Why Jeff Shallit Doesn’t Attend Evolutionary Biology Conferences – And Why That’s Not the Point
Jeffrey Shallit has responded to my new column over at his blog, Recursivity.
Shallit’s reply is interesting. He starts out on the wrong foot right away, in his subtitle:
“Thomas Cudworth asks why prominent evolutionary scientists did not attend the Evolution 2011 conference in Norman, Oklahoma this summer.”
Actually, I didn’t. In fact, I pointed out at the beginning of my article several prominent “evolutionary scientists” who were at the conference. What I asked was why almost no prominent culture-war biologists read or contributed to papers at the Evolution 2011 conference. Apparently it escaped Shallit’s notice that the whole point of my article was to question the connection between being a loud culture-war crusader for neo-Darwinism and actually being competent in the field of evolutionary biology.
The bulk of Shallit’s response is an explanation, allegedly for my benefit, about how academia works and why academics can’t attend every conference going. Well, I agree with him that academics can’t attend every conference going (as I clearly conceded in my original article, which he appears to have read hurriedly).
One of the obvious constraints, I acknowledged, is budgetary. But such restraints clearly do not apply to all the people on the list. Read More ›