His remarks were not about her person but about her tone and manner – as he explicitly stated. And he was right. Her manner was sarcastic and sneering. That’s quite obvious from her remarks which you quoted. I remember the first time I read her remarks, begin repelled by the tone. And that was long before Behe replied to her. In fact, he at first wasn’t even going to reply to her, he was so put off by the tone. And rightly so. A “scientist” who can’t converse in a civilized manner isn’t entitled to a reply from another scientist. That should be part of the training of a scientist. If science programs are failing to train their students in basic professional manners, then science programs are not doing part of their job.
I didn’t say there were any. And there were no sexist remarks in Behe’s post. You apparently don’t know the meaning of “sexist.” Or you are misusing the term, which is not at all uncommon among culture warriors.
Telling a person who is acting like a jerk that that person is acting like a jerk does not become sexist merely because that person is a woman. Jerks come in all sexes.
I thought you weren’t going to reply to me any more. I wish you would stick to your resolve.
You appear to be unable to detect biting sarcasm. The statement I had in mind, and which Mercer already knew about, has already been quoted above:
This opening was insulting both in effect and in intent. It was below the belt. It’s not the way one scientist (or scientist in training) should speak to another scientist. No one here should defend it. Only a culture-war partisan would defend it.
Note that I’ve said nothing at all about the substantive arguments here. I’m commenting only on the manner. Her manner is indefensible, no matter how good her scientific arguments are.
When I was a graduate student, if I put stuff like that in what I wrote, my supervisors made me take it out. But in Abbie Smith’s case her supervisor (or if he wasn’t her supervisor, he was a sort of mentor who was cheering her on) condoned such writing. Behe rightly pointed out his professional neglect in this matter.
I gather from your remarks that you have not read the original exchange between Behe and Musgrave, which can be found on the Uncommon Descent site. Behe gives a list of several remarks made by Smith, and makes some comments about them to Musgrave:
Dear Dr. Musgrave,
I find your letter disingenuous. The tone of Abbie Smith’s post was insulting, jut-jawed, and puerile:
C “I’m ERV. This is my dog, Arnold Schwarzenegger. And this is my friend, Vpu. I presume you and Vpu haven’t met, as you recently repeated in an interview with World magazine the same sentiment you gurgled ad nauseam in ‘Edge of Evolution’”
C “Ah, Michael Behe, you might try to talk your way around Vpu now … Sorry, you’ll find no escape with that limp-wristed, ad hoc parry.”
C “Ah, Michael Behe, you might try to talk your way around Vpu NOW by saying, “Vpu might be new new in HIV-1, but its not NEWnew new.”
C “This is just one of a billion plus examples of lazy Creationists taking advantage of the ignorance of their followers.”
As far as I’m concerned, if a complete stranger sends me a message with a sneering tone like that, she can go soak her head. I had no intention of replying to Smith’s post at all; I did so only after I received requests from other folks who wanted me to reply.
At no point in my reply did I “belittl[e] her and play[…] the “I’m a Professor and she is a mere student card” as you allege. The only reference to Smith’s tone I made was the following sentence: “Although she calls herself a “pre-grad student” the tone of the post is decidedly junior high school, of someone who is trying hard to compete with all the other Mean Girls on that unpleasant website.” I think a re-reading of her post shows that my evaluation was quite judicious. After that passage I addressed only the science, not her sneering tone.
Frankly, Professor Musgrave, I find your concern “as a member of my professional association’s education committee” for “the support and nurturing of the new generations of enquiring minds” to be unconvincing. One of the very basic prerequisites for education is to be able to engage in civil discourse, especially with people whose views are different from your own. It is clear to me that Smith has not yet mastered that skill. To the extent that you consider yourself one of her professional mentors, you have failed in your responsibilities.
I realize that Behe’s call for civil discourse may seem alien to some of the culture warriors here, but it’s a wise and sane insistence.
I don’t see how it was rude, as Behe’s claim was and is false.
In fact, it was incredibly sexist, particularly considering that he was wrong and she was right. You don’t know anything about scientific discussion, as you refuse to participate in any.
She was. A virologist is a person who does virology. I’m a biochemist, having trained during a sabbatical. There are no cards, Eddie; we are judged by what we do. Do you realize how silly your credentialism is? How it reveals your lack of academic accomplishments?
Still a virologist. By the way, in the hard sciences at top-tier schools, master’s degrees are labeled “exit,” and awarded to those who fail their doctoral qualifying exams. I don’t have a master’s.
They are. Speaking of facts, Behe misrepresented the facts about HIV, a fact that doesn’t seem to bother you. Also speaking of facts, the most famous paleontologist in the US, and probably the world, never earned a bachelor’s or a PhD:
So, is male Jack Horner a mere “paleontologist-in-training,” Eddie? If so, you have your work cut out for you. You can start by “correcting” the Wikipedia page’s title, as anyone can do it. I’ll make some popcorn.
After that, you’ll need a huge campaign, as the exact phrase “paleontologist Jack Horner” generates a mere ~12700 hits. Keep me posted.
You would never be so hypocritical as to use labeling in a sexist way to avoid addressing the substance of Behe’s falsehoods–or would you?
And again, WRT keeping the facts straight and scientific professionalism, if I buy Edge of Evolution on Amazon, will Behe’s false claim about HIV (and the reference he cited that has nothing to do with it) be prominently corrected, or is it still there?
That is not a personal insult. It’s a criticism of his book. A book, BTW, that has received unanimous derision from all scientifically informed reviewers.
Could you please educate us on exactly which form of “civil discourse” includes the phrase “Go soak your head”? Thanks.
BTW, I find it curious that someone who follows the writings of the DI as you seem to is not yet aware of their familiar tactic of focusing on the tone their critics take when unable to respond to the substantive points those critics make. This has the further benefit of discouraging the DI’s followers and donors from actually reading for themselves what the critics have to say, and relying instead on the invariably deceptive and dishonest versions that the DI provides.
The DI members are lousy excuses for scientists, but they are reasonably good propagandists. They sure have you hooked
Not always. I have a masters, awarded when I qualified to continue the program, after 2 years. I don’t know exactly how I qualified. There was no qualifying exam. But in the quaint language of the University of Chicago, I have an S.M. in evolutionary biology. You also get a masters if you quit the program, for any reason, after the first 2 years. But I think your point was that there are no masters programs in the sciences at fancy universities, only doctoral programs. That may be true.
Your epistemological confusion here is massive. You can’t distinguish between the contents of what someone says and the way they say it. Behe’s views could be utterly and completely false, and every criticism Smith made on the scientific front could be completely valid – and yet Smith could still be a rude jerk in the way she framed her criticism. I’m pointing out that she was a rude jerk. Behe’s upbraiding of her for her rudeness was completely appropriate.
And, as Behe points out, the overwhelming majority of his reply to her was on the scientific substance of her complaints. He talked about her rudeness only very briefly, as a preface to his reply. But because of her rude framing, she didn’t deserve any reply at all, and she owes him an apology. But I’m sure she will never proffer one.
As for the rest of your post, there’s nothing worth talking about. Behe said nothing at all that was sexist, unless telling a person who happens to be a woman that she was unprofessionally rude is automatically sexist. Is one only allowed to tell men that they are being rude, but not women? I thought feminism was about equality of treatment. If a man can be upbraided for rudeness, then a woman should be able to be upbraided for rudeness, too.
Yes, people can know a lot about a field without formal qualifications. So what? We’re not talking about very rare superstars such as Jack Horner. We’re talking about run of the mill graduate and undergraduate students. Is every undergrad studying virology a “virologist”? Is every Master’s student studying virology a “virologist”? Is every medical student a doctor? Is every dentistry student a dentist? Is every astrophysics student an astrophysicist? If a first-year law student helps a courtroom lawyer prepare some written materials, is the student a “lawyer”? I didn’t say Smith knew nothing about virology, but it’s not normal usage to call someone who hasn’t completed even a Master’s, let alone a Ph.D., in a field an “-ist” in that field. My comment was merely about normal usage of terms. It’s a waste of time to quarrel over this. But no doubt you will keep quarreling. I won’t be involved in the quarrel.
Your Americocentrism is showing. What may be true of “top-tier schools” in the USA (and I doubt it’s true of 100% of those, but we can leave that aside as a mere detail) is not necessarily true of “top-tier” schools elsewhere. A casual internet search on the University of Toronto website (U of T is one of the world’s top universities) shows that the M.Sc. in Chemistry is not awarded for failing doctoral qualifying exams, but for (among other things) producing a thesis, which requires doing actual chemical research. The M.Sc. there is not a consolation prize for failure, but a positive achievement. See https://www.sgs.utoronto.ca/programs/chemistry/. So you might want to qualify your statement by adding “in the USA.”
Yes, it is. The insult lies in the sarcastic framing. I cannot imagine that you could be a good clinical psychiatrist if you cannot pick up nuances like this in the way people write and talk.
I did. Read the entire text of Behe’s letter to Musgrave, which I supplied. There are several other examples.
He did not say that in reply to Smith. He said that in reply to Musgrave, by way of explaining to him why he did not originally reply to Smith. If you bothered to read the exchange, you would see that Musgrave was berating Behe for not replying immediately to Smith. Behe explained that he felt no need to reply to someone who was so rude. He used the phrase you mentioned to explain that to Musgrave.
And by the way, “Go soak her head,” is a very mild expression. “Eff off” would have been the reply of many to such obnoxious teenage-level rudeness as Smith displayed, and to such disingenuous pompousness as Musgrave’s letter displayed. Behe was remarkably restrained. Christians are often like that.
In case you have not noticed, the topic here is not “substantive points” of science, but “rudeness”. See the title above. I was commenting on the subject of who had been rude to whom. I made no comment on who was right about scientific questions. You are attempting to divert the discussion from the topic given, to a topic you would prefer to discuss. I would suggest you start your own topic: “Why Behe Was Wrong”, or the like.
I’m still waiting for Art to show me where the “rudeness” is found in the Discovery article he cited. I guess he can’t find any rudeness.
Sure I can. The evidence is what matters. Behe misrepresented it, blatantly. He deserves zero respect.
We’re not talking about views, Eddie. We’re talking about Behe’s blatant misrepresentation of the evidence.
How long did it take him to admit that he had misrepresented the evidence again?
Behe owes his readers an apology for fudging the evidence. If it had been an innocent error, he would have corrected it and thanked Smith for pointing it out. He did neither.
Nor should she. Has Behe corrected the book?
We’re talking about doing, something you don’t seem to understand. So are you admitting that degrees aren’t required?
No, only those DOING virology.
Studying doesn’t count. This is about DOING.
Is Jack Horner a paleontologist or not, Eddie?
I have done neither in biochemistry. I learned during my sabbatical. I am a biochemist.
Again, it’s not about knowing. It’s about doing.
And you don’t apply that usage consistently.
You just wrote half a page of content-free quarreling.
I don’t answer “Have you stopped beating your wife” questions.
Speaking of false claims, did you ever retract the false claims you made on BioLogos about (I paraphrase) “no one ever talks about random mutations, except for creationists” and “no one with any knowledge of genomics would ever talk about a 2% difference between chimps and humans”? Both of those claims were disproved on the spot by copious quotations from scientific literature, yet you didn’t retract them. You simply retreated in silence. You were reminded of them sometime later, and the spots where you made the claims were identified, and the spots where the rebuttals were found were identified, but still you remained silent. So if Behe is guilty of the same thing (and I don’t concede that he is), you are hardly in a position to complain. Admitting error (on even the smallest, most trivial point of language, let alone anything with scientific content) has never been a virtue of yours.
I did not say it was not insulting. I said it was not a personal insult. Do you understand the difference?
Again, no personal insults. Just (justified) criticisms of Behe’s writings.
Yes. On a website visible to the general public. which Abbie Smith was almost guaranteed to read.
Do you need to spell it our further for you?
Your original question, you seem to have forgotten, was not only about rudeness but also about dismissiveness.
No, my point was regarding the extent to which ID Creationists employ the tactic of whinging about the tone of the criticisms they receive to divert from the content of those criticisms. Oh, look, I just found another example:
Right. For this discussion, the topic is "Rudeness from the ‘DI Crew?’ " Not “Did Behe make errors?” or “Is Behe a good scientist?” or any of the other things that Mercer always wants to talk about. And so far, Art has introduced only one example of “rudeness”, but no rudeness is visible in that example.
The other example adduced, not by Art but by Mercer, when traced to its sources, shows the rudeness of Abbie Smith, not of Behe. The sources of Abbie Smith’s rudeness doubtless lie deep in her personal biography and/or psychological makeup, but I don’t attribute the rudeness to her being a female, nor does Behe. So there is no “sexism” here, though it’s not surprising that certain people here would trot out that word, as this is a place of constant “virtue signaling”, to use a favorite term of John Harshman. In fact, overall, Abbie Smith is an outrider; the vast majority of aggressive, sarcastic, mean-spirited opponents of ID are male, not female.
Behe was not dismissive about the contents of either Abbie Smith or Musgrave. He at first hesitated to reply to Smith because of her unprofessional rudeness, but when he did reply, he replied in detail to her objections. And Musgrave he replied to at even greater length, regarding the technical questions, over several posts, all of which can be read at Uncommon Descent. In fact, Behe quite frequently replies at great length to his critics, trying to meet as many of their points as possible. That’s hardly a “dismissive” attitude. (Whether his responses are scientifically adequate is an entirely different question; but “inadequate” is not the same as “dismissive”.)
And would she break down in tears if she saw that he had felt like telling her (though he did not tell her) to go soak her head? I doubt it; based both on her attack on Behe and on comments she made on some blog site discussions at the time, she’s hard as nails. Your concern about the very mild phrase “go soak her head” (which is much milder than some of the phrases you have used on this site, which have later been grayed out or retracted by you), is rather desperate. I’ve taken abuse here, from you guys, a hundred times worse than “go soak your head.” Are you making a serious point, or just caviling for the sake of opposing me? (It’s usually the latter.)
But then again, I’m talking to the man who thinks that a group of truckers who hold up protest signs, honk a few horns, and ask the Prime Minister to give them back their jobs as “insurrectionists,” so it’s not surprising that you would vastly exaggerate the power of the phrase “go soak her head.”
Yes, it was a personal insult, and intended as such. And regarding your apparently specious distinction, I think you will be hard-pressed to find an example in human life where someone has said, “You have just insulted me, but I know you didn’t mean it as a personal insult, so I’m not offended.”
I suspect you are confusing “insult” with “vigorous and uncompromising criticism.” Vigorous and uncompromising criticism need not be personal in nature. It can be addressed solely to the hypothesis, and not at all to the person. However, Abbie Smith’s framing remarks (the ones highlighted by Behe, I mean) do not fall under that heading. They were not intended to convey intellectual content, but to personally wound. That is how any normal English reader would understand them. Your attempt, and Mercer’s, to excuse them as something nobler than that, is risible. And it says a lot about both of you that would wish to excuse those remarks. A non-partisan, non-culture-war judgment would be something like: “Yes, Smith was smart-alecky in tone and Behe had a right to be offended by the tone; she should have limited herself to the scientific questions, as she would be expected to do in any published peer-reviewed paper or in any formal presentation at a society of scientists.” But you guys, just like Musgrave, condone the tone (and as far as I can tell from here and from past discussions, Mercer not only condones it but celebrates it).
Enough about Abbie Smith, whose 15 minutes of fame passed many years ago, and who wouldn’t have had even that much fame had she not had Behe’s fame to piggyback on. Let’s return to the business at hand. Art made a charge about rudeness and dismissiveness of ID people toward students or people in training. In support of that, he has given a link to one article, an article in which I see no rudeness or dismissiveness. I await his exegesis of the sole example he has provided, demonstrating the rudeness and dismissiveness, and I await more examples. Until then, I have to declare his claim unsubstantiated.
You’re so eager to quarrel that you’re ignoring the context, Eddie.
You were being dismissive toward a young, female, American virologist. I showed that you do not use degrees as a criterion for labeling an old, male, American paleontologist.
Why haven’t you “corrected” Horner’s Wikipedia page?
Irrelevant to your attempt to dismiss Dr. Smith, as AFAIK she is not Canadian.
I see. So suppose a scholar writes a book in which he makes claims regarding a field in which he does not have expertise.
A student who does have expertise in that field writes an article in which she corrects a very simple error that seriously undermines the premise of the book.
The scholar’s response is not to acknowledge the error and correct his book. Instead, he makes gratuitous remarks about the student’s gender, tells her to “Go soak her head” thru a third party, and makes invalid claims and excuses to avoid admitting his error.
What term would you use to describe this behaviour? “Scholarly”? “Respectful”? No I think “dismissive” much better fits the bill.
Ah, well. I guess that’s how we would know if she had been insulted, right? After all, those hysterical females just don’t have the emotional stability of a big, strong man like Michael Behe. I’m sure he didn’t break down in tears when he read Abbie Smith’s article. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t rude and insulting. Right, “Eddie”?
Very limited expertise – very, very junior in the field she was writing about.
No; it affected (at most) only the part of the book in which he discussed what she was talking about. The bulk of the book was not affected by her criticism. I take it that you haven’t read Behe’s book. Which would not be surprising. (I’ve read it, by the way.)
Now let’s rewrite your scenario to make it factually accurate and complete (i.e., including the facts you deliberately left out):
“A student writes a piece (“article” makes it sound like something that could have been accepted in a scientific journal, which in its current form it would not have been) in which she offers some criticism of the least important component of the author’s argument in the book, and in the course of offering her criticism throws in gratuitous, snide, sarcastic, and polemical remarks aimed not at clarifying any scientific question but at insulting and ridiculing a senior scientist.”
And now let’s rewrite your “response” part:
“The scholar’s initial inclination was not to respond to the student at all, since responding to that kind of adolescent polemic would only encourage other writers of the same ilk to produce more such writing. However, the scholar’s friends, while recognizing that the critic was a smart-alecky twit, thought that he should respond to the substantive part of her argument, so as not to appear to be avoiding it, so he relented and, after writing one extremely short paragraph commenting on her manners, wrote an extended response dealing with her substantive points. He thus discharged his scholarly obligation to respond in detail to academic criticism.”
There. Now that we have stated what actually happened, and characterized it correctly, we can see that there was no foul on Behe’s side.
It’s not inaccurate. And yes, it is tu quoque response, but a totally appropriate one. People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, and Mercer’s house is straight out of Corning, NY. As for the rest of Mercer’s rant, it’s irrelevant, because I never said that someone had to have formal qualifications in a field to know a lot about it. Darwin had no formal qualifications in biology, but he knew a lot about it. I never took a course in political science, but I know a great deal about political theory. I never said that Abbie Smith knew nothing about virology. I just pointed out that calling her a “virologist” introduced an ambiguity, since 90% of readers who hear someone being called a “virologist” would imagine someone at a much more advanced stage of a research career than Smith was, just as 90% of people who hear the word “astrophysicist” would imagine someone like Fred Hoyle or George Gamow, not someone just beginning a Master’s program. And this was a very minor side-observation of mine – which, as usual, Mercer has tried to blow up into a big debate. So call her a virologist if you like; I know what Mercer means by the term now. It’s no big deal.
Which is, of course, another fine example of whataboutism and youtooism!
@Eddie so good to see you taking on the DI hating crowd! How’s that working for you, posting on “Peaceful” Science, where there are a handful of people who make war on those who disagree with them? I’m laughing so hard reading this thread. Really appreciate you trying hard to separate the details.
On the semi-DI side, James Tour once publicly insulted John Shostak, then later personally contacted Shostak to apologize, which was actually accepted. But since Tour’s opinions on Origins of life don’t coincide with Borg perspective, and he refuses to be assimilated, many tried to destroy him anyway.
Similar to you here, when you get tag-team attacked, it’s hard to keep up. “Resistance is futile.” You’re doing great, but most of us give up eventually, which is EXACTLY what they want: Silence those who speak ideas they don’t agree with by red herrings, ad hominems, appeals to authority, just wear them down, etc. Totally antithetical to the whole process of science, but hey, this is not really about science.
I just love how @Eddie baited you into those shallow sexist stereotypes you have!