In The Wikipedia article
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Great. Iâm curious @evogradâs response and will think about it carefully. Family time now, so no one set a bomb off here while I am gone.
Ok, thatâs apparently an error, but a pretty trivial one. Itâs comparable to the article reporting that you had worn a green blouse that day wheras you had actually worn a blue one. Itâs not really what I had in mind when you initially said the article was full of âerrors and biasâ. I was picturing something a bit more insidious.
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Oh do you have to leave so soon. I was enjoying this so much. I wish that Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, and Nathan Lents could join us here. You could charge an admission fee. Even the trial lawyers from FFRF would enjoy this.
Read Brooks report and then read mine. Then read what the blogosphere did other it.
https://pandasthumb.org/archives/2008/02/id-intelligent.html
https://evolutionnews.org/2012/07/what_really_hap_1/
Here is the blogosphere on the subject:
I once stood in front of an audience for what seemed an eternity while a questioner called me a liar and a fraud, suppressing results for money, andâŚyou get the idea. I told him what really happened but he wouldnât listen. He was sure what he had read was trueâ or he was just out to humiliate me.
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From Evolution News 7/2012 above Ann says"
In June 2007, I attended a private conference in Boston, commemorating the famous Wistar Symposium of 1966. All participants were asked to keep the proceedings confidential â and all did.
This exercise may shed some light on the way science is done.
No science isnât done like that. Science is about collaboration, open conferences, published proceedings.
Patrick, I am warning you to stop baiting Dr. Gauger. This is about substance, not some silly PR âbrownie pointâ game youâre playing. Cease and desist.
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Thanks Guy.
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WIth respect, I donât think anyone is denying that ID proponents sometimes get misrepresented, or that they sometimes get treated with contempt as a result (or for other reasons). Thatâs pretty trivially true. What I was interested in when I first asked my question was (insidious) examples of the âerrors and biasâ that you said that wikipedia article specifically was full of.
So far youâve given the example of a quote from Daniel Brooks that was apparently in error in saying that HGT was involved in your microbial experiment. While that should of course be corrected, I was hoping for something more juicy. Do you have some more alarming examples from that wikipedia article?
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Great that you ask good questions, although being âtreated with contemptâ is never merely âtrivially trueâ for the one experiencing it, and a lack of empathy is not the best way to encourage a response. It takes courage for Dr. Gauger to keep swimming against the tide. I am thankful for her efforts, as is atheist philosopher Thomas Nagle, generally, if you need a name or two dropped.
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Read the article, and tell me itâs fair and unbiased. Read Brookâsaccount, which is completely wrong, and tell me he was fair and unbiased. Read the Skeptic piece than and ask yourself if that is the way to treat anybody.
The alarming stuff is in the link I posted first, for any of you who want a career in academia. Rick Sternberg made the mistake of publishing a paper by Steve Meyer on the Cambrian explosion, that had passed peer review.
He lost one job, had his keys and access to the collections at the Smithsonian taken away, was assigned to an office in outer Siberia, had his personal and political life investigatedâread his web page if you doubt me. Congress said he had definitely been harassed, but they had no jurisdiction. Read the other stories too.
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A video on evolution from the Vice President of the United States
Again, I donât know why the topic has suddenly become how unfairly you and others get treated. I asked about the errors you percieved in the wikipedia article that Patrick linked in the OP. Nothing more.
Regarding Sternberg, perhaps the most high-profile case of âdiscriminationâ, I think this article shows convincingly that Sternberg has misrepresented quite a bit of what happened:
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Who was not vice president at the time, but who was later so chosen by the people. In the culture wars, this is hardly a topic that a leader can stay completely silent on, but that every leader does suffer from an inescapable hazard regarding: the scientific âconsensusâ changes so fast these days, itâs 1) hard to stay abreast of, therefore 2) hard to respond cogently to, 3) a matter of adjusting to new information, and even paradigm changes, so that NOT EVEN SCIENTISTS within their own discipline can count on things staying roughly the same from when they were earning their degrees. Thatâs why its called âthe biological revolution,â and the real experts are recognized by their tentativity, appreciation of opposing views and arguments, and whose proposals for resolution are often truly constructed out of bits and pieces of what was once considered paradoxical.
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I happen to know Dr. Sternberg personally, and can vouch for his complete integrity on these matters.
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I told you and Josh told you several âerrors.â Publications not mentioned, ie tha claim we had done no research, the green screen thing, and Wistar ii.
Listen, you donât know Sternberg. I do. That piece is pure propaganda. I was around when all that was happening, and I heard what was going on from the parties involved.
If we could go have a drink together, I could tell you face to face how ID people are treated. Case after case. Then I could look you in the eye and ask, âDo you believe me?â
Should any academic be subject to such treatment for what amounts to an intellectual position? What happened to academic freedom or freedom of speech? This has happened even to tenured professors. Whatever you think about ID this isnât right.
Professors can say almost anything they want, with impunity, except âhate speechâ âŚand ID. There is a difference, donât you think?
I am not trying to overthrow the government, or to wreck the economy. I donât want to destroy Science either.
Go ahead. Minimize whatever I say. I canât persuade you if you already have decided whatâs true.
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I see that the bomb that went off was somewhat contained.
No one is denying ID proponents face a lot of abuse. That is obviously true. No one is claiming that scientists are open to ID arguments right now. They are not.
The bigger question is about whether specific charges are factually true or false. Many are true, and many are false. I do think it is in everyones interest to get the facts straight. It is everyoneâs interest to find common language so we can talk about what what happened.
The biggest question is how did this situation arise? That question can only be dealt with after we can talk about facts with out outsized responses. We are not close to a common understanding. ID, as I understand it, blames it on bias. Most scientists, on the other hand, say it is an appropriate reaction to shenanigans.
Let me tell you where I can agreeâŚ
- The other publications were not mentioned.
- The focus on the stock photo is silly.
- The accusation that Gauger lied does not appear correct (nor did Brooks say you lied, nor does the wiki article).
Any one who paints #3 as you lying is wrong. Does that appear any where in the wikipedia article?
So I have read the articles carefully.
Part of the problem going on here is the idiosyncratic use of the work âinformationâ in ID. Here is what he writes:
Gunther Wagner congratulated Dr. Gauger on doing some great experimental work, but noted some logical inconsistencies in inferenceâŚ[@agauger] was then prompted by one of her colleagues to regale us with some new experimental finds. She gave what amounted to a second presentation, during which she discussed âleaky growth,â in microbial colonies at high densities, leading to horizontal transfer of genetic information, and announced that under such conditions she had actually found a novel variant that seemed to lead to enhanced colony growth. Gunther Wagner said, âSo, a beneficial mutation happened right in your lab?â at which point the moderator halted questioning. We shuffled off for a coffee break with the admission hanging in the air that natural processes could not only produce new information, they could produce beneficial new information.
Here is what you writeâŚ
Gunter Wagner (and most of the other participants, I assume) knew that the mutant strain I found did not solve the problem I had posed â namely, how new enzyme functions, or the ability to make biotin, arise in the first place. It was beneficial only in the sense that the mutant cells could scavenge biotin from the medium better than before, which allowed them to grow better. In fact, he probably realized that it demonstrated just how sensitive my assay was. If the cells could find a way to make or find even a little biotin, it would have been enough for them to grow.
In his leaked report, Dan Brooks claimed that I had found a mutant with beneficial new information . This is stretching things quite a bit. What I probably found was a mutant with an extra copy of the genes required to transport biotin from the medium, or with a higher affinity for biotin. That kind of mutation would help glean every available biotin molecule, but it would not help make biotin in the first place. There was no new genetic function generated, or sufficient information to make biotin. In the end, this adaptation would be a dead end for these cells once exogenous biotin was exhausted.
In my understanding, the mutant did produce the new information to survive better with low biotin. The fact you presented this data is de facto evidence you were being honest, by the way. It was not, however, the specific type of new information you were looking for in your experiment. I get the point. I think everyone else does too.
It seems that Brooks did really represent the situation correctly. He just used the term âinformationâ in a different way then you. This is not actually a telling of the story that calls you dishonest, as I read it. Quite the opposite. Nor does could I find any place in that article that Brooks called you dishonest. I think what happened was a cultural clash, difference in use of the word âinformation.â The wiki article seems to get it correct:
As reported by Daniel Brooks, ââŚshe discussed âleaky growth,â in microbial colonies at high densities, leading to horizontal transfer of genetic information, and announced that under such conditions she had actually found a novel variant that seemed to lead to enhanced colony growth. Gunther Wagner said, âSo, a beneficial mutation happened right in your lab?â at which point the moderator halted questioning.â[29] Gauger herself has reported a different take on this meeting, saying that the point was not whether there was a beneficial mutation (which Gauger agrees there was) but whether or not the organism had manufactured a new way to make biotin, which it had not (it had merely been able to better scavenge it from the environment). Additionally, Brooks implied that the questioning was cut short because of the question, while Gauger holds that this was simply an amusing question at the end of the session.[30]
Let us grant that there was no horizontal gene transfer. That is really beside the point. Iâm not sure what is unfair or unbiased bout this paragraph. Brooksâs take on the story was explained, as was yours. No conclusions was drawn about who was right. In fact it seems easy to see how both of you are right. He is making one point, and you are making the other. There does not appear to be a conclusion that you lied. Rather, it is clear, just as you explain, that you are using ânew informationâ in differnet ways.
Can you clarify why this is such an unfair telling? It sounds like it undermines your public argument more than the specific scientific point you were making, or your personal honesty.
Now, getting to the rational skepticism blog, this is what it says:
So, in summary,: Gauger lies about her own research and continues to deny what is blatantly obvious on even a cursory reading: Her own research debunked one of the fundamental precepts of Intelligent Design and demonstrated that beneficial new information can arise in a genome thru Darwinian mechanisms.
The first claim does not seem fair. It does not appear you were lying about the results. That wasnât fair or correct. This however was not the article in the OP. He posted a wikipedia article on the BioLogics institute that appears to give the key parts of the story in a balanced way. What am I missing?
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Of course not. No one is saying that.
That is not fair. He was wrong.
To be clear, however, that is not happening here, nor is is that in the wikipedia article.
It is true. Identifying with ID will call down a lot of abuse on anyone in science. The real question is why?
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