Nice post.
People like Behe frustrate me to no end. Of course you can't find any contrary evidence if you don't look for it, or you simply ignore it. If only we could bronze that type of stupidity and put it on display for all to see.
I'm sorry, but in Behe's comment number 4, when he said, "How can the Court declare that a stack of publications shows anything at all if the defense expert disputes it and the Court has not itself read and understood them?" Didn't he just complain that the court did basically the same thing that he did?
He declared that the "stack of publications" does not show anything at all, when he himself has not read and understood them, by his own admission.
Can you say "hypocrite"?
Yeah, it's something that struck me immediately when I read it. I was just left scratching my head at that particular statement. His 'response' is filled with contradictions and he actually damages he own case more than he helps it.
In some ways, I feel sorry for the guy. He's based his entire career and basically threw away his scientific credibility with the whole ID movement. There isn't anything left for him to do except admit he was wrong or blindly defend what he's done.
I hope that I never put so much of my career behind a single scientific hypothesis that I would blindly defend it no matter what.
"Dr. Behe needs to realise that science is not about making a claim and having everyone disprove what you think."
Science isn't about that, but creationism is.
The point is Behe that you are the one making the claim that the immune system is IC, not the court and not the plantiffs.
Actually, the plantiffs are disputing his claims, and are offering the publications as evidence. They needed to either call the authors to the stand to testify, or have introduced specific quotes from the material into the cross of Behe, that would support their challenge of Behe. I can't imagine conclusions drawn from information not introduced into the trial could have survived on appeal.
Roger, the problem with that argument is that Behe is (as an 'expert') for the defence supposed to be familiar with the area he is testifying in. If Behe is unfamiliar with the general research in the area then he's already shot any 'legal' credibility he has in the foot. This is the larger reason for why the court found dumping such a large number of papers on Behe was so convincing.
Also, the papers were submitted into the court and so were part of the evidence. As they are published in peer reviewed journals that both sides experts agreed was how scientists communicated, there was no solid reason for the court not to accept them. Just as the court would not have justification to dismiss papers that mentioned "IC" or similar. The difference is that there are no papers that support the immune system being irreducibly complex.
That's why the presentation had such a profound effect on the court.
The question isn't whether Behe was or was not familiar with the specific documents at issue. The documents were NOT explored at trial, either via direct examination or cross. Yes, the sides stipulated that on this issue, the evidence such as it was, is contained in the peer-reviewed literature. But they did NOT agree on what the evidence said.
So the evidence needed to be either vetted at trial, or ignored by the judge in reaching a decision.
Actually, that is a very important question as I already explained and I think it's relevant to go back over the trial transcripts in question:
Q. Professor Behe, what I have given you has been marked Plaintiff's Exhibit 743. It actually has a title, "Behe immune system articles," but I think we can agree you didn't write these?
A. I'll have to look through. No, I did not.
Q. And there are fifty-eight articles in here on the evolution of the immune system?
A. Yes. That's what it seems to say.
Q. So in addition to the, some of these I believe overlap with the eight that I previously identified that Dr. Miller had talked about, so at a minimum fifty new articles?
A. Not all of them look to be new. This one here is from 1991 that I opened to, I think it's under tab number 3, it's entitled "Evidence suggesting an evolutionary relationship between transposable elements and immune system recombination sequences." I haven't seen this article, but I assume that it's similar to the ones I presented and discussed in my testimony yesterday.
Q. And when I say new, I just meant different from the eight that I identified with Dr. Miller.
A. Yes, that's right.
Q.
A minimum of fifty, and you're right they're not all new. Some go back as early as 1971, and they go right through 2005, and in fact there's a few that are dated 2006, which I guess would indicate a forthcoming publication.
A. I assume so.
This is where they were originally bought up, note the specific line of argumentation being adopted.
Then we enter (after a bit of back and forth into this)
A. Well, these books do seem to have the titles that you said, and I'm sure they have the chapters in them that you mentioned as well, but again I am quite skeptical, although I haven't read them, that in fact they present detailed rigorous models for the evolution of the immune system by random mutation and natural selection.
Q. You haven't read those chapters?
A. No, I haven't.
Q. You haven't read the books that I gave you?
A. No, I haven't. I have read those papers that I presented though yesterday on the immune system.
Q. And the fifty-eight articles, some yes, some no?
A. Well, the nice thing about science is that often times when you read the latest articles, or a sampling of the latest articles, they certainly include earlier results. So you get up to speed pretty quickly. You don't have to go back and read every article on a particular topic for the last fifty years or so.
Q. And all of these materials I gave you and, you know, those, including those you've read, none of them in your view meet the standard you set for literature on the evolution of the immune system? No scientific literature has no answers to the question of the origin of the immune system?
A. Again in the context of that chapter, I meant no answers, no detailed rigorous answers to the question of how the immune system could arise by rando
A. Again in the context of that chapter, I meant no answers, no detailed rigorous answers to the question of how the immune system could arise by random mutation and natural selection, and yes, in my, in the reading I have done I have not found any such studies.
Note here that Behe hasn't bothered reading said articles and yet is making an assertion about what they do and do not say on faith. What scientist do you know just throws away the evidence from a paper they haven't read because they are "sure it doesn't answer their question".
Finally, we have the key part of the exchange and the reason for the papers presentation:
A. Okay, Darwinian mechanism. Okay, yes, that's correct.
Q. You conclude the chapter called "Publish or Perish" by saying, "In effect, the theory of Darwinian molecular evolution has not published, and so it should perish," right?
A. That's correct, yes.
Q. And then all these hard working scientists publish article after article over years and years, chapters and books, full books, addressing the question of how the vertebrate immune system evolved, but none of them are satisfactory to you for an answer to that question?
A. Well, see, that again is an example of confusing the different meanings of evolution. As we have seen before, evolution means a number of things, such as change over time, common descent, gradualism and so on. And when I say Darwinian evolution, that is focusing exactly on the mechanism of natural selection. And none of these articles address that.
Q. Again at the same time you don't publish any peer reviewed articles advocating for the alternative, intelligent design?
A. I have published a book, or -- I have published a book discussing my ideas.
Q. That's Darwin's Black Box, correct?
A. That's the one, yes.
Q. And you also propose tests such as the one we saw in "Reply to My Critics" about how those Darwinians can test your proposition?
A. Yes.
Q. But you don't do those tests?
A. Well, I think someone who thought an idea was incorrect such as intelligent design would be motivated to try to falsify that, and certainly there have been several people who have tried to do exactly that, and I myself would prefer to spend time in what I would consider to be more fruitful endeavors.
Q. Professor Behe, isn't it the case that scientists often propose hypotheses, and then set out to test them themselves rather than trusting the people who don't agree with their hypothesis?
A. That's true, but hypothesis of design is tested in a way that is different from a Darwinian hypotheses. The test has to be specific to the hypothesis itself, and as I have argued, an inductive hypothesis is argued or is supported by induction, by example after example of things we see that fit this induction.
The papers are simply there to establish that there is an active amount of research into the immune system and that 'evolutionary scientists' are publishing on it daily. Rothschild then shows the vacuity of the ID movement by forcing Behe to admit on the stand they have NEVER published anything supporting the irreducible complexity of the immune system.
That's why those papers were so important.
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This nothing more than another weak attempt to gloss over what was really said. By piling up a stack of papers one is just trying to bully by numbers. If numbers is what wins out then we would still believe in a flat earth as Galileo was certainly out numbered.
The problem here is that Behe is pointing out that there is a major problem with what scientists are accepting as evidence in respect to Darwinian evolution. If your fundamental assumptions are incorrect, it doesn't matter how many papers you write supporting those assumptions, they are still incorrect.
What Behe was talking about and you and others like you consistantly ignore is that evolutionary evidence is baseless.
All evidence provided is based on similarities. According to the current ideas, all one needs to do is find two things that sufficiently similar to be explained evolutionary and then one no longer needs to provide proof that said evolution actually happened.
Instead, Behe and other ID proponents have put forth the notion that instead, evolutionary claims should be based not on similarities between systems, but on an actuall genetic analysis of the two systems. From there one can find the true differences and similarities. Then one can go on to actually create real tests that can show how possible it would be to get one to change to the other. Also, one can use mathmatical models using fitness tests to see how probable or improbable such changes through natural processes actually are.
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