

Professor Lenski's humorous but scientific put down of Conservapedia nonsense - bdfh42
http://www.conservapedia.com/Conservapedia:Lenski_dialog

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biohacker42
I can not believe that people keep feeding the anti-evolution trolls. That's
what they are, real life trolls.

Plenty of scientists believe in God, what these people are pushing isn't even
good religion. Talk about cherry picking the bible.

But what most upsets me is not the trolls, but the people who feed them.
Scientists debating with them. Scientific debate is not the same as "debate".
They are in fact exact opposites.

Here's how best to explain it: In debating competitions you can still argue
the pro-slavery side and win! That's debate, it is NOT ABOUT TRUTH.

Science, and the unfortunately named "scientific debate" are about making a
claim that can be proven wrong. Explaining how to prove your claim wrong, and
then sitting back and waiting for your opponents to prove you wrong.

So lets stop feeding the trolls, and lets rename "scientific debate" to
gooobladowy or something, just to clear up the confusion.

When science and trolls engage in debate, science ALWAYS loses.

All the trolls need to win is for there to be debate, not even scientific
debate, even TV debate is good enough. You can NOT win by arguing with real
life trolls. You will NEVER convince them.

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daleharvey
reading the talk page on that was also pretty funny, someone summed it up
pretty well

Scientific scrutiny works like this: Scientist A publishes results.

Scientist B: A, I tried duplicating your experiment, but parameters x, y, and
z that I need were not in your article. I need you to disclose to me x, y, and
z that you used at the time. What are they? A: x, y, and z are such and such.
B: Using x, y, and z, my result doesn't agree with yours at all. Are you sure
you did the procedures that you claimed? A: ... B: You fraud!

Scientific scrutiny does not work like this:

A publishes results. B: I have Generic Skepticism toward your article. Under
code viii of the Publication Criteria, I demand that you give me all of your
data! A: ... ok...? It seems that everything you would need is already in the
article. Did you have something specific in mind? B: A has refused to attach
all data he has ever used for the experiment. He is withholding information
and thus hiding something.'

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boredguy8
Google Cache, as the page seems to be YCed:

[http://209.85.141.104/search?q=cache:1xPHjZ8_5w0J:www.conser...](http://209.85.141.104/search?q=cache:1xPHjZ8_5w0J:www.conservapedia.com/Conservapedia:Lenski_dialog+http://www.conservapedia.com/Conservapedia:Lenski_dialog&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1)

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tc7
My mind boggles at the response on the talk page:

[General impression:] "Yeah, we sure showed that 'scientist'! He'll think
TWICE before tanglin' with us again!"

As a Christian, I cringe on the inside. And outside. Heck, full-body cringe.

* Edit: And to clarify if needed, it looks like there's some reasonable people there as well, but what's with the admins or whoever is writing the nonsense?

* Edit2: Ah, the front page demonstrates the attitude well: "Lenski's latest response to a request for his data is revealing ... about Lenski's attitude. Take a good look at the attitude our tax dollars are paying for."

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comatose_kid
"In other words, it’s not that we claim to have glimpsed “a unicorn in the
garden” – we have a whole population of them living in my lab! [
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unicorn_in_the_Garden>] And lest you accuse
me further of fraud, I do not literally mean that we have unicorns in the lab.
Rather, I am making a literary allusion. [
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allusion>]"

Ha.

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coglethorpe
"It is my sincere hope that some readers might learn something from this
exchange, even if you do not."

I loved that line.

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paulgb
This Andy Schlafly appears to be a bit of a quack from the dialog, but I am
not convinced Prof. Lenski was right to deny him the data.

I'm admittedly quite unaware of how science works, but would this be a correct
analogy: Initech uses GPL code in a product, hacker writes Initech asking for
source, Initech says "no, you do not have such and such qualifications, you
wouldn't know what to do with the source, so you can't have it".

I looked up section viii. of the PNAS guidelines and at first glance it
doesn't seem he quoted it out of context. In fact it specifically says
"readers", not "qualified scientists" as in another guideline.

Obviously Andy Schlafly's intentions were to discredit Prof. Lanski, and he
was not qualified to examine the data. Prof. Lenski made the judgement call to
deny him the data. But, having submitted to PNAS, is it his call to make?

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fallentimes
The fact that an evolution denier got in shooting distance of the United
States presidency is an absolute travesty.

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michael_dorfman
Thanks for that.

Reading it was the most fun I've had all day.

