Ben Stein vs. Neil Cavuto: Whoever Wins, We Lose

Ben Stein and Neil Cavuto are both kinda crazy. Neil Cavuto thinks that national healthcare is a "breeding ground for terror," blames Obama for the stock market decline (relying on economic experts such as Hollywood's Kelsey Grammer), and has hosted an entire panel discussion devoted to the topic: "Do married men hate Hillary because she sounds like their nagging wives?" In addition to using his show to promote partisan hackery, Cavuto also likes to focus on topics such as these: "KNOCKOUT GIRLS: GIVING MEN 'HOT' HAIRCUTS," "LINGERIE BOWL," "NEW DATING SERVICE HOOKS UP 'SUGAR MAMAS' WITH 'BOY TOYS,' " and "PORNO-TAX!"

Ben Stein, on the other hand, is a creationist who frequently compares scientists to Nazis, and once compared the police officers who caught homosexual Senator Larry Craig in a public restroom to Nazis.

In the above video, the two men shout at each other about something.

Ben Stein Invokes Godwin's Law Again

"When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [i.e. biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you," - Ben Stein.

UPDATE: The Anti-Defamation League isn't happy with Stein's overuse of Holocaust comparisons.

UPDATE II: Here is Stein giving us his thoughts on science generally.

Stein's Propaganda

Ben Stein is a former Nixon speech-writer, a psychiatric patient who cannot stand to lose (seriously), and a frequent user of Godwin's law (see here and here). Unfortunately, he is also now a documentary film maker. But despite the fact that his new anti-evolutionary film is riddled with errors, Chris Mooney warns us that we shouldn't be too cavalier about his new propaganda venture.

Who knows how much money Expelled will make, or how many minds it will influence. I suspect its strong opening will create additional buzz and attention, but even if not, this horrible but also damaging film ought to serve as a massive wake-up call to all who care about science in this media age. From Michael Crichton’s State of Fear to Stein’s Expelled, there is nothing to prevent the most awful, misleading drivel from reaching and influencing mass audiences. There are no standards. There is no filter. And the truth is not just automatically going to win in the competition of ideas when the playing field tilts against it.

The important point here is that "the truth is not just automatically going to win in the competition of ideas when the playing field tilts against it." When Stein is speaking to an American public that is more likely to believe in the devil than Darwin, and he is speaking through a one-sided uncontrolled medium, you can bet that he'll have a real influence on some people. So it becomes necessary to push back on these kinds of things. You can't just brush this stuff off, and you can't just preach to the choir about how ignorant Stein's film is.

It's not entirely clear to me what form popular science education should take going forward, but it at least helps to understand what the problem is.

UPDATE: Check out Expelled Exposed.

UPDATE II: For more on Stein's film, check this out.
Part I: Ben Stein misrepresents Guillermo Gonzalez's denial of tenure
Part II: Ben Stein misleads his interviewees
Part III: Ben Stein misrepresents the Sternberg affair
Part IV: Ben Stein compares evolutionary theory to Naziism
Part V: Ben Stein appears on the O'Reilly Factor to compare creationism to relativity theory
Part VI: Ben Stein compares evolutionary scientists to Nazis

No Intelligence Allowed

Ben Stein lies about Sternberg. Again.

Ben Stein's Expelled - Part VI

Ben Stein has a new trailer for his new pro-creationism movie. It doesn't take long for Stein to set up the issue as a stark choice between "Everything on earth was created by a loving god" versus "Some think we're nothing but mud animated by lightning." The way he sets up the question, and makes a gross, oversimplified caricature of evolutionary theory immediately made me think of this South Park clip:


But wait. It gets stupider. Stein immediately resorts to Nazi comparisons. As a video of Hitler takes over the screen, Stein narrates: "This isn't Nazi Germany," and proceeds to decry the "persecution" of creationists. Later in the trailer, Stein says that "Darwinism" is "dangerous," while simultaneously showing clips of Nazi death camps. Basically, Ben Stein is nothing but a rhetorical bomb-thrower.

Just to remind everyone, when Larry Craig (R-ID) was arrested for soliciting gay sex in an airport bathroom (where there had been previously reported incidents of lewd behavior), Stein was the first to compare the arresting officer to a Nazi. According to Ben Stein: "Gestapo, Gestapo, Gestapo!" (yes, that is a direct quote).

Stein quickly gets into the Sternberg affair. As I've written before, Sternberg circumvented the normal editorial process to publish a substandard pro-ID paper in a scientific journal. He immediately lied about his access being revoked, and the harshest penalty he received was having his fellow scientists complain about his lack of integrity behind his back. This is a far cry from Nazi-style persecution. But according to Ben "persecution complex" Stein, Sternberg "found himself the object of a massive campaign that smeared his reputation and came close to destroying his career." According to Sternberg, he was being punished merely for seeking "freedom."

Stein goes on to say that publishing this paper would not have been a problem in the era of Galileo. That's really a funny claim to make, since arguing anything other than the contents of the paper would probably get you a place in front of the Spanish Inquisition. Hell, they threatened Galileo with torture and death just for advocating heliocentrism in a roundabout way. But this claim is doubly dubious, since we didn't have the genetics, paleontology, biology and geology that has been confirming evolutionary theory over and over again for the past 200 years.

According to Stein, Sternberg was just being "punished" for going "against the "status quo." It's painfully obvious that Stein is going to milk this "rebel intellectual" image for all it's worth. According to Stein, the media, the courts, and the educational system are all out to get him. I think that this quote sums up the movie best: "It's going to appeal strongly to the religious, the paranoid, the conspiracy theorists, and the ignorant."

This is really the epitome of propaganda.

Part I: Ben Stein misrepresents Guillermo Gonzalez's denial of tenure
Part II: Ben Stein misleads his interviewees
Part III: Ben Stein misrepresents the Sternberg affair
Part IV: Ben Stein compares evolutionary theory to Naziism
Part V: Ben Stein appears on the O'Reilly Factor to compare creationism to relativity theory

UPDATE: It looks like Ben Stein sees a psychiatrist to deal with his fear of losing:

Although he wins more than three-fourths of the $5,000 trivia contests on the Emmy Award-winning game show [Win Ben Stein's Money], Stein is tortured by his losses. That mix of shock, disbelief and self-hatred isn't rehearsed; he says he sees a $250-an-hour psychiatrist to deal with his fear of losing. Stein's wallet is stuffed with affirming notes from the psychiatrist that say things like "This game does not measure your real intelligence, which no one would ever question" and "You are a star, and they can't take that away from you."

I guess this might go towards explaining why Stein frequently rolls out the Nazi comparisons, and thinks that everyone who says he's wrong is trying to persecute him and stifle his free speech.

Ben Stein's Expelled - Part V

Transcript available here.

My favorite part of the interview was this:

STEIN: Einstein worked within the framework of believing there was a God. Newton worked within the framework of believing there was a God. For gosh sakes Darwin worked within the framework of believing there was a God. And yet, somehow, today you're not allowed to believe it. Why can't we have as much freedom as Darwin had?

The big difference here is that Einstein didn't just say "light bends because God did it." Likewise, Newton didn't just say "gravity exists because God did it." Darwin didn't just say "different species are here because God did it," either. The fact that these men believed in the existence of God otherwise is completely irrelevant to the point Ben "persecution-complex" Stein is trying to make here. Their theories were good, and were backed up with evidence. They didn't just rely on divine fiat. As a result, they weren't laughed at in the scientific community. Even the Big Bang theory, although it has religious implications (insofar as it posits a beginning in time of the universe itself, and is thus compatible with religious beliefs), has been accepted because it presented significant evidence in its favor, and thus won over the scientific community.

Creationism, on the other hand, "works within the framework of believing there is a God" in a completely different manner. Its central argument is simply this: "things are so complex that God must have done it." It's the same old theological argument we've had floating around for centuries, but it's certainly not science, and it's certainly not on par with the theories of Newton and Einstein.

Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV

Ben Stein's Expelled - Part IV

Ben Stein has a new pro-creationist movie coming out in which he posits that Intelligent Design theory is marginalized, not because it is scientifically vacuous, but rather because of some sort of atheist conspiracy.

Aside from misleading his interviewees and imagining cases of persecution, Ben Stein has now taken things a step further and invoked Godwin's Law. According to Stein:

He said he also believed the theory of evolution leads to racism and ultimately genocide, an idea common among creationist thinkers. If it were up to him, he said, the film would be called “From Darwin to Hitler.”

The theory of evolution leads to genocide and Naziism, huh? Leaving aside the fact that genocide existed long before Darwin, let's take a look at what Hitler himself has said on the topic.

For it was by the Will of God that men were made of a certain bodily shape, were given their natures and their faculties.
-Hitler

Even a superficial glance is sufficient to show that all the innumerable forms in which the life-urge of Nature manifests itself are subject to a fundamental law--one may call it an iron law of Nature--which compels the various species to keep within the definite limits of their own life-forms when propagating and multiplying their kind. Each animal mates only with one of its own species. The titmouse cohabits only with the titmouse, the finch with the finch, the stork with the stork, the field-mouse with the field-mouse, the house-mouse with the house-mouse, the wolf with the she-wolf, etc.
-Hitler

From where do we get the right to believe, that from the very beginning Man was not what he is today? Looking at Nature tells us that in the realm of plants and animals changes and developments happen. But nowhere inside a kind shows such a development as the breadth of the jump, as Man must supposedly have made, if he has developed from an ape-like state to what he is today.
-Hitler

Basically, Hitler did not believe in evolution. His genocidal techniques were based on the ancient practice of animal husbandry, where you simply breed the strongest stock within a discrete kind. He explicitly rejected the idea that one "kind" (a creationist term) could evolve into another, especially with regard to humankind.

Does this mean that belief in animal husbandry or creationism leads to genocide and Naziism? Of course not. Such an argument would be just as asinine as Stein's ridiculous claims.

But even if Hitler did believe in evolution, then Darwin would be no more responsible for the Holocaust than Einstein was for Hiroshima. They both merely proposed value-neutral scientific theories. The fact that species have achieved their current diversity through the process of natural selection does not at all imply that we should kill off those we deem "weak." The fact that splitting an atom results in a massive release of energy in no way implies that we should release that energy over a Japanese city.

Stein's intellectually dishonest comparison is just a transparent attempt to make the theory of evolution look like a dangerous ideology that you should protect your children against. It's pure and simple propaganda meant to motivate people to oppose this "deadly idea."

Of course, comparing those who disagree with you to Nazis is nothing new to Ben Stein. When homosexual Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) was arrested for soliciting sex in a public restroom stall, Stein had this to say about the arresting officer: "Gestapo, Gestapo, Gestapo." Yes, that's a direct quote.

Part I, Part II, Part III

Ben Stein's Expelled - Part III

Ben Stein has a new pro-creationist movie coming out in which he posits that Intelligent Design theory is marginalized, not because it is scientifically vacuous, but rather because of some sort of atheist conspiracy.

On the film's website, you will see newspaper headlines flashing across the upper right -hand corner. One of those newspapers reads:

"The Branding of a Heretic"

Stein appears to be referring to this Wall Street Journal Op-Ed of the same name, which was written by David Klinghoffer, an Intelligent Design advocate and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute. Incidentally, Klinghoffer is the same man who wrote the overwrought story I discussed in Ben Stein's Expelled - Part I.

The article begins:

The question of whether Intelligent Design (ID) may be presented to public-school students alongside neo-Darwinian evolution has roiled parents and teachers in various communities lately. Whether ID may be presented to adult scientific professionals is another question altogether but also controversial. It is now roiling the government-supported Smithsonian Institution, where one scientist has had his career all but ruined over it.

This is the main theme of the article (which also happens to be the theme of Stein's film): scientists are being persecuted and repressed by a bunch of uppity establishment scientists (Stein actually refers to them as "Big Science"). So who is this scientist whose career has been "all but ruined"?

Mr. Sternberg, who isn't himself an advocate of Intelligent Design

Wait. That doesn't seem right. Sternberg (1) joined the editorial board of the young-earth creationist Baraminology Study Group in 2001,* (2) lectured in 2002 on Intelligent Design at the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design (this is an Intelligent Design advocacy group, in case you couldn't tell from the name), and (3) signed the Discovery Institute's Dissent From Darwin petition. He now serves as a fellow for ISCID.

Apparently, Klinghoffer is trying to paint Sternberg as an objective scientist who published a pro-ID paper, not because he was previously involved in the ID movement, but rather because of the paper's scientific persuasiveness. At the very least, this background should be disclosed.

So what did Sternberg do that "all but ruined" his career?

Mr. Sternberg was until recently the managing editor of a nominally independent journal published at the museum [the Smithsonian], Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, where he exercised final editorial authority. The August issue included typical articles on taxonomical topics--e.g., on a new species of hermit crab. It also included an atypical article, "The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories." Here was trouble.

The piece happened to be the first peer-reviewed article to appear in a technical biology journal laying out the evidential case for Intelligent Design. According to ID theory, certain features of living organisms--such as the miniature machines and complex circuits within cells--are better explained by an unspecified designing intelligence than by an undirected natural process like random mutation and natural selection.

Wow, Klinghoffer left a lot of details out here. Perhaps the most significant detail is this, as recounted by the Council of the Biological Society of Washington when they finally repudiated the paper Sternberg let slip through:

Contrary to typical editorial practices, the paper was published without review by any associate editor; Sternberg handled the entire review process.

Some peer editorial review. It's also worth pointing out that Sternberg was a visiting editor of the Proceedings, and this was predetermined to be his last issue before stepping down from that position. In addition to skirting the normal editorial process on that last issue, Sternberg also chose to stray from the journal's normal subject matter. According to the Biological Society of Washington, "The Council, which includes officers, elected councilors, and past presidents, and the associate editors would have deemed the paper inappropriate for the pages of the Proceedings because the subject matter represents such a significant departure from the nearly purely systematic content for which this journal has been known throughout its 122-year history.... Accordingly, the Meyer paper does not meet the scientific standards of the Proceedings."

[CORRECTION: Commenter kevinwparker points out: "Sternberg has stated that "three qualified scientists" provided a standard peer review, a statement not disputed by the CBSW, who are complaining about the editorial process, not the peer review process. (Of course, the three "qualified" scientists were probably on the lines of DI fellows Michael Behe, Jonathan Wells, and William Dembski, but that's another issue.)"]

So what kinds of harms has Sternberg suffered for breaking the rules (note: Klinghoffer portrays Sternberg as having suffered for his religious beliefs instead)?

Mr. Sternberg's editorship has since expired, as it was scheduled to anyway, but his future as a researcher is in jeopardy--and that he had not planned on at all. He has been penalized by the museum's Department of Zoology, his religious and political beliefs questioned. He now rests his hope for vindication on his complaint filed with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) that he was subjected to discrimination on the basis of perceived religious beliefs. A museum spokesman confirms that the OSC is investigating. Says Mr. Sternberg: "I'm spending my time trying to figure out how to salvage a scientific career."

The Office of Special Counsel ultimately dismissed his complaint for lack of merit, by the way.
[CORRECTION: kevinwparker points out that the OSC decision never reached the merits: "The letter explaining the situation is here. The OSC could not deal with the complaint because Sternberg is not employed by the Smithsonian but was just a guest researcher there. Panda's Thumb notes this as well."]

So let's take a look at what happened that put Sternberg's future "in jeopardy," and how exactly he had been "penalized."

In October, as the OSC complaint recounts, Mr. Coddington told Mr. Sternberg to give up his office and turn in his keys to the departmental floor, thus denying him access to the specimen collections he needs.

Although the Discovery Institute's David Klingoffer charged that Sternberg's keys had been taken away and his access revoked, it turns out that this wasn't quite true. His keys were only temporarily taken away while the Smithsonian reorganized the vertebrate and invertebrate zoology departments. His access was never changed.

Nor was Sternberg fired or suspended. Instead, the bulk of the persecution appears to be in the form of angry emails that his colleagues sent to each other (not even to him personally) about how awful they thought it was for Sternberg to step in and publish a substandard paper that goes against the past 200 years of biology, paleontology, etc. Some persecution.

Soon after the article appeared, Hans Sues--the museum's No. 2 senior scientist--denounced it to colleagues and then sent a widely forwarded e-mail calling it "unscientific garbage."

Not all criticism is persecution. Maybe he's just right.

Here's the punchline, which seems to be the theme of Stein's movie as well:

Intelligent Design, in any event, is hardly a made-to-order prop for any particular religion... Darwinism, by contrast, is an essential ingredient in secularism, that aggressive, quasi-religious faith without a deity. The Sternberg case seems, in many ways, an instance of one religion persecuting a rival, demanding loyalty from anyone who enters one of its churches--like the National Museum of Natural History.

It seems like a common tactic of cranks to accuse the mainstream scientific ideas of simply being an intolerant form of dogmatic religious faith.

* Although Sternberg joined the editorial board, he did not subscribe to young-earth creationist beliefs such as the whole young-earth thing.

Ben Stein's Expelled - Part II

In August, I wrote about Ben Stein's new pro-creationist film Expelled, and how the film's website dishonestly portrayed Guillermo Gonzalez as some sort of martyr to "Big Science" (rather than as a University professor who was justifiably denied tenure for failure to produce original research while employed). It turns out that wasn't the only dishonest aspect of the film.

World-famous Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins was invited to appear in a film titled "Crossroads," reportedly produced by Rampant films, which he was told would "examin[e] the intersection of science and religion." Being a famous atheist scientist, Dawkins agreed. It was only after the interview that Dawkins learned that the film's title, producer, and premise were all other than he had been told. Instead of "examining the intersection of science and religion," the film sets out to paint the old, discredited idea of special creation as some sort of bold new idea that is being persecuted and discriminated against. Dawkins says that he never would have appeared in the film if he had known its true premise.

Eugenie Scott, a physical anthropologist, and the executive director of the National Center for Science Education, was similarly approached and deceived.

“I have certainly been taped by people and appeared in productions where people’s views are different than mine, and that’s fine,” Dr. Scott said, adding that she would have appeared in the film anyway. “I just expect people to be honest with me, and they weren’t.”

P.Z. Myers, a biology professor from the University of Minnesota was also approached and offered the chance to appear in "Crossroads." Myers wrote this email to the producer once he learned more about the film:

Hey, I just learned today that the actual film is now called "Expelled", that it features Ben Stein, and that it's really a gung- ho pro-creationism/anti-science film. I would have agreed to be interviewed even if you'd been honest with me about the subject — I'm not reticent about my opinions — so I don't understand why you felt you had to conceal your intent. Care to explain yourself? Was this the movie you planned from the beginning?

None of the questions were answered by the producer, who simply thanked Myers "for sharing your viewpoints."

This line deals with the situation pretty well:

There is no credible scientific challenge to the theory of evolution as an explanation for the complexity and diversity of life on earth. And while individual scientists may embrace religious faith, the scientific enterprise looks to nature to answer questions about nature. As scientists at Iowa State University put it last year, supernatural explanations are “not within the scope or abilities of science.”

UPDATE: This is how the film originally presented itself to Dawkins, Scott and Myers.

Crossroads—The Intersection of Science and Religion:
It's been the central question of humanity throughout the ages: how in the world did we get here? In 1859 Charles Darwin provided the answer in his landmark book, "The Origin of Species." In the century and a half since, biologists, geologists, physicists, astronomers and philosophers have contributed a vase amount of research and data in support of Darwin's idea. And yet, millions of Christians, Muslims, Jews and other people of faith believe in a literal interpretation that humans were crafted by the hand of God. This conflict between science and religion has unleashed passions in school board meetings, courtrooms and town halls across America and beyond.

Ben Stein on Larry Craig

Back in the early 1980s, during the Congressional page sex scandal, there had been rumors that some members of Congress had engaged in sexual acts with certain underage male pages. Before anybody came forward and accused him of doing anything improper whatsoever, closeted homosexual Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) issued a public statement declaring that he personally was not involved in this particular incident. Craig said that he felt the need to come forward pre-emptively because he was "unmarried" and therefore might be targeted with false accusations in the future for some reason.

Lo and behold, Craig recently pleaded guilty to soliciting sex from an undercover police officer in a public restroom (the officer had been inside that particular restroom at that particular time due to recent reports of lewd behavior). At 12:13 p.m., Craig had entered the public restroom and anxiously peered into the undercover officer's bathroom stall. The Senator then waited for the stall next to this officer to become vacant, and immediately occupied the space himself. Craig tapped his foot, inching it closer and closer until it was rubbing against the officer's. Craig then made a stroking motion underneath the stall that was clearly visible to the officer (Craig later said he was just picking up a piece of paper from the floor of an airport bathroom stall, but the arresting officer says there was no paper there). This is, apart from being something really creepy to see while taking care of your own business, a telltale signal that one desires to get it on in a public men's room. The police officer recognized this signal and displayed his badge underneath the stall. Once he saw the badge appear under his stall, Craig shouted "NO!" and left the stall without flushing the toilet (he apparently hadn't gone to the bathroom at all this entire time). He'd been caught.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with homosexual behavior. However, soliciting sex in a public restroom, and playing footsie with a complete stranger while he attempts to take a dump, is supremely weird and creepy. The state of Minnesota even takes this a step further, and considers such behavior to be "disorderly conduct." Larry Craig pleaded guilty to exactly this:

Minn Stat. Sec. 609.72
Whoever does any of the following in a public or private place, including on a school bus, knowing, or having reasonable grounds to know that it will, or will tend to, alarm, anger or disturb others or provoke an assault or breach of the peace, is guilty of disorderly conduct, which is a misdemeanor: ...
(3) Engages in offensive, obscene, abusive, boisterous, or noisy conduct or in offensive, obscene, or abusive language tending reasonably to arouse alarm, anger, or resentment in others.

Ever in denial, the closeted Craig came forward (as soon as the matter became public), and defiantly declared "I am not gay." He insists that he will "fight" the charge to which he has already pleaded guilty.

This is all a very sad story. It's sad that Larry Craig is so ashamed of himself that he is reduced to soliciting sex from strangers in airport restrooms, and possibly from Congressional pages (although there is nothing to substantiate this, you have to admit that it's strange how defensive Craig became immediately after that story broke). It's sad that Craig's wife and children have to hear about all this on the news. Overall, it's a very embarassing story for everyone involved. However, it's also hard to be sympathetic towards a man who, in the face of damning evidence, insists that an apparently honest police officer is actually a bald-faced liar.

Nonetheless, political hack Ben Stein felt the need to step forward and take the opportunity to get in some gratuitous jabs at the arresting officer.

First, Stein invokes Al Qaeda and acts as if doing any other kind of police work amounts to enabling terrorism:

"It's an airport, hello? There are security problems at airports. Al Qaeda are you listening? Our security people are entrapping perfectly honest U.S. senators in lavatory stalls instead of looking for you terrorists."

The man was investigating previously reported incidents of lewd behavior in that exact same bathroom. This is something that the airport has an obvious interest in ending. They're not going to just drop everything else because Al Qaeda exists.

Next, Stein recounts the event while omitting pretty much everything significant:

"This guy went in there, as far as we know, all he did was tap his foot or listen to somebody else tap his foot."

Actually, we also have a police officer's testimony that the man peered into his bathroom stall, rubbed his foot against the officer's, made the telltale stroking motion, and shouted "NO!" when he knew he'd been caught. It's not like this officer just has a grudge against people who tap their feet, and to suggest so is absurd.

Stein then makes the same mistake and simultaneously invokes Godwin's law:

"But he didn't do anything. He tapped his foot. And I don't like the idea that people are sitting in the next stall from you at a public bathroom listening to whether or not you tap your foot. This is, as I said, Gestapo tactics, Gestapo, Gestapo, Gestapo. It's not America."

GESTAPO, GESTAPO, GESTAPO! Not everything is comparable to Nazi tactics, Ben. This incident in particular is a very far cry from the Nazi Gestapo.

Red herring:

"What did he do wrong? Suppose, he was soliciting for gay sex. Gay sex is not illegal in the United States, the Supreme Court has said that."

You're right. Gay sex is not illegal. But that's not the question. Disorderly conduct is illegal. And when you solicit sex in a public restroom by rubbing your foot against a complete stranger and stroking your hand underneath his bathroom stall while he tries to take a dump, that is illegal. Oh, and he pleaded guilty to an illegal act.

This is not about homosexuality. Of course, that's the punchline given Craig's previous voting record, but it is not at all anti-homosexual to say that this behavior is of a kind that we should discourage.

Furthermore, I'd just like to point out what Ben Stein thinks of homosexuals, himself:

"I hope it won't come as a surprise to anyone that a big part of male homosexual behavior is interest in young boys."

But it's apparently okay for him to say that, since he knows gay people.

BONUS: Video!

Ben Stein's Expelled - Part I

As some of you may know, Ben Stein has an upcoming documentary film (titled "Expelled"), in which he posits that Intelligent Design theory is marginalized, not because it is scientifically vacuous, but rather because of some sort of atheist conspiracy.

Here's a taste of what's to come from Expelled.

On the film's website, in the News section, you will see animated newspaper headlines flashing across the upper right -hand corner. One of those newspapers reads:

"University Astronomer Forced Out For Inconvenient Belief"

Interesting.

The text reads:

"ESPITE [sp] A STELLAR RESEARCH RECORD, Iowa state university professor Guillermo Gonzalez is being forced out of his job for the expression - outside the classroom - of an inconvenient personal belief"

"No intelligence allowed" is a nice tagline for a film that can't even spell the word "despite." However, there are many, many things wrong with this.

First of all, Gonzalez was never "forced out" of anything at all, whatsoever. Rather, he was denied tenure when he first applied at the University of Iowa.

Second, Gonzalez did not have the "stellar research record" the Discovery Institute and Ben Stein seem to think he did. At least not in a pattern that warrants a grant of tenure.

"Under normal circumstances, Mr. Gonzalez's publication record would be stellar and would warrant his earning tenure at most universities, according to Mr. Hirsch. But Mr. Gonzalez completed the best scholarship, as judged by his peers, while doing postdoctoral work at the University of Texas at Austin and at the University of Washington, where he received his Ph.D. His record has trailed off since then.

"It looks like it slowed down considerably," said Mr. Hirsch, stressing that he has not studied Mr. Gonzalez's work in detail and is not an expert on his tenure case. "It's not clear that he started new things, or anything on his own, in the period he was an assistant professor at Iowa State."

That pattern may have hurt his case. "Tenure review only deals with his work since he came to Iowa State," said John McCarroll, a spokesman for the university."

That's great that the guy did all this post-doc research. Apparently it was very good work. However, the case for martyrdom is seriously weakened when your research has trailed off during the period relevant for review. And you can't cite all that great research in support of your theory of persecution when the University has a policy of only considering work you've done while employed.

But wait. There's more.

Mr. Gonzalez said he does not have any grants through NASA or the National Science Foundation, the two agencies that would normally support his research, on planets beyond our solar system and their parent stars...

Mr. Gonzalez said that none of his scientific publications mention intelligent design, aside from The Privileged Planet. He co-wrote the book with a $58,000 grant from the John Templeton Foundation, which paid 25 percent of his salary for three years. The Templeton Foundation, a philanthropy devoted to forging links between science and religion, is perhaps best known for an annual $1.5-million prize that is awarded "for progress toward research or discoveries about spiritual realities."

"Iowa was, in a way, endorsing the project through administering the grant," Mr. Gonzalez said.

So the man worked 7 years at ISU, and the only major grant he could secure was from a religious organization to write a book in the popular press that advocated an idea roundly rejected by all major scientific organizations. Fantastic. And he even claimed that the ISU administration "endorsed" his project.

This took up 3 of Guillermo's 7 years at ISU.

Nor did any of Guillermo's grad students complete their PhDs during his stint.

He arrived at Iowa State in 2001, but none of his graduate students there have thus far completed their doctoral work, although a student from the University of Washington, with whom he had previously worked, did finish.

I imagine that Expelled is going to be filled with cases just like this.

(h/t Ed Brayton)

Rebels Believe Whatever They Want

Tara Smith and Steve Novella have a new paper (available at PLoS) in which they discuss the tactics of HIV-denial groups such as Alive and Well. Of course, despite the years of research linking HIV and AIDS, certain people still tend to disbelieve the connection, often portraying themselves as rebel intellectuals fighting a noble fight against close-minded mainstream scientists.

Interesting fact: the Foo Fighters deny the link between HIV and AIDS, and encourage their fans to donate to a denial group. What a bunch of rebels, huh?

On a somewhat related note, former Nixon speech-writer Ben Stein has a new movie coming out in which he portrays evolutionary theory as a close-minded anti-religious dogma, and poses as a rebel intellectual (you can tell he's a rebel because they consantly play the song "Bad to the Bone"). According to Ben Stein, "scientists are not allowed to even think thoughts that involve an intelligent creator." I shit you not. If you don't believe me, here is the movie's website.