I couldn’t comment responsibly on hypothetical political motivations within the University of Chicago. I’m not on-site, and don’t know the personalities and professional quarrels between biological sub-disciplines.
That applies to Larry Moran, Ken Miller, Dennis Venema, and many others who are not criticized on that score in these debates. It probably also applies to a good number of the biologists posting comments here, yet they feel confident in their knowledge of evolutionary biology. So I’m not sure what the point of your remark is. Is it that only professors of evolutionary biology (or members of “committees on evolutionary biology”) have the knowledge to comment on evolutionary mechanisms? Is that your position?
None of us are challenging the field of evolutionary biology to tell them they have had it all wrong for decades. The standards are higher for Shapiro.
This is especially true because they are loosing, and most evolutionary biologists reject EES outright because of the pseudo-history. In situations like this, credentials are a great signaling factor for outsiders to figure out who is right.
Maybe, but I suspect that a good number of laymen think that credentials are often appealed to inconsistently in these debates, and that this has devalued arguments from credentials.
He has done years of experimental and theoretical work on the genetics and mutations of unicellular organisms, and his credentials are not relevant to mechanisms of evolutionary change? When life for most of its existence on this planet was unicellular?
More exactly, “he’s a professor of molecular biology at one of the world’s greatest universities” is not relevant to his authority on matters of evolution. Do I have to remind you again that you made that attempt to assert his authority?
Now, which of his published papers do you find most relevant to the subject of mechanisms of evolutionary change? We could discuss that.
Then why is Larry Moran, molecular biologist, regarded by so many followers of these debates as an oracle of evolutionary theory? What’s the rule here: that molecular biologists who moonlight as evolutionary theorists are qualified to do that if they endorse mainstream thinking, but unqualified if they don’t?
Read his book. It captures the drift of years of his papers, plus the drift of much other research done by others. There’s lots and lots about evolutionary change in there.
In my case, I have great respect for Larry because he has been writing very thoughtfully about evolution for many years. I first came to know of him via “talk.origins” on usenet. And, incidentally, that’s also where I first came to know of @John_Harshman.
No, the rule is that people who make valid arguments and properly interpret the literature they’re citing ought to be listened to, credentials don’t mean much, and irrelevant credentials mean nothing. Of course Larry isn’t a molecular biologist; he’s a biochemist. It isn’t his credentials that make him worth paying attention to. And it isn’t Shapiro’s credentials that make him not worth listening to.
You appealed to his research to support his credentials. I’m asking for that support. His book is not research. His papers (the ones that aren’t reviews or opinion pieces) would be research. But are they research that supports the claims of his book?
@eddie I hope you are listening to @John_Harshman. He is spot on regarding Shapiro, Moran, etc. You are a scholar. It seems you are applying different standards to evolutionary biology than you do to your own field. If you applied to the same rules, this would not be so complex for you.
I apply the same standards in all academic fields. That is, I think that what Department a person did his Ph.D. in is irrelevant, and I think the title of the Department he/she currently works in is irrelevant. I think that the only thing that is relevant is his/her knowledge of the subject matter.
As far as I understand it, Glipsnort’s Ph.D. is in Physics. So is he incompetent to talk about evolutionary theory? I don’t think anyone here would say that. I think everyone here would say that the mechanical application of labels would be absurd – that what counts is knowledge of a field, not one’s academic history or formal credentials.
John Harshman is implying that because Shapiro’s field is “molecular biology”, he is rightly ostracized by evolutionary theorists, and not allowed to participate in the Committee on Evolutionary Theory at Chicago. But he doesn’t say that Larry Moran, in the same field, should be ostracized by evolutionary theorists at the University of Toronto. So whatever criteria he is applying, they aren’t the criteria of formal labels that he purports to be applying.
Obviously if Shapiro has done real experimental work on mutations in bacteria, he has some knowledge relevant to evolutionary theory, if only to the evolution of bacteria (which are a large part of life on the earth).
I have no idea why Shapiro is not on Chicago’s Committee. For all I know, he never asked to be on it. Or maybe he was invited, and declined. John Harshman is implying – without saying so directly – that Shapiro is consciously kept out by the others. I don’t find this kind of indirect allegation very helpful. Either John should say outright that he knows the other guys at Chicago are keeping Shapiro off the Committee, or he should not speculate about it at all.
In any case, the fact that someone is kept off a Committee does not prove that it’s because his knowledge base is irrelevant to the work of the Committee – as John Harshman is implying. It could just as easily be that the members of the Committee don’t agree with his theoretical perspective. If Lehigh University were to start a Committee on Evolutionary Thought, I am pretty sure they would not include Michael Behe on it, despite his doctoral and NIH post-doctoral work on mutations and malaria – but they might well include one or more other biochemists from the school whose views on evolution were more congenial. This sort of thing happens in academics all the time. To me these political matters are not worth discussing. Some academics have contempt for the views of other academics, even for other academics who share their field and have research credentials as good as their own. I already knew that. It’s not peculiar to evolutionary theory – it’s found in all departments of the university.
I agree. But of course, “valid arguments” and “properly interpret” are often open to debate.
It’s not a record of his current experiments, no. So what? That is not its purpose. It is written as an overview of the state of knowledge in a field, as of the date it was published. As such, it might state things that are true, and might provide evidence for them from hundreds of articles produced throughout years of peer-reviewed literature (which it does). But you aren’t interested in reading it to find out.
You can find that out by reading his research papers – he gives a complete list of them on his university website – and by reading his book, and comparing the two. If you actually do this, I would listen to your conclusions with respect. But right now, you are dismissing him without reading him, based on hearsay – and compounding the prejudice by drawing speculative inferences about why he’s not on the Committee for Evolutionary Theory at Chicago. This is not constructive.
In the original paragraph you wrote, you stressed that his field was not “evolutionary biology”, and then went on immediately to juxtapose that fact with his failure to “make it” onto the Committee on evolutionary theory at the University of Chicago. Maybe you didn’t make the connection explicit, but it sure looked as if you were saying that molecular biologists shouldn’t be butting their noses into evolutionary theory, and that he was rightly excluded because he was out of his field. And my point was that a molecular biologist might know a great deal about evolutionary theory, especially about evolution in bacteria, if he has done experimental work in that area. So if he’s excluded, it’s not because he has no familiarity with evolutionary theory, but because others don’t like his conclusions about evolutionary theory. But I have no knowledge that he has been excluded, and you have provided no evidence that he has been. You’ve merely implied the exclusion.
Look, this discussion isn’t going anywhere. If you don’t want to read Shapiro’s books and articles, don’t read them. All I ask is that if you say he is wrong, you cite statements from him rather than rely on the low opinion that some other biologists have of him.
OK, fair enough. I shouldn’t have said “knowledge in the field”. It is presenting an overview of a new way of looking at evolution, but also an overview of the experimental literature which in his view provides justification for that new way of looking at evolution. But that doesn’t change the point I was making to John Harshman. He was complaining that the book wasn’t a report of specific research. My point was that this wasn’t its purpose. It’s purpose was synthetic. Whether or not it succeeds in its purpose is another matter, but it shouldn’t be judged by the expectations for a research article when it’s a book presenting an overview. You don’t fault a scholarly book advocating new principles of literary criticism because it isn’t a 15-page technical analysis in a literary journal on the dramatic structure of Act III of Shakespeare’s Othello.
You need to understand the context: it was in response to what you wrote. As I’ve said, it was an attack on your credentialism, not an attempt to assert credentialism on my part.
Now, if you don’t want to discuss his scientific work, there seems no way to determine if he’s out to lunch or not.