Here is an email I received from a troll just after I started posting Jim Downard’s asinine emails to me. Presumably the troll wanted me to post the email as is. I am posting it, but without incriminating a prominent anti-ID proponent, whose career I was supposed to place in jeopardy, but which would have backfired on me. Note that I emailed “Concerned Scientist” twice (never a reply):
Email 1 (7.12.06): “I’m not sure what to believe. In this age of computers and hard drives it makes no sense to me that you didn’t keep a back-up of your project. Absent that, you need to reconstruct it and show it to me before we can take a next step. –WmAD”
Email 2 (7.14.06): “Unless I hear back from you in short order with some solid evidence that the story you gave below is true (e.g., transcript with “F” for course from [snip–prominent anti-ID proponent], I’m going to conclude that you are a troll and will use your letter any way I see fit. –WmAD”
Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 12:32:06 -0700 (PDT)
From: Concerned Scientist < concernedscientist23@yahoo.com>
Subject: Supression of an ID Experiment
To: [snip]@designinference.comDr. Dembski,
I recently graduated from the University of [snip],
with a major in computer science and a minor
in economics. I originally planned to minor in
biology, and it is the disgraceful events that led me
to change this that I wish to share with you. The
events I describe here took place between the early
fall of 2004 and fall of 2005, however I had feared
repercussions from the University if I had stepped
forward. I have now graduated and been accepted into
a graduate program in another state, so I have come up
with the courage to speak.In my sophomore year, I was undecided between majoring
in computer science or biology, with the possibility
of pursuing both. I took a course offered by a
Professor [snip] on Developmental Biology. In it,
considerable attention was paid to the evolution of
transcriptional regulatory networks, and the structure
of cis-regulatory elements was mentioned briefly. I
immediately took an interest in these, as I had been
working on computer modeling a similar system not long
before and saw some obvious models I could build.ÂÂOver the next six months, I created a model of the
regulatory elements of the model organism Xenopus
tropicalis, in which I took a took all known
cis-regulatory elements at the time (there are now
many more, but at the time it was a tractable project)
along with their consensus sequences and created a
model involving all genes known to have a lethal
effect – that is, genes for which dysregulation would
likely result in death at some point, specifically
before “birth” or “hatching” from their eggs. Since
the eggs are large, visible and produced from maternal
DNA, defects in the eggs or sperm would still allow an
egg to form and be tallied but not to fully develop.
My hypothesis was that the rate of non-development
predicted by my model would be below the total rate of
non-development (as mutations directly affecting
protein structure instead of regulation could also be
lethal and were not included in my model). The
survival rate of Xenopus embryos had, fortunately,
been conclusively determined in the lab and the wild,
leaving this project completely in silico.I was, understandably, surprised when my model
predicted that the majority (>97% using the most
conservative estimates for several variables) of the
eggs should not have fully developed. I assumed there
was a problem with my model, and spent two months
trying to fine-tune it to give me the correct
response. I played with various revisions of the
model and ultimately shelved it. In a later CS
course, however, I was working on a simple program to
perform reiterative modeling and, since I had a
working program handy, I used my cis-regulatory model
to test the script. Amazingly, when the program
repeated itself (two total iterations) the frequency
of non-development was between 15% and 55% of the
published value using conservative variable estimates
(95% confidence interval).I was, at this point, enrolled with Professor [snip]
again in Evolutionary Developmental Biology and chose
to make this into my end of term project. When I
informed him of my model, he was very enthusiastic and
supportive. I e-mailed him a rough draft, in which I
drew the following (apparently wrong) conclusion:“The results of over 3000 runs of this model suggest
some sort of “Predictive Agency” in the mutation of
cis-regulatory elements – that is, if the mutation of
these elements was completely random, virtually no
Xenopus embryos would develop. A reiterative model,
and none of the other models applied, fits the
published data on Xenopus survival. This is contrary
to the accepted position, as this suggests that the
embryo was somehow able to predict failure and re-roll
the dice, so to speak. There is no known embryonic or
cellular mechanism for this, leading me to tentatively
put forth the models of Intelligent Design.”I described my results to a friend proof-reading the
paper as follows:“Imagine being presented with a deck of cards and
dying if you picked anything but a heart. You would
probably not survive the pick. Imagine, then, if you
were allowed to redraw in the event of a club, spade
or diamond. Your odds would go up quite a bit, and
that is precisely the pattern I observe in the
survival rates of these Xenopus eggs.”Professor [snip] replied by e-mail that night telling
me I had done excellent work and asking if I would be
interested in developing the model further under his
supervision and, potentially, publishing. I was
thrilled, as a publication would guarantee me the grad
school of my choice, and agreed. He mentioned some
statistical errors that he would help me with, but
agreed with my overall method. He then asked me where
the model had been developed and where all the copies
were. I informed him that I had developed it in a CS
lab on campus and that all the code was there. The
next day he told me that the University had strict
regulations about how material awaiting publication
should be stored, and told me to move a copy of the
model (several thousand lines long) and the results I
had collected onto a computer in his laboratory under
password protection and to delete the copy in the CS
department. I was so pleased with the thought of
publishing that I immediately complied with this, in
retrospect ominous, request.I submitted my final paper to Professor [snip] for
evodevo, and went off on summer break very pleased
with myself. I was shocked, then, to see that I had
been given an F in that class. I e-mailed Professor
[snip] several times, but he did not respond. I went
to his office two months later when Fall term opened,
and he denied ever speaking of publication and said my
work was plagiarized and that he was doing me a favor
by only giving me an F instead of reporting me to the
administration, upon which I would surely be suspended
or expelled. I asked for my model back, at which
point he denied having it. He then said that
creationists and Christian “fundies” like myself were
like a cancer in biology that had to be removed. This
took me aback, as I am an agnostic and am very
strongly in favor of evolution as an explanation for
the development of life. He then threatened to call
campus security if I did not leave his office
immediately or if I ever returned.I took his threat seriously, as the word of a
professor in a matter of plagiarism always trumps that
of a student. I fortunately had enough credits to
finish a minor in economics. To be honest, I have
started and stopped this letter many times as I have
feared some repercussions from the University, but I
feel that as a scientist, my first duty is to the
truth and to follow the data. I have followed your
work for some time since then, Dr. Dembski, and
believe you hold the same principles. I do not know
if you might be able to use the description of my
cis-regulatory model or my account of the encounter
with Professor [snip], but you may feel free to do so
in whole or in part. I wish I could send you the code
for the model or my e-mail exchange with Professor
[snip], but as I said the only copy of the model is in
his hands and my university e-mail account was purged
over the summer (highly unusual and suspect). The
model took me months to create, and to be honest I was
so traumatized by the event that I don’t feel I can
recreate it. There may have been flaws in my model
and it may not have survived the scrutiny of the
scientific community, but it was suppressed before it
was even presented and it deserves a chance to be
heard. I have chosen to post this letter anonymously,
under the pseudonym Lagileo, an anagram of Galileo,
another scientist whose work was suppressed when it
did not agree with the prevailing dogma. I would ask
you to please respect that anonymity.Lagileo