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More antics from PZ Myers?

November 3, 2006 Posted by scordova under Intelligent Design
74 Comments

You be the judge. I welcome commentary and contrary accounts as the comment by McGrew has not been independently confirmed. Here is what professor Tim McGrew had to say:

Let me put that more bluntly: Myers is lying through his teeth. Literally. He is actually that dishonest.

And not a single commentator on Panda’s Thumb for the past two months could be bothered to check Myers’s quotation against Wells’s actual words to see whether Myers was telling the truth.

This can be found in the comment section of My Denver Post Review of Two New Books on Darwinism and Intelligent Design by Douglas Groothuis.

excerpt:

Let’s start with Myers’s commentary leading up to what he presents as a quotation in which Wells quotes — according to Myers, misleadingly — the developmental biologist William Ballard. Myers’s own words are in italics.

This is the heart of Wells’s strategy: pick comments by developmental biologists referring to different stages, which say very different things about the similarity of embryos, and conflate them. It’s easy to make it sound like scientists are willfully lying about the state of our knowledge when you can pluck out a statement about the diversity at the gastrula stage, omit the word “gastrula”, and pretend it applies to the pharyngula stage.

Literally. He is actually that dishonest.

Now this is a very serious charge. If Wells is deliberately misleading his readers about Ballard’s meaning, then his credibility is definitely severely damaged.

Myers continues:

Here’s how Wells quotes William Ballard (a well known elder developmental biologist, who has done a lot of work on fish and is therefore familiar to me):

Myers then gives the following statement in a quote box, which I will reproduce here in bold:

It is “only by semantic tricks and subjective selection of evidence,” by “bending the facts of nature,” that one can argue that the early embryo stages of vertebrates “are more alike than their adults.” (pp. 35)

Myers goes on, after the box:

Always be suspicious when you see partial phrases quoted and strung together by a creationist. Little alarm bells should be going off like mad in your head.

This is from a paper in which Ballard is advocating greater appreciation of the morphogenetic diversity of the gastrula stage—that is, a very early event, one that is at the base of that hourglass, where developmental biologists have been saying for years that there is a great deal of phylogenetic diversity. Here’s what Ballard actually said:

Now we get another quote box, and again I’ll put the contents in bold:

Before the pharyngula stage we can only say that the embryos of different species within a single taxonomic class are more alike than their parents. Only by semantic tricks and subjective selection of evidence can we claim that “gastrulas” of shark, salmon, frog, and bird are more alike than their adults. (Ballard WW (1976))

Myers winds up his complaint:

See what I mean? He has lifted a quote from a famous scientist that applies to the gastrula stage, stripped out the specific referents, and made it sound as if it applies to the pharyngula stage. It’s a simple game, one he repeats over and over in this chapter.

What is much more significant is that Myers has misquoted Wells — not simply selectively quoted him, but out and out misquoted him, attributing to him in direct quotation something that is critically different from what Wells actually said.

Here, for comparison, is what Myers says Wells says, and what Wells actually says:

Attributed to Wells by Myers:

It is “only by semantic tricks and subjective selection of evidence,” by “bending the facts of nature,” that one can argue that the early embryo stages of vertebrates “are more alike than their adults.”

Wells’s actual words:

Dartmouth College biologist William Ballard wrote in 1976 that it is “only by semantic tricks and subjective selection of evidence,” by “bending the facts of nature,” that one can argue that the cleavage and gastrulation stages of vertebrates “are more alike than their adults.”

Wells’s actual wording supplies the very detail — that Ballard is referring to the cleavage and gastrulation stages — that Myers silently edits out of his quotation from Wells. Wells isn’t talking about the pharyngula stage. He never was. That is entirely Myers’s fabrication.

Let me rephrase that: Myers has changed Wells’s wording and then has the temerity to accuse Wells of misleading the reader at the very point where Myers himself has made the change in Wells’s words.

Let me put that more bluntly: Myers is lying through his teeth. Literally. He is actually that dishonest. And not a single commentator on Panda’s Thumb for the past two months could be bothered to check Myers’s quotation against Wells’s actual words to see whether Myers was telling the truth.

This sort of thing just frosts me. John and others who frequent PT and Pharyngula should be warned that they cannot take what they see there at face value.

(HT: DonaldM at teleological.org)
(Update: the words “I welcome commentary and contrary accounts as the comment by McGrew has not been independently confirmed” were added 11/6/06 in deference to objections suggesting this posting was like a newspaper article. To clarify, weblogs are opportunities for competing accounts to be discussed.)

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74 Responses to More antics from PZ Myers?

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  1. 61
    JehuNovember 3, 2006 at 4:58 pm

    Another PZ Myers lie?

    To add to what Sal just posted. Here is what PZ says on his blog, discussing Wells’ book:

    The previous paragraph quotes Sedgwick (1894) saying that “…a species is distinct and distinguishable from its allies from the very earliest stages all through the development.” Then Wells says, “Modern embryologists confirm this,” and uses the Bill Ballard quote. Bill Ballard did not confirm that at all. Ballard coined the term “pharyngula”, and in that paper he specifically affirms his acceptance of the idea of great similarity at the pharyngula stage, as I quoted above.

    Really? Ballard does not support Sedgwicks statement? Well, from the quote of Ballard’s paper that Todd posted, this is what Ballard says,

    In fact, the most obvious structural characteristics of either the eggs or the cleavage stages of a shark, a salmon, a frog, a bird, or a mammal are unique each to its own class, not generally shared. We would not consider them very much alike unless we had been taught so at a very early age. Very few vertebrates pass through a stage which can strictly be called a blastula. The embryo in its period of most active morphogenetic movements is usually called a gastrula, but as all agree this word has no morphologic meaning anymore. Each class of vertebrates (in mammals we might almost say each particular order) develops and then loses its own set of temporary structures – like the parade ground ‘formations of maneuver’ – during this period. The plain fact is that evolutionary divergence has taken place at every stage in the life history, the earliest no less than the latest. To bolster the partial truths in Von Baer’s generalities by insisting that the eggs of vertebrates are more like one another than their ‘blastulas,’ the blastulas more like one another than their ‘gastrulas,’ and to homologize all theoretical ‘functional blastopores’ where ‘invagination’ is taking place would be running the risk of assuming what is not yet demonstrate – that the genetic physiologic, and cell-behavior processes going on are the same in time and nature.”

    Notice how PZ doesn’t actually quote from the Ballard article, he just rambles on about the pharyngula stage.

  2. 62
    scordovaNovember 3, 2006 at 5:01 pm

    To assit the reader in seeing what’s going on here are the stages, for example, here are zebra fish development stagesZebrafish development. [I believe "h" stands for the number of hours]

    Cleavage Period (0.7- 2.2 h)

    Blastula Period (2 1/4 – 5 1/4 h)

    Gastrula Period (5 1/4 – 10 h)

    Segmentation Period (10-24 h)

    Pharyngula Period (24-48 h)

    Hatching Period (48-72 h)

    Early Larval Period

    PZ wrote in his PIG response:

    to me, for instance, anything before the pharyngula stage is early

    –PZ Myers

    Well the gastrula stage is before the pharyngula stage. So let’s revist Well’s rendering of Ballard:

    It is “only by semantic tricks and subjective selection of evidence,” by “bending the facts of nature,” that one can argue that the early embryo stages of vertebrates “are more alike than their adults.”

    Wells gives a plain English way of remembering the more technical rendering by Ballard

    Before the pharyngula stage we can only say that the embryos of different species within a single taxonomic class are more alike than their parents. Only by semantic tricks and subjective selection of evidence can we claim that “gastrulas” of shark, salmon, frog, and bird are more alike than their adults.

    So, PZ admists “before the pharyngula stage” = “early”

    Wells uses the phrase the early embryo stages. What’s the problem? PZ mischaracterizes what Wells said. Obfuscation and distortion.

  3. 63
    DonaldMNovember 3, 2006 at 5:19 pm

    Ironically, Myers writes in the original post at PT that is the source of this brouhaha, just after he accuses Wells of deliberate deception:

    Always be suspicious when you see partial phrases quoted and strung together by a creationist. Little alarm bells should be going off like mad in your head

    Methinks he dost protest too much!

  4. 64
    JehuNovember 3, 2006 at 5:19 pm

    My mistake, PZ does quote from Ballard, but it is so short that if you blink you miss it.

    “the pharyngula stage…is remarkably uniform throughout the subphylum.”

    Well, here is another quote about the pharyngula stage from Ballard’s Comparative Anatomy and Embryology (1964, p. 69)

    Some of these actual pharyngulas have a tailfin and some do not. Those which are tetrapods have lung buds, the fish pharyngulas lack them. They all have a liver, to mention an organ at random, but the livers of fishes, birds and mammals are interestingly different in detail even at the pharyngula stage. Arteries can be compared easily but there is little uniformity in the veins. Most conspicuously, the circumstances and needs for respiration, nutrition, and excretion at this stage have been met by a good many structures of a temporary nature, aptly referred to as scaffolding tissues, which are in bold contrast in the different classes of vertebrates.

  5. 65
    scordovaNovember 3, 2006 at 5:27 pm

    So the question remains regarding Myers claim:

    pluck out a statement about the diversity at the gastrula stage, omit the word “gastrula”, and pretend it applies to the pharyngula stage.

    How in the heck did Wells pretend that what was being discussed was the pharyngula stage? He used the phrase “early embryo stage” and on pages 30-31 we know Wells was referring to the gastrula stage as one of the early stages. Myers is not accurately representing Wells.

    Myers then takes this misrepresentation and uses it to claim Wells lied.

    Myers could of course clear things up and explain how it is that Wells is pretending Ballard’s comments about diversity apply to the pharyngula stage.

  6. 66
    toddNovember 3, 2006 at 5:28 pm

    Here is the entire ballard paper

    Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4

  7. 67
    toddNovember 3, 2006 at 5:29 pm

    Here is the entire ballard paper

    Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4

    You have to remove the UD URL to get to the images.

  8. 68
    toddNovember 3, 2006 at 5:30 pm

    That would be the following string: http://www.uncommondescent.com/archives/

  9. 69
    toddNovember 3, 2006 at 5:31 pm

    s89651507.onlinehome.us/Ballard1.gif
    s89651507.onlinehome.us/Ballard2.gif
    s89651507.onlinehome.us/Ballard3.gif
    s89651507.onlinehome.us/Ballard4.gif

  10. 70
    JehuNovember 3, 2006 at 5:41 pm

    And what about the pharyngula stage?

    Are embryos really that similar at that stage?

    Is there a highly conserved developmental stage across the subphyla?

    Whether there is or isn’t Wells doesn’t worry about it because he knows it is not material, he shows the same hourglass figure in his book that PZ uses on PT. But Wells may giving too much credit to this hourglass idea. As PZ himself points out:

    There is a fair amount of debate in the evo-devo community about the reality of the developmental hourglass, … serious embryology (none of which seems to be done by “intelligent design” proponents) demonstrates that there is a significant amount of variation within the phylotypic period.

    So for all the yelling about the pharyngula stage, it is all smoke and mirrors.

  11. 71
    scordovaNovember 3, 2006 at 6:00 pm

    Todd,

    Thank you so much for you help in linking to the papers for our scholarly study.

    Hey, what did you think of PZ weblog. Aren’t they the most congenial people in the world (note the sarcasm)?

    Sal

  12. 72
    scordovaNovember 3, 2006 at 6:07 pm

    in the interest of fair reporting, Tim McGrew had this to say:

    The “well-he-is-still-misusing-Ballard” charge is a separate one, and we can consider that independently. But it wasn’t the original charge Myers made. And the original charge was false and arose from careless reading of the call-outs without looking at the text, just as my original charge of outright fabrication was careless and arose from my reading of the text actually written by Wells rather than of the callouts written by some editor. Both charges, it now appears, were simply false. I’ve apologized to PZ. But PZ needs to apologize to Wells.

    Sooooo….how about it PZ, are you going to apologize to Dr. Wells or will you maintain the following misrepresentation where you Claim what Wells did to Ballard statement was to:

    pretend it applies to the pharyngula stage.

    I see little to no evidence to support that claim, in fact, quite the opposite since Wells used the word “gastrulation” 3 times on pages 30-31. Given you used that misrepresentation to call Wells a liar, I think a retraction on your part with an apology is in order.

  13. 73
    toddNovember 3, 2006 at 7:16 pm

    Sal, thanks for your support. Is it true you have a blender just for puppies? The howlers over at PZ’s place said so…

  14. 74
    DonaldMNovember 3, 2006 at 9:14 pm

    Speaking of “howlers”, Nick Matzke, the Minister of Disinformation over at the National Coaliation for the Saving of Evolution, has weighed in at “The Panda’s Thumb” with this version of today’s events:

    This morning, the ID guys were embarrassed – once again – when it was revealed that they didn’t know what they were talking about when they accused PZ Myers of lying by misquoting Wells in PIGDID. PZ dealt with this pretty darn convincingly over here.

    There you have it, folks, PZ has “convincingly” dealt with all of us silly “creationists” once again.

    Geesh! What a joke. This is even beneath Matzke’s usual standards of misinformation!!

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