Brad would have you believe that the independent counsil was …

Comment on GC Votes to Revise SDA Fundamental #6 on Creation by Roger Seheult.

Brad would have you believe that the independent counsil was just that… independent.

I’ve read the relevant parts of the emails and believe that their actions were not consistent with the integrity of the peer review process. This is also the conclusion reached by The Wall Street Journal which recently released their opinion. This can be read here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704075604575356611173414140.html — see especially the part that deals with the “independent nature” of the inquiry:

“Mr. Russell took pains to present his committee, which consisted of four other academics, as independent. He told the Times of London that “Given the nature of the allegations it is right that someone who has no links to either the university or the climate science community looks at the evidence and makes recommendations based on what they find.”

No links? One of the panel’s four members, Prof. Geoffrey Boulton, was on the faculty of East Anglia’s School of Environmental Sciences for 18 years. At the beginning of his tenure, the Climatic Research Unit (CRU)—the source of the Climategate emails—was established in Mr. Boulton’s school at East Anglia. Last December, Mr. Boulton signed a petition declaring that the scientists who established the global climate records at East Anglia “adhere to the highest levels of professional integrity.”

and

“Mr. Mann was one of the Climategate principals who proposed a plan, which was clearly laid out in emails whose veracity Mr. Mann has not challenged, to destroy a scientific journal that dared to publish three papers with which he and his East Anglia friends disagreed. These two reviews also saw no evil. For example, Penn State “determined that Dr. Michael E. Mann did not engage in, nor did he participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community.”

“On the allegations that there was subversion of the peer review or editorial process, we find no evidence to substantiate this.”

But Mr. Jones wrote Mr. Mann on March 11, 2003, that “I’ll be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor,” Chris de Freitas of the University of Auckland. Mr. Mann responded to Mr. Jones on the same day: “I think we should stop considering ‘Climate Research’ as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues . . . to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board.”

I would be willing to follow up with you, though as you note this is a long way from the main point of our discussion here….

But not really…

You defense of the “independent panel” deepens the irony of the example. It is precisely for that reason why there is a de facto conspiracy: I truly believe you genuinely believe the “independent panel” is correct and you do so because you advocate for result of its findings not the basis for its decision.

How can anyone declare that this statement shows no evidence for a derangement of the peer review process:

“I’ll be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor,”

“I think we should stop considering ‘Climate Research’ as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues . . . to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board.”

Now I can clearly see why you also believe that there is little if any bias against creation science in the scientific world.

But please – let the readers here decide.

Roger Seheult Also Commented

GC Votes to Revise SDA Fundamental #6 on Creation

“Thanks for telling me you meant literal years. I’m not sure who the joke’s on, but this did make me laugh. If you like, you can add to my mathematical example that I have been working on topology for years, it is my hobby, I’ve talked about and read about it and am writing a book about it. Also, I tell you that I know more about topology than you know about Nantes. Should you believe I have disproved the Poincaré conjecture?”

No, [edit] but I’d probably pretend and at least consider that you knew what you were talking about.


GC Votes to Revise SDA Fundamental #6 on Creation

Roger, please stop deranging the peer review process. How dare you.  (Quote)

You’re kidding right! I’m find it difficult to imagine someone who has published as much as you have to make a statement like that without jest.


GC Votes to Revise SDA Fundamental #6 on Creation
Great, again, show me where Sean Pitman claimed to be an expert. He claims to have at least “some understanding of protein structure.” That is very different from an expert.


Recent Comments by Roger Seheult

Faith without Evidence: Are we really a bunch of ‘Flat Earthers’?
There are too many of them. Where do I start. https://www.swau.edu/dinosaur-research-draws-world-wide-acclaim-inspires-new-tv-series
Mary Schweitzer’s T-rex.

That’s just off the top….
wait another one –
Walter Veith….
wait more….


Faith without Evidence: Are we really a bunch of ‘Flat Earthers’?
Ad hominum attack means that no other better arguments were available at the time of writing. I win.


Southern Adventist University opens Origins Exhibit
@Ervin Taylor:

I literally have not logged on to this website in years. It looks like the same arguments are going back and forth which means that if you haven’t been able to solve them by now, you aren’t going to convence each other of your points. What is really amazing to me and anyone intersted in the topic, however, is the tone of the comments, which usually reveal the maturity of the writer especially if they include absolutes:

Examples:
“vast majority of scientifically-informed Adventists will thank Dr.Kent ”

“this misnamed web site”

“Dr. Kent has done a masterful job”

These are usually tip-offs to a lot. Also, it makes me wonder that if Sean Pitman is so ill-informed, and he operates on such a mis-leading web site, why does the good Dr. Taylor waste his time coming to this website, reading the material and then commenting on it? In fact I can bet that Dr. Taylor has spent more time on this web site then I have in the last year – and that speaks volumes about what Dr. Taylor really thinks of this website – perhaps the good Dr. Kent as well.


The Metamorphosis of La Sierra University: an eye-witness account
Again, the question is begged: Why would they work so hard to change the university rather than just leave and go where universities already believe the way you do? Dare I say that there lies a larger conspiracy that transcends LSU and that may be going on at your local SDA instituation? Again, why the push over a generation to change a whole university and to denude it of its fundamentals?


Educate Truth’s purpose and goals
Most of the blogs that are critical of this site aren’t interested in what this site is really out to do. They simply want to demonize it ergo Alinsky’s rule of indetify, demonize, and marginalize. Hence their cherry picking from the comments for their own purposes.

Thanks for the recap though.