I certainly agree with this:
It would be a legitimate concern if I did not contact the scientists I criticized beforehand. It wouldn’t be unethical, but it certainly would be unprofessional.
Without getting into the details, I did contact several scientist at BioLogos ahead of time. Several of them were given opportunity to review a near final draft of the book. BioLogos leadership, though not happy about what I wrote, confirmed that all statements I made about them (most contained in Ch. 1, 7, 10, 12, and 18) were “accurate.”
As a courtesy to them, I also invited Darrel Falk, with BL at the time, to endorse the book, and he did. I asked him in the end if I was fair to BioLogos. In his assessment, I was.
I’m putting this in public just to clarify that I did in fact follow this convention. Though I quote many scientists, the scientists I was critiquing had ample opportunity to correct any misrepresentations of their work, and ultimately agreed I accurately represented them.
Another scientist I quoted was Jerry Coyne (Ch. 1 and 18). Privately, I did present the text that refers to him for review. In a very collegial and kind interaction, he offered some suggestions and I responded with appropriate edits. His review of the book, it seems, was very fair on the scientific aspects (Coyne: The return of Adam and Eve as real people). Disagreements arise on the theology and philosophy, but that is to be expected here. I do not know of any objections Coyne maintains as to how he was quoted by me in the book.
One reference to Coyne was to explicate his concerns about how Christians vilify atheists, which arose in his analysis of a WIRED article i appeared in (Coyne: AAAS and Swamidass in WIRED Article - #25 by swamidass). I share his concerns. Are atheists our neighbors? They certainly are our neighbors, and we should treat them with dignity and respect.