From Suzan Mazur at Huffington Post:
The Royal Society science office says the suspense will soon be over. It will announce presenter names/topics for the November evolution paradigm shift conference within two weeks — democratically, by email to all those registered to attend the public meeting. What’s more, it has added to its original list of invitees. Zoologists perhaps at last conceding viruses belong in the tent?
More politics than the UN, one guesses.
However, grumblings about paradigm shift are coming not only from “the enemies,” i.e., the usual suspects (who are likely to send their disruptive “representatives” to the London gathering) — but from more measured, responsible voices like Indiana University biologist Michael Lynch. Lynch recently responded to my story about the Extended Synthesis crowd who’ve now been funded by Templeton with $8M but still can’t agree on a definition for Extended Synthesis with this note:
“Superficial, silly, shallow-minded, self-promotional. I and many others view this as a complete embarrassment to the field. If one wishes to extend something in public, especially as a biologist, one ought to have a very good idea of what is being extended.” More.
It isn’t shaping up as a nice, quiet place to sleep. Stay tuned.
I’ve been noticing a change anyway, in that I see people addressing new data with fewer rhetorical nods to the authority of neo-Darwinism.
Note: Suzan Mazur is the author of Paradigm Shifters, pictured above.
See also: Junk DNA back “with a vengeance” It’s probably not a great time to be Dan Graur. A better time, actually, to be Jonathan Wells