Author: Lori Jia
Well, it’s been worth the wait. The week-long attack from the intelligent design crowd on me explodes in a final fireball of absurdity. Read more in the final update of my response to the Pinto-loving Discovery Institute.
Originally published November 20, 2006. Copyright 2006 Carl Zimmer.
The Discovery Institute has fired a second post at me and my National Geographic article on evolution. I’ve updated my post to explain why they’re shooting blanks.
In the comment thread, some people asked why I was wasting time dealing with this stuff. The reason is simple: if I don’t show why these attacks are baseless, some people may assume there’s some truth to them. And since I put a fair amount of work into this article, I want to do my part to set things straight. Since the Discovery Institute does not see fit to put a comment thread on their “Evolution News and Views” site, this is the next best place for me to go about this.
Well, the talk at Cornell last week went very well. Thanks to everyone who came. If you want to hear me wax rhapsodic about parasite manipulations (and explain how scientists study their evolution), you’re in luck. Cornell has put the video of the talk online. The image is pretty small on the screen, so I decided to post the slide show on my web site here. I suggest opening two screens and advancing the slides as the talk progresses.
At first the sound is a little scratchy on the video and the light balance takes a while to get properly adjusted. But don’t give up–it evens out. You may also hear a baby gurgling from time to time.
Things have not been going so well on the political front for the advocates of intelligent design (a k a the progeny of creationism). This election season their allies on state boards of education in Kansas and Ohio went down to defeat. On the scientific front, things have never really gone well. The Discovery Institute in Seattle claims that it has spent millions on research. They have precious little to show for it. As I wrote last year, a single evolutionary biologist produces more papers in peer-reviewed biology journals than the entire staff of the Discovery Institute. You’d be hard-pressed to find a single paper that actually claims that intelligent design is supported by original evidence.
Attention all Loom readers in the Cornell University area: I’m heading up to Ithaca to give a talk tomorrow on a subject near and dear to my heart–how parasites turn their hosts into puppets and slaves. I’ll be at the David Call auditorium in Kennedy Hall at 4 pm. The lecture is open to the public and will, of course, include a very creepy Powerpoint. Details here, map here.
Originally published November 7, 2006. Copyright 2006 Carl Zimmer.