Friday, April 06, 2012

Willfully misquoted



www.understanding-creationism.com
by Massimo Pigliucci

A number of years ago, journalist Robert Wright labelled evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould “the accidental creationist” in an oft-quoted article that appeared in The New Yorker. According to Wright, Gould was culpable of (unwittingly) aiding and abetting creationists because of his public pronouncements on evolution, based on “his muddled [understanding of] evolutionary theory.” Indeed Wright went on to quote this infamous quip by John Maynard Smith (another prominent evolutionary biologist), who said of Gould:
[T]he evolutionary biologists with whom I have discussed his work tend to see him as a man whose ideas are so confused as to be hardly worth bothering with, but as one who should not be publicly criticized because he is at least on our side against the creationists.
I don’t know which evolutionary biologists Maynard Smith talked to, but they were off the mark by a long shot, and his vitriolic comment was anything but fair play toward an esteemed colleague. Be that as it may, I was reminded of this incident several times during the past few weeks because of a sudden spike in mis-quotations of yours truly that have appeared on two “prominent” creationist blogs: the bizarrely named “Evolution News” and the more ironically termed “Uncommon Descent” (the four entries are here, here, here, and here, in chronological order of appearance).

The barrage began on March 23rd at Uncommon Descent, where Sal Cordova picked up several quotes from a recent Rationally Speaking post (on “Universal Darwinism” — he got the link wrong, don’t know for sure if by unintelligent design or what). Cordova ended the short post by summarizing my position thus: “Dennett is wrong, Dobzhansky is wrong, Dawkins is wrong, and Pross (the author Pigliucci critiques) is wrong. Grand slam!” To which he added: “Duane Gish said it better: ‘Nothing in evolution makes sense in light of biology.’”

Of course I did not say anything like “Dennett, Dobzhansky, Dawkins and Pross are wrong” across the board, and instead disagreed with specific statements and positions taken by these writers. But apparently if you are a creation-fundamentalist the very concept of honest disagreement and open discussion eludes you. And so does the idea that the nature of science makes it an open-ended enterprise where progress is made in part precisely because people disagree.

The following day a “memo to Sal Cordova” appeared, again at Uncommon Descent, posted by Denyse O'Leary, entitled “Massimo Pigliucci may be in transit” (uh, oh!). The entire post consists of two quotes from me (and they didn’t give me royalties!), one about Dobzhansky, the other from a slightly older Rationally Speaking post about consciousness.

Now, it’s not clear to me exactly where  those two quotes may signal my transition to, but they ought to be pretty useless to pseudoscientists of any stripe. In the first instance, I simply pointed out that Dobzhansky exaggerated when he famously wrote (not in a technical paper) that “nothing in biology makes sense if not in the light of evolution.” I stated the obvious: plenty of research has been done in biology (e.g., during much of the molecular biology revolution) by moving evolution to a background condition, without explicitly taking it on board. But this is as controversial as to say that much research has been done in physics (e.g., non-equilibrium thermodynamics) without explicitly taking on board quantum theory. To go from there to say that one can therefore reject/deny either evolutionary biology or quantum physics is nonsense on stilts.

My second claim was that I think that some of my fellow atheists of late have been a bit too quick  at declaring things like consciousness to be an “illusion", since such conclusion is based on questionable metaphysical grounds and indeed is pitted against some of the best neurobiological evidence to date. But are the good folks (ahem) at Uncommon Descent now saying that people who think consciousness is a real phenomenon are somehow bound to accept metaphysical fables concerning the existence and postmortem survival of the soul? I don’t think so.

Third day: on March 26th Evolution News (ah!) picked up on my Dobzhansky comment to conclude that “This is a point that has been made repeatedly by Darwin critics and proponents of ID, on this blog and elsewhere. The neo-Darwinian theory of evolution (and even common descent itself) has very little heuristic value or practical application when it comes to most fields of biology.” The comment was made by one “Jonathan M.” (people, please, at least have the decency to identify yourselves if you write for the public, yes?) and is, naturally, another non sequitur. First of all, as I mentioned above, my comment is most certainly not the kind of thing that “Darwin critics” and IDers have been saying. Second, if it is the case that the theory of evolution (it’s the Modern Synthesis, by the way, not neo-Darwinism, get your history of biology straight) has little heuristic value this is in the same sense in which quantum mechanics ain’t particularly useful for building bridges. In neither case does it follow that the theory is somehow wrong or deficient. But, again, logic (even at the 101 level) isn’t these people’s forte.

Finally, we get to Casey Luskin, who wrote a longer piece on April 5th for Evolution News on the recent Tennessee bill that would allow the teaching of “controversy” over evolution in that state’s schools. Luskin quotes me thus: “As evolutionary biologist Massimo Pigliucci said: ‘[I]t has to be true that we really don't have a clue how life originated on Earth by natural means.’” Except that dear Luskin “forgot” to quote in context. Here is the full version:
There are two points that must be borne in mind, however, before going for a [Fred] Hoyle-like explanation for the origin of life [i.e., the life originated on other planets and was imported on Earth]. First, it has to be true that we really don’t have a clue about how life on Earth [original italic] originated by natural means. As we will see, though the situation is messy, it is not that desperate.
Now, does it sound to you like Luskin fairly represented what I actually wrote? Didn’t think so. And of course in that same article I lambasted creationists and IDers of all stripes. So you see the problem with Wright’s charge against Gould: it is pretty much impossible to write for the public in an intellectually honest way and not be willfully misquoted by people who have no qualms at being intellectually dishonest if it suits their ideological agenda. That shouldn’t stop us from engaging the public, or from pointing out every time these bozos are trying to get free mileage by distorting what we write. Incidentally, isn’t lying a violation of one of the Ten Commandments? (It’s the 10th, 9th, 17th or 21st, depending on which version of the sacred scriptures you prefer.)

21 comments:

  1. Welcome to the quote mines. You're in good company:

    http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/project.html

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  2. > Incidentally, isn’t lying a violation of one of the Ten Commandments? (It’s the 10th, 9th, 17th or 21st, depending on which version of the sacred scriptures you prefer.)

    Ah, but they aren't bearing false witness against you, you see. They're bearing false witness in your favor, so it's okay. Even leaving that aside, there's limitless room to maneuver when neither God nor Caesar is actively arbitrating the case.

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  3. P.S. The quote mine about plenty of research being done without reference to evolutionary theory isn't even very original. The creationists did the same thing to Adam S. Wilkins:

    http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/part4.html#quote4.8

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  4. A very useful piece. And to expand a bit:[history/ethics/literature/philosophy/et al.]is "an open-ended enterprise where progress is made in part precisely because people disagree." Which, I surmise, is why Plato wrote dialogues . . .

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  5. Laughing too hard to rebut, but ye gods, is that author of the 'rational wiki' page slamming O'Leary a sad sack of hatefulness or what?

    Incoherent bloggers of all creeds rule. Language is way overrated anyway, even the digestible variety. I know that its hard work and a socially responsible thing to do when one deigns to form coherent sentences. But with every mental edit in favor of social acceptance or political correctness does the output not become less honest?

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  6. The Creationists seem to have got you both ways. They've used part of what you've said to give credence to their views, and then count on your defensive reaction to push you further from the self-adaptive evolutionary positions they really fear.

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    1. I'm with you there, Roy. Dignifying the buffoons with a rebuttal is merely arguing with an iiiiiiidiot wind.

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  7. It's so interesting that after the rejection of most of Darwin's theories, the discussion is going on....

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    1. Rejection in some areas is a form of confirmation in others.

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    2. I read the comment as, "It's so interesting that even after rigorously investigating Darwin's theories in an intellectually honest fashion and thereby determining that the process of evolution is real, ascertaining which of his ideas were accurate, which needed to be refined and which needed to be scrapped, and through this iterative process gaining a much more accurate understanding of how evolution works, people are still interested in asking intelligent questions about it and applying extraordinarily successful investigative methods to answering them so as to expand the frontier of human knowledge yet further."

      All of which essentially boils down to, "It's so interesting that cultures of knowledge persist even though cultures of ignorance are more normal."

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    3. I read it as Christians not being the only religionist creationists.

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  8. I'm shocked, shocked! Creationists being dishonest, it can't be...

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  9. Pooh, they did not lie. They simply cherry picked any purple-stained statements.

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  10. This is the problem with becoming a public intellectual Massimo. Easier for me to be obscure and unquoted;) That said to be one of the quoted, forces nuance to be missed. Every dissent needs to be have a disclaimer such as "while I agree with my esteemed colleagues Prof. Dennett et al on a number of topics...." and such nonsense. I am not sure how to cope with this.The only times I have ever had any of my blogs read are when I say some very inflammatory, non subtle things like "Francis Collins is a nut, and by Obama appointing him to the NIH, he has lost my respect". People read that. When I talk about Free -will, nanoscience, and certainly anything related to my actually field of study which is nuanced, no one cares to listen...

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  11. "When I talk about Free -will, nanoscience, and certainly anything related to my actually field of study which is nuanced, no one cares to listen..."

    Boring and not quotable at all.

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  12. The deal is, Wright should know better, ethically as well as intellectually. That said, he doesn't impress me that much.

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  13. I am with Maynard Smith against Gould on this one. I don't think Gould's reputation will (or should) ever recover from the Mismeasure debacle of shoddy science. http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001071

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  14. Joanna,

    that may be a bit harsh. Assuming the Lewis et al.'s paper is correct, they still do not accuse Gould of conscious manipulation of the data. And at any rate, the Morton affair has nothing to do with Gould's contributions to paleontology or evolutionary theory.

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  15. The paper seems to be rock solid. It does demonstrate a shoddy attitude to scientific rigor on Gould's part. This accusation had previously been brought to Gould's privately, from what I hear, this issue had been simmering away for a long time before these accusations were finally published. Gould may not have consciously manipulated the data, but he did consciously ignore those telling him that they thought his analysis was flawed. Gould did, however, prove his point about the role of bias in science, in the most ironic way possible.

    I'm not a paleontologist, so can't judge Gould's contributions there. I don't see that his contributions to evolutionary theory at large were particularly profound. Eg, punctuated equilibrium is interesting enough, but he did not make it clear that punctuated equilibrium is NOT inconsistent with Darwinian gradualism, and by failing to make this clear from the outset, Gould succeeded in creating much confusion.

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    1. Johanna,

      while Gould (and Eldredge) certainly initially exaggerated the import of puncteq, in plenty of subsequent publications they made it clear that it was compatible with the Modern Synthesis. It is also true, however, that it raises its own issues that are not reducible to standard popgen, such as the possibility of species selection.

      As for his other professional contributions, Ontogeny and Phylogeny is one of the most influential books in the pre-evodevo period, and his last one -- as much as it could have definitely benefited from editing -- is a lasting contribution by a giant of the field. Maynard-Smith's comments were simply uncalled for, and possibly (I'm guessing) motivated either by jealousy or by an unjustified sense of intellectual superiority.

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  16. Consciousness (i.e. subjective awareness) is not an illusion. It's axiomatic (i.e. self-evident). Any attempt to deny it presupposes it. That being said, materialists consider "free will" to be purely illusory. Why? Because materialists consider mental phenomena to be epiphenomenal and therefore causally inert. And since our entire mental life is predicated on a belief in free will, then the materialist must deem our entire mental life to be illusory.

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