The gloves come off!

Chris Comer, the former director of science curriculum for the state of Texas, has sued the Texas Education Agency for firing her. Her offence? Forwarding an e-mail that discussed the use of Intelligent Design as a stalking horse for creationism. Chris Comer sues Texas Education Agency. Hat tip: Darwin Central.

Who says you never see a bat-cat?

more funny cat pictures

Take that, creationists!

Troy Britain has responded to a “Creation Research” article with a beautiful technical knock-out. The article, “Evolution’s Biggest Hurdles,” states, as usual, that scientists are baffled by the origin of multicellular animals.

Troy takes the author, Dr. Morris, by the hand and gently leads him through a summary of the evolutionary evidence in “You can tune a piano, but you can’t tunicate…” Troy includes pictures and references. The real mystery is why Dr. Morris can’t look up this stuff for himself. It’s public, readily available knowledge.

Image: myxobacteria

Expelled crawls into Canada

The notorious creationist movie has crawled over the border into Canada and garnered a few reviews.

The Straight:

Truth begins and ends with the title of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, a semislick advertorial for “intelligent design”, the sanitized public mask of creationism, itself invented by Christians who think their God is too stupid to have come up with evolution on his own….

Various cranks, allegedly fired from academia for their outrageous anti-Darwinist queries, give the usual freedom-of-speech spiels. (The genuine questions raised here have to do more with the notion of tenure than science, but that’s too subtle for movie palaver.) And leading evolutionary thinker and outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins—seen in several interviews—only gradually recognizes that he is being set up.

The National Post, “Science is not Philosophy,” by John Moore

Expelled is at its most risible when it tries to establish a direct line from Darwin to eugenics and genocide. Stein quotes from a passage in Darwin’s writing that appears to endorse the notion that for a species to thrive the infirm must be culled. He omits the part where Darwin insists this would be “evil” and that man’s care for the weak is “the noblest part of our nature.”…

The core of the religious complaint against evolution rests on a false syllogism: Darwin leads automatically to atheism which leads to a world without moral order; therefore science is the enemy of God. It’s a maddening false supposition because while scientists are free to believe in God (and an estimated 40% do) science itself remains neutral…

…just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean everyone isn’t out to get you. It is equally true that when everyone insists you are wrong about something it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re engaged in an elaborate conspiracy. You could just be wrong.

The National Post, “Nature vs. nurture vs. Nikita Khrushchev,” by Chris Knight:

apparently lacking any decent footage of Darwinists in their natural (and naturally selected) environment, it uses old black-and-white clips of cops with billy clubs, schoolyard bullies, Berlin Wall builders, guillotine operators and (my favourite) Nikita Khrushchev banging a shoe. The message is clear: If you think life evolved from the primordial soup, you’re in some pretty bad company.

Expelled goes on to make the argument that Darwinism was a necessary though not sufficient condition for Nazi Germany — which, even if true, is like saying that having two arms is necessary though not sufficient to strangle someone; and I stand by my right to bare arms. Nonetheless, this spurious leap of logic lets the filmmakers unleash a torrent of Nazi newsreel footage. (Apparently, Darwinists can be both Communists and Fascists at the same time.)

Intelligent Design is not synonymous with the six-days-and-then-He rested liturgy of creationism, but it’s not far off. Proponents believe life is too complex to have arisen randomly, and the universe too unlikely for it to be a chance occurrence. (Although if life hadn’t arisen, we wouldn’t be making films about how unlikely it is.) DNA is a program, they contend, so where’s the programmer? Unfortunately, any theory that rests on the axiom “Well, somebody must have made all this!” lacks a certain scientific rigour, never mind experimental validation.

A few other fallacies are worth mentioning. Just because a scientist holds a belief doesn’t automatically make that belief scientific. And just because a theory is framed in scientific language doesn’t necessarily give it equal status with opposing viewpoints. The flat-vs.-round-Earth debate, for instance, doesn’t take place on a level playing field because one of the theories is wrong…..

Ultimately, however, what sinks Expelled is not bad science but bad filmmaking.

For more about the movie, visit Expelled.

Paralyzed woman in Alberta launches suit against chiropractors

A woman in Alberta who suffered a stroke after neck manipulation by a chiropractor believes that it is the cause of her stroke.

Sandra Nette launched her suit on Thursday.

–CTV.ca News Staff

An Alberta woman is at the forefront of a landmark lawsuit after a neck adjustment she received from her chiropractor allegedly triggered a massive stroke that has left her paralyzed and disabled.

The class-action suit — filed by Sandra Nette and her husband David Nette on Thursday in Edmonton — is asking for more than $500 million in damages for the alleged victim, and for anyone in the province who alleges they have been treated or harmed by chiropractors who deliver “inappropriate and non-beneficial adjustments.”

The suit, the first of its kind in Canada, names:

• the couple’s chiropractor, Gregory John Stiles;
• The Alberta College and Association of Chiropractors; and
• The Alberta Ministry of Health and Wellness.

The Nettes charge that by allowing chiropractors to use “ineffective” and “dangerous” neck adjustments, the ministry has “placed an uncontrolled public health risk into the primary health care marketplace.” The statement of claim contains allegations that haven’t been proven in court. No statement of defence has been filed.

According to the suit, Sandra Nette had been going to her Edmonton-area chiropractor for several years, for what her husband described as preventative maintenance. She claimed she had no specific health complaints and was healthy at the time.

When driving home after her last appointment on Sept. 13, 2007, Nette recalled she felt dizzy and was experiencing vision loss. She pulled over to the side of the road and called her husband, who took her to Edmonton’s Royal Alexandra Hospital.

Doctors there determined she suffered multiple strokes as a result of a tear to both vertebral arteries in the upper part of her neck, according to the lawsuit. She required surgery and then was taken to the University of Alberta Hospital.

“The doctor at the time, I will never forget it, (looked) at me and the first words out of his mouth after doing the MRI results were simply: ‘chiropractor, right?’” Dave Nette told CTV News. “I was absolutely shocked. I had not put that together that there could be any connection.”

Dave Nette claims his wife, who was 40 at the time of her stroke, was in perfect health. “Never did drugs, a non smoker… Always maintained perfect weight,” he said. “From diet to fitness I would have to say that certainly my wife is and was … in better shape than myself.”

….She said she was never fully warned that a stroke could be a rare complication of neck adjustments….

Some studies, however, say the procedure is safe. The chiropractic community, including the Canadian Chiropractic Association, has always maintained the risk of stroke or serious injury from chiropractic neck manipulation is very small.

…. Nevertheless, neck adjustments have been under considerable scrutiny for over a decade, since the death of 22-year-old Laurie Mathiason, who suffered a fatal stroke after a chiropractic neck treatment in Saskatoon.

Why do people laugh at creationists?

What’s the joke about “Cdesign proponentsists”? It all started during Kitzmiller v. Dover, with the fuss over an “Intelligent Design” textbook called Of Pandas and People that the Dover, Pennsylvania, school board wanted to use in science classes…

And scientists have been laughing about “Cdesign proponentsists” ever since.

“Why do people laugh at creationists?” 24

I’ve been falling behind. When I discovered the YouTube “WDPLAC?” series, there were only six videos. Now I see that there are at least 24. So here’s “Ben Stein and the non-sequiturs”—what a name for a rock band!

Expelled the movie: Ninety minutes of awful

Yesterday, Etha Williams braced herself and went to see Ben Stein’s movie Expelled. The conclusion: 90 minutes of awful. The summary:

“…this piece of agitprop was bad cinematography, bad science, and bad research. I don’t see how it could convince anybody who wasn’t already convinced.”

For more reviews and information, see Expelled the movie.

Cryptozoology, mutants, and hoaxes

Skip on over to Introspection of a Struggleing Mad Scientist where S E E Quine had done a quick rundown and explanation of a number of wierd creatures, starting with the chupacabra.

Why are so many of my posts about pseudoscience and religion?

Left to myself, I’d write the kind of posts I want to read, all about

• the therapod transition to birds: the development of feathers , the evolution of feathered dinosaurs into birds, and the continuing controversy about whether flight developed from the bottom up ( by running) or top down (by gliding from trees)
• the sequencing of the platypus genome and what it can tell us about the roots of mammalian evolution
• how a couple of cancer cells have evolved into free-living parasites (Tasmanian devil facial tumor and canine venereal tumor)
• how viruses moved mouse breast tumor genes into the human genome and what that means for the chances of getting breast cancer, e.g. breast cancer is more common where there are mice
• remnant populations from long ago: There’s one small carnivore in the U.S. - the kit fox, the swift fox? - that’s descended from the previous, less specialized group of carnivores
• more remnant populations: Giant peccaries that were thought to have gone extinct 10,000 years ago until a small population was discovered in Paraguay in the 1970s by a wandering biologist
• most remnant populations: a recently re-discovered tree in Australia is basically tree 1.0; or maybe 2.0 if you want to call the cycads the first version.
• island biodiversity: It’s a great tragedy that ants were introduced into Hawai’i, because for 25 million years the insects there developed without the need to protect themselves from the fierce little predators, and they are unique–and now, probably doomed.
• a primitive ant discovered, lost, and re-discovered in Australia
• an insect so primitive it dates from before the split between ants and termites
• scanning electron micrographs of fossil embryos from 570 million years ago, before the Cambrian explosion (if you can call something that lasted millions and millions of years an explosion)
• Nanobes: are they real organisms or just chance accretions?
• Is there some primitive life-form in the earth’s crust that is manufacturing new oil?
• What effect are we having on deep-sea life by removing whale carcasses from the ecosystem?
• whatever happened to that cave where life evolved for thousands of years without direct sources of oxygen or sunlight?
• Is there any way to get all that floating plastic out of the oean before it kills off the albatrosses, the sea turtles, and who knows what else?
• Homo floresiensis evolution: did she descend directly on Flores Island from Homo erectus? Why are some scientists trying very hard to prove that she’s just an abnormal Homo sap.?

It was H. floresiensis that got me science-blogging, when my local paper, which bills itself as “Canada’s national newspaper,” based its article on a misconception of how evolution worked.

Here’s the problem:

Read any popular science book and you’ll find that it’s all about science: the joy of discovery, the wonder of the natural world, the hunt for the truth, the solving of mysteries, and the intellectual fascination of deciphering complex systems. It’s not about hating God, denying god, replacing god, or promoting amorality. If there’s religious feeling, it’s usually of the “God made this wonderful universe” variety.

But Biblical literalists who are set on denying any scientific discovery that conflicts with their tiny universe provoke bewilderment, irritation, and finally anger when they engage in quote-mining, rhetorical tricks, double-standards, misrepresentation, and finally outright lying, perjury, and slander as they struggle to hang on to their world-view. Lying is the scientist’s greatest sin.

That many anti-science advocates rake in huge salaries and lucrative speaking engagements and the regularity with which they are caught with their pants down engaging in sexual practices for which the publicly and tirelessly condemn others is just the icing on the cake.

So the pure science posts tend to get stuck at the draft stage or even the good intentions stage, while I deal with an anti-science movement that will debilitate the U.S. as an economic and political power if it ever gets the upper hand.

Sexpelled!

Michael Shermer reports on a new Discovery Institute film, Sexpelled! No intercourse allowed.

The new film bravely exposes the Big Sex suppression of the Stork Theory and calls for equal time for the competing theories. [Author's note: The theory below sounds nutty to people who know anything about sex and reproduction. But keep in mind, these arguments are modelled after Intelligent design arguments against evolution. If you know anything about evolution, the arguments against it sound even sillier.]

There’s even a Facebook group in support of Sexpelled!

Proof of the Stork Theory: why Sex Theory is clearly wrong:

• Sex Theory is just a THEORY! No one has actually observed a baby appearing during sex!
• The stork is NOT just a theory! We know that it exists!
• It is highly improbable that a baby can be created from the random collision between a sperm and an egg cell. In fact, Bill Dembski has proved that it’s mathematically impossible.
• Do you really want to believe that you are the result of dumb, blind chance, rather than a loving and nurturing stork?
• I have never observed a so-called sperm cell or egg cell. Have you?
• It’s an insult to my value as a human being to think that I am a random accident, caused by nasty things people only do in their bedrooms.
• Sex violates the second law of thermodynamics. There is no way a perfect baby can be made from a random, gooey mess.
• Where are all the transitional forms? If it is true that sperm cells turn into babies, we should see stuff like sperm with arms and legs or babies with a large tail to swim around.
• How was the first sperm created? Sex Theory proponents can’t answer this question, which is but one of many holes in their Sex Theory religion.

And if Sex Theory is wrong, clearly Stork Theory must be right!

Picture of an Intelligent Design theorist:

more funny pictures

For more information, visit Expelled!

Arguing against evolution by invoking Hitler

Blog Submitted to a Candid World has a good article about the nonsense of “Arguing against evolution by Invoking Hitler.” Submitted says,

I’ve had it up to here with this crap. I try to restrict my use of profanity on this site, but this argument is batshit insane, and it’s time for it to die. I want to save you from viewing the idiocy expressed therein, so I’ll gist the arguments of the link for you: it’s the typical creationist canard, that evolution, by iterating the idea of the “survival of the fittest,” gave Hitler the intellectual armaments he needed to perpetrate the Holocaust. As the author (Benjamin Wikier, “PhD”) says,

All this doesn’t mean that Darwinism was the sole cause of Hitler’s barbarism. But it does make clear that Darwinism must shoulder its share of the moral burden, because the connection is undeniable.

Lunacy.

Go read.

Techskeptic’s autism post

Techskeptic has taken on the task of debunking some of the commoner myths about the causes of autism. Here’s just one in a whole series of points:

Claim: Mercury in Thimerisol causes autism
Evidence: We have been vaccinating more people and the rate of autism has been rising.
Debunking: Here is a study that tries to make this very claim. But that data in the study conflicts with its own conclusions. It shows the rise in autism rates, but sadly for him, and David Kirby the head of the mercury militia, thimerisol is no longer added to vaccines in the US as of late 2002. Its now 2008 and the rates continue to rise in california, and in the entire US, without even a blip in the rate when the thimerisol was removed.

This is not surprising, Canada performed the very same study in 1998 with 27,000 kids in it, same result.

If you take out the thing they claimed to be causing autism and the rates continue to rise, then it wasnt that thing.

Read the rest.

Hundreds of theatres drop Expelled movie

The Sensuous Curmudgeon reports that the movie Expelled has been dropped by hundreds of theatres by its third weekend.

The Sensuous Curmudgeon

Its daily grosses haven’t been too hot either: they’re down to about $159,000 a day.

By contrast, an unremarkable sci-fi flick called Jumper, released a few months ago grossed $24,000,000 in its first week.

“Toxic feet” treatment

Here’s an update from Mondo Skepto on an herbal treatment that is supposed to extract the toxins from your feet: It doesn’t work.

Read all about it.

It’s amazing and depressing that people believe this stuff. Truly, we’re living in a world of alchemy and humours. Happy Beltane!