright notice removed (which is in itself a felony) and a creationist voice-over pasted on over our music (yes, I have a recording of your lecture). Harvard slapped you down for that, and yes there is a paper trail. One can only assume that had we not taken notice then, we would be debating The Inner Life of the Cell being used in EXPELLED, instead of a copy. You have enough of a colorful history that Harvard, in its wisdom, decided to ‘swat the gnat’ with as little fuss as possible. Imagine our surprise earlier this month, to see our work copied in a movie trailer for EXPELLED! And you are in the movie too! Not quite a star, but brown dwarfs are cool. XVIVO has no intention of engaging alone, in asymmetrical fighting against an ideological entity with orders of magnitude more resources than we have. That might make great theater, but would resemble a hugely expensive game of whack-a-ID. Boring! It makes me happy, though, that you decided to implicate your friends in print, on your blog (http://www.uncommondescent.com/legal/expelled-plagiarizing-harvard/#comment-229619), in what is legally, malignant infringement, since you no had doubt discussed with EXPELLED’s producers, Harvard’s previous legal infringement action against you, the Discovery Institute, where you are a fellow and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where you teach. Once we uncover the EXPELLED animation dollar trail, and bring it to light, we will have even more fun. The sublimely ridiculous claim that EXPELLED uses completely original animation, in light of copying our work so closely that a budget was reserved to pay for an infringement suit by Harvard, is delicious! Why should I try to take you guys down when you are doing such a splendid job yourselves? For free! So go ahead and release your movie. Just keep track of how many tickets you sell. We may just find that data valuable, too. David Bolinsky For more on David Bolinksy and the animation see: (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/147)UPDATE (April 12, 2008): P.Z. Myers comments. Blake Stacey also has a nice post summarizing the copyright infringement issue. UPDATE (April 19, 2008): The footage copied from XVIVO was apparently removed before the film’s public release yesterday.

“Expelled” producer Mark Mathis says that Christians who believe in evolution were intentionally excluded from the film because they “would have confused the film unnecessarily.” (Don’t confuse people with the truth!) He goes on to say that “the form of Catholicism that Ken Miller [biology professor at Brown University and co-author of a popular biology textbook] accepts and practices is, is nowhere near the form of Catholicism that is followed by Catholics who are members of the Catholic church, who believe in Catholic doctrine." Mathis, who is not a Catholic, is apparently unaware that Miller’s view of evolution is consistent with the official position of the Catholic Church as set forth by both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. The Catholic Church’s position on evolution has been that it’s not in conflict with Christianity, since Pope Pius XII. Mathis should also take a look at the NCSE’s Voices for Evolution, where he’ll find that a lot of other Christian sects similarly have no problem with evolution. “Expelled” and its producers seem to want to force a false dilemma of a choice between Christianity or evolution, just as the young-earth creationists do. They don’t seem to realize that this kind of forced choice is one which will make any honest, inquiring mind who accepts the false dilemma to choose against Christianity. J.P. Hunt, a student in Ray Baird’s 1980 “balanced treatment” class on creationism and evolution at Emma C. Smith Elementary School in Livermore, California, said on the 1982 PBS show “Creation vs. Evolution: Battle in the Classroom”: Someone that I know has become an atheist because of this class, because the creationist theory was so stupid, he thought. Well, if religion requires me to believe this, then I don’t want to have any part of it.I don’t find this too objectionable as a consequence, personally. Learning that I was lied to by young-earth creationists was a significant factor in my abandonment of creationism, then Christianity, and then theism. The rampant dishonesty of the “Expelled” crowd will no doubt serve the same effect for others like me, and cause them to look to see if they’ve been similarly lied to about other things. Odds are, they will find that they have. (Via Stranger Fruit.)

Another negative review for the film, by Jeffrey Kluger. He specifically calls out the film for dishonesty: The man made famous by Ferris Bueller, however, quickly wades into waters far too deep for him. He makes all the usual mistakes nonscientists make whenever they try to take down evolution, asking, for example, how something as complex as a living cell could have possibly arisen whole from the earth’s primordial soup. The answer is it couldn’t–and it didn’t. Organic chemicals needed eons of stirring and slow cooking before they could produce compounds that could begin to lead to a living thing. More dishonestly, Stein employs the common dodge of enumerating all the admittedly unanswered questions in evolutionary theory and using this to refute the whole idea. But all scientific knowledge is built this way. A fishnet is made up of a lot more holes than strings, but you can’t therefore argue that the net doesn’t exist. Just ask the fish. ...

Scientific American: …it seems a safe bet that the producers hope a whipping from us would be useful for publicity: further proof that any mention of ID outrages the close-minded establishment. (Picture Ben Stein as Jack Nicholson, shouting, “You can’t handle the truth!”) Knowing this, we could simply ignore the movie–which might also suit their purposes, come to think of it. Unfortunately, Expelled is a movie not quite harmless enough to be ignored. Shrugging off most of the film’s attacks–all recycled from previous pro-ID works–would be easy, but its heavy-handed linkage of modern biology to the Holocaust demands a response for the sake of simple human decency. ...

XVIVO LLC has sent a copyright infringement warning letter to Premise Media about the computer animation that appears to have been based on XVIVO’s “The Inner Life of a Cell.” Some have speculated that “Expelled”’s release was moved from February to April because it had used the XVIVO film directly (just as William Dembski and other Discovery Institute fellows had been doing in public lectures), and they used the time to re-create the animation on their own. The letter says that XVIVO considers the segment in the film to still be close enough to be an infringement of their intellectual property rights, and demands: That Premise Media, Rampant Films, and its officers, employees, and agents remove the infringing segment from all copies of the “Expelled” film prior to its scheduled commercial release on or before April 18, 2008; ...

Roger Friedman at Fox News reviews “Expelled”: “Expelled” is a sloppy, all-over-the-place, poorly made (and not just a little boring) “expose” of the scientific community. It’s not very exciting. But it does show that Stein, who’s carved out a career selling eye drops in commercials and amusing us on sitcoms, is either completely nuts or so avaricious that he’s abandoned all good sense to make a buck.Looks like “Expelled”’s positive reviews are limited to those by right-wing political talk show hosts on whose shows they’re buying advertising. ...

John Lynch brought my attention this morning to HB 2713, the student religious freedom act, in the Arizona legislature. At first I thought this was like the “academic freedom” bills being pushed by the Discovery Institute (which I believe is also something that the film “Expelled” is being used to push), but those are about defending the ability of teacher to promote nonsense in the classroom, while this bill only defends student-initiated religious expression. There is one serious problem with the bill, however, and that is its conflation of religious and secular viewpoints: “Each public educational institution shall permit religious viewpoints in the same manner and to the same extent as secular viewpoints are permitted on the same subject matter.” If instead, this said merely that if one religious viewpoint is permitted, all religious viewpoints must be permitted, I’d have no problem with it. But this wording has the effect that where you can discuss anything at all, you can also discuss religion. In a science classroom, since science is secular, you can talk about religion. In a math classroom, since math is secular, you can talk about religion. That’s ludicrous. I think the bill will die, if not for the good reason I’ve just given, for the reason that it does also open things up to all religions and to anti-religion. If students are permitted to wear shirts with a Christian message, they must also be permitted to wear shirts promoting an Islamic message, an atheist message, a Satanic message, or a Pastafarian message. Likewise, if students are permitted to use personal viewpoints in writing an essay or giving a presentation to the class, they may use their viewpoints on religious matters as well. Again, atheism would have to be as welcome as Christianity. (And it’s not that atheism is a religion, only that it is a viewpoint on religious matters.) I suspect the authors and sponsors of the bill–State Representatives Clark, Anderson, Barto, Crump, Groe, Pearce, Robson, Tobin, and Yarbrough, and by State Senators Gorman, Gould, L. Gray, Harper, and Johnson–don’t really want that consequence. I think a few supportive emails are in order, thanking them for endorsing the right of students to argue for atheism in the classroom (and Satanism, and Scientology, a religion that Johnson, Gray, Gorman, and Pearce are familiar with, since they’ve previously sponsored bills on behalf of the religion).