#2518: William Basener

William Basener is a professor of data science at the University of Virginia and formerly associate professor of mathematics at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Basener is probably most famous for his involvement in William Dembski’s Evolutionary Informatics Lab at Baylor, which was not a lab but a website and – in particular – never did any biology, and its pseudoscientific work in support of Intelligent Design Creationism. Basener is also a signatory to the Discovery Institute’s silly petition A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism, and one the relatively few signatories with genuine credentials and a significant and real scientific output.

 

He does not have any expertise in biology, but has published a couple of papers – many of which are superficially professional-looking – that he claims are relevant to biological evolution. These include an article with John Sanford in Mathematical Biology in 2017, where they argue that R.A. Fisher’s notorious Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection needs additional terms added to account for mutation, and that when these are added, the mean fitness of populations tends to steadily decline. Of course, Basener and Stanford misunderstood the population genetics literature (also here), in particular the extent to which Fisher’s theorem has any bearing on the mathematics of selection versus mutation, and were generally wrong, but that doesn’t seem to deter them. Basener has also been on the editorial team of the journal Bio-Complexity, which is not exactly the kind of place you want your work to be published if you wish it to be taken seriously.

 

Diagnosis: Something of an authority in the Intelligent Design creationist community, insofar as he is one of the relatively few among them who can produce arguments that superficially look like they have anything to do with science, at least to those who don’t have any expertise in the fields. Though this particular branch of pseudoscience has faded from public view over the last decade (after it turned out that its supporters generally never cared about the “sophisticated science” look anyways but preferred dumb anti-science conspiracy theories), they’re apparently still at it.

#1917: Jed Macosko

Another intelligent design creationist (his relationship, if any, to last entry’s Christopher Macosko is unclear), Jed Macosko is an assistant professor (of biophysics) at Wake Forest University who, unlike most ID proponents, appears to publish peer-reviewed scientific research. None of the serious publiscations seems to touch on Intelligent Design, of course, but it gives him credentials, which can be used for marketing ID regardless of whether they actually help establish intelligent design creationism research as a scientific enterprise. Macosko is also a Fellow of William Dembski’s International Society for Complexity, Information and Design, and a Fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture between 2001 and 2003. Unsurprisingly, Macosko is also a signatory to their ridiculous petition A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism, which – to put it simply – does not reflect scientific dissent from Darwinism.

In addition to peer reviewed research that does not concern Intelligent Design, Macosko produces

non-peer-reviewed material that does, indeed, purport to support ID, and is perhaps best known for co-editing, with Dembski, “A Man For This Season: The Phillip Johnson Celebration Volume” (information about the volume here); Macosko himself contributed a chapter on “how Johnson has influenced [the authors] approach to biology and what implications such an ID-fiendly approach would have for biology” coauthored with David Keller, a University of New Mexico chemist who is not a biologist either. Funny that.

He is also on the editorial board of the pseudojournal Bio-Complexity, and was involved – giving biological guidance – in the subversive creationist game CellCraft; subversive, since it was not marketed as promoting ID and those using it might not notice that the biology was deliberately skewed creationistwise. That game is not his only outreach effort. There is a reasonably thorough discussion of some of his 2002 public lectures on “Darwinism and cell complexity” (marketed as “Free scientific lectures offered”) here. One of these lectures, at UC Davis, is titled “Life’s Molecular Machines: By Chance or by Design?” (sponsored by a Christian Bible-study group called Grace Alive and opened with a plenary prayer) and yes – as you’d expect, it predictably and misleadingly suggests that evolution is “by chance”, which it is certainly not. The other “scientific” lecture, “If Darwinism is Unfounded, Why Do so Many Smart People Believe It?” was to be given at the Grace Valley Christian Center. Apparently anti-science is science, only more comprehensive since it includes the “anti” part as well.

Diagnosis: One of the slicker, more professional-seeming anti-scientists in the creationist enterprise, and as such probably one of the more dangerous. No, it isn’t more scientific or rational, or less anti-science, than green-ink rants in weird font combinations about how the Bible disproves that the Earth is round, but it sounds more professional and is deliberately targeted toward those who aren’t really well-versed enough in evolutionary biology to tell the difference.

#455: Barry Arrington

Barry Arrington is a lawyer specializing in representing the middle management agents of conservative right wing thought, and is, in fact, quite a wingnut nutjob himself. Arrington officially runs William Dembski’s blog Uncommon Descent (ever since Dembski “withdrew” in 2008 to focus on “research”). Arrington is thus for instance in charge of the moderation policies at that site, and is therefore behind the policy (typical to the point of definitional of crackpot sites) of not allowing comments that provide coherent criticism of Intelligent Design Creationism (some records of the activity are kept here). True to the spirit of the movement, Arrington deletes and denies critical comments to the posts on the blog, and subsequently proclaims that the lack of comments from ID critics means that he won the argument (for instance here). In fact, it is not only critics of evolution who receives this treatment. After Arrington had asserted that Darwin was a firm racist, Uncommon Descent blogger DaveScot wrote a post in which he happened to point out that some Christians had been racists too. Arrington then banned DaveScot from Uncommon Descent for violating its policies by posting such claims. (Arrington’s actual reply was that these purported Christians were not really Christians and that atheists are worse). Intelligent Design should nevertheless be taught in public schools since it is important that kids hear both sides.

Among other activities Arrington has also attempted to run for a position on the Colorado school board, and he is (or was) the treasurer of MichelePAC, Michele Bachmann's fundraising organization – he even managed to misspell Bachmann’s name on the FEC filings. Arrington has also tried to place the blame for church shootings on atheist writers, primarily because he wants to see a connection and is a screaming douche. The imaginary status of his evidence is rather mind-boggling, but from the evidence he concludes – predictably, and through inference by fallacy – that morality is impossible without God. He has also claimed that using the fossil record to argue for evolution is cheating since it is based on science (indeed). After all, Arrington is at a deeply unfair disadvantage here – how can he win possibly win an honest discussion when his opponents are the ones who have all the truth, evidence, reason, reality, science, intellectual honesty, and accountability on their side?

Diagnosis: Complete idiot whose inability to distinguish between providing reasons for X and bullying critics of X into silence makes him a perfect moderator for ID outlets.

#103: William “Bill” Dembski

Possibly the most influential and cited (though scarcely in peer reviewed publications – though he actually have a couple of those in mathematics) among America’s Intelligent Design creationists – and one of the most tireless, self-aggrandizing and seriously deluded. He is not a stupid guy, but there are things he is just completely unable to grasp, to the extent that it almost suggests some sort of cognitive malfunction (more likely confirmation bias and an inability to realize a mistake). See here, here, here, and here. No, he just doesn’t get it. Perhaps it is because his grasp of information theory is not as solid as it should be, resulting in some completely basic mistakes.

Ok, some background: Dembski has a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Chicago, and in philosophy from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Currently he pretends to teach at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (yes, pretends; his course requirements are, shall we say, dubious). He is quite clear that ID is science, not religion, as his quite clear from his own summary of ID: “Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John's Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory.” Too bad Dembski doesn’t quite grasp the latter (some examples: here, and here). See also here.

He is closely associated with the Discovery Institute and is the mastermind behind the blog Uncommon Descent (UD, no link provided!); for more on his background, consult this objective article, or this one. He has gathered quite a substantial number of lackeys, including Denyse O’Leary, Dave Scott, Robert Marks, Barry Arrington (who now officially runs UD), Winston Evert, George Montañez and Bruce Gordon (all loons; some will have separate entries).

Most notable for his book “No Free Lunch” (which pretty much dresses Paley’s old fallacies up in math) and the never defined notion of “specified complexity” (here, here, here, and here, and an awesome post on creationist misuse of information theory in in general).

Dembski isn’t particularly good at handling handling criticism either.

Diagnosis: Seriously deluded kook who, despite being obviously intelligent, lets his own preconceptions completely obstruct his view as to how things actually hang together – even on topics related to his field of expertise. Extremely influential nonetheless, and as such extremely dangerous.

#675: Michael Flannery

Michael A. Flannery (MA, MLS) is the associate director for historical collections at Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences, University of Alabama, Birmingham, and has supposedly “published extensively on the history of medicine, pharmacy, and bioethics”. He made a certain splash with his book Alfred Russel Wallace’s Theory of Intelligent Evolution: How Wallace's World of Life Challenged Darwinism, the foreword of which was penned by William Dembski, no less (Flannery is himself associated with the Discovery Institute) – and that really tells you all you need to know about the book (more here). To emphasize that he is not a creationist, Flannery points out that “ID is not creationism. It makes no claim about the nature of the designer [and] it can be embraced by a wide spectrum of belief systems from Judeo-Christian to Moslem and many more.” Which does not make it non-creationist, and does not make it a theory with even a semblance of predictive or explanatory power (indeed, it explicitly avoids any semblance of explanatory power out of the theory – responding to the question of why X is the case by “it was so designed” is, without specific information on the motives of the designer and the exact techniques employed, no more of an explanation than “it just is that way”).

The revealing thing about Flannery’s misconceptions is that he views evolution vs. ID not as a matter of having the best scientific theory (a perspective from which the quasi-religious denialist dogma ID wouldn’t even get on the ground, much less off of it), but as a metaphysical dispute: “Darwin’s own theory could hardly be called objectively scientific. Early influences on Darwin’s youth established his predisposition to materialism and a dogmatic methodological naturalism long before his voyage on the Beagle. In short, Darwin's metaphysic compelled his scienc.” The depth of his lack of understanding of science and scientific methods is breathtaking, and a better example of a genetic fallacy is hard to come by.

Diagnosis: Yet another denialist crackpot who makes stuff up in the name of Jesus. Delusional moron.

#1596: Winston Ewert

Winston Ewert is Bill Dembski’s at least one-time research assistant and support staff at his Evolutionary Informatics Lab, which is not a lab. As such, he was Dembski’s coauthor (together with George Montañez and Robert J. Marks II) on the paper “Efficient Per Query Information Extraction from a Hamming Oracle”, a paper that has become somewhat legendary for its perfection of the art of obfuscation in the service of anti-science (it is discussed in some detail here), as well as “A General Theory of Information Cost Incurred by Successful Search”, which seems to be not really much better. Ewert’s reply to critics is discussed here; in fact, in December 2015 he finally admitted that the No Free Lunch theorems don’t work as an argument against evolution, but it is unclear whether he is willing to admit that he admitted this. (See in particular this and this for some details).

He also writes posts for Uncommon Descent, in particular posts that display a notoriously poor understanding of (one almost suspects deliberately misleading claims on) probability, such as this.

Ewert is currently apparently affiliated with the Discovery Institute’s Biologic Institute, and has published his own stuff in their house journal Bio-Complexity, which doesn’t set particularly high standards for papers that support their house brand of pseudoscience. The standards are well illustrated by his review paper on several computer models of evolution “Digital Irreducible Complexity: A Survey of Irreducible Complexity in Computer Simulations”, discussed here and here.

The Evolutionary Informatics Lab involves the following senior researchers (as per 2012) in addition to Dembski, Marks, Ewert and Montañez):

-       William F. Basener, Professor of Mathematics at Rochester Institute of Technology and signatory to A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism.

-       Gil Dodgen.

-       Norman C. Griswold, Emeritus Halliburton Professor of Electrical Engineering (retired) and former Department Chair at Texas A&M University.

-       Granville Sewell.

-       Donald C. Wunsch II, Mary K. Finley Missouri Distinguished Professor of Computer Engineering at the Missouri University of Science and Technology.

Diagnosis: We wish to be reluctant to use the word “dishonest”. Suffice to say that Ewert isn’t exactly contributing to the scientific enterprise, unless you count inadvertently making scientists aware of certain interesting fallacies and misunderstandings.