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The Schlafly-Lenski Briefwechsel
| June 24, 2008 | Posted by William Dembski under Intelligent Design |
PZ Myers at the Panda’s Thumb draws our attention to an exchange between Andrew Schlafly and Richard Lenski (the impetus for the exchange is Lenski’s work running tens of thousands of generations of E. coli to produce some interesting, or not so interesting, evolution as the case may be). Myers thinks Lenski gets the better of the exchange. I would draw your attention to Lenski’s seething contempt and ask whether it betrays strength or weakness.
31 Responses to The Schlafly-Lenski Briefwechsel
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Lenski’s overreaction is worse than Schlafly’s overreaction; granted. But this is about strategy.
Schlafly chose to badger Lenski about his results, presumably because he felt a need to respond to the Coynes of the world and outrageous claims that are being made based on the paper. Unfortunately this can come across as simple bad manners. Schlafly appears to be insinuating that Lenski is dishonest and bullying him with threats of legal action.
We don’t know if the results Lenski reported are accurate—and we’ll never know. It will never be possible to prove that no evolution occurred, even if the same study is repeated with negative results. The best Schlafly can hope for is a Pyrrhic victory.
We do know, however, that Lenski’s own conclusions are quite modest: “We demonstrated that the evolution of this new function was contingent on the history of the population in which it arose.” No attempt is made to use the results to support the theory of evolution per se. And except for a little self-indulgence at the end, the paper is restrained and free from tendentious polemic.
So is it better, from a strategic point of view, to attempt to score points against Lenski through confrontation, knowing in advance that no conclusive result is possible, or can more good perhaps be done by taking up pure, sweet reason and explaining why his results can be interpreted to support ID and undermine Darwin’s narrative of effortless progression?