Being a Professor of Medicine, Physiology & Biophysics
at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center doesn’t mean that you
understand or accept science as an effective method of inquiry, and Robert
Eckel surely doesn’t. Though he has some scientific publications in unrelated
fields, Eckel is opposed to the application of scientific standards to fields
he clearly doesn’t know much about. He is, for instance, a hardcore creationist and both a
signatory the Discovery Institute’s petition A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism and on the CMI list of scientists alive today who accept the biblical account of creation.
Eckel thinks that evolution is just a theory (so he doesn’t really understand the basics of science in general), and that evolution
being just a theory immediately entails that the Biblical account of creation
is equally valid and that creationists and scientists just interpret the same
data using different worldviews (which could only work if you overlook the fact that creationists just reject almost
all the data, but really not even then). So why do so many scientist subscribe to evolution? Well, thinks
Eckel, it’s because they haven’t accepted Jesus. But of course.
Diagnosis: Yet another raging fundamentalist anti-science champion.
The US is apparently crammed with them, but Eckel has credentials that might
make him look, to those who don’t care to look too closely, as if his claims
should actually carry some weight, which they shouldn’t.
Minor quibble: What was once the University of Colorado, Health Sciences Center is now the University of Colorado, Denver, Anschutz Medical Campus.
ReplyDeleteSlightly bigger quibble: he's anti-science with respect to evolution and that sort, but in his own research area(s), he's very pro science and a solid well-respected researcher who's actually good to work with. Still a loon, though ...
Lee Euler of cancerdefeated.com, author of "How to Cure Almost Any Cancer at home for $5.15 a Day".
ReplyDeleteNuff said.