Saturday, November 10, 2012

The scientific paper that makes Darwinists see red



On August 4th, 2004, Dr. Stephen Meyer published a review paper about the origin of biological form in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington (volume 117, no. 2, pp. 213-239), which is published at the Smithsonian Institute.

The paper caused a firestorm. The journal editor, Dr. Richard Sternberg, was targeted by a vicious campaign of harassment, ostracism, and professional destruction at the Smithsonian. The paper was repudiated by the Society after its publication.

The Federal Office of Special Counsel and a Congressional committee issued scathing reports on the criminal discrimination and harassment against the journal's editor merely for allowing the ideas to be published. The reports and other documents are here.

The Congressional report concludes:


The staff investigation has uncovered compelling evidence that Dr. Sternberg’s civil and constitutional rights were violated by Smithsonian officials. Moreover, the agency’s top officials—Secretary Lawrence Small and Deputy Secretary Sheila Burke—have shown themselves completely unwilling to rectify the wrongs that were done or even to genuinely investigate the wrongdoing. Most recently, Burke and Small have allowed NMNH officials to demote Dr. Sternberg to the position of Research Collaborator, despite past assurances from Burke that Dr. Sternberg was
a “Research Associate in good standing” and would be given “full and fair
consideration” for his request to renew his Research Associateship.2 The failure of Small and Burke to take any action against such discrimination raises serious questions about the Smithsonian’s willingness to protect the free speech and civil rights of scientists who may hold dissenting views on topics such as biological evolution.


Major findings of this staff investigation include:


Officials at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History created a
hostile work environment intended to force Dr. Sternberg to resign his position as a Research Associate in violation of his free speech and civil rights...

The hostility toward Dr. Sternberg at the NMNH was reinforced by anti-
religious and political motivations...

NMNH officials conspired with a special interest group on government time
and using government emails to publicly smear Dr. Sternberg; the group was
also enlisted to monitor Sternberg’s outside activities in order to find a way to
dismiss him...

Indeed, NMNH officials explicitly acknowledged in emails their intent to pressure Sternberg to resign because of his role in the publication of the Meyer paper and his views on evolution...

In emails exchanged during August and September 2004, NMNH officials
revealed their intent to use their government jobs to discriminate against
scientists based on their outside activities regarding evolution...

Secretary Small and Deputy Secretary Burke have exhibited a head-in-the-sand attitude toward wrongdoing at their agency; they have engaged in stonewalling and spin rather than dealing forthrightly with the discrimination that has occurred...

The issue is not the disagreement of Smithsonian scientists with Dr. Sternberg’s views on evolution, but rather their effort to use their official powers to punish Dr. Sternberg by seeking to remove him as a Research Associate, and their effort to publicly smear him with false information on government time using government emails. More broadly, NMNH officials have made clear their intent to prevent any scientist publicly skeptical of Darwinian theory from ever being appointed as a Research Associate, no matter how sterling his or her professional credentials or research.

In addition to the overtly criminal campaign of harassment against editor Sternberg, Myers' research paper was excoriated in many scientific circles. Notably lacking were any substantive refutations, or even cogent discussions, of the content of the paper.

The paper is here. Please read it in its entirety. It is a fine summary of the design argument.

After you read it, consider that this viewpoint is considered so dangerous to Darwinist 'scientists' that they went to radical means to bury the paper and to professionally destroy those who wrote it and published it. Why was a single paper in a relatively obscure journal judged so dangerous that extraordinary means had to be taken to repudiate it and punish the scientists responsible for writing and publishing it? What was so dangerous about it? To whom, or to what, was it dangerous?

When you consider the science that Meyer explains so well, you will understand why atheists find these ideas so threatening that they violate the most basic precepts of scientific discourse and simple civility to censor them. They even broke the law to punish the editor of the journal.

Have no illusions about Darwinists and atheists. This is what they do to scientists who tell the truth about biological origins.  

16 comments:

  1. All of a sudden Egnor has developed an aversion to all things political. He now plays golden oldies about Darwinism.

    Hard to be a loser on all fronts, eh?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Too funny! Egnor breaks the record for most lies in a post. Go read this and the links it points to for the real story.

    This is what they do to scientists who tell the truth about biological origins.

    Actually, mostly we just laugh at you.

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  3. The fraud's name is Richard von Sternberg. Nice aristocratic German name.

    Everything in your post has been refuted a gazillion times, and you know it. You're just as much a scam artist as R von S. Maybe you can share a cell one day and comfort each other.

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  4. Stephen Meyer certainly is(n't) an expert on the Cambrian.

    In his film 'Darwin's Dilemma', which he coproduced with Paul Nelson ( a young Earth creationist), one third of which is concerned with the Cambrian explosion, he shows the Cambrian fossil beds in western Canada, the Cambrian fossil beds in China and an oil drilling exploration ship in the Pacific Ocean, asking why no fossils from the Cambrian have been found in the Pacific seabed, without revealing the answer.

    Which is, that he's an idiot. The supercontinent Rodinia (similar to the later Pangea) had just broken apart, what later formed China and western Canada were actually very close together and the Pacific Ocean didn't exist at the time (no existing ocean is older than about 200 million years).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Johann,

      You should take some time and learn to read. That is, assuming you have greater ability than a Grey African parrot. My sister had a Grey that would perfectly emulate the sound of a flushing toilet when my brother-in-law came in from the barn. The reflexive quality of your conditioned response reminded me of that.

      Anyway, back to the point, which is: "The issue is not the disagreement of Smithsonian scientists with Dr. Sternberg’s views on evolution, but rather their effort to use their official powers to punish Dr. Sternberg by seeking to remove him as a Research Associate, and their effort to publicly smear him with false information on government time using government emails."

      Got that?

      By the way, I hear you're a finalist for the Mugabe Humanitarian Award. Your good work promoting the NY Marathon while people were suffering without power, food, or fuel on Staten Island was noticed by the Award Committee. Good luck! You certainly deserve it.

      Delete
    2. "Anyway, back to the point, which is: "The issue is not the disagreement of Smithsonian scientists with Dr. Sternberg’s views on evolution, but rather their effort to use their official powers to punish Dr. Sternberg by seeking to remove him as a Research Associate, and their effort to publicly smear him with false information on government time using government emails.""

      Said "issue" also being a lie. If you read the appendix to the Congressional report it actually contradicts the claims of the report. What the Smithsonian emails show is that Sternberg's associates didn't particularly like him (which is their right) because he had a track record of being extremely sloppy with specimins, borrowing books and not returning them, etc. Also, he was supposed to have a supervisor during his time there but had never met with the person assigned to him.

      Regarding the paper, he bypassed rhe normal peer review process and snuck it in at the very tail end of his time with the journal, then left so he wouldn't have to answer questions about it. The paper itself simply claims that known evolutionasy mechanisms cannot account for the Cambrian Explosion (said claims have already been refuted in the link posted above) and simply asserts ID by default.

      Boo

      Delete
  5. The issue is not the disagreement of Smithsonian scientists with Dr. Sternberg’s views on evolution, but rather their effort to use their official powers to punish Dr. Sternberg by seeking to remove him as a Research Associate, and their effort to publicly smear him with false information on government time using government emails."

    Poor, foolish little sheep who believes Religious Right propaganda without bothering to read the rebuttals already posted. We chortle in your general direction.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And I bask in your chortling, which comes to me downwind of the Tittering Ward in the Bates Motel and Rest Home.

      I know. It's the best an Ocupoid Anonymite can do. But still, one would think that after all these millenia, hanging from a branch and chittering would have...

      Delete
    2. ... created someone who knows how to spell "millennia"? In your case, doubtful.

      Delete
  6. True God-fearing, Jesus-loving AmericanNovember 10, 2012 at 9:16 AM

    Have no illusions about Darwinists and atheists. This is what they do to scientists who tell the truth about biological origins.

    I totally agree with you, Dr Egnor. I look forward to seeing you at the next tin foil hat convention.

    ReplyDelete
  7. CrusadeRex, if you're reading, I think most everyone here has at some point in their comments proven my last point entirely.


    First Time Caller (Calling Again)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. FTC,
      I am, and yes - you're point is well taken.
      But I still think it worth your while to get a tag, even if it is only for contacting people and networking ;)

      Delete
  8. The most alarming aspect of this paper debacle is not that scientists disagree - that is healthy. Rather, my issue is with the smear campaigns and the censorship.
    Good science relies on dissent.
    Meyers paper (I enjoyed it, personally) has just as much right to be published as his nihilistic and dogmatic censors.
    But then, I think that is most likely why Dr Egnor made this post.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If it has the right to be published it has the obligation to pass through the same peer review process every other paper does. Sternberg saw to it that that did not happen.

      Boo

      Delete
  9. The Federal Office of Special Counsel and a Congressional committee issued scathing reports on the criminal discrimination and harassment against the journal's editor merely for allowing the ideas to be published.

    When you lead off with a lie, it makes everything else you claim suspect. And you led off with two. Neither the OSC or a Congressional Committee issued a report.

    The OSC did write something about the case, but it wasn't a report. It was not even a preliminary finding. Their preliminary finding was that they didn't have jurisdiction and therefore could not actually do anything regarding the case. They then gave a preliminary analysis. Do you know what a preliminary analysis means? Absolutely nothing. It means that the OSC reviewed Sternberg's claims and determined if they took everything he asserted as true, he had sufficient basis to avoid having his claim dismissed summarily.

    The Congressional Committee (in this case the House Subcommittee on Government Reform) issued nothing. Persistently claiming (as Sternberg does) that the Committee issued a report is just evidence of the paucity of his claims. Souder, who championed Sternberg, was the chairman of the Subbcommittee, but the rest of the Subcomittee refused to issue the report. The "report" that came out was published by Souder's staff, and not by the Subcommittee. As such it is not a Congressional report, and has no more meaning than if you published as "report" on Sternberg.

    And for a sitting Subcommittee chairman to be unable to get a report he wants published by his Subcommittee to actually be published, well, in parliamentary terms that means that his fellow Subcommittee members thought that the material in question was completely without merit. The actual actions of the Subcommittee in the Sternberg case strongly indicate that they viewed his "case" as being entirely meritless.

    But since you don't have anything to prop up you assertions other than lies, you continue to lie. Even after it has been pointed out time and again that you are peddling lies.

    ReplyDelete