I’m the author of that series on evograd. While I’ve written about a couple of the papers that @Agauger lists in this post, most of them are still on my to-do list, and given my current schedule I won’t get to all of them particularly fast. I do intend on continuing that series, but my first priority is finishing my review of Nathaniel Jeanson’s book, which will take me at least a couple for months to complete.
I do try not to engage in ad hominem, I explained in Part 1 the reason I excluded papers in BIO-complexity from the main part of the series. It’s not because they’re all necessarily “unworthy” of attention.
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swamidass
(S. Joshua Swamidass)
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My apologies. I am a little hypersensitive, and expected ad hominems without reading the list. Yes, I had thought the original list had papers on it that didn’t belong on a list of research papers, so I was glad to find this new list when I went looking. So in that respect I agree with Trimming the Fat. The main point still stands. There are peer-reviewed articles in mainstream journals and respected science publishers by ID authors. That is much harder to do now because our names are more widely known, and the prejudice is extreme.
That is definetely true. Which is why I think publication counts are really beside the point any way.
It is more about the quality and coherence than the number or place they are published. For goodness sakes, this last year blog comments gave rise to real advances that are going to stand going forward.
The other peice you’ve done differently @Agauger is honestly engage with qualified critics like us. You’ve chosen to do the hard work of participating in scientific community with us. In community, we have been mutually corrective and even been able to build consensus.
In contrast, most other ID advocates have avoided scrutiny and community, choosing instead to directly make populist appeals to uninformed crowds. Once they are celebrities, they do less and less work, and never engage the real and fair criticism brought forward by other scientists. Then, instead of engaging critique, they attack us as unfair and biased. I don’t have much respect for that pattern.
You, @Agauger, have been different. You see that right?
Jeff Hardin, the chair of zoology at UWisc, and chair of the BioLogos board, included your work in his paper at the Dabar conference. Do you remember that?
My point was that work on common decent between chimps and humans has been going on for a long time with many thousands of researchers in a lot of different fields that the work of you and the other ID folks are just a few of many contributors over time. Science progresses one small step at a time. Lots of tiny contributions by a lot of people along with the unusual leaps like Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Hubble, Watson & Crick, Penzias and Wilson, Hawkins, Doudna, and Reich
You’ve also tackled problems using the same tools as the rest of us being willing to be honest about negative findings. I remember asking you early on what you would do if you found strong evidence against a bottleneck. You said you would publish it, even if it got you in trouble.
Most ID work “already knows the answer” before doing any work, and do not have a good track record with negative results. It blinds them to real errors as the seem to baptize bad arguments as correct on the final point even if the details are wrong. Once again, I have little respect for that. Science is not intuitive. Usually our preconceptions of biology are wrong, not confirmed.
You’ve already seen that first hand by doing population genetics simulations. There is a basic openness to being wrong I’ve observed in you that I respect. I think you know biology is surprising, and want to get the details straight, what ever the answer ends up being.
Well, you have first-hand experience at Biologos how Richard Buggs was treated, and he holds a readership (I think it is) at a respected British university. My name is public and I receive a mixed response, as you know, some of it just knee-jerk automatic.
What seems to you to be real and fair criticism can seem unreasonable or obtuse to others. Different perspectives. Dialog is good but not if you are attacked.
Perhaps I am better at seeing things from other people’s points of view. I have never completely removed my evolutionary eyeglasses. I have double vision
Yes. No disagreement. In fact, I regularly tell students that the work scientists do is amazing. How far we have come in just the years since my undergrad is amazing.
And I remain appalled at his treatment and defended him in more ways than one.
Which makes it all the more appalling how he was treated.
At some point I hope DI recognizes we are treating you fairly here. You have wanted a fair hearing. We are giving it to you. On at least one argument, Buggs and you already convinced me. Bring your case here. We will treat you fairly. We may not agree with you in the end, but we will be honest about your valid points. We might even turn around and help you make your case.
Populist appeals have real limits. Come share the scientific work you care about with us. Maybe we will be able to learn from each other?
@swamidass
Joshua, I would like to ask you to read that last post with my glasses on and see if wasn’t just a tad patronizing. We are doing the work of science. There are projects going on that I am not free to tell you about, to protect those doing the work. Careers are on the line. But I can assure you, they are scientific projects, with no prejudgement of results.
I’m going to skip that comment about “my boss.” I have a different position now.
Gosh, how do you respond so fast?
It was the implication that we weren’t doing real science that bugged me. So, fine.
BTW, I should tell you about an accusation on the web that I did hide a result that would have overturned my bioF work. I wrote a response post, but years after the fact, because I rarely google my name and din’t know how the story was being used.
