Retraction vs. Correction?

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

@swamidass

he still did not retract (and is part of why we don’t see @Agauger here any more). I’m not exactly sure how you’ve come to the impression I use kid gloves on them.

Both Ann and Paul Nelson are tragedies IMO. Both should know better. Really sad.

I agree. I think it is a shame that @Agauger left here, but its got be hard when she does seem to follow a different path than the rest.

@swamidass

In fact, I have regularly stated that ID has major problem with trust because they won’t retract anything. Though occasionally and rarely there are exceptions by one or two scholars, most of them never do. It is anti-scientific.

Good to hear. Of your two examples, both are Behe, whose abuses of science are petty compared to other crap, and one is about jacket blurbs. I haven’t seen calls for retraction or correction, but if you regularly do this, then great.

I do this regularly, and also on far more tehcnical points. I picked those because they are understandable to the public, which is critical if you are going to call out a scientist on something he is unlikely to correct. You need to do that on things the public understands. If he won’t retract things everyone knows he got wrong (and are not central to his case), then we can’t trust him to retract more nuanced things.

Of course, I’ve addressed many more of the technical points in detail. In those cases, my goal is helping the public understand, and also ensuring I didn’t miss something. See this for example: Which Irreducible Complexity?.

We’ve also called out people to engage with errors that other scientists (e.g. @art) have found: Art Hunt to Doug Axe: Invitation to Discuss.

I do think my tone can be different with BioLogos, largely this is when I’m dumbfounded that they are not following standards I just expect everyone to follow in mainstream science. I’m not surprised, in contrast, when a young earth creationist scientist executes nonsense. That’s what I expect from them.

@sfmatheson

My parting word is this: I do think that deleting an article, about science, from a website of the prominence of BL’s, is a mistake. My preference is what I would have done: leave the post there, with clear notes that it has been corrected, pointing to the post where that happens.

Well, now that we are talking about it, that is one of my concerns. Though I’m sure BioLogos is not following the COPE guidelines, Haarsma did articulate a policy, a policy they seem to have violated the same day she announced it.

@glipsnort

I suspect broader principles of integrity, accuracy, and transparency provide a better basis for framing this discussion.

I agree with this too. However, that silent deletion fails on these grounds too.

@sfmatheson

That approach would be consistent with the practices of the professional scientific literature, and it would be the opposite of what we all expect from anti-science disinformation dispensaries.

This is where I also feel there is a massive missed opportunity. Handling these mistakes well would have put others (e.g. DI) really to shame, and would take away any reason I personally have for objecting to them. We all make mistakes. Some of us make large mistakes. And sometimes we don’t fix them quickly enough. If we put that all out there, and are transparent and apologetic, well then I think everyone should move to asking why other origins organizations are not doing the same. It is fairly tragic that this is not what is happening now.