New Lecture on Trees of Life, Science, and Christianity

Conversation Side Conversation
, ,
142

Anyone can find single examples of anything by searching for words or phrases on the internet. The ability to show single isolated examples doesn’t prove that usage is common. The use of the word “colleagues” is not common among everyday working folks. Most of the people posting here have at least one university degree, and many have several, and many have medical degrees or work in and around universities or medical schools etc. where the term is more common. But it’s not street language. I know this from living in the real world, as opposed to spending my entire life in schools, as you doubtless have from elementary through high school to undergrad to med school to specialization in psychiatry to your current position at the University of Toronto. I have spend a huge portion of my life relating to small businessmen, tradesmen, hotel bellhops, factory workers, non-credit continuing ed. students from all walks of life, etc. I haven’t heard them talking about “colleagues” very often. You won’t convince me by quick lookups on the internet that what I know from 60+ years of personal observation (probably 20-30 years longer than you’ve been alive) is false. And it’s a sign of how easily you are distracted from substantive issues that you’d invest precious time quarrelling about a word I used only in passing in response to something else.

I want confirmation from a dozen sources other than John Harshman. Can you provide them, or not? If not, I suggest you sit out and let people with knowledge do so. Author, title, date, page numbers, please.

143

Now that’s hurtful.

2 Likes
144

Yes, and not only do I know this, I said it. But then Mercer said it applied to undergrad students as well as grad students and others, and that was what I was objecting to. It’s not normal usage among undergrad lab partners. That’s all I meant. But as usual here, Mercer and Faizal want to make a big federal case out of a simple comment.

I’ve used them as well, for a whole summer in the oil processing industry. The working-class guys that taught me my job didn’t use words like “colleague”.

You have now:

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english-german/fork-lift

It is also sometimes spelled as two words:

And of course, only you would raise such a pedantic point in what is purportedly a serious biological discussion.

I mentioned the article, and articles linkable from it, in order to give additional support to Buggs’s claim. At least the linkable articles do that, even if the first article doesn’t mention specifically “professors”.

You’re being evasive. Are you saying that the hundreds (probably thousands) of undergrad biology students who have reported aggressive remarks about their faith are all (a) lying or (b) misinterpreting wholly innocent comments?

Whose rules? Yours? I’m getting tired of hearing you tell other people how they should argue, what they should and shouldn’t say. Why don’t you try answering my question? I asked not for what you could prove, but what you think. Do you think that there has never been a case where biology profs attacked Christians or Christianity in class, or do you think it has happened sometimes? Can you answer that straight question?

145

Yes, I accept this. And I already modified my original claim, granting Harshman that the first article I mention did not specifically mention professors, but “lab colleagues.” The point is that the disparaging comments were found in the biology ethos, and that is what the Christian was remarking on. And according to Buggs, who holds a teaching position and presumably is in touch with professor and students today, professors outside of labs also sometimes produce such comments, in classrooms.

I’m still trying to figure out if Harshman and others here think that Buggs is lying when he says that, or, if they don’t think that, how they account for Buggs’s perception, which was so strong he felt justified in talking about it in his inaugural lecture. You’ve already granted that it very probably happens sometimes, so my disagreement is not with you. Why the others here can’t simply say something like, “Yes, it happens sometimes, but not frequently,” is beyond me. There seems to be a Pavlovian reflex here requiring that any time Eddie posts anything, all atheists contradict everything he says. Not a point, not even a half-point, is ever to be granted to me by the atheists. Even my hyphenation of “forklift” must be contradicted. It’s pretty puerile for adult scientists to behave in this reflexively partisan way.

Are most scientists like the ones posting here, so quarrelsome about tiny points? Or are we getting a non-representative sample of scientists here? I hope it’s the latter. I used to think highly of scientists, but after 15 years of conversing with some of them on origins sites, my opinion of them has gone way down.

146

It does apply to undergrads when they are in real labs, which many, probably most, undergrads do on the way to grad school.

Which was irrelevant in the context of your voluminous babble alleging anti-Christian prejudice.

I’m pretty sure that you’ve written more words about it than we have.

That’s a compound adjective. It should be hyphenated.

That’s an English-German dictionary. It’s not in the English dictionary as a hyphenated noun. That’s pathetic, Eddie.

This is the place where you falsely accuse me of overstatement. Ready?

I didn’t say it wasn’t, did I?

Again, you’ve written far more than I have, Captain Pedantic.

There has never been anything serious about it, since you aren’t even slightly interested in the free evidence, just going on and on about what people say. We’re just watching you dig hole after hole.

147

Have you considered trying to discuss some larger ones?

I don’t believe that for a second.

I’d predict that for the example organisms Dawkins offered, almost all genes would give insignificant or no differences in trees. Why don’t you try a few hundred and get back to us?

Wasn’t that the big point you tried, and failed, to make?

148

That was definitely not the case at the major research university where I was. Hardly any science undergrads had lab jobs while still in undergrad. Not many, and nowhere near “most.” What happens today, and in your part of the world, I cannot say.

Rubbish. You’re talking to a professional editor. A solid compound word can be used adjectivally. And in this case, it quite often is:

https://www.linde-mh.com/en/Products/Forklift-Truck/

You don’t think the professional philologists who put together English-German dictionaries are competent in English?

The English dictionary? You think there is only one English dictionary? I’d say there are dozens. Did you check them all?

I did. I raised the important question, also raised by Buggs, whether some Christian students who were interested in biology were choosing not to enter graduate school in biology because of a perceived anti-Christian ethos. If this is true, it is something that should be seriously addressed by biology professors, department chairs, deans, etc. And if it’s not true, it needs to be refuted.

Why? If you won’t listen to Buggs, an expert on plant genomics, you certainly wouldn’t listen to me. Why don’t you respond to his examples?

149

I’m beginning to think, and perhaps I should have known, that the best response is not to engage with you.

3 Likes
150

I couldn’t care less what you believe. I’ve admired scientists since I was a little kid. I remember reading about J. Tuzo Wilson and Maurice Ewing when I was about 10, and admiring them. I remember reading about Allan Sandage, and admiring him. I’ve admired Einstein, Heisenberg, and countless others. I admired Jastrow and Asimov and Sagan. I admire Darwin. (One can think a scientist is wrong but still think he’s a good scientist.) I admire Gould for his Structure of Evolutionary Theory, and for his deep interest in the history of his field.

My disenchantment with scientists has come when they show a dogmatic streak and a desire to stamp out scientific heretics. We see that regarding origins issues, regarding global warming, and in many other areas. Scientists have become politicized and polemical, and often vulgar and violent in their means of expression. The sad thing is that, instead of seeing that this kind of behavior is part of what has turned the public against science, they blame all the public disaffection with scientists on the public itself. Well, they are paying the price for their arrogance and bad manners, in terms of diminished public influence. They are no longer as trusted as they once were.

I don’t feel sorry for them. They should clean up their act. The moderate, sensible, fair, non-polemical scientists should step up into the public light, and make clear that the hot-headed ideologues don’t speak for science, and that real science is much more cautious and qualified in its claims. That would win the public back to respect for scientists as people who can be trusted.

In fact, someone like Buggs is far more likely to cause people to trust scientists than someone like Dawkins or Coyne. Buggs speaks gently, with good manners, and projects a humility which is absent in those others. He comes across in his lecture as a likable person, the kind of person you’d like as a neighbor or friend or uncle, not, like so many of the mouthy scientists, as an arrogant boor.

151

Nothing would please me more than if you stopped your nit-picking engaging, which is about half to three-quarters the contents of your replies to me. When you actually discuss science, instead of trying to catch me out on how I say things, I learn the odd point from you, but you can’t seem to stick to straight science; you always throw in some needling.

In the meantime, I note that you refuse to answer the questions: In your view, are there some biologists who make digs against Christianity or Christian students in the classroom? And is Buggs lying when he says there are? Or is he just mistaken? And how would you account for such a mistake, given that it’s not Buggs alone who reports this, but many other people?

152

It’s competitive, but in the Canadian context I know undergrad students who secured funded lab positions from freshman onward, both through summer and carrying on part time in session. This is especially true with the programs that are tougher to get into to begin with.

Have you read / listened to much of Neil Shubin or Sean B. Carroll, writers that are secular, but in my mind are not abrasive? Donald R. Prothero is also worth reading on the fossil record, a bit more impatient with what he considers science denial, but not anti-Christian per se.

2 Likes
153

I said nothing about jobs. You really don’t have a clue. As I wrote,

Jobs? I said nothing about jobs and I said nothing about the proportion of undergrads. “Most” referred to the successful ones who got into good grad schools, not undergrads in general. They tend to have worked in labs. Not had jobs in labs.

Have you considered reviewing elementary set theory?

Yet you keep making ridiculous claims and false attributions about my own experience. Why?

Of course it can. But if two separate words are used adjectivally, they need a hyphen.

Do you not realize what PIs spend a lot of time doing?

From the same source.

You didn’t.

For someone who prattles on about threads sticking to subjects, you sure avoid doing so.

What happened to trees?

What happened to Buggs’s claim:

Who are some of these “most others”?

You wrote:

You seem to have lost interest in the first part. Why?

I’m talking about evidence, your Kryponite, not your expertise.

That would go with your always despising me.

Testing hypotheses is dogmatism?

That’s more effective for fooling people like you, fer sure.

That’s also more effective for fooling people like you, fer sure.

I go for evidence. You avoid it generally, and grossly misrepresent it when you try to engage with it.

154

In the US, undergrads are rarely paid in the context to which I was referring; the only semblance of payment is a two-page recommendation letter that gushes about the student’s great hands and great mind.

I wasn’t talking about paid positions. Eddie just made that up.

155

You’re confusing expressions such as “meat-eating dinosaurs” with the sort of example I gave. Once a phrase originally derived from two separate words is accepted as a single word, it no longer needs a hyphen when used adjectivally. Hence, you can write “quicksand pit”; you don’t have to write “quick-sand pit”. Similarly, you can write “forklift truck” (as I showed some truck merchants in fact do) without the hyphen, if you regard “forklift” as an established unitary word.

The contradiction here is that you complained about my use of a hyphen in “fork-lift”, and now you are insisting that the two words, if used adjectivally, need a hyphen. Yet I was implying an adjectival use, because in my mind, “fork-lift” is just a shortened form of “fork-lift truck”. That is, when I write “fork-lift” or “fork lift” or “forklift”, I’m always thinking the unwritten word “truck” afterward. Had I expressed the noun “truck,” by your rule, I would have had to put a hyphen in “fork-lift”, but even when “truck” is not expressed, it’s what I’m thinking, so it’s perfectly logical (that is, in the spirit of your rule, if not according to the letter) to write it. But of course, as I said above, your rule is not a rule anyway.

In fact, there has always been considerable fluidity regarding hyphens, and quite often, three distinct forms are found in actual usage: two words (space and no hyphen), two words (with hyphen), and one word (two words fused into one, no hyphen or space). Dictionaries tend to list the predominant form in current usage, but it’s rarely the case that the other two possibilities are never found.

Had you used the word, whether you had written “fork lift” or “fork-lift” or “forklift”, I’d never have bothered to mention it, regardless of my own preference. But then, I’m not a pedant, and I’m not out to score debating points over every word my opponents use.

Just as a footnote: I edit many books with science content, and it appears that many modern scientists do not agree with you that two words used together as an adjective require a hyphen. For example, many, perhaps most, would write, “sickle cell anemia” rather than “sickle-cell anemia”. They regard the adjectival character of the two-noun phrase as sufficiently obvious in context that the hyphen does not need to be put in. Similarly, they would usually write, “dwarf star density” rather than “dwarf-star density”, since it’s obvious which two words are adjectival and which word is being modified. And as long as they spell such phrases consistently in their writing, I don’t “correct” them by applying a mechanical rule such as you suggest.

156

I didn’t make it up. I mistakenly assumed that paid positions were meant. Science programs are difficult enough as it is, and if some undergrad student is working, say, 10-15 hours a week in a professor’s lab, that’s a big chunk of time away from his homework and studying for his exams, and I was just assuming the prof would pay the student, if only the minimum legal wage, for the sacrifice of time. I knew many students in Arts who were working 10-25 hours in restaurants etc. to make enough money to keep going to school; only the remuneration could justify the loss of essay-research and essay-writing time (which loss might well mean they earned only a B instead of an A in their courses). Maybe rich science students, who have all their tuition and living expenses covered, can afford to give 10 or 15 hours a week free to their profs, but poorer ones, who need to supplement their incomes to go to school at all, would probably use that 10 to 15 hours a week to pump gas or make pizzas, to make ends meet.

157

IOW, it was a total fabrication.

So what? It’s more important than either if one’s goal is graduate school. I clearly explained that already and you predictably ignored it.

Again:

The undergrad is learning how to do science, not sacrificing time. Most scientific fields are about doing, not rhetoric.

More probably, you don’t have a clue how science works (which is why you are so easily duped) and can’t admit it.

:rofl: :joy:That, immediately following your outpouring of pure pedantry, reflects an incredible lack of self-awareness and/or self-control.

Let’s keep in mind that you characterized the fact that the ribosome is a ribozyme, a fact that won a Nobel Prize, as pedantry because you were so easily fooled by Meyer’s scam.

158

You completely ignored my point about how poor students could afford to volunteer time when they were having to work hours outside of school as it is. I surmise that you, and most of the people you are referring to, were of such upper-middle-class background that funding was never an issue in their education; if Mom and Dad cheerily fork over the dough for tuition, books, and living expenses, then the student doesn’t have to work nights or weekends or summers to make ends meet. Some of us, however, had to work full-time every summer to earn enough to go back to school, and even then fell a bit short.

Regarding your point about doing lab work to get into grad school, I can only speak from my experience, which may now be out of date. In my day whether or not you were accepted at graduate school depended primarily on your grades in undergrad. If you got “A” grades in undergrad you would almost certainly be accepted in most graduate schools. Of course, profs had to write letters, too, but they’re not going to write a bad letter for an “A” student. Sure, they might write a more glowing letter for an “A” student who had also spent time volunteering in a lab, but there were lots of people accepted to grad school and good students would all get in, maybe not at their school of first choice, but at some decent graduate school. So volunteer work in a lab, while it might help, was not regarded as essential to get into grad school. But things might be different nowadays than they were in the 1970s. If so, it’s sad, because it means we live in a less open society where the best opportunities are available only to the privileged few for whom money is not an issue.

159

Thanks for this information. Of course, if the students had funded lab positions over the summer, they would not then need to get a summer job in a factory to have money for next year’s schooling. I certainly would say it makes perfect sense for a student aiming at grad school to compete for such funded positions, because they are a win-win proposition. But volunteer lab work, if it’s a significant amount of time weekly, or if it requires giving up summer employment, is very much a win-lose proposition (good for grad school entrance, bad for the pocketbook), and one poorer students are less likely to accept.

I haven’t yet read Shubin or Carroll, though of course I’ve heard of them. I believe you when you say they are less abrasive; I have not known them to enter into combat in places like this, or to run nasty little blogs like P. Z. Myers’s. I read a good essay by Don Prothero once, where he was reviewing serious scientific literature on the thesis “macroevolution is not simply the sum of bits of microevolution,” and wrote in a very balanced way, which generated some respect in me. I read it online and can’t remember the title of it or where I found it.

I think the main thing is that “you can disagree without being disagreeable,” and that scientists who observe that maxim in their public writing and speaking are likely to generate public trust, while scientists who fail to observe it are likely to generate the opposite. People tend to trust people they like, and distrust people they don’t like.

The other thing is that most people tend to trust writers and speakers who are capable of conceding points to an opponent, who don’t feel the need to contradict everything the person on the other side says. The appearance of being one-sided or dogmatic generates distrust. Thus, a scientist who criticizes an ID book while granting that the author makes a few worthwhile points is more likely to appeal to an undecided reader than a scientist who seems to have a personal vendetta against ID and its proponents, and writes “reviews” that go like: “Page 1 – garbage; Page 2, trash; Page 3, pseudoscience; Page 4, the author is an ignoramus; Page 5 – the author is lying; Page 6 – the author is plotting a theocracy; Page 7 – the author misspelled a chemical name and therefore must be incompetent…”

1 Like
160

You have no relevant experience.

That’s silly. I applied to grad schools in 1979, and you are utterly wrong.

“Eddie got an A in my class” is a nothingburger to an admissions committee assessing scientific talent and drive. I know this from both sides.

No, Eddie, you miss the point completely. Not just a lab, one’s own lab. It’s not about the volunteering. It’s about the learning.

They’re the same, because my day was in the 70s. Again, you don’t have the slightest clue. Stop digging.

161

1-- Yes, an admissions committee would be interested not just in grades but in “scientific talent and drive”. That’s obvious. But how would they assess “scientific talent and drive” in a student from 1,000 miles away that they have never met? Presumably, primarily on the basis of letters from the student’s teachers or lab supervisors (which obviously would mention volunteer experience if there was any), though if a student wrote an exceptionally good application letter, that could be a factor, too. What else would they use to determine “talent and drive”?
2-- Are you saying that no teacher would ever say in a reference letter that a student had “scientific talent and drive” unless that student had volunteered in a research lab?
3-- Are you saying that no students without such experience were ever admitted to good graduate schools?
4–How many students were in your graduate program when you were a grad student? Did you poll them to ask them how many of them did volunteer work as undergrads? What were the results of your poll? Was it 10%, 50%, 100%, or what?
5-- Can you point me to any documents which show what percentage, nationally or internationally, of science grad students (at least in your area) have done volunteer lab work before starting grad school?