Examples of Dishonesty

There is an interesting weasel approach to such charges of dishonesty, often used by politicians and the like.Ted's words quoted from his website are indeed true in a technical sense. Their DNA has been described as "about halfway between ours and that of a chimpanzee". What Ted's page omits to indicate is who gave that description.Now it turns out that Ted knows the answer to this, because when Ted brought this up on Usenet some time ago and was challenged to give references, he gave the quote from an Indian newspaper, and I was able to confirm that indeed that description was given, by the expressindia reporter.The newspaper article was reporting on scientific papers, which of course do not say anything so ridiculous. In the Usenet thread, Ted made a couple of his characteristic blustering responses, and swiftly retired from the field. No modifications are made on his website, of course.The web page is thus formally accurate as worded, and deliberately misleading. Dishonest, in other words.Cheers -- Sylas

Not necessarily; and I think we should avoid speaking of dishonesty without some better cause. This is probably a young person who has trusted sources that are unreliable. Sometimes untruths simply grow in the telling, without dishonesty being involved; just carelessness.For example, the following might be a sequence of writers, all quoting each other.

• Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups.

  -- SJ Gould, in Evolution as Fact and Theory
• SJ Gould's work on punctuated equilibrium is intended in part to explain the lack of transitional forms at the species level. [cites person A]
  
• A famous Harvard evolutionist is well known for work which attempts to explain an otherwise puzzling lack of transitional forms. [cites person B]
  
• Evolutionists have acknowledged that there is a lack of transitional forms. [cites person C]
  

All the above are correct, as far as it goes, but they get progressingly more misleading. It does not take much more of this before you get the example that Lam has given.

I stand by everything I wrote about Sir Arthur Keith in Message 19; and refer you to the complete text of his essay Evolution and Ethics, which I cited in the other thread. I don't agree with all of Keith's views, but I have nothing but contempt for redwolf's sleazy distortions. It is emphatically not credible for Stringer to make the cited comment. The statement from the reporter is incorrect. This is common in journalism, and I would not be too criticial of the reporter for this. He is plainly not an expert, and it is an easy mistake for an amateur to make. Such errors in reporting of scientific results are common. They are not malicious or dishonest, and occur becuase the reporters don't have the background to identify the errors, and because the final proof reading of their copy is reviewed by other journalists or by newpapers editors; not by scientists. Scientists don't have time to review everything which is written on their research.If you know of any ridiculous statements by evolutionists; start a thread. If you know of dishonest statements by evolutionists, then they can be introduced here. I can think of some instances of errors of various kinds by evolutionists, but the claims that evolutionists are any different to other scientists in this regard are invariably hot air. No, my objection was not to that phrase, which is about correct. My objection was to the erroneous statement made by Ted, which he gave without attribution and in spite of being shown that it was wrong. In the newspaper article, the reporter said: Your phrasing is much better as a description of the results. I'd word it as follows: Even that is not strictly true; the difference between modern human and Neanderthal is substantially less than half the difference between apes and modern humans, or between apes and Neanderthals. I took the actual data from the primary literature, and reported it in my usenet article. The original source is The data, rendered by me for Usenet in an ASCII fixed width font representation, is If you think that is a good description of matters, then you are very stupid. If you don't, then you are dishonest.Sheesh -- Sylas[This message has been edited by Sylas, 04-29-2004]

We are going off topic; but here are some quick corrections.

• The matter is not of "phrase wrongly understood". It is "phrase flatly incorrect".
• The matter is not of a correct number, be it half or third or whatever. The error is in speaking of Neanderthals being "between chimpanzees and humans". They are not; and in fact if anything the data shows that the Neanderthal-chimpanzee difference is very slightly greater than the human-chimpanzee difference. Within the accuracy of the data, however, the difference measures should be considered equal.
• I don't give a damn whether or not an understanding supports evolution. I am only trying to get the understanding of the research correct. Then we can decide if it supports our views, or indicates a need to revise our views.
• Humans did not evolve from chimps. That has never been part of Darwin's evolutionary model or its modern refinement. The evolutionary model is that humans and chimps evolved from a common ancestor.
• On the other hand, there has been a change in the view of Neanderthals with respect to human evolution. They used to be regarded as our ancestors. Data like that discussed in the newspaper article is now persuading the great majority of scientists that Neanderthals were our cousins, and that we share a common ancestor with the Neanderthals several hundred thousand years ago. This is still open to dispute, and the data is not entirely conclusive. The ancestor was most likely a late Homo erectus, but it is not really possible to test such speculations on direct ancestry with currently available data.

My phrasing is indeed terrible in the quote you give. ("That sentence should be taken out and shot.")Keith's position is that Hitler applied the ideas of evolution to further his evil aims for racial domination. This is analogous to applying the ideas of physics to obliterate Hiroshima. He also suggests that a human propensity for evil is an evolved propensity.Keith is not saying that evolutionary biology justifies such behaviour. Keith is arguing against the use of evolution as a scientific basis for ethics.The really revolting dishonesty of the invocation of Keith is in Message 17, concluding in this extract quoted from chapter 3 of Keith's essay: In the context of redwolf's post, especially with preceding quotes from the same essay by Keith on how Hitler was an evolutionist, redwolf is plainly suggesting that Keith proposes evolutionary theory as giving a scientific basis for ethical or moral behaviour. I showed that this is a gross misrepresentation by quoting the conclusion of the chapter 3: I could also have quoted from the forward: You have made a legitimate criticism of my prose, and the double negative. Keith's prose is also rather awkward, and it is very easy to quote extracts that reverse his meaning. But if you read the essay complete, the meaning is clear; and for redwolf to quote the question Keith sought to answer, without any hint of his plain answer, bespeaks a malignant dishonesty that is despicable.Cheers -- Sylas (Edited to add the sentence on propensity for evil)[This message has been edited by Sylas, 04-29-2004]

This is a very plausible speculative guess at the source of the error. The graph you give is from the same Cell paper that the Indian newspaper article refers to. It is a natural mistake, and there is no dishonesty involved in making this mistake, nor in Ted failing to pick up the error.However, the error is immediately obvious to anyone with a bit of background on the nature of DNA differences. When Ted raised this in Usenet some years ago, the error was swiftly identified and explained. The source of his quote was identified as a reporter, and the research papers involved located and perused. The error does not appear in the scientific papers, only in the newspaper report. This is completely normal; no-one should expect newspaper reports to be fully accurate in their comments on technical scientific papers. The newspaper report is a good one, despite this isolated howler.It is a bit naive to rely on second hand newspaper reports for descriptions of such research; but not dishonest.What is less excusable is continuing to promulgate the error after it has been pointed out; but I don't think it is a major problem. It could be laziness, or in this case a kind of bloody minded refusal to admit that your errors have any significance.The Cell paper does not give a table of differences, and it does not even quote numbers for Neanderthal-chimp differences. If these had been included in the plot, the error would have been much less likely. I will show what I mean, with a diagram, in a new thread, as soon as I can get the diagram uploaded somewhere. (Edited to remove off-topic discussion, which will be in the new thread. Thanks for the heads up Nosy.)[This message has been edited by Sylas, 04-29-2004]

Without intending any offence to you personally; but you have shown no such thing. I stand by both those statements exactly as given, and neither one has been refuted at all.All you have done is made some rather strange speculations, which simply don't fit the case. Both are matters are, in my opinion, completely cut and dried, and unambiguously explained already.The first issue is fairly minor.The background is that a newspaper reporter made an error in reporting some research. Ted repeated the error as it appeared in the newspaper article. It was an understandable mistake for someone not familiar with the work; but pretty naive to go from the newspaper report rather than the actual research.Your response is basically a speculation that the scientists involved might have said the same thing as the newspaper. That speculation is completely without foundation, and suggests you don't actually know anything about the research in question. Read the papers, for heavens sake. To say that Neanderthal is halfway between human and chimpanzee is like saying Seattle is halfway between Los Angeles and New York. It is flat out wrong; and the scientists involved said no such thing.Ted was informed of this, some time ago, in a fairly detailed discussion. He basically appears to consider that the error is unimportant. In the grand scheme of things, perhaps it is; but to continue to repeat the error anyway when it would be easy to correct the matter is the kind of bloody-minded refusal to deal with simple facts that is part of Ted's quirky charm.I will be starting a new thread shortly that tries to explain the data better. I won't make any reference to Ted; my focus will simply be to explain what was discovered in the research. I invite you to forget about accusations and retractions and whatnot with respect to Neanderthals, and simply join in with a view to learning what the research was about. This is a friendly invitation.The second issue is the misrepresentation the links between evolution and ethics, and in particular the deliberately distorted representation of Keith's position. Your whitewash of this matter simply makes no sense in the context of the thread. I believe my previous posts are quite adequate on this matter. You're being ridiculous again, Syamsu. The Nazi's invocation of evolution and science, and their invocation of religion, is not a basis for criticism of either. Evolution is a scientific model; not a system of ethics. Hitler tried to suggest that preservation of the purity of the Aryan race was some kind of moral imperative; but that moral position has no scientific basis. There is nothing in evolution that justifies such an imperative. Morals and science are different things entirely. Hitler's insane rhetoric sometimes used the terminology of science -- and more often used the terminology of religion. But in neither case can honourable critics reasonably blame Christians or science for Hitler's insane and depraved parody of ethics.It is not just talkorigins that recognizes the vacuity of this idiotic attack The invocation of Hitler as an attempt to smear others by association has been so egregiously self-serving and misplaced that it is widely recognized all over the net as an indication that the attacker has run out of real arguments. That is certainly the case here. One of the major findings of evolutionary biology is the exceptionally close relationship of all humanity; and that ranking human races along a ladder of development has no biological basis. Even a plain definition of race is problematic.There is plenty of scope for ethical criticism of individuals in the past, who (for example) sought to override the rights of others in eugenics programs. The point is that evolution does not give any ethical justification for such things. It is just a model for how living creatures diversify over time.The only aspects of evolution used by Hitler are "micro-evolutionary". This is small scale evolution well below the level of species that is not in any dispute. The use of the Hitler bogey-man in this way is cynically hypocritical, and a grossly irresponsible and dishonourable treatment of one of the great evils of the modern era.Best wishes -- Sylas

Sorry Brad, I can't help, as I have not seen the video. Gould was strongly opposed to eugenics. Schraf; I had come to the same conclusion, and had already decided to simply let my existing posts stand as an adequate statement of my position, which is neither comprehended nor refuted in the odd attempts to engage. Over and out. Sylas.(Fixed title in edit)[This message has been edited by Sylas, 05-01-2004]