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Sunday, March 09, 2008

Speaking of cheating ....

 
The Face book controversy [Is it cheating to discuss an assignment in a Facebook study group?] has spread to lots of other blogs. On some of them, support for the students is getting bloggers in all kinds of hot water (e.g., A Blog Around the Clock).

Meanwhile, PZ Myers exposes another kind of cheating. This time it's the Intelligent Design Creationists () who are caught with their pants down. Read how Casey Luskin completely misrepresents the National Academy of Sciences with some very creative quote mining [Why do newspapers continue to publish Discovery Institute press releases?].

This is clearly dishonest behavior and it's about time for the general public to take notice. It will be interesting to see if any Intelligent Design Creationist tries to distance themselves from Casey Luskin. It would be a shock if any of them actually criticize Luskin for his dishonesty. If you know of a single example of a honest Intelligent Design Creationist who admits that Luskin was dishonest then please let me know. I'd like to praise them in a separate posting. Let's see if Denyse O'Leary, Bill Dembski or Micheal Behe can step up to the plate.


10 comments :

lee_merrill said...

I was getting the distinct impression that what Luskin wrote misrepresented what the Academy said--but it only changes the order and gives the impression of a paragraph being excerpted. I would not protest upon finding these quotes so distant in the book, what on earth does it matter?

Why say this is completely misrepresenting the Academy?

This I claim, is a complete misrepresentation of the situation, I dare say if I were to scan blogs of naturalists, I could find quotes out of order and from disparate parts of papers and books.

If Prof. Moran distances himself from PZ, we should applaud?

Anonymous said...

Luskin quoted from a sentence from one paragraph and a phrase from the second paragraph. These paragraphs were pages apart and in no way connected.
The big lie is in the phrase Luskin used to connect the quotes - "because neo-Darwinism is".
The paragraph on page 16 is talking about evolution. The paragraph on page 52 is talking about scientific theories in general.

Anonymous said...

"I could find quotes out of order and from disparate parts of papers and books."

No you couldn't.

lee_merrill said...

> RC: The paragraph on page 16 is talking about evolution. The paragraph on page 52 is talking about scientific theories in general.

Evolution is a scientific theory! I'm rather shocked at these "dreadful lie" claims.

> LM: I could find quotes out of order and from disparate parts of papers and books.

> ILM: No you couldn't.

I've apparently acquired some notoriety! Someone created a login just as a jibe for me.

Well, here might be one such quote of quotes of this blog entry: "And what is the basis of accusing Dawkins of fomenting vile religion? That he encourages 'Us'nThemism' and 'derogation of the Other.' "

Sounds like it occurs in the same paragraph? Well, you would be much deceived, these two quote lie four whole paragraphs away, one near the start, and the other near the end--scandalous!?

lee_merrill said...

Oops, PZ's blog entry is here.

TheChemistryOfBeer said...

"Well, here might be one such quote of quotes of this blog entry: [PZ]And what is the basis of accusing Dawkins of fomenting vile religion? That he encourages [JW]'Us'nThemism' and [JW]'derogation of the Other.'[/PZ]

Sounds like it occurs in the same paragraph?"

Only and IDiot would think that.

"Well, you would be much deceived, these two quote lie four whole paragraphs away, one near the start, and the other near the end--scandalous!?"

Thanks for highlighting that you have no examples of quote-mining, in spite of your bluster that you could easily find such examples.

Anonymous said...

It's always amusing to see people who don't believe in absolute moral laws to make absolute moral statements.

Why do atheists get so concerned when a non-atheist is "dishonest"? He is only following what his genes told him to do, right? If man is just matter and chemicals, there is no way we can act contrary to what our genes "tell us to do".
So basically, in the atheist worldview, there is nothing wrong in being "dishonest". It's just chemicals operating in one's brain. Thigns just "are".

*Mats*

Larry Moran said...

anonymous says,

It's always amusing to see people who don't believe in absolute moral laws to make absolute moral statements.

Surely it's even more amusing to see people behaving dishonestly when they do believe in absolute moral laws?

God would not be pleased with Casy Luskin.

Anonymous, do you condone his behavior?

Doppelganger said...

Well, have at it, Lee. Let's see some results for your 'scan' of the blogs of 'naturalists'. Let's see all the out of context quotes, out of order quotes, etc., that you just know will be there.

That or just accept what appears to be a fact - that creationists are by their very nature dishonest to the core.

Monado said...

I call Straw Man Argument on Mats! He's invented a bogeyman version of atheists, or ather copied a version from religious hate-literature.