The next arms race?

For this next trick...

Wikipedia Erases Paleontologist Günter Bechly
David Klinghoffer | @d_klinghoffer

Günter Bechly is a distinguished paleontologist, specializing in fossil dragonflies, exquisitely preserved in amber for tens of millions of years. After revealing his support for the theory of intelligent design, he was pushed out as a curator at the State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart, Germany. He subsequently joined Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture as a Senior Fellow. Now we learn that our colleague has suffered another act of censorship: he has been erased from Wikipedia, ostensibly for not being “notable” enough.

This is a big deal, and a reminder of a key dynamic in the debate about ID. What the public hears about that debate is often highly misleading. That’s for a number of reasons, including media distortion, dishonest attributions of “creationism” to ID proponents, and a refusal by most professional scientists who oppose ID to respond to the theory on its scientific merits.

The discussion of design evidence is affected as well by an absence of voices that, in a sensible world, would be in the thick of it. Those voices, a ghost chorus, belong to scholars sympathetic to ID who keep out of the controversy because they’re aware they will be punished if they speak up. We know many of them, and keep private channels of communication open. At Evolution News, we have documented a range of instances of censorship and intimidation. Rarely, though, do the censors reveal themselves as clearly as in the case of Wikipedia versus Bechly.

They don’t do so by name. Wikipedia editors typically employ pseudonyms. But  a discussion page records the deliberations of editors and others on the decision to delete Dr. Bechly’s Wiki entry. It makes for a fascinating and revealing read.

Enormously influential in forming opinion, Wikipedia relies on volunteer editors who may have zero experience in the areas that catch their attention. They’re a dedicated group, with, it often seems, huge amounts of free time on their hands to police changes to entries. The sociology is significant here. Do these unpaid editors have jobs? Spouses? Families? If you don’t think that being preoccupied by children or employment, too busy to obsess about Wikipedia, or not being too busy to do so, correlates with a person’s view of reality, you’re fooling yourself.

So when it comes to anything related to ID, Wiki editors have rigid and not altogether surprising biases. They are lightning fast at erasing corrections to pages they care about. Wikipedia’s coverage of ID, which they characterize as “a religious argument for the existence of God,” is hopelessly prejudiced and inaccurate.

So a pseudonymous editor recommended getting rid of Dr. Bechly’s page, and another, after making a show of weighing the case and soliciting opinions from others, agreed to it. In an eerie replay of his experience with the museum, which deleted his webpages, Bechly is now erased.

Prior to disappearing, his Wikipedia entry dispassionately recounted his education, employment, and accomplishments, including an impressive scientific publications list and a variety of species and taxa named for him. It devoted a short paragraph to his “Support for Intelligent Design.” The case for erasing him seems to have been carried by three individuals. If I’m interpreting the discussion’s welter of nerdy abbreviations and other lingo correctly, a person called “Trekker” nominated Bechly for deletion. This editor claims no bias against “creationism.”

Now, it maybe [sic] also appropriate to point out that I was not even aware that this person was some kind of creationist or whatever when I put this article up for deletion. I simply saw it a while ago by looking at someone elses [sic] edit it [sic] and decided to check the sources, which I do regularly, and saw that they were very lacking. I then checked the talkpage which had already brought up the issue of notability. I felt a [sic] AFD [Articles for deletion] was a good idea. That’s that.

Trekker, whose interests include “pro wrestling, literature, science fiction, fantasy and comic book[s],” is pressed by a pro-Bechly contributor, “Sam Tanner.” Trekker then throws a tantrum and exits the discussion — “If you are feel [sic] I’m being combative and condescending towards you that’s because I am.” Tanner replies that Trekker’s combativeness “does suggest that this is more than routine housekeeping.” Really? Do you think so?

Another active participant, “David Eppstein,” is apparently, and to his genuine credit, a real name. It belongs to a computer science professor at UC Irvine. He argues for deletion and maintains that Bechly’s “turn to fringe creationist views does not seem to be notable at all.” At one point Bechly himself enters the discussion, offering “dozens of more secondary sources from the print press, TV and radio” plus “three described new insect orders, more than 160 described species, and insect family Bechlyidae, a genus and 8 species named after me, 2 edited books and numerous book chapters, 1 book in German about me, and a ResearchGate score that is higher than 85% of ResearchGate members.”

Bechly wonders what Eppstein, with his own brief Wikipedia page, itself “semi-protected” from edits, can offer by way of comparison. I have written to Eppstein to ask this question; I am waiting to hear back. Being on the faculty on a University of California campus is no trivial accomplishment. But the system has 21,200 people on its faculty staff. To my eyes, Eppstein does not seem more notable than Bechly. The latter points out that on the atheist side, “intellectual nobodies like Richard Carrier and Matt Dillahunty” enjoy lavish and lengthy Wiki entries. Indeed they do, not skimping on personal details, either. For example, did you know that Carrier (whom I’d never heard of), a self-published author and blogger whose biography runs to 9,000+ words, has “revealed that he is polyamorous”? TMI, Wikipedia.

While much of the encyclopedia is useful, a lot of it is a comedy. Thus, you might wonder if the bio belonging to the editor who ultimately decided Dr. Bechly’s fate is real or a put on. I believe it’s all too real.

The editor, “Jo-Jo Eumerus,” also goes by “Septimus Heap,” after the popular fantasy series for juvenile readers. He is “a currently 23-year old male from Switzerland” who “distinctly prefer[s] to be referred to by the attributes of my avatar on the forums (that is, usually as ‘boy’).” Jo-Jo, or rather “boy” (??), includes a graphic of himself as a wizard, “from a time 500 years ago.” He indicates he has been “diagnosed with Asperger syndrome” and “sometimes [has] problems with society due to this.”

On the Bechly matter, Jo-Jo solemnly rules that “‘notability’ does not necessarily indicate ‘notability’” in Wikipedia’s sense. With a straight face: “Accusations of anti-creationism bias are not germane to the purpose of AfD [Articles for deletion], and we don’t consider the stances of an article subject on a contentious topic in judging notability.”

The most prominent dissenting voice, Sam Tanner, provides ample illustrations of Bechly’s “notability” in any sane, realistic sense of that word, with links to mainstream scientific and popular coverage of his work. That includes discoveries of some pretty horrific insects from 100 or more million years ago.

But once they’ve got you falsely tagged as a “creationist,” none of it matters. One editor pushing for deletion candidly admits:

[D]etermining notability, especially in borderline cases, can definitely be subjective. If it weren’t, discussions like this wouldn’t be necessary.

Well, obviously so. This isn’t a “borderline case,” but clearly, the editors trying to erase Dr. Bechly’s record do not have some sort of knockdown, objective algorithmic case against him. It’s a mad world, a funhouse world, where the notability of a paleontologist of Günter Bechly’s stature is uncontested one day but, following his admission of finding ID persuasive, suddenly and furiously contested, to be ruled upon by a 23-year-old “boy” and 500-year-old wizard called “Jo-Jo.” Such is the alternative reality of Wikipedia.

What’s there to be done? Fight the editors on their own pages? No, that’s a waste of time. We’ve tried. But do share this with friends, as widely as possible, so that perhaps readers will take the online encyclopedia with a pinch of skepticism next time. Also please be sure to share the new documentary Revolutionary in which Dr. Bechly gets to tell a little bit of his own story.

Choosing life has become controversial?

Controversial! HHS to Define Life in Line with Embryology Textbooks
Wesley J. Smith

The Department of Health and Human Services has published a draft strategic plan for 2018-2022 that includes some, shall we say, controversial language. See if you can spot it:

Mission Statement

The mission of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is to enhance the health and well-being of Americans, by providing for effective health and human services and by fostering sound, sustained advances in the sciences underlying medicine, public health, and social services.

Organizational Structure

HHS accomplishes its mission through programs and initiatives that cover a wide spectrum of activities, serving and protecting Americans at every stage of life, beginning at conception…

Whoa. Life “beginning at conception,” or perhaps better stated, at the conclusion of fertilization, is a fact of basic biological science – as embryology textbooks attest.

Still, despite the scientific accuracy, expect the usual suspects to be furious about the proposal. Indeed, that sound you hear is the  yelling already beginning.

The proposed mission statement would also  seem to set the department against assisted suicide:

A core component of the HHS mission is our dedication to serve all Americans from conception to natural death, but especially those individuals and populations facing or at high risk for economic and social well-being challenges, through effective human services. [Emphasis added.]

Good. We can use all the help stopping the death agenda that we can get.

Jehovah's Witnesses in Nazi Germany:a timeline.

Jehovah's Witnesses in the Holocaust: Chronology of Events 1933-1945

1933 - About 25,000 Jehovah's Witnesses are active in Germany. March, first concentration camp, Dachau, established. April 1, all religious literature printed by Jehovah's Witnesses is banned from circulation in Germany. In June, Prussian State Police ban the work and organization of Jehovah's Witnesses. Some Witnesses sentenced to terms in labor and concentration camps. Watch Tower office in Magdeburg raided and closed. August 16, first mention of existence of concentration camps in the Golden Age magazine (now Awake!), published internationally by Jehovah's Witnesses.

1934 - October 7, telegrams of protest sent to Hitler by Jehovah's Witnesses in 50 countries, including Germany.

1935 - April 1, Jehovah's Witnesses banned from all civil service jobs and arrested throughout Germany. Pension and employment benefits confiscated. Marriage to one of Jehovah's Witnesses becomes legal grounds for divorce. Children of Jehovah's Witnesses banned from attending school. Some children taken from parents to be raised in Nazi homes and reform schools.

1936 - Mass arrests of Jehovah's Witnesses. Several thousand are sent to concentration camps and some remain there until 1945. December 12, Jehovah's Witnesses throughout Germany secretly distribute 200,000 copies of the Lucerne Resolution, a protest of Nazi atrocities, in one hour.

1937 - Buchenwald concentration camp established. Here is first known use of the purple triangle as a symbol for camp inmates who are Jehovah's Witnesses. April 22, Gestapo order directs that all of Jehovah's Witnesses released from prison be taken directly to concentration camps. June 20, Jehovah's Witnesses throughout Germany secretly distribute the "Open Letter," which supplies detailed accounts of Nazi atrocities.

1938 - October 2, Watch Tower Society President J. F. Rutherford, speaking over a network of 60 radio stations, denounces Nazi persecution of the Jews. November 9 and 10, Jews experience a nationwide attack in a pogrom called Krystallnacht (night of Broken Glass). About 25,000 Jewish men deported to concentration camps. On November 15, all Jewish children expelled from school.

1939 - September 15, August Dickman, one of Jehovah's Witnesses and the first conscientious objector of the war to be executed, dies by firing squad at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

1942 - January 20, Wannasee Conference of Nazi officials formalizes plans for the so-called Final Solution, the extermination of European Jewry.

1945 - May 7, Germany surrenders and the war in Europe ends. The Nuremberg war crimes trials begin in November. September 30, verdicts of the war crimes trials announced in Nuremberg on the same day that Jehovah's Witnesses hold public convention at the Zeppelinwiese, formerly used for Nazi Party rallies.