Blue Collar Scientist

I’ve been up to my elbows in telescopes for the last couple days and haven’t been reading my blogroll or news, so it is possible this is already all over the internet and everyone knows about it, but still, I feel like I have to post for the sake of completeness.

I’ve already published a letter from a descendant of holocaust survivors about why she thought that Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed was a piece of anti-semitic propaganda. And some of the numerous commentators to our Expelled coverage here have made similar points.

Now, the Anti-Defamation League has made a statement denouncing Expelled (emphasis mine):

The film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed misappropriates the Holocaust and its imagery as a part of its political effort to discredit the scientific community which rejects so-called intelligent design theory.

Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people and Darwin and evolutionary theory cannot explain Hitler’s genocidal madness.

Using the Holocaust in order to tarnish those who promote the theory of evolution is outrageous and trivializes the complex factors that led to the mass extermination of European Jewry.

The Anti-Defamation League was founded to fight anti-Semitism “through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry,” and Expelled is certainly exhibits anti-Semitism, hatred, prejudice, and bigotry in abundance.

Hat tip to JimboB.

Despite my promise to be off the blog for a day and a half, I just had to jump on here and point you to this post, which contains just the right amount of scorn and contempt, and which I seriously wish I had written. Skeptico rocks.

I think I might have to join the fan club.

Tony Zirkle, Republican candidate for Congress in Indiana’s Second Congressional District, spoke to a Nazi party celebrating Hitler’s 119th birthday. For video, go here.

Zirkle claims to be a devoted Christian. That’s his excuse for speaking at a Nazi event:

This is just a great opportunity for me to witness,” he said, referring to his message and his Christian belief.

Zirkle is, as is consistent with his “faith,” a supporter of intelligent design creationism. He thinks that people who home school their children so as to avoid good science education should be refunded a third of their property taxes:

Two of the issue that have been flaming the controversies over public education are the evolution/creation debate and indoctrinating kindergarteners that homosexual domestic partners constitute merely one more acceptable, alternative lifestyle. Our public schools should not be exploiting our elementary school children to become pawns in these highly emotional, divisive debates.

Under the 1st and 14th Amendments, Congress has authority under the due process clause to ensure that states are not depriving citizens of their religious free exercise. Therefore, in any district where public schools take either position on these two issues and force their opinions on public school children, I will propose legislation that will entitle parent(s) to a refund of the approximately 1/3 of their property taxes (or percentage of rent that derives from property taxes) that go the public schools so that the parent(s) can either home school or send their children to a private school.

Now, I’ve not heard of even a single biologist who supports the Nazi cause. But here’s an ID creationist, and such a respectable one¹ that he’s a congressional candidate, who is speaking right there in front of a picture of Hitler and next to a Nazi flag.

What does that say about Expelled’s message that biologists are Nazis?

Orac has a more complete takedown.

1. I use the term loosely. [↩]

The Beagle Project have been having, for the last two weeks, a contest to caption this still from the movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.

Some of the captions entered were pretty good:

• ‘When I behold an entangled crank…’
• SI MONUMENTUM REQUIRIS, CIRCUMSPICE.
• Origin of species meets origin of specious.

But the winner was actually an animation, and it deserved the honor.

Mark Mathis is one of the producers of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. He was recently interviewed by Jay Davis of Real Detroit Weekly, and if there was really any doubt about it, this establishes pretty well that Mathis is stupid beyond belief.

I confront Mathis with this point [that intelligent design creationism is untestable], and he counters that evolutionary theory is also untestable. This is patently untrue — to give just one example, scientists have witnessed speciation, the arisal of a new species from an old one.

When I point this out, he interrupts me immediately: “Whoa! Wait a minute! Please send me whatever material you have that demonstrates that we can observe speciation because I have not seen anything. I’ve never heard anyone even claim that!”

Is he serious? He’s just produced a film about evolution, and he’s never heard of the fact that speciation has been observed and thoroughly documented in the scientific literature? I’m stunned. I send him peer-reviewed research confirming this fact via e-mail, and he later responds, “This isn’t an important argument for me.”

The interview goes on, with Mathis lying some more about evolution:

“You can’t apply falsifiability to Darwinian evolution. How is it falsifiable?”

I respond by quoting the biologist J.B.S. Haldane: “Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian.”

And it goes on:

Mathis pauses before saying, “If you want to get into the science…” He then trails off and mutters something irrelevant before finally confessing, “Look. You can get into the intricacies of the science on both sides. And I am not qualified.” On that point, we can both agree.

The interview then moves on to the subject of the famous night when Mathis summoned armed security guards to prevent PZ Myers from seeing the film (while not recognizing his companion, Richard Dawkins, and hence letting him in):

No producer who releases a film called Expelled would actually expel an individual who appears in his film from seeing that film. Right?

Mathis laughs before offering two reasons why he told the security guard at the screening not to let Myers in. First, Mathis says, “He has viciously attacked me personally and attacked the film.” Just to clarify, Myers did not break into Mr. Mathis’ house in a drunken rage with a bowie knife—he has simply been critical of Mathis’ arguments.

The second reason? Mathis assumed that the incident would engender “some additional attention” for the film. I’m not joking. He actually called that a reason.

“He was not invited to the screening,” Mathis says. “I don’t have time to read P.Z. Myers’ oral diarrhea.”

“But the screening wasn’t done by invite, was it?” I ask.

“It’s still our screening. I’m still the producer on site. And I still have the ability to say, ‘I didn’t invite you. And you’re not coming.’” Mathis repeats, “I denied him entrance to a film that he was not invited to.”

“But just to clarify, others who weren’t invited were allowed in, right?”

“Done by discretion! Done by discretion!” In case you’re wondering, this means yes. It seems safe to say that discretion is something that Mark Mathis lacks entirely. I let him scream for one more minute.

“We have the option of ex… uh, of kicking, uh, of not allowing P.Z. Myers to come to the film he wasn’t invited to. Okay? Who cares?!”

Ok, that last quote? That’s not even intelligible speech.

I shouldn’t be surprised. That’s exactly what we’re accustomed to getting from creationists.

Hat tip to Joe. Just Joe, again, who apparently reads Pharyngula more often than I do.

I grew up in Ohio, and for several years in the mid 90’s, I had the opportunity to drive through the town of Mt. Vernon on a fairly regular basis. It was a quaint, old-fashioned midwest town, with a real town square, a drugstore with a soda fountain right out of the 50’s, and everything else you’d imagine in a town that looked essentially like a time capsule, or a movie set, from my parents’ generation.

So it wasn’t really a surprise to me when I heard through the media that a middle school teacher in Mt. Vernon was lying in his classroom about evolution…

In one class, Freshwater used Lego pieces to describe the beginning of the world. He dumped the pieces, then asked students if the Legos could assemble by themselves, said Joe Stuart, 18, assistant editor of the high-school newspaper.

…and forcing his religion on his students…

On Monday, Middle School Principal William D. White told Freshwater to remove “all religious items” from his classroom by the end of Wednesday.

Freshwater agreed to take down the Ten Commandments from the door of his classroom, posters with Bible verses and Bibles on a shelf. But he refused to remove his personal Bible from his desk when students are in the room.

…because, if anyplace is going to attract religious extremists who are living in a previous century, it would be a town that seemed like it was living in a previous decade.

But what I hadn’t heard before was that middle school teacher John Freshwater has allegedly mutilated and injured his students¹

“We are religious people, but we were offended when Mr. Freshwater burned a cross onto the arm of our child. This was done in science class in December 2007, where an electric shock machine was used to burn our child. The burn was severe enough that our child awoke that night with severe pain, and the cross remained there for several weeks. … We have tried to keep this a private matter and hesitate to tell the whole story to the media for fear that we will be retaliated against.”

So according to this, not only does Freshwater walk around with an “electric shock machine” and painfully burn his students, but he also intimidates them into not telling. These are, if I’m not mistaken, exactly the tactics used by more traditional child abusers. But I’d guess - being blissfully ignorant of this seamy side of human behavior - that most ‘traditional’ abusers avoid branding their victims with religious symbols, due to the sort of obvious evidence that a brand would constitute.

It is also worth noting that Freshwater doesn’t have the support of his co-religionists - he’s a radical, an extremist, and others don’t want anything to do with his antics:

[School Superintendent Steve] Short said it is alleged that Freshwater used his classroom to advance religion and that he teaches his own beliefs from the Bible and not the approved curriculum. In the fax, the parents also said, “We are Christians who practice our faith where it belongs, at church and in our home and, most importantly, outside the public classroom, where the law requires a separation of church and state.”

Freshwater may believe whatever he wants, but he needs to be fired because of his behavior.

(Hat tip to BCS’er Joe. Just Joe.)

1. Without, it hardly needs be said, their, or their parents’, consent. [↩]

I’ve liked other videos put together by this guy, but this time he utterly outdoes himself - and merely by letting Ben Stein talk:

The producers of Expelled, having been notified by XVIVO (pdf) that their movie infringed on XVIVO’s copyright of an animation of the inner workings of a cell, responded to that by almost immediately filing a lawsuit against XVIVO. This, of course, is well known, since it happened more than a week ago.

Yoko Ono, Sean Ono Lennon, Julian Lennon, and EMI Blackwood Music Inc, have apparently decided not to allow Expelled’s litigious, lawsuit-happy producers strike the first blow in their case. They have filed a lawsuit against Premise Media Corporation, C&S Production LP and Rocky Mountain Pictures, Expelled’s producers and distributors, seeking an injunction preventing them from continuing to use John Lennon’s song Imagine, and also seeking damages.

This story hits a little closer to home than most lawsuits involving big-ticket celebrities and movie distributors. BCS contributor Iatra Polygenos, back when she was a freshly-minted veterinarian, was part of a team that treated one of Yoko Ono’s cats. Iatra is loyal to her clients, even clients that really belonged to her clinicians at a time before she really had clients of her own, so the BCS family is rooting for the plaintiffs in this case, just out of sheer biased loyalty.

As many people have pointed out, plagiarists don’t steal from just one source. If you do it once, you are going to do it again, and again, and again. Plagiarists are serial offenders by nature.

I’m not sure what is going to happen next, but it seems likely that the next shoe to drop will involve Expelled’s alleged stealing of video from PBS. Or it might have something to do with Expelled’s use of the song All these Things That I Have Done, by The Killers, which has also been said to be a result of plagiarism.

What’s sad about these cases is that it is really simple to get rights to clips and music. For the most part, all you have to do is call up whoever owns the rights, and ask for a license to use the material. A fee is negotiated, usually off a fairly standard fee system, you pay it, and you get to use the material¹. The only reason someone wouldn’t do this if they were going to use three major pieces of other peoples’ work in a movie that opens in 1,052 theaters would be - well, that they are bad, evil little people.

1. Granted, the licensing fee for a song of the significance of Imagine would be very high. [↩]