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Thursday, October 3, 2013

What Do You Do When All the Reviews Are Bad?

9:34 AM Admin

Charles Marshall has reviewed Darwin's Doubt in last week's issue of Science. The title says it all: When Prior Belief Trumps Scholarship.

Here's a sample of what a bad review looks like.

... when it comes to explaining the Cambrian explosion, Darwin's Doubt is compromised by Meyer's lack of scientific knowledge, his "god of the gaps" approach, and selective scholarship that appears driven by his deep belief in an explicit role of an intelligent designer in the history of life.

Ouch!

So far the Intelligent Design Creationists have a perfect record. Every single review of Darwin's Doubt by a scientist has been negative. None of them like the book.

What do you do under those circumstances? Remember, that the minions of the Discovery Institute aggressively hyped this book in the Spring before it was published. It was supposed to be the book that destroyed Darwinism.¹

Not to worry. The IDiots have an excuse ... in fact they have several.

Ignore the main criticism and focus on details. This is what Stephen Meyer is doing in his response to Charles Marshall's review: When Theory Trumps Observation: Responding to Charles Marshall's Review of Darwin's Doubt.
Most reviewers ignore the main arguments. This is the defense offered by David Klinghoffer, that well-known defender of Intelligent Design Creationism, and a non-scientist: A Taxonomy of Evasion: Reviewing the Reviewers of Darwin's Doubt.
At least we got their attention. This is what makes David Klinghoffer proud, "Marshall's review stands out. It's important. Not only because Marshall is a distinguished paleontologist writing in one of the world's two most importance science journals ..." [Stephen Meyer Answers Charles Marshall on Darwin's Doubt]. Casey Luskin uses the same excuse in when he writes [Teamwork: New York Times and Science Magazine Seek to Rebut Darwin's Doubt,
It's now evident that, their previous denials notwithstanding, Darwin defenders have been unnerved by Darwin's Doubt. On the same day last week, both the world's top newspaper (the New York Times) and one of the world's top scientific journals (Science) turned their attention to the problem posed by Stephen Meyer.
Publicize reviews by non-scientists That's what Denyse O'Leary does in Astonishing innovation: Bethell’s review of Darwin’s Doubt defies tradition, tells you what is in the book. David Klinghoffer does it too: The American Spectator Warmly Welcomes Darwin's Doubt.

That's what you do if all the reviews and bad and you are an IDiot.

1. There were half-a-dozen earlier books that were also supposed to have destroyed Darwinism.

Stephen Meyer Says that "Homology" Is a Problem in Molecular Evolution

8:33 AM Admin

Stephen Meyer argues (in Darwin's Doubt) that the Cambrian explosion cannot be explained by evolution but it can be explained by Intelligent Design Creationism.

His main thesis is that all the animals appeared suddenly in the Cambrian and there's no evidence that they arose from ancestors living earlier in the Precambrian. Unfortunately for him, there IS plenty of evidence in the form of molecular evolution. By comparing genes and proteins we can show that all the animal groups are related to one another and that their common ancestors are spread out over a considerable period of time as shown in the phylogenetic tree below from a paper by Dunn et al. (2008).

This evidence is a serious problem for Meyer so he has to deal with it in his book. He tries to discredit the entire field of molecular evolution by challenging the basic assumptions [Stephen Meyer Says That Constant Mutation Rates Are a "Questionable Assumption"], by setting up a strawman [Stephen Meyer Says Molecular Data Must Be Wrong Because Different Genes Evolve at Different Rates], and by pointing out that molecular dating is not precise [Stephen Meyer Says Molecular Evidence Must Be Wrong Because Scientists Disagree About the Exact Dates]. His most ridiculous argument¹ against molecular evolution is that the results must be wrong because there are no transitional fossils from before the Cambrian Explosion! [The Cambrian Conundrum: Stephen Meyer Says (Lack of) Fossils Trumps Genes]

None of those arguments stand up to close scrutiny but, as I warned you last week, there are actually five arguments against the validity of molecular evolution [Darwin's Doubt: The Genes Tell the Story?].

Are you ready for the final argument showing that molecular evidence must be discounted?

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