Theohysterical Characteristics of Hate Coordination in Censorship Activities of Daily Science

At the beginning of this year, a certain research article discussed the many special optimizations in the human hand that sets it apart from other ape hands in terms of manual dexterity and, by extension, tool use.  Call it the science of the opposable thumb:

Interesting stuff.  But don't base any of your studies though on their meticulous documentation and experiments.  As you might guess from the watermark, the paper has been RETRACTED due to "inappropriate" (and apparently, offensive) language.  Ming-Jin Liu et al used the C-word.  Yes, the word "Creator" appeared not once but twice in the paper.  P.Z. Myers and other intimidazi apparently bombarded PlosOne with protests against nasty so-called "intelligent design creationism" creeping in, and PlosOne finally noticed that the C-word had been carefully hidden in the front-page abstract.   (Sneaky ID devils.) 

The authors have since stated that the Chinese expression (perhaps Tian?) was improperly translated and should have been rendered as "Nature" for Western "ears."  Bowing low before the angry Darwinian gods proved pointless though, and the publishers would not accept revising the "Creator" language to either "nature" or even "evolution".   As Eugenie Scott and Barbara Forrest have taught us, if the eagle quacks like a duck, then it can't be an eagle, because it probably once was a duck and that makes it is just a duck pretending to be an eagle (or some such logical profundity), just like we are all really sarcopterygian fish, no matter how many millions of mutations and HGTs we may boast since our Tiktaalik phase.  Someone call Barbara Forrest, for she may want to add a new chapter to her Trojan Herring book!  Here's another attempt of unseemly religion to camouflage itself as Holy Science.  Changing "Creator" to "Nature" won't atone for this unpardonable sin because it would be known that these edits changed it from being an ID article to "passing for" a Science article.  But once a "creationist" text always a "creationist" text, and as the brave and wise luminary/logician Judge Jones III has opined, an ID article can't be a Science article. 

You can still download the article but note that it bears the scarlet letters branded on each page.  And yes, all this means the authors must be ... secular creationists!
Now, if only the thought police could scrub our Declaration of Independence of all this offensive language (as well as all public forums), we might finally be free from the freedom of expression. 

Lysenkoism Part II: Collectivist Science

As I continue to ponder Elsberry and Perakh's denouncement of the comparison of  Darwinism to Lysenkoism, I find it funny that their attempt to "turn the tables" on ID proponents includes appeals to their alleged "self-aggrandizing puffery."  Apparently, they are offended by the effrontery of not exhibiting the proper humility and this, to them, makes them "Soviet-like" and Nazi-like. But this is (perhaps unintentionally) a red herring.

What is the most salient connection between the bullying and harrassment by the anticreationist coalition and the initimidation of totalitarian regimes is the urgency to suppress dissent and make sure that it has serious consequences.

Elsberry and Perakh try to steer the reader in the direction of seeing ID as kin of Lysenkoism.  ID and Lysenkoism are both against the neo-Darwinian Synthesis, for one.  Secondly, both are allegedly unproductive, whereas the Modern Synthesis supposedly can be credited with the great advances of modern biology.

In many ways, even though I think E and P's arguments on the matter are fallacious, I believe it is a red herring to argue at all based on which theory any one group's model of theory choice supports.  Fervent neo-Darwinist advocate (and contemptuous anticreationist) Jerry Coyne disagrees with E and P about the practical success of neo-Darwinism.  Many science defenders are aware of this inconvenient truth, but it is often considered impolitic to point it out.  But even if it could take credit as a productive heuristic, it is still not a good argument for suppressing alternative views or for excusing suppression.

The big problem with Lysenko's Michurinism was not really that it was unproductive or wrong.  The problem was that its shortcomings were foisted on people through intimidation and the use of state power to enforce a hegemony.  If dissent and controversy had been tolerated in the universities and if various firms and organizations had been free to pursue the erroneous theory of their choice, all of the public agriculture's eggs would not have been in the Michurinist basket -- maybe only a few government-sponsored experiments.   A free marketplace of ideas would have been ideal then as now.

Is ID the New Lysenkoism?

"[I]mprovement in crop plants and animals occurred long before we knew anything about evolution, and came about by people following the genetic principle of 'like begets like'. 

[I]f truth be told, evolution hasn't yielded many practical or commercial benefits. Yes, bacteria evolve drug resistance, and yes, we must take countermeasures, but beyond that there is not much to say.

~ Jerry Coyne, fearless defender of neo-Darwinism, quoted here

Elsberry and Perakh, despite their obvious disdain for Darwin skeptics, make for interesting reading when they try to comment on the substance of ID approaches.  They completely jump the shark on the matter of ideological science in general and Lysenkoism in particular.

First of all, I'd like to comment on where I first heard Lysenkoism mentioned with respect to Darwin-skepticism.  The first was in some commentary by Eugenie Scott.  As I recall, it wasn't in response to anything by ID advocates, but simply an analogy based on her belief that all ID is driven by ideology, and since the Lamarckist approach under Stalin was favored because of Marxist ideology, ID and Lysenkoism are obvious soulmates.  Profound.  (It's possible she was inspired by the E&P paper, but I don't remember seeing any references to it.)

The second instance was in the book Corrupted Science, which was advertised as an unbiased look at the relationship between ideology and science, and ironically turned out to be completely political polemic.  This too wasn't a reaction to Lysenkoism comparisons by ID advocates.

My impression upon reading the Scott article was a sense of irony.  The lost jobs, lost tenures, lost promotions, etc. where professors and teachers go from being praised and celebrated to suddenly being denounced as third-rate hacks abound.  As neo-Darwinist zealots often remind us, skeptics of hyper-selectionism and neo-Darwinism are sorely outnumbered.  In spite of this, what you will hear from the "science defenders" are complaints as to how dangerous it is to question ID (you might lose the good opinion of all those cranks they make fun of).