Book Review: Slaughter of the Dissidents
| January 5, 2009 | Posted by johnnyb under Darwinism, Education, Intelligent Design, Legal |
I just got through reading Slaughter of the Dissidents, and I must say, it is fantastic. I was a little skeptical at first, simply because the title of the book was so extreme. After reading it, I still think that the title is extreme (there are real slaughters of people happening in different parts of the world), but I can see why it was chosen – the extent to which Darwin skeptics are being persecuted in academic environments is simply astonishing.
The first chapter, “A Context for Discrimination Against Darwin Skeptics” deserves special recognition. Kevin Wirth, who authored it, did an excellent job providing a background and context for this book, especially for those not familiar with the debate or why it generates so much controversy. It almost deserved to be an entire book unto itself. It described why (a) Darwin skeptics are skeptical, (b) Darwinists are skeptical of the skeptics, (c) why ID’ers and Creationists are often lumped together in a single category, even when completely inappropriate to the context, (d) the relationship between the source, the justification, and the effects of ideas (and why it matters), and (e) the relationship that religion has with this whole debate.
Honestly, if someone who wasn’t familiar with the issues asked for a short introduction to the whole issue, I would recommend that they buy the book if only to read the first chapter. That would give a good background on what the disagreement is over and why it is so heated.
Chapter 3 was emotionally tough to read – page after page after page of people being denied from academia precisely because they are Darwin skeptics. Bergman suggests that it is precisely this discrimination which causes there to be so few Darwin skeptics in academia. It was gut-wrenching to see, page after page, a veritable catalogue of good students being denied access to academia.
We’ve all heard about Carolyn Crocker and Guillermo Gonzalez, and some may have heard of Raymond Damadian and Dean Kenyon. All of these people’s stories are detailed and documented. But those only scratch the surface of the problem described by Bergman. Board after board, committee after committee, and court decision after court decision have ruled that it’s okay to single out a single range of views (skepticism of Darwinism) from consideration. In the Bishop case, the court actually ruled that the school has the right to censor any personal opinions of professors that it wants to (including tenured professors). In case after case, it is admitted by all parties that the teaching was not coercive, and the discussion was appreciated by the students, and it represented a tiny fraction of class time. But, since it was against Darwinism, it was alright for it to be censored.
This isn’t just happening in private schools – it’s happening in public schools (high school and college) which use public money for their operation. There is clearly a widespread problem of viewpoint discrimination, which your tax dollars are funding.
The last chapter asks what we should do now. The two which seem most relevant to the average Darwin skeptic (or even non-skeptic who disagrees with the discrimination) is to simply make your voice heard – whether it is a letter to the editor or speaking out at a school board meeting or writing your senator – make your voice heard. If you are a student, check out the academic freedom policy of your institution, and see what the limits are. If you are a non-tenured faculty member, Bergman suggests that you keep your head down and write pseudonymously. I disagree – I think everyone needs to be counted on this issue, though I know that some simply cannot because of the potential personal cost. For tenured faculty, it is imperative that you take students and younger faculty members under your wing and leverage your influence to help them come through the process unscathed. If we all stood up together, who knows what might be accomplished?
The book is great for anyone who is interested in the debate. It is informative to know what lengths people and groups will go to in order to eliminate discussion of the alternatives to Darwinism.
52 Responses to Book Review: Slaughter of the Dissidents
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I did not read #30 and #31 before writing #32.
For certain, no. I’m just saying that their story based upon undirected processes is at least plausible in this case.
gpuccio made this good point:
I also admit I cannot remember whether the Trichromatic Color Vision scenario was based experimental evidence or by examining sequence similarities. It’s been a while since I’ve read up on the subject. So perhaps I may be too hasty in agreeing that it’s plausible.
In any case, I’ll be gone for the day. I just cleared the moderation queue and Khan has not responded on anything yet.
Patrick,
I’m sorry, what exactly are you calculating here? the probability of PAX6 controlling transcription of any given gene? did something get cut off above that in your comment? In Drosophila, Pax6 causes expression of 371 genes, if that helps you in your calculation.
of course not. but let’s focus on what we do know, which is the master control gene. We know a) that it is expressed during eye development in all metazoans b) it is highly conserved among those metazoans, to the extent that genes from one species can stimulate eye formation in other species and c) that all of the (v little) evolution it has undergone has come through cobbling together of other bits of genes, i.e. well-knwon evolutionary processes. as for the other 371 genes, as you can imagine sorting that out is a bit more complex, but once again we can say “we don’t know.”
You say “of course not” but how does that square with your earlier statement of “complex eyes arising from repeated expression of the Pax6 gene that controls the formation of simple eyes”? That’s the only reason I said that.
How can you justify this assertion?
That’s why I suggested starting with a simpler system like the light-sensing ocelli or a simple eyespot to see if there any plausible pathways for even that. I just ran a quick search looking for a simulation or at least a hypothesis and didn’t have much luck.
Apparently I’m not the only ID proponent who has not heard of such research. Luskin wrote this just a couple days ago:
Hmph. That’s annoying. There must be some sort of hypothesis out there we could examine. Know of anything?
Here’s a somewhat dated, but reasonable place to start:
http://www.cell.com/trends/gen.....99)01776-X
again, it’s an idea that has some evidence supporting it, but not that much. and people are working on it. However, the evolution of Pax6 itself is reasonably well known, as is reviewed briefly in the above paper and in
http://www.jyi.org/volumes/vol.....edman.html
homology levels of 90-96% are clear indications that this gene has not evolved very much, and most of the changes involve recombination and loss/gain of parts of homeodomains and paired domains. hence, different parts have been shuffled around, lost and gained- classic evolutionary processes.
Hello folks.Kind of looking for an opinion of a theory I have been playing with for a while now and reading your comments and hopefully it will make you think if you thought about it much before. What if evolution has been developing backwards and forwards at the same time?We have alot of evolved or devolved species here on planet EARTH in many stages of real experimentation or maybe selection.Some are in other parts of the universe but as I mentioned before, many are here ,only in different sizes for storage and in starage programmed mode needing only the Master`s command to obey and transform/perform their along waited commands.If one can believe that a one cell life formed over time into us,for that source beyond,was it any more difficult to form either or,or and the top of and the bottom of{if we truly knew which was which}and,farmer talk,put every life form out to pasture to fend for themselves and hope that what is is noticed in time for a successful healthy balance? Please enjoy-hopefully proving/disproving.Thinking gives one life that they never knew they had before.
Khan,
How about that testable hypothesis pertaining to un directed processes?
That PAX6 is “highly conserved” is also evidence for common design.
There isn’t any known undirected processes that can put together a master switch which controls anything- nevermind 300+ other genes.
However your avoidance of producing a testable hypothesis demonstrates a glaring weakness in your position.
It is a given that “evolution” does not have a direction.
The first link is not free. I could get hold of it later on, but does it develop the story with an information-based pathway or is it simply a vague generalization? If it’s the former why don’t you post the number of proposed steps in this pathway? Does it say anything at all about eyespots?
The second link is more interesting as it does provide some research notes on what information may correspond to the eye:
It’s been more than ten years since this article so I’d hope the information specific to the eye has been nailed down. And if that’s been done then where is a hypothesis that provides a plausible scenario?
Discussion of a potential “pathway” for evolving the eye was mostly limited to this statement:
That’s nice. Where’s the information-based evidence that this story is plausible?
You’re restating your assertion–not justifying it–and not saying anything all at the same time. Considering that this gene encodes for many other systems in a variety of very different vertebrate morphological features should we be surprised at the differences noted in sequence comparisons? What does your statement say at all about the evolution of the information specific to the eye? About the capabilities of undirected processes to pull off even an eyespot? Are you seriously claiming that merely noting similarities is evidence for your larger claim?
Patrick,
do you know anything about building phylogenetic trees?
Yes, but I’m certainly not an expert. So I’m assuming you do not know of any better information or a potential hypothesis we could examine or are we now going to cover the five d-s? If so, spare me.
I have a question and I don`t know if it is stupid to ask or anot.If a tree has a broken heart,can a tree hugger heal it?
Why is this all of a sudden focusing on the mechanism? Should we be insted focusing on academic freedom? We can debate the merits of ID in other, relevant threads. The point of the book is that academia is censoring opposing views by any means possible, and is doing quite an effective job of it. This is an outrage to anyone who cares about academic freedom.
JohnnyB-
If the mechanism “proves” correct, then academic freedom is a moot point.
MY point is that academic freedom is not moot because the mechanism(s) cannot be objectively tested.
Khan,
Do YOU know anything about constructing a testable hypothesis?
If so this would be a good time to present a testable hypothesis based on undirected processes.
If you cannot do so then your digma trhreatens not only academic freedom but also critical thinking.
Patrick,
I asked the question bc I was going to suggest that you go to GenBank, collect all the sequence data and build a simple maximum parsimony gene tree. that would be a hypothesized pathway for the evolution of the Pax6 gene. then you could do a mutation-by-mutation analysis and see what you come up with. Or, you could just look at figures 2+3 from the Gehring paper I linked to. you would find that the evolutionary pathway is v simple, with a relatively small number of amino acid changes. however, the differences in eyes between those species is v great. of course, bc Pax6 controls so many genes, we can’t simply say that small changes in Pax6 have led to large changes in phenotype. but it does suggest that of the key players in eye development had a single ancient origin and may have controlled the development of the first rhadobmeric photoreceptors (recruited into all eye types) from simple precursors. this is surprising bc it had been thought that eyes evolved independently many different times- but these data suggest a single common origin. these photoreceptors are hypothesized to have combined with pigment cells to form a prototype eye that then evolved into all the current forms. an example of how this diversification may have occurred can be found in ragworm eyes. as larvae, they have simple eyes composed of a photoreceptor and pigment cell. as adults, they have cup-shaped eyes that are composed of many larval eyes and constructed through repeated expression of the same Pax-6 and other genes used to construct the larval eye. Similarly, Pax-6 is differentially expressed during formation of all metazoan eyes, suggesting that the evolution of complex from simple eyes may have at least partially been driven by changes in Pax-6 expression. this work is still in progress, I urge you to be patient; after all, we still haven’t found a cure for cancer despite orders of magnitude more scientists and funding. a promising avenue to get beyond just looking at Pax6 is to use microarrays to compare gene expression during eye development in different metazoans. this will allow us to get a handle on how the genes under Pax6′s control have evolved. this was done for mice just this week:
http://www.plosone.org/article.....ne.0004159
the other sources of info were “making of the fittest” and the review article by Gehring.
Guys,
Sorry I’ve been away for so long…
Kahn said:
“Kevinw,I read over the case studies that were on the web and I am not still not impressed.”
Not surprising. You don’t sound like someone who would be (impressed). So read the book if you want a more robust perspective. I can’t give it all away for free. What’s on the SOD web site is intended to whet your appetite. Guess you don’t have any. That’s fine – you just go ahead and not be impressed.
“Even if they are as bad as you say, I ask you this in return: ID has its own well-funded research center and its own journal. Nothing supporting ID has come out of the research center and the journal hasn’t published in 3 years. can you really argue this is bc of oppression?”
First of all, I don’t understand how or why you jump from my claim of discrimination to this question. There is no relevance I can see. What’s the connection here?
Secondly, ID certainly does NOT have a “well-funded research center” that I know of. What’s your source for that info? How well funded are they?
I know there’s a lab (Biologic) and I’ve been there. But if that’s what you’re thinking is “well funded,” I would think again.
Finally, I never argued that the reason they have not published stuff in their own journal is bc of oppression. I WOULD say that their research would not likely get published in many cream-of-the-crop refereed science journals if the authors were known ID sympathizers. Would not matter how good their science was.
Someone said:
“I want real, empirical examples, just like you were asking of me. aren’t you the ones who accuse Darwinists of just “imagining” things?”
Darwinists DO imagine stuff all the time. But let’s be clear about something: imagination is an integral and legitimate part of building hypotheses when we don’t have all the evidence we need. The problem that many Darwinians have is that they often seem to forget the fact that the imaginative bridges btwn the evidence is just that, and some of them have a tendency (after they co-mingle evidence with imagination) and call it all “evidence.”
That IS a huge problem. And I understand it – it comes from a strong desire to see what you want to see. That’s what I call “confirmation bias.” As far as I can tell, most Darwinians start with the assumption that all the evidence fits into an evolutionary scenario of one sort or another. There is little to know question that it could have been any other way.
Not a truly objective approach to examining the evidence…would you say?
Khan,
I apologize for my rudeness at #42. Based upon the unexpectedness of the question and the phrasing of “do you know anything” made me expect you were about to launch into an attack on my person.
I think your suggestion in #46 is a good place to start. Although I’d add that we should be looking for any foresighted mechanisms, as well. Also, I note that any changes in Pax-6 expression might need to occur simultaneously with changes in other genes, which makes this endeavor all the more difficult since we’d have to search for possible alternate (non-eye related) functionality as well.
In any case, my point in all this discussion was to highlight how the grand claims of Darwinism (or whatever you want to call it) are largely unverified. This is the core of the theory yet supporting evidence only provides support for the smaller claims that ID proponents would expect to be true (although an exact “edge” is still a very rough estimate). Never mind OOL. We know that an intelligent agent is at least capable. But what remains to be researched is method (how did the actor act) and that is being tackled by ID-compatible hypotheses. Then of course there’s the identity issue, although that remains to be seen whether we’ll find any specific clues.
Khan,
Why osn’t PAX6 evidence for a common design?
Why must it be evidence for universal common descent when we don’t even know whether or not thne transformations required are even possible via any amount of accumulating genetic mistakes?
Then you say “be patient”. That is not going to happen when one preaches a conclusion that has not been confirmed by anything but a world-view.
And Khan,
What is going to happen to that world-view when scientists finally figure out what IDists have been saying for years- that biological information is NOT reducible to the sequence. Rather it is very similar to the information on a computer disk- embedded on the DNA (and other structures) providing the assembly, editing, transcription, error correction and translation processes.
BTW development is not an indication of evolution.
kevinw,
your book is awfully expensive ($27 for a paperback?). I didn’t see it on the website, but I assume a portion of the proceeds are going to a legal defense fund for the victims?
the connection is that, even in the absence of the claimed oppression, ID scientists are still unproductive. if you’re arguing that good science is being repressed, this fact certainly argues against that.
I’m sure you’re aware of Axe’s paper in Plos One, a reasonably well-respected journal. Behe’s paper was accepted in Protein Science, a middling journal. Dembski apparently had a paper accepted somewhere, although he won’t say where. as to whether or not they would get accepted in nature or science, that’s all hypothetical until they actually submit there. even if they get rejected (as most of us do, boo hoo), if it’s exciting enough it will get published somewhere and noticed.
the biologic inst website lists at least 3 full-time staff, including two PIs. since salaries are the biggest expense of any scientific endeavor, that indicates to me they’re reasonably well-funded. but maybe you know better.
I would like to see a clear example of this from the peer-reviewed literature. i think you’re conflating what science writers do with what the scientists themselves do.
Kahn,
kevinw,
You said: “your book is awfully expensive ($27 for a paperback?). I didn’t see it on the website, but I assume a portion of the proceeds are going to a legal defense fund for the victims?”
Funny man. Well, for starters, it’s 450 pages, well researched, and wasn’t written in a day. I’d say it could sell for more, but, you wouldn’t believe it. Anyway, I’ll be selling the e-book version soon for much less if paperback is too pricey for your pocketbook.
” the connection is that, even in the absence of the claimed oppression, ID scientists are still unproductive. if you’re arguing that good science is being repressed, this fact certainly argues against that.”
Au contraire my friend, you are only seeing the glass half full. You still don’t get it. Many Darwin skeptics are excellent scientists in a variety of scientific endeavors. Many of them are VERY productive in their chosen fields, and are recognized for their accomplishments and acievements UNTIL their skepticism of Darwinian ideas becomes known. Then, all of a sudden, they can’t possibly be “good comrades” (as Ben Stein put it…)
“I’m sure you’re aware of Axe’s paper in Plos One, a reasonably well-respected journal. Behe’s paper was accepted in Protein Science, a middling journal. Dembski apparently had a paper accepted somewhere, although he won’t say where. as to whether or not they would get accepted in nature or science, that’s all hypothetical until they actually submit there. even if they get rejected (as most of us do, boo hoo), if it’s exciting enough it will get published somewhere and noticed.”
True. But you are focusing on the guys that are front and center in the ID movement. Don’t expect to see them get published in a Big Science journal near you anytime soon. When you shift your focus, what you find is a great many other scientists who are thought to be respectable and get published all over the place in highly respected science journals, UNTIL they are found out to be Darwin skeptics.
“the biologic inst website lists at least 3 full-time staff, including two PIs. since salaries are the biggest expense of any scientific endeavor, that indicates to me they’re reasonably well-funded. but maybe you know better.”
WEll, let me put it this way. John West once asked Ken Miller what his annual budget was FOR HIS DEPARTMENT at Brown University. Miller popped up with a figure, to which West stated “I wish I had that kind of budget to work with – but I don’t.” And I believe West was referring to the ENTIRE budget for Discovery Institute (of which Biologic is just a part).
I said: The problem that many Darwinians have is that they often seem to forget the fact that the imaginative bridges btwn the evidence is just that, and some of them have a tendency (after they co-mingle evidence with imagination) and call it all “evidence.”
To which you responded “I would like to see a clear example of this from the peer-reviewed literature. i think you’re conflating what science writers do with what the scientists themselves do.”
Oh dear, you ARE kidding me, right?
For starters, go read “Betrayers of the Truth” by Broad and Wade. Then do some research on confirmation bias. That ought to get you going down the path I’m thinking of.
When every piece of evidence is viewed as evidence (by scientists) that must somehow fit into an evolutionary explantion, I’m not conflating anything here.
It’s a fact. Nearly all scientists do this (even if it’s only lip service) when they report on the evidence: everything they look at is viewed in the light of evolution. When they don’t understand how any evolutionary connection played a role in the development of a critter, they assume it did anyway, and they put up all kinds of stories about how they imageine it “must have”, “most certainly”, and “without question” had to have occurred (via evolution).
Go read anything by Feduccia (on Birds), or Robert Carroll (vertebrate paleontology). These guys and others all talk about how we don’t really understand how various fossil critters are related, but by their homology, we KNOW they must be related somehow.
A MUST READ is Barbara Stahl’s “Vertebrate History: Problems in Evolution.” She was a trooper for evolution,but you won’t find a more revealing account of what we don’t know (and things haven’t changed much since she wrote it)