Yes, that list again. The Discovery Institute’s petition A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism is, if the purpose really was to showcase the scientific dissent for Darwinism, a pretty self-undermining affair, something that is splendidly illustrated by this effort. Anything that could walk or crawl apparently qualified as a signatory as long as it had a PhD, and preciously few of the signatories would qualify as working scientistsby any stretch of the imagination, and even fewer have any background in a field remotely relevant to the topic of the petition.
A typical example is Art Nitz. Nitz has a Ph.D. in Anatomy & Neurobiology, University of Kentucky, and is currently apparently a Professor of Physical Therapy at the same institution with some publications on sports medicine to his name – nothing to do with biology, much less evolution. But Nitz is also chairman of the Kentucky Family Foundation (related to this group?) and president of the Frankfort Alliance Church Of The Christian And Missionary Alliance, Inc, and has a side job as speaker giving creationist talks at various venues – completely outside his area of expertise, of course, and his rejection of the theory of evolution is equally obviously not founded on scientific grounds. So it goes.
Diagnosis: Fundie denialism. Entirely unsurprising, and yet so ridiculous.
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