Carl Zimmer Doubles Down on Chromosome Two Lies and Misdemeanors

Casey Luskin has posted a response to Zimmer: What the Literature Says about Chromosomal Fusion and Why It Says It - Casey Luskin July 24, 2012 http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/07/what_the_litera_1062521.html bornagain77

Maus: I’m simply mendacious, a dissembler, sophist, and liar. Finally Maus has written something accurate. What Maus lacks in scientific knowledge, experience, and logic he makes up for in ad hominems. Which is what this is really about. The above is the context that played out with Zimmer. So he is either pig-ignorant or a two-faced cad; possibly both. But you have staked your claim on the notion that he is merely pig-ignorant. Maus could not describe the "context" of the horrible thing Zimmer did. He can't be bothered. Since Maus implies "context" is crucial, I'll describe the "context." On the Biologic Institute's facebook page, they posted a couple of quote-fragments (not full sentences) from an UNNAMED authority claiming that fusion did not happen in chromosome 2. Zimmer asked them a simple question, asking them for a scientific citation whence they drew their quotes. 250+ comments later, no one at the DI would tell him the citation, they just issued endless ad hominem attacks: https://www.facebook.com/BiologicInstitute/posts/100608590086002?notif_t=share_reply Paul McBride (our PaulMc) searched Luskin’s "book" and copied in the citation that Zimmer asked for. Someone at the DI deleted McBride’s comments. So the DI can’t give us the citation, and we’re not allowed to copy it in ourselves. They delete our comments if we do. Klinghoffer showed up, inviting Zimmer to debate the “facts” whose source no one at the DI can or would specify. Zimmer declined to debate; he just wanted one simple scientific citation. So yours truly, in the comments section on FB, challenged Klinghoffer to a debate in Zimmer’s stead, on two conditions: 1.From now on, all posts at ENV will have open comments, forevermore. 2. No word length limit. I got this response: <crickets> Instead, Klinghoffer crowed “Victory!” at ENV, describing his incontrovertible evidence that Darwin’s Boys are cowards who run from a fair fight, because “Darwinists” decline to debate. He never mentioned me, and he never posted the citation Zimmer asked for. Klinghoffer then posted at ENV announcing that no “Darwinists” had read Luskin’s book, except McBride, so all “Darwinists” were criticizing that which they had not read. This after I had demolished every page in chapter 4, dissecting Luskin’s “figures” and citations, logic, etc. Klinghoffer implicitly accused me of having not read the book, from which I had provided specific page numbers, Luskin quotes, etc. and posted on their own Facebook page. Then the DI banned me and deleted all my comments. As they say in Communist China, I have been “harmonized.” I am, in short, a mouth-breathing unschooled lackwit of no redeeming character. Well, that's two accurate statements from Maus. Diogenes

Nick, have you stopped beating your wife? It's only an uncivil question if we lack context about what the evidence is as to whether you have a wife and whether you have ever beaten her. If you're more tolerant and patient than most folks you might even offer to investigate the evidence underlying the claim. And if you are a civil sort, and have any awareness of propriety, you'll off to have that discussion in an appropriate forum rather than here in the UD comments. But if I tell you "No, thanks" to such an offer then I have hung myself with the rope you gave me. I have demonstrated that I have no sense of civility and no sense of social graces. That I am, in short, a mouth-breathing unschooled lackwit of no redeeming character. Or I'm simply mendacious, a dissembler, sophist, and liar. The above is the context that played out with Zimmer. So he is either pig-ignorant or a two-faced cad; possibly both. But you have staked your claim on the notion that he is merely pig-ignorant. And that hardly seems any more nor less civil than staking a claim that he is a two-faced cad. As for me, I do not consider you to be pig-ignorant. And yet you have presented an out-of-context concern troll, in an out-of-context fora, studiously ignoring context of either Zimmer's remarks or Hunter's analysis of the same. So I can only conclude that you are a liar. And if not, then you are certainly so lacking in social graces that it seems hardly out of place to reiterate the question: Nick, have you stopped beating your wife? Maus

Nice, now Carl Zimmer's being called a liar for asking a question. Remember this the next time you complain about civility and ask someone like Zimmer to write for your blog. NickMatzke_UD