That is false. I did not give him a poor review because of trust. I never claimed this.
Rather we evaluated DD on its own terms. It was given a poor evaluation. His response was not trustworthy. Rather than acknowledge unequivocal errors, he did “other” things. This makes it worse for him.
We continue to seek to engage with Behe to sort this all out. He has every opportunity to engage with us in good faith. It unfortunate that this has been difficult for him, but this is how science works.
Are you certain that Behe and @swamidass agree on the central thesis? It could prevent some misunderstanding to state what you think the central thesis is and see if @swamidass actually does agree with it.
@Nlents, I explained how you can “devolve” irreducible complexity with Constructive Neutral Evolution. The quotes are Lents™ 
Two other studies of the heterozygous mouse model - published in 1995 and 1996 - showed that these mice had significant defects in male fertility. If the polar bear mutations acted to lower the activity of its own APOB, results similar to those for the mouse might be expected. In other words, if Behe’s reasoning was correct, polar bear males should have serious fertility defects.
They almost certainly do not, which means his rationalization defending his claim that the polar bear APOB has only 50% of normal activity is not valid.
Yes. I know.
For the record. I don’t belive we set the record straight for anyone’s sake but our own. It is the right thing to do. There is no reason not to do so, especially on minor points like this, especially if you really did make a mistake.
Generally, when two groups disagree strongly about something, there is a tendency to
a) Over protect those on one’s own side.
b) Be over critical of the other side.
This gives an impression to the listener that group is biased and pre-committed to their viewpoint. And the entire discussion become “clanish”.
However, if the group actually self corrects errors, or accepts their mistakes readily. If Group members are willing to disagree with each other openly, it adds to trust.
I agree. I also note that more than one person immediately agreed out publicly an error was made. @NLENTS at the time was on vacation. I’m sure when he looks at it close, he will clarify how we misread him, or fix it.
I think the only reason it has taken this long in the first place is because:
There was a flurry of posts from ENV, most of them wildly misreading us. It was (and is) hard to keep track.
Nathan was on vacation in Dubai at the time, so was not able to deal with it immediately.
So, it was raised again in this podcast. I went on the record with my assessment. Let us see what happens from here.
Yes let us.
I listened to this and you did quite well. I learned a lot. Thanks.
What did you think went well? What did you learn?
You certainly showed how one can be a 21st century cutting edge scientist and a Christian. You clearly are an expert on evolutionary science and how science works. I see no problem with how you are advancing science through your work. And also I see how being a Christian actually helps your work as a scientist.
I realize before I ask that you may not want to elaborate, so feel free to decline to answer…
But…
Could you elaborate? How do you think being a Christian could help scientific work?
I was there, I posted my comment on the other thread. Congrats, you did great in what seemed to be a hostile crowd. My question was censored and he apparently took pleasure in censoring me.
agree with @swamidass. The truth sets us free and be the better man for it.
What was your question again?
I saw some of this and find it really interesting that this would even come up. Pointing out, with evidence, that some has ignored evidence in their argument is not an ad hominem. It is a statement about an argument, not a person. This is fairly obvious, at least I think it is. Certainly, I’ve been told several times (inaccurately) that I am “ignoring the evidence” against the genealogical Adam and Eve. I’ve never thought it was an ad hominem, but just a misguided objection. The response was to demonstrate that I had taken this evidence I had supposedly ignored into account. The objection is resolved, and we move one.
So, why, in this case, does pointing out that evidence was ignored by Darwin Devolves (and it was) constitute an ad hominem attack? That is a difficult question to answer with psychologizing blindly. We have stayed away from ad hominems. That is a fact. It seems that they are struggling to find a way to dismiss our critique.
I very much agree. ID is filling a vacuum, but people are looking for something different and better.
It has been an interesting and instructive experience facing a totally onslaught from the DI and finding out that most people do not know, much less care, about what DI says. When I get question, I point them to the to blog articles I wrote on this and that settles it. It seems that DI has lost everyone’s attention, if they ever had it.
There is an opportunity to do better. It will be more than just PS that will rise to the challenge, but I think we will play an important role.
The argument was muddled, but they were basically saying that because you had called Behe untrustworthy, your initial comments in the book review about him ignoring evidence should also be read as a personal attack, part of your agenda to discredit Behe. It seems a bit circular.
And let’s not forget #3., this isn’t exactly a pressing priority for me. And I mean that in both the “I’m extremely busy and backlogged this month” and the “I couldn’t possibly care less about the concerns of the DI” senses.
Also, just ftr, I was on vacation in Florida, visiting my parents. The next week, I was in Dubai speaking at a literature festival. It was all-expenses paid and that’s the only way I would go there. For a whole bunch of reasons, I would never take my family on vacation to Dubai. I just want to be clear about that.
When I get time, I’ll try to circle back to this, but I’m getting less inclined to do so all the time. I mean, at the very worst, I erred in how I described someone else’s position, not on the science itself. As usual, this is an effort in organized distraction (their famous squid ink approach), trying to move the spotlight of scrutiny from Behe’s litany of errors onto someone else. Within this very same topic (we are talking about chloroquine resistance in malaria, right?), Behe made errors both in his mathematics (taking inappropriate numbers and using them incorrectly) and in how he applies this phenomenon to the limits of unguided mutations. So his errors undercut the very thesis of his second book. So let’s try to keep perspective here when we’re talking about mistakes that need to be corrected.
That isn’t very convincing. APOB is known to be involved in cholesterol metabolism. Fertility is a highly complex trait that can be affected by many things. But nevertheless, a different prediction was made here. Behe predicts that the APOB gene has lost function in polar bears. You predict it hasn’t. We will see. I find it deeply disingenuous to claim this is an “error”. It’s a conclusion from the literature and Behe’s reasoning makes sense to me. At worst its a testable hypothesis. We’ve been here before.
I remember when Edge of Evolution came out and its critics spent years attacking Behe’s thesis by claiming chloroquine resistance didn’t require two mutations, when that was a perfectly reasonable conclusion from the literature. Behe was later vindicated on this, but even at the time the criticism didn’t make any sense. If the critics were right, it actually hurt the broader case for the effectiveness of natural processes, but they seemed not to understand this. Some still apparently do not. It seems certain quarters are again desperate to poke holes in Behe’s book out of a desire to discredit him to the public, which I personally could care less about.
His conclusion in this case is based on the literature, as it was then, and as it was then, I expect him to be correct and his critics to be irrational and resorting to an intellectual version of hysterics hoping that their lay audience won’t be able to navigate the scientific issues, as they were then. I have seen this dance before, and I trust Behe.
I will also note that only Arthur Hunt has actually responded on the substance, so thank you Arthur.