Has Dawkins lost credibility?

[CFLarsen]

No, articulett, the problem is that Dawkins' answer wasn't edited out.

Of what?

 

[jjramsey]

In the clips that I've seen-- the answer is not shown at all... just the pause... and it's used in several different clips-- with different questions asked... I didn't see any clip where any answer was provided-- maybe the OP linked such a clip.

The OP did link to such a clip.

I find that those accusing Dawkins of dishonesty are a little more dishonest than he is when the facts are examined.

The facts were examined in the post on Dispatches from the Culture Wars, and this time around, it was Dawkins who ended up being dishonest. Not that the creationists fared too well, either. They misrepresented Dawkins' failure as an indication that the question they posed was unanswerable, when it was just Dawkins having a bad moment. But Dawkins should have just said that the creationists took advantage of that bad moment, rather than stretch the truth about the aftermath.

I am well aware of creationists and their dishonest inferences which they will insist are not "lies".

So am I. That's what made Dawkins' distortion so plausible.

 

[articulett]

The OP did link to such a clip.



The facts were examined in the post on Dispatches from the Culture Wars, and this time around, it was Dawkins who ended up being dishonest. Not that the creationists fared too well, either. They misrepresented Dawkins' failure as an indication that the question they posed was unanswerable, when it was just Dawkins having a bad moment. But Dawkins should have just said that the creationists took advantage of that bad moment, rather than stretch the truth about the aftermath.



So am I. That's what made Dawkins' distortion so plausible.

What is the distortion... his supposed claims in an email? The video camera was shut off... and then resumed with a seeming answer that was a non- sequitur. I asked that you cut and paste what it was Dawkins' said that is a dishonest appraisal of such. You gave a link which posts his supposed response and non-responses in an email. I'm a fan of Ed Brayton's column; however, Dawkins supposed distortion has to do with what he supposedly said or didn't say in an email, correct? The question was dishonest and revealed the documentary makers (just like those in Expelled) to be other than what they represented. How else could one answer?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=B_MN_O9ICzY&feature=related
http://youtube.com/watch?v=bXy0aOI_zT4&feature=related

I don't think Dawkins has ever purposely distorted any information as far as I can tell. And it would take more than allegations about an email for me to presume as much. His writings and speeches and video clips are all over the web. If he misrepresented what happened or purposely distorted it, it should be easy to find, correct? It should not be based on something he supposedly wrote in an email when asked to reflect about what was said and when--especially when he hadn't viewed the result of the editing etc.

Pharyngula could be accused of doing the same regarding Expelled.

 

[articulett]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=huEMVJb4Js8

Deceitful editing discussed 12 minutes in. Where is Dawkins being dishonest?

In any case-- very amusing and worth watching.

 

[Acleron]

With regards to his expertise in evolution, Dawkins hasn't lost credibility, but as Ed Brayton and Glenn Morton found out by getting access to the unedited tapes, Dawkins did screw up by providing a non-responsive answer, and he did show himself to be less than honest by not acknowledging this and instead claiming that it was the usual misleading editing from creationists. Or in Brayton's own words:



BTW, Brayton does the Dispatches from the Culture Wars blog.

I am often illiterate, stupid, and uneducated but I do try to be logical, but sometimes I just lose my temper, so...

If someone gained access to your house by fraudulent means how would you rectify that position. By answering a nonsenical question?

Try understanding the garbage they asked, try to define what they meant by their silly question and when you do, apologise.

Aaargh!!!!

 

[VonNeumann]

There's too much nonsense in this thread to make it worth participating, but I'll just point out that the above is completely wrong.

First of all, there's only one mathematical definition of information, and it's closely related to entropy in thermodynamics. Claude Shannon proved that in the 1940's, founding the discipline of information theory. I recommend reading his paper - it's absolutely beautiful.

Secondly, Dawkins knows that and it is what he means. A quick google search will verify that.

Since this is a forum for skeptics, you might try applying a little critical thinking. Are you aware of the fact that Smolin is a proponent of an alternative theory (one that is probably indistinguishable from string theory to the layperson), which suffers from all the same ills (being difficult to test, for example) only to a much greater degree, and is a direct competitor for resources and funding? I might add that (very much unlike string theory) it hasn't produced a single useful insight into math, particle physics, cosmology, or anything else.

Smolin is a scientific failure, so rather than do science he writes books to try to convince people he's a "seer" and deserves more funding.

I read Shannon's 1947 paper long time ago. He put a lot of people out of their misery who couldn't figure out why they couldn't get more bandwidth out of whatever media they tried to. I also remember some people wrongly claiming in the 1970s that you'd never be able to make a modem (on 3KHz wide voice bands) go faster than 2400 baud due to the Nyquist rule (heheh, I guess they couldn't think past FSK). Anyway, that's another story.

Yes, I suppose you are correct about Smolin. And, being a skeptic's forum, and being a skeptic, I tend to be attracted to what some of the dissenters have to say. The point still stands about science -- seems it has reached a point of diminishing returns for the research money spent. So I guess we can all continue to argue about it all for a long time to come.

 

[articulett]

Yes, I suppose you are correct about Smolin. And, being a skeptic's forum, and being a skeptic, I tend to be attracted to what some of the dissenters have to say. The point still stands about science -- seems it has reached a point of diminishing returns for the research money spent. So I guess we can all continue to argue about it all for a long time to come.

Maybe in physics... definitely NOT the case in evolution... the more we know, the more tools we have for finding out more. And I can't imagine another field of study with more potential for benefiting humans (well, maybe neurology) (and technology)...

 

[Acleron]

The point still stands about science -- seems it has reached a point of diminishing returns for the research money spent. So I guess we can all continue to argue about it all for a long time to come.

What returns are you talking about?
In any adult society a certain amount of resources are invested in non-productive but appreciated results of endeavour. This has led to great art, music and science. If you think that science is a purely commercial endeavour I feel sorry for your lack appreciation and understanding.

 

[jjramsey]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=huEMVJb4Js8

Deceitful editing discussed 12 minutes in. Where is Dawkins being dishonest?

Simple. Dawkins was saying that when he appeared to be giving an evasive answer to the question asked earlier, he was actually giving an answer to a completely different question, rather than the one the video shows him being asked. To quote the Brayton article (quoting Glenn Morton):

The only alteration to the question posed by Gillian originally to Dawkins is the narrator's addition of the wods "Professor Dawkins," in front of the question. That is such a minor change that it does not alter the
substance of Gillian's claim....

I might add that I think Ms. Brown did Dawkins a favor. While Dawkins is shown staring at the ceiling for 11 seconds on the video, the actual time on the audio is 19 seconds. She spared Dawkins 8 seconds of embarrassment.

In short, the reason the video showed Dawkins pausing and then giving a bad answer is because that is exactly what happened. The editing itself was not misleading here. For whatever reasons, he really was stumped at that time.

This is dead obvious if you actually read Brayton's post. All I am doing is repeating it V-E-R-Y S-L-O-O-O-W-L-Y so that you get the point. I think you are coming dangerously close to repeating a mistake similar to Barry Williams' :

What happened here was that he got a letter making an accusation against "the bad guys", the letter was from one of "the good guys", and a very famous and respected one at that, and Williams ran with it. No need to ask questions, no need to examine the evidence. The story fit what he expected and wanted to be true, it helped his side and made the other side look bad, so let's print it.

 

[articulett]

Simple. Dawkins was saying that when he appeared to be giving an evasive answer to the question asked earlier, he was actually giving an answer to a completely different question, rather than the one the video shows him being asked. To quote the Brayton article (quoting Glenn Morton):



In short, the reason the video showed Dawkins pausing and then giving a bad answer is because that is exactly what happened. The editing itself was not misleading here. For whatever reasons, he really was stumped at that time.

This is dead obvious if you actually read Brayton's post. All I am doing is repeating it V-E-R-Y S-L-O-O-O-W-L-Y so that you get the point. I think you are coming dangerously close to repeating mistake similar to Barry Williams' :

Look... I'm not the only one not getting it. The claim is that in a letter when asked about the event, he denied it happened... perhaps not remembering or tying it together or whatever. But then when his memory was refreshed... he and others are in agreement with what happened... except that he says that they showed him answering a different question... and others said that was an answer to the original question? So his entire distortion amounts to his response to an email inquiry where he denied the event occurred? Or was it his claim they used the answer to a different question? I just don't understand where the notion that he was purposefully distorting information comes into play. And you don't need to speak slowly-- we are smart people here on this forum... we can understand facts just fine. I think it would be easy for you to cut and paste his statement of distortion and it's source as well as what it distorted and that source. How hard is that?

I would think that would be an easy enough thing to do since you have Ed's column... two "cut and pastes"-- the distortion by Dawkins and the actual facts distorted. (with links). That's easy enough isn't it?

 

[articulett]

More on information assembly from the bottom up for Von Neumann:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071030105309.htm

Discussed in more detail here: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94834&page=35

 

[dakotajudo]

Articulett introduced the human body and its trillions of replicating cells all potentially contributing to evolution. In fact only four of my cells have done that - I have two sons and two daughters.

Not really.

True, only the germline cells contribute to descent with modification, but the selection part acts on the trillions of replicating cells in the body; something goes wrong with those (or even if they simply don't adapt well to your environment) and you don't get the chance to produce sons and daughters.

I was hoping you were going to clarify how you could say that evolution is not about progressive advancement. If life started out as something simpler than uni-cellular and progressed to self-aware organisms, in a mere span of ~10^9 years, then is that not "progressive advancement"? And if that is progressive advancement, why do you not attribute it to what we call "evolution"? I don't think it is typical that someone who takes stock in evolution, would emasculate it to the point it becomes merely about adaptation.

Emasculate? Merely? Perhaps you don't understand how powerful an idea adaptation is. And for "progressive advancement", there have been ratchet theories that explain the appearance of advancement.

And, as you correctly found from that infallible specialist source of reference, Wikipedia, Crick is responsible for the term "Central Dogma". That same wonderful source has actually screwed up somewhat, since Crick's C.D. was that DNA produced PROTEIN and not vice-versa (reference "The Theory of Evolution" by John Maynard Smith, Pelican edition, pp 64-5 for all this detail) but that doesn't matter. It's just the same if you talk about tRNA. If you look at the right organism you'll find that somatic cells may become reproductive cells, and that RNA can and does make DNA.

No, Crick's central dogma is 'once information has got into a protein it can't get out again'

Be careful how you state it - DNA does not "produce" protein, nor does RNA "make" DNA, both are template molecules (though, of course, RNA can have catalytic moeities). And I'm not sure what you meant by "talk about tRNA" - perhaps that's a typo.

The idea of molecular templates is what is central to molecular biology - that nucleic acids can act as templates for other nucleic acids or for proteins, but that proteins do not act as templates.

Of cource, this statement is wrong:

I take it, then, that you don't know that the existence of retroviruses proves that the "Central Dogma" is wrong?

The central dogma, as stated in http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/SC/B/B/F/T/_/scbbft.pdf, has not been proven wrong, and still applies.


Going back a bit, now I get it, Dick; you don't understand information theory

I just count my information in bits, bytes, and their multiples. I am alo a card player, and I know that the amount of information necessary to define any bridge deal is exactly the same as any other - but that if a player is dealt all 13 spades (especially on his birthday) purposeful intervention is all but certain.

See, you just contradicted yourself. The specific hand you mention can be stored much more simply (13*spades) than nearly all other hands, say, 6H +AD + 9D + JH + 10H + 10C + 10S + 2S + 2D + KS + 3H + 3S + 8C. (actually, I just dealt out 13 cards from my poker deck; I don't play bridge, so I don't know if that's a valid bridge hand. But you should see my point).

(13*S) is kinda how file compression (ZIP) works. And if you don't get that, then you obviously don't see the flaws in this line of reasoning:

To specify a crucial protein - Hoyle takes one of the histones as an example - around a hundred aminoacids must be coded for, from a choice of twenty, in the correct order. The amount of information involved is, in these terms, of the order of 20 raised to the power 100, which I roughly calculate is 2 to the power 400 (the actual number is irrelevant - it's BIG). Suppose (as is the case) that this universal protein - vital for cell division - must be specific, barring a handful of acceptable aminoacid variations. (Almost) any change is lethal. BUT THIS HISTONE MUST HAVE EVOLVED ONE MUTATION AT A TIME.

Not to mention the obvious flaws with respect to the molecular biology of histone proteins. For example, while histones H3 and H4 are highly conserved, histones H2A and H2B are less so, and H1 may not even be strictly necessary. Archaeal histones suggest a certain amount of modularity among the histones, which implies compression of information, along the lines of 13*S.

Now, the specific histone is not stated, so it's hard to say for sure, but given the published sequences of the various histones, I'd say Hoyle is greatly overstating the complexity required to code for histone proteins. If you look at the published alignments at http://research.nhgri.nih.gov/histones/web/alignments.shtml , it should be obvious that there's more than a handful of allowed substitutions.

Really, it's not a very good example; it's fairly new protein, as these things go.

Then there's the hugely inaccurate "MUST HAVE EVOLVED ONE MUTATION AT A TIME".


Sorry if that got to be a little of topic, but really, it's hard to read a debate about Dawkins' credibility, with so little pertinent knowledge in evidence. Personally, I find Dawkins a bit too reliant on gradualism, but otherwise explains evolution well.

Interestingly, there is an article in the recent Skeptical Inquirer that is critical the "Selfish Gene" hypothesis. I dunno, over the course of several semesters of molecular biology, selfish genes were never really discussed; nor does the concept appear much in the literature.

Smolin is a scientific failure, so rather than do science he writes books to try to convince people he's a "seer" and deserves more funding.

Well, let's compare Smolin with Dawkins, then. A quick PubMed lists 6 references for Dawkins, 4 for Smolin.

But I didn't expect any hits for Smolin on PubMed; on arXiv I find his name listed for some 82 papers (http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/au:+Smolin_Lee/0/1/0/all/0/1?per_page=50); compare this list to Dawkins bibliography at http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins-archive/Dawkins/Work/biblio.shtml. Dawkins' target audience is the lay population; Smolin's seems to be the specialists, but both seem to be out a lot of work in their bits of science.


Consider that Dawkins published "The Selfish Gene" in 1976, but I could find only two references in my edition (1989) that list Dawkins as an author, written on or prior to 1976 - so perhaps your complaint about Smolin applies to Dawkins as well? (or, more likely, you've been unfair to Smolin).

So, has Dawkins lost credibility? Of course not. Credibility, to my mind, isn't about being right all the time, it's about asking the right questions at the right time (and, in this case, ignoring the wrong questions). I certainly don't agree with everything Dawkin's has written, but it's still worth my time to read at a least part of his arguments - I've mostly skimmed "The Selfish Gene" and I started "The God Delusion", but didn't finish; on the other hand I read "The Ancestor's Tale" straight through; I'll probably read that again. Contrast that with, say, Dick Atkinson or VonNeumann; I might not be bothered to read their responses to this post.

 

[godless dave]

Hoyle was an astronomer. I suspect he knew no more about biology than I do, and I'm just a dude with a BA in linguistics.

 

[jjramsey]

But then when his memory was refreshed... he and others are in agreement with what happened... except that he says that they showed him answering a different question... and others said that was an answer to the original question?

Sigh, it's not just that "others said" Dawkins' response was to the original question. It's that the unedited tapes showed that his response was to the original question. Again, this is dead clear from Brayton's post.

I think it would be easy for you to cut and paste his statement of distortion and it's source as well as what it distorted and that source. How hard is that?

One source of his statement of distortion was on the very YouTube clip that you mentioned above, where he says his apparently evasive answer was actually a response to, in Dawkins' own words from the clip, "a completely different question". I can't cut and paste that, since it's a video, but you already know where that statement is on the clip because you told me--about 12 minutes into the video. What it distorted was the actual turn of events during the interview with Dawkins, as indicated by the unedited tapes, which Brayton describes in the post to which I've linked multiple times. There is also an IIDB thread with more details. Here is a fairly good starting point:

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?p=1632789#post1632789

Note especially this part:

Actually, there is good reason to know that he was answering the question that was asked - the question was repeated when the taping resumed. That's not on the finished tape, but it was on the unedited tape.

(Interestingly enough, as is clear from the IIDB post from Brayton, at the time, Dawkins hadn't alleged what he now alleges in the YouTube video, that the tape had been edited in a misleading fashion, though he did earlier allege that he had never given the interview.)

 

[VonNeumann]

What returns are you talking about?
In any adult society a certain amount of resources are invested in non-productive but appreciated results of endeavour. This has led to great art, music and science. If you think that science is a purely commercial endeavour I feel sorry for your lack appreciation and understanding.

I'm all for research. A lot of what I've done in my life was on research money, directly or indirectly, mostly private but some guv. I guess I didn't state my point clearly.

I started to write a whole bunch of history about how research has been politicized and how the waves of money, and lack of, cause scientists to change industry and all that. It's all completely out of scope of this thread so I'll just let you think I lack appreciation and that I don't understand.

 

[VonNeumann]

More on information assembly from the bottom up for Von Neumann:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071030105309.htm

Discussed in more detail here: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94834&page=35

You think you have made a point about non-teleological evolution by illustrating by means of a man-made endeavor: nanotechnology. This is a blunder. It is the same blunder that I've spent many times mentioning w.r.t. Dawkin's "Methinks.." program. It is like saying you believe in perpetual motion because you can demonstrate something like perpetual motion (all the way up until the battery is depleted). Nanotechnology is developed in a bottom-up process of human creativity (you know?). Your leap from that toward evolution requires that you first withdraw the human-creativity element (because otherwise you'd be making a case for teleology).

It would be fair to illustrate nanotechnology that evolves on it's own with no human deux-a-machina. But such as that does not exist. When it does, someday,THEN use it for illustration.

You (et al) need first to ask yourself if you can introspect into your own cognitive contradiction, that you'd use what would be evidence for the other side to attempt to supply evidence for your side. This so bizarre -- what are you thinking?

 

[VonNeumann]

Emasculate? Merely? Perhaps you don't understand how powerful an idea adaptation is. And for "progressive advancement", there have been ratchet theories that explain the appearance of advancement.

You must not have bothered to read what I was responding to. I understood the other party as having said that evolution is not about progressive advancement, it is only about adaptation. If that is all evolution is about (adaptation) then there would be very little controversy. The core of the controversy is about whether the huge increase in information in all the DNA on Earth today, vs the amount of information in DNA on Earth, say, 1BYA, is entirely explainable by the standard model of evolution. If he meant something by "progressive advancement" other than a huge increase in information, then I missed his point.

 

[VonNeumann]

Maybe in physics... definitely NOT the case in evolution... the more we know, the more tools we have for finding out more. And I can't imagine another field of study with more potential for benefiting humans (well, maybe neurology) (and technology)...

Again, I was musing about string theory. I'm with you on the other stuff.

 

[articulett]

No Von... what are you thinking. The article was clearly a model for how molecules self assemble in environments-- a clue for abiogenesis. But I'm not going to run around and re-explain to someone who thinks the nylonase mutation was a special design from a telelogical source. Nothing I quote comes from anyone who is thinks like you do. But you sure can twist anything to pretend it does.

 

[VonNeumann]

No Von... what are you thinking. The article was clearly a model for how molecules self assemble in environments-- a clue for abiogenesis. But I'm not going to run around and re-explain to someone who thinks the nylonase mutation was a special design from a telelogical source. Nothing I quote comes from anyone who is thinks like you do. But you sure can twist anything to pretend it does.

I wasn't being completely fair, being that I didn't read the link yet. So thanks for the link. I'd like to see what they say about self-assembling molecules.