Traipsing Into Evolution Book Review

Here's my short version of the book review for Traipsing into Evolution.  A book this bad deserves a detailed review, but for now, here it is.

Losing a court case is like suffering a poker "bad beat."  Nobody really wants to hear your story, and it's considered "whining" if you don't get over it after one beer.  Amazingly, losers comprise more than 50% of all lawsuit participants.  Most go away muttering under their breath about judges who don't understand them.  Some can't get over their legal "bad beat" and write books about their loss.

So say it, so be it.  The Discovery Institute has published its whine after the Dover bad beat. Entitled "Traipsing Into Evolution," it appeals to the court of public opinion.  Appeal denied. This is a wretched book.

The Discovery Institute PR campaign for Intelligent Design bears a laughably strong resemblance to Baghdad Bob, the Iraqi "Information Minister" who claimed there were no Americans in Iraq's capital city as those same Americans pounded up the stairs into his own studio.  His mere statements of fact served as their own proof, no matter how outlandish.  Traipsing continues in this tradition.  None of the factual assertions in this book are to be taken seriously.

The book overlooks a peculiar idiosyncrasy of courts. Unlike Iraq's ministry of Information, courts rely on something called "evidence."  There are two components to that concept.  First, only evidence actually admitted in court "counts."  Out of court, self-serving press releases are not evidence and don't count.  Second, the evidence proffered in court must meet certain minimum requirements.  Witness testimony, for example, must be both under oath and subject to cross-examination.

That means witnesses must answer questions from an attorney who is not sympathetic to the witness's own position.  The witness cannot decline to answer and the witness must tell the truth.  In the Dover trial, the Intelligent Design side offered: (1) out of court press releases; (2) proffered witnesses who waffled, equivocated, and finally admitted the lack of factual support for ID when cross examined; and (3) some of the Intelligent Design witnesses got caught lying under oath.

The trial judge's opinion detailed ID's lack of evidence and the witness testimonial defects, including the falsehoods, throughout his 139 page decision. Any intellectually honest post-mortem would have addressed these issues head on. If you expect Traipsing to do so, you'll be disappointed.

Traipsing argues that ID is good science and that it is not creationism.  In "Baghdad Bob" fashion, the book only offers Discovery Institute press releases as "evidence" in support of its arguments.  No real evidence is offered and the evidence actually offered in court is not analyzed. The court rejected both propositions based on the evidence actually offered at trial.  As just one example of actual evidence, two Discovery Fellows, Michael Behe and Scott Minnich testified as experts.  Both were asked under oath if ID was science. Both had the choice to answer truthfully or to lie and prevaricate.  To their credit, they answered truthfully. Minnich testified that ID was not science and Behe testified it was as scientific as astrology.  Based on this evidence from ID's own proponents, the judge not surprisingly found that ID was not science. Frankly, the authors distort both the in-court and out of court evidence in their book.

The book makes much of the fact that the judge concluded that there was a lack of peer reviewed literature, apparently overlooking the "vast" ID-favorable literature enclosed in the book as Appendix B.  There are two reasons why the judge did not consider this literature: (1) it was out of court hearsay, not subject to cross examination; and (2) It is not scientific research, it is essentially propaganda. This second point explains why nobody was willing to actually testify in court that such peer reviewed ID-specific scientific research existed.  Nobody was willing to take the perjury rap in court.

If you are interested in what really happened, get it from the horse's mouth. Read the opinion itself and the actual evidence and trial testimony. Both are online.

Comments

[Nick (Matzke)]

Nice review, about what Traipsing deserves.

Minor typos:

Iraqui --> Iraqi
weree --> were

[Nick (Matzke)]

And I just noticed the title is "Traispsing" instead of "Traipsing".

[Joe McFaul]

Thanks, Nick, corrections made.

[Stauffenberg]

You are of course aware that "evidence" is only "evidence" if the court allows it.

Are you seriously trying to tell me that a judges own beliefs do not affect how he sees this "evidence"?

Judge Jones is an educated man, who had certainly heard about these issues before.

Quit yanking our chain.

[Joe McFaul]

"You are of course aware that "evidence" is only "evidence" if the court allows it.

Are you seriously trying to tell me that a judges own beliefs do not affect how he sees this "evidence"?

Judge Jones is an educated man, who had certainly heard about these issues before.

Quit yanking our chain."

Yet another loser's whine. All losers in all cases make the same pitifiul mewling sounds. "The judge didn't understand me. He had it out for me..he didn't like my lawyer's tie."

That's all it is, whining. I've heard all of the post verdict whines--made some myself.

IF...IF the DI thought the judge had made erroneous ruling, then their book would have looked a little different, woudln't it?

They would have argued that the judge made the following incorrect evidenciary rulings:

a. ....
b. ....
c. ....

But they did not.

But you can help out. The transcripts are online. Feel free to identify any prejudicial evidentiary rulings. I'll be happy to discuss them here.

You do not adddress the DI claim that the peer reviewed evidence was excluded. It was excluded on a very routine hearsay/no cross examination basis.

You disagree?

[Ron Zeno]

The IDiots have a strange problem with "evidence". They love to assert they have some that proves their case, but when placed in a position where they have to produce it they cannot. Instead they complain about being put in such predicaments. Again and again, their own words and actions betray them as conmen and liars.

[Ed Darrell]

Since the Texas book hearings in 2003, I have challenged ID advocates to produce a photograph of any ID lab, anywhere on Earth.

Here is the best of their efforts to photograph ID being done as science: [black square, cricket chirping]

[steve s]

Great post, Joe. Keep up the good work.

[Casey Luskin]

I discovered this review of Traipsing Into Evolution (TIE) today, and there are a number of false accusations and statements made in Mr. McFaul's review of TIE. I’d like to focus here on one claim, if I can restrain myself. He claims that "the book only offers Discovery Institute press releases as 'evidence' in support of its arguments." Let's see if that claim is true.

Since some footnotes cite to more than one source, the total count below may add up to more than the 188 footnotes in the body of the book. Please note--this was a quick count so actual numbers may be off by a couple:

Rough Footnote Tallies in the Body of TIE:

- Legal Cases: 50

- Pro-ID-Scientific reference (i.e. The Design Inference, Meyer article, Darwin's Black Box, etc.): 31

- Non-ID Scientific References (i.e. books by scientists, articles in Nature, etc.): 28

- Media Articles about ID: 17

- Transcripts / Testimony: 15

- Amicus Briefs (for or against ID, or other): 15

- Other (random cites, like the few to Richard Sternberg's website): 11

- Non-ID Philosophers: 9

- Anti-ID websites: 8

- Discovery Institute Press Releases / Other Discovery Institute Public Statements: 7

- Various Legal Scholars: 4

- Statutes: 1

- Generic pro-ID books that are not primarily science-focused: 1

Hmmmm…it looks like "Discovery Institute press releases" are pretty far down the list, and most certainly not the "only" citations offered "in support of [our] arguments". In fact, a good number of those "press release" citations were simply to document the temporal chronology that Discovery had issued public statements opposing Dover’s policy before they passed it, and immediately after they passed it, a point which sadly was lost upon Judge Jones.

As for "evidence" on peer-review, Judge Jones had testimony about Meyer's paper from both Barbara Forrest and Scott Minnich. As for Mr. McFaul's claim that some pro-ID expert witnesses did not testify supporting ID-science because “[n]obody was willing to take the perjury rap in court,” all I can say is "wow." This incredibly false and mean-spirited conspiracy theory--the vacuous decorum of which exposes the mindset of many Darwinists--has already been dealt with easily here.

Finally, given that the prominent anti-ID legal scholar Jay Wexler agrees with our arguments that Judge Jones overextended the judicial arm by deciding issues about whether ID is science, it seems like there's a lot more substance and accuracy in our book than Mr. McFaul lets on. Think for yourself: I encourage readers to read TIE in order to judge Mr. McFaul’s analysis for themselves.

Thank you all for reading my post and best wishes. (Sorry, I couldn't restrain myself to talk about a few issues aside from the footnotes claim.) My apologies, but I probably do not have time to respond to any further comments on this blog.

Sincerely,

Casey

[Cheap Jordans]

The man who has made up his mind to win will never say "impossible".