Bogus Editors for Bogus Journals?

I've been looking some more at the journals published by CS Canada, the inexplicably-named group that runs the "Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture" and the "Canadian Research and Development Centre of Sciences and Cultures".

I contacted a professor listed as a "deputy editor" of

• Studies in Sociology of Science
• Management Science and Engineering
• Canadian Social Science

and editor of Studies in Literature and Language. She told me that she has "no editorial responsibilities for any of those journals" and remarked, "How strange!".

It's not strange at all; this is typical behavior for bogus journals. I notice that the editor-in-chief of the journals listed above are "Prof. William Kent", "Shawn Barnes", and "Alvin Linden". No legit institutional affiliation is given for any of them and I have not been able to find anything about them online. Do they even exist? I doubt it very much.

Another Dubious Journal Solicitation

Reader J. B. passes on the following solicitation from the dubious Progress in Applied Mathematics:

Dear Dr. B., J.

I read your article of "[title redacted]". And I know that you are an expert in this area.

I am Anthea L. Stock, the editor of Progress in Applied Mathematics (PAM) which is a peer-reviewed, open access journal, published by Canadian Research & Development Center of Sciences and Cultures. It is a journal focuses on the fields of Mathematics, geometry, mathematical physics, statistics, mathematical biology, dynamical systems, financial mathematics, optimization, algorithms, numeric analysis, symbolic computation, mathematical model, statistical software, topology, computer, operational research, Riemannian geometry, differential manifold, math software.

Many respected abstracting/indexing services covered our journals like:

AMICUS of Canada; ProQuest; Gale; EBSCO Publishing; DOAJ; Ulrich’s; PKP Open Archives Harvester; Open Access; Open J-gate; Ulrich's Periodicals Directory; CNKI; Google Scholar

We are calling for submission of papers for the coming issue of January 2014. Please send the manuscript to: pam@cscanada.net. Or you could find the journal’s profile and submit manuscripts online at: http://www.cscanada.net/index.php/pam/author/submit/1.

If you have any questions, please contact with us at: pam@cscanada.org; pam@cscanada.net

It is appreciated if you could share this information with your colleagues and associates. Thank you.

We are recruiting reviewers for the journal. Please find further details at: http://cscanada.net/index.php/pam

Best regards,

Anthea L. Stock| Editor
Progress in Applied Mathematics
ISSN 1925-251X [Print]; ISSN 1925-2528 [Online]
Canadian Research & Development Center of Sciences and Cultures
Address: 758, 77e AV, Laval, Quebec, H7V 4A8, Canada
Http://www.cscanada.org; Http://www.cscanada.net
E-mail: pam@cscanada.org; pam@cscanada.net; caooc@hotmail.com

All the warning signals for this journal are there: preposterously wide coverage; ungrammatical solicitation; sponsorship by the clunky-named "Canadian Research & Development Center of Sciences and Cultures" (which itself has a ungrammatical description and is apparently based in some apartment building), etc.

When Moose Attack

There's nothing better than an annoyed moose. Beware!

What to Do With a Photographer that Doesn't Understand Evolution? Why, Publish Him, of Course!

I'm always amused by the creationist site, Uncommon Descent. They employ all the usual creationist tactics, including the elevation of nonentities to the status of experts, and all the usual crackpot tactics, like attacking the most celebrated theories and scientists.

Here is a good example, where we are treated to the vapid analysis of one Laszlo Bencze. Bencze seems to think that evolution should be "laden with intimidating mathematical formulas and at least as difficult to master as Newton’s Mechanics or Einsteins [sic] Relativity", but it is not. And therefore it's wrong. Or something.

Who is Laszlo Bencze? As far as I can see, the guy's just some wedding photographer who lives in Sacramento. No evidence that I can see that he's ever studied science at an advanced level, let alone biology or evolution or mathematics.

Anyway, Bencze is wrong. If you learn more about evolution than you can find in creationist cartoon books, you know right away that the mathematics of evolution is well-studied and taught in biology classes at nearly every university. For example, there's Haldane's celebrated calculation of the probability of fixation of a new beneficial allele A in a large population; it's about 2s, where s is the selective advantage of A. How much do you want to bet that Bencze doesn't know this classic result from 1927 (!), let alone be able to derive it? Can he state and prove the Hardy-Weinberg theorem? It's not that hard! Does he know the basics of coalescent theory? Very, very doubtful.

Yup, Bencze's just another in a parade of ignorant anti-evolution blowhards. That's why it's so funny to see him promoted by the intelligent designoids as an expert with a point of view worth publishing.

Twin-Prime Problem and Goldbach Conjecture Solved?

I was tipped off about this by a reporter at our local newspaper: a local man, James P. Moore, is apparently claiming a solution to the twin-prime problem and the Goldbach conjecture. I haven't read his work. However, the manner in which the claim is being made raises real questions about its correctness.

Moore is apparently not a mathematician by training. Here it is stated that he has a systems design engineering degree from Waterloo.

According to MathSciNet, the database that attempts to review every mathematical publication of interest, Moore has not published any mathematical papers, at least under the names "James P. Moore" or "J. P. Moore". The chances that an amateur without previous mathematical publications could solve these important and famous problems are, for all practical purposes, zero. (Prior to his celebrated recent success on the twin-prime problem, Yitang Zhang, a professional mathematician, had two published papers in good journals.)

Instead of placing his claimed solution on the arxiv, or publishing it in a journal -- as would be customary in such a case -- Moore is selling his solutions online in three different books for $27.05 each. One book is entitled either "The Proof of the Primes" or "The Proof of Primes", a title that doesn't make much sense mathematically.

Moore apparently is working with a public-relations firm to get the news out about his work. You can listen to an interview with him here; it is one of the most painful interviews I have ever heard, largely because the interviewer seems to have no comprehension at all about what the solution might consist of -- she keeps referring inexplicably to DNA -- and seeks to fill the time by repeating the same information over and over.

Moore gave a talk yesterday at the University of Waterloo, but I didn't attend. It wasn't sponsored by the Pure Mathematics department, though. As far as I can see, his public-relations firm hired the room. Again, that's not a good sign.

Here his PR firm suggests that his solution consists of "developing a formula capable of generating every prime number progressively and perfectly". This would not be of much interest, since such formulas are already known. The page also claims that such a method would "create stronger security systems". This is a common misunderstanding; encryption systems such as RSA, while they use prime numbers, would essentially be unaffected by faster ways to generate them. RSA's security would be affected by faster ways to factor products of two or more primes, which is a very different and essentially unrelated problem.

If amateurs think they have solved a famous problem, probably the best route to fame and fortune is to post the paper to a preprint archive. If you can't get an endorser for the arxiv, there's always vixra. Believe me, if your solution is correct, or even close to correct, you'll be acclaimed rather quickly. Hiring public-relations firms and selling your solution in books pretty much guarantees you will be ignored.

Addendum: here Mr. Moore claims, about the primes, that "there is no equation to define them". This is certainly false. They can be defined by a number of different equations; for example, see the talk by my colleague Eric Rowland here.

Another addendum, February 23 2014: Someone showed me a copy of Moore's claimed "proof" of Goldbach's conjecture. Needless to say, it is not correct, and introduces no new ideas at all.

Poor Conrad Black

Poor Conrad Black!

Let us all weep for this disgraced Canadian hero, who has received "many good wishes" and claims "for the first time, at any stage of this long and relentless persecution, I have not received a single negative message."

(Should you wish to disabuse Mr. Black of the notion that everyone stands behind him, negative messages can be sent to cbletters@gmail.com.)

Mr. Black says that "Honours do not make a man, any more than the withdrawal of honours unmakes one." But being convicted of mail fraud and obstruction of justice certainly unmake a man. Then again, that same man has a history of dishonest behavior, starting with selling stolen exam papers when he was a student at Upper Canada College.

Mr. Black boasts of supporting letters written by Henry Kissinger. If one wants to rehabilitate one's reputation, I can think of no one better than Kissinger, whose sterling reputation has never been besmirched. Just like Mr. Black's.

I Get Email

Just the latest of many crackpot e-mail messages I get:

I came across your uwaterloo page and had read the write-up blatantly attacking creationist research.
 
What YOU fail to see, is that you promote the Smithsonian, a religious institution. You might want to check
the Jesuit IHS logo against that of the Smithsonian. And you might want to check the fact that natural science comes from religion.
The pure ignorance of your position is already noted as you cannot provide one shred of evidence for either evolution, big bang, dark matter or the heliocentric universe
and yet stand by science as the be-all and end-all. Where were you when the earth was created and man put upon it? Where is your research in understanding everything
you reference within the sciences is actually mathematical models, a knowledge fantasy and does not subscribe to even the definition of true science....yet more or less falls
within the realm of an oxymoron, science-fiction. I am not sure you even understand what science is. It's also quite funny that you subscribe to mysticism that has been created by priests, such as evolutionary science. Professing yourself to be wise, you have become a fool. 

This guy was not honest enough to sign his real name. Big surprise.

Another Inappropriate Name

What do you think when you hear the name "World of Science Canada"? Probably something to do with science, right?

Wrong. It's just another clunky evangelical site, featuring videos that have everything to do with evangelical Christianity and pretty much nothing to do with science. They feature my old pal David Humphreys, a former professor of chemistry at McMaster. If you have the stomach for it, watch a few of the videos. In one of them Prof. Humphreys claims that "justice delayed isn't justice denied", turning the old aphorism (usually ascribed to Gladstone) on its head.

But isn't that what fundamentalist religion does to everything good? Make it stupid and tawdry and change its meaning?

They Offer Nothing But Lies, 5

The falsehoods are coming fast and furious at the creationist site, Uncommon Descent. Somebody (other than me) should try to catalogue them all.

Here are just two that caught my eye recently:

- Rob Sheldon claims that "The problem, as physicists will only tell you behind a closed and locked door, is that life violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics." This is false in two different ways: first, there is simply no evidence that any biological process violates the 2nd law -- it is one of the hoariest and least believable of all creationist claims. Second, there is no reluctance to consider thermodynamics in biology, as Sheldon implies; there are many books and papers that discuss it in detail. I don't know a single reputable physicist who believes that the 2nd law contradicts evolution, but the "closed and locked door" nonsense feeds the usual "theist victimization" scenario. Sheldon cannot cite any papers in the peer-reviewed physics literature that make his case; creationists like Granville Sewell publish their nonsense in creationist vanity journals.

- V. J. Torley (who is not a scientist and who does not, as far as I can tell, have any advanced scientific training) makes the claim that "if a student of biology or psychology at a secular American college were to voice the same sentiments now (I’m thinking especially of the statements made by Dr. King on the inability of matter to account for the human mind), that student would probably be given a failing grade and not allowed to graduate." Torley has simply no idea what takes place in biology or psychology courses at American universities; that's what allows him to construct this bizarre persecution fantasy.

I guarantee you that if a student of biology or psychology were to claim "there is something in man that cannot be calculated in materialistic terms", no one would pay any attention at all. (Maybe a few might roll their eyes.) There are literally thousands of Christian students in biology and psychology at American universities who hold this and other far less supported beliefs (e.g., transubstantiation, virgin birth, etc.) and nobody gives a damn. The idea that such a "student would probably be given a failing grade and not allowed to graduate" is completely without merit, but fits well with the "theist victimization" scenario I already mentioned.

Creationists have nothing to offer but lies.

P. S. A prediction: creationists will dredge up a single example of a student, probably an extremely poor student and/or offensive proselytizer, who was suspended from some university for another reason, and claim it was because the student denied evolution. They then will use this as justification for Torley's claim.

Shoddy Journalism & Tinpot Moderators at NPR

I love NPR, and listen and donate to it frequently. But the last 24 hours have soured me a bit, at least on some NPR employees.

Take a look at this segment, which ran yesterday morning on NPR.

It's not very good, but I suppose it's a little better than yesterday, when it had the line "There's also miraculous healings and prophesying" [at the charismatic Catholic church being discussed].

I took issue with this claim by posting on their Codeswitch blog. It's one thing to state that "parishioners report miraculous hearings". It's quite another thing to state flatly -- even if ungrammatically -- that these "miraculous healings" actually took place. Did the reporters witness any "miraculous healings"? Were medical records verified? I'm willing to bet they did not and were not.

In response to my posting (which was rapidly voted up), NPR first (silently) fixed the grammar but kept the part about "miraculous healings". Then they deleted my comment, together with the comments of many other people. When I complained about this, my comment was briefly reinstated by Codeswitch employee Matt Thompson. He agreed it had been deleted unfairly. Once again, it was rapidly voted up; NPR listeners know bad journalism when they see it.

After some time (I don't know when) my comment was deleted again. This time Matt Thompson refused to answer my e-mail to explain why. I then took my case to Gene Demby, who apparently runs this NPR blog. He couldn't come up with any good reasons to delete my comment or the comments of dozens of others. He only claimed that "the story was about a specific faith tradition; the deleted comments argued about its illegitimacy". Bullshit. My deleted comments were about the shoddy journalism of NPR's reporters, who shouldn't be reporting "miraculous healing" as fact if they had no evidence. A simple rephrasing would have made that clear; it's Journalism 101.

And even if other people's comments argued about the "illegitimacy" of a "faith tradition", so what? Are "faith traditions" somehow above the reach of criticism?

Tinpot dictators and control freaks like Demby should not be moderating blogs for NPR. NPR stands for "National Public Radio", not "National Pablum Radio". NPR should be using the loosest possible standards to ensure robust discussion and debate.

Update: Gene Demby is so insecure he actually blocked me from following him on twitter. This guy shouldn't be employed at NPR!

Math Challenge #1

Here's the first of some math challenges, drawn from my notebooks. This is one from around 1977.

Observe that sin(333) + sin(355) = sin(22) is not an equality, but is true to about 9 significant digits. Explain. Find another similar almost-identity.

When Veritas Doesn't Mean Truth

Did you ever notice that many irrationalist groups choose descriptive names that are just the opposite of their actual goals? For example, the American Family Association is devoted to destroying those families that happen to have gay people at their heads; American Thinker should be entitled "right-wing crackpots rearranging their prejudices", and so forth.

Then there's the Veritas Forum. Veritas, of course, is the Roman goddess of "truth" --- but this group is just an evangelical organization seemingly devoted to the opposite. For example, they're currently pushing a book by Mary Poplin, an anti-intellectual and embarrassingly shallow thinker who spoke at Waterloo three years ago. In her talks she made some questionable claims and played the martyr card. I think any self-respecting organization that seriously cared about the truth wouldn't be shilling for her.

The local Veritas group is sponsoring three events this week. Unfortunately, I probably won't be able to attend most of them due to other commitments. On Wednesday we get Joe Boot, a local Christian apologist who can you see perform here, in a debate against Dan Barker. Although I like Dan, he's not always the strongest debater, but here he absolutely destroys Boot; Boot seems to have little or no understanding of neuroscience, paleontology, or information theory, but is happy to pontificate about those subjects. He even repeats the longest-running falsehood in creationism! The tepid applause after his dismissal of evolution was pretty funny.

If anybody goes to these events, please post a description in the comments.

Moose in the Pool

From reader D. S. comes this picture of a moose in a swimming pool.

Happens every summer in Canada if you don't put out moose repellent.

Interview with Edward Caudill

Here's a great NPR interview with Edward Caudill, author of the new book, Intelligently Designed: How Creationists Built the Campaign Against Evolution. I haven't read the book yet, but based on the interview, Caudill knows his stuff.

The Intellectual Fraud of Intelligent Design

Back in 2001, Wesley Elsberry and I began working on a long paper in which we did what intelligent design advocates demanded: take their claims seriously and examine them. In particular, we looked at William Dembski's claims about "CSI" or "complex specified information" or "specified complexity".

Dembski claimed to have created a mathematical methodology that would accurately determine if something is designed or not. His method was rather complicated, involving (as we wrote then) "a choice of probability space, a probability estimate, a discussion of relevant background knowledge, an independence calculation, a rejection function, and a rejection region". In Dembski's view, each of these needed to be given in detail before design can be concluded.

Despite the fact that Dembski claimed that many things contained CSI, such as the 16-digit numbers on VISA cards, he hardly ever gave the calculations justifying these claims. In fact, as far as I can see, these calculations were only given for four things (as we discuss in our paper on p. 16), and even then, the descriptions were sometimes sketchy. And in one of Dembski's calculations, his numbers were off by 65 orders of magnitude. Years passed before Dembski conceded this.

In another article, Elsberry and I challenged intelligent design advocates to do the calculations that Dembski was unwilling or unable to do. It is now more than ten years later, and nobody has taken up the challenge.

So I always find it amusing when some intelligent design advocate starts babbling about "CSI" or "complex specified information" or "specified complexity" or "FSCO/I" without providing the six items Dembski said were necessary. The latest babbler is Casey Luskin, who proudly asserts that a sculpture in the Atacama desert "exhibits high levels of specified complexity" and is therefore designed. Needless to say, Luskin doesn't give any of the six things Dembski said were necessary.

Luskin's babbling can be reduced to "it looks designed, therefore it is". But one could assert exactly the same thing about the Giant's Causeway.

Anyway, Luskin is wrong. We conclude that the sculpture in the Atacama Desert is designed not because of "specified complexity", but because it is an artifact: a characteristic product of human activity. We know that humans sculpt things; we know that parts of the body are frequent choices for sculptors; we know that artists use iron and cement in their work. All this combines to suggest "artifact" as the most plausible hypothesis, not "created by erosion".

Intelligent design is a kind of intellectual fraud. It erects a complicated mathematical methodology to fool the rubes, but then it hardly ever uses this methodology to do any calculations. The goal is to wear the cloak of mathematical legitimacy without revealing the empty shell beneath. Smart people should see this scam for what it is.

P. S. Another one of our challenges was, using Dembski's methodology, to identify, as designed, some object on the earth whose status (designed/undesigned) is currently not known. This could be, for example, something found on an archeological dig. Needless to say, 10 years later, nobody's succeeded at that challenge, either. Looks like that methodology is real useful, right?

Ask The Editor: When Should I Include Page Numbers in a Reference?

Recently I got the following query from an author of a paper in a journal I edit:

When should I include page numbers when citing a specific theorem in a reference?

Here's my answer: page numbers, like much of mathematical writing, follow the "be nice to the reader" rule. This rule says, in effect, "Imagine you are a relatively naive reader of this paper. What information would you like the author to include to help you understand the paper and locate the references?"

Following this rule, if you're citing a result in a long book, you should certainly include the theorem or equation number, and probably also a page number. On the other hand, if you're citing a very short paper with one result, then it's probably not necessary.

As an example of what not to do, take a look at this paper, where the authors write (on page 17, just below equation (30)),

"by a result of Bourbaki [3], σ-parabolic subsets (respectively, σ-positive systems) of R are just parabolic subsets...

The reference [3] is to a 300-page book! (To be fair, this was an early version of the paper; in a later version they fixed this.)

David Gelernter, Hypocrite

The whiny and porcine David Gelernter is back again, with an astonishingly un-self-aware screed entitled "The Closing of the Scientific Mind". For Gelernter, who despises atheists and thinks they are "crusading" and "dangerous", a closed mind means one that disagrees with him, or, worse, laughs at his incoherent religious ideas about the brain.

Gelernter huffs that "Scientists have acquired the power to impress and intimidate every time they open their mouths, and it is their responsibility to keep this power in mind no matter what they say or do". But this responsibility evidently does not apply to Gelernter himself, who once made the false claim in the New York Times that "the Supreme Court outlawed prayer and Bible reading in the public schools" and refused to retract it.

The sin of scientists is apparently that "too many have forgotten their obligation to approach with due respect the scholarly, artistic, religious, humanistic work that has always been mankind’s main spiritual support". Umm, mankind has been around for hundreds of thousands of years. During most of that time, there wasn't any "scholarly" or "humanistic" work to support anything at all. As for the "religious ... work" that has formed "spiritual support", aren't we entitled to ask whether religious claims are true? Or are we just supposed to say, "That's somebody's spiritual support and hence off limits; I should just be quiet"? What a grotesque and tiny-minded view of the human enterprise Gerlernter has. But then, he's the guy who once told atheists they should just shut up.

Another nasty thing that those scientists have done, says Gelernter, is "to belittle human life and values and virtues and civilization and moral, spiritual, and religious discoveries, which is all we human beings possess or ever will". Umm, no, we possess a lot more than that. What happened to understanding the world? That's not a "moral, spiritual, [or] religious discovery". And when most of the religious "discoveries" of the myriad faiths are either trite or self-contradictory, why do are we obligated to respect them? David Gelernter, I suspect, finds eating a BLT an offense against his god, while devout Hindus do the same for cheeseburgers. Bully for them, I suppose, but why does this represent a "discovery" that conveys anything useful to anyone of a different religion?

Gelernter claims that "[y]our subjective, conscious experience is just as real as the tree outside your window". What does that even mean? "Just as real" in what sense, and how does Gelernter know this? How about the subjective experience of a chimpanzee? Is that "just as real" as the tree? How about the subjective experience of a cockroach? Again, just as real? If I take PCP and hallucinate spiders crawling on me, how is that "just as real" as the tree?

Gelernter is a big fan of Thomas Nagel, and he can't tolerate any criticism of Nagel. Those who criticized Nagel are dismissed as (and I'm not making this up) "punks, bullies, and hangers-on of the philosophical underworld" and a "lynch mob" and a "mass attack of killer hyenas". Of course, what actually happened is that there was (mostly fairly mild) criticism of Nagel's book and ideas. Critics pointed out that Nagel didn't offer much of anything new, and had fundamental misconceptions about biology and science. Nobody picketed his university, or called for Nagel to be fired, or threatened him at academic meetings, or called for a boycott of his books -- all things that happen routinely to university professors who upset the far Right. When climate scientists are threatened, I don't see Gelernter sticking up for them. The hypocrisy is breathtaking.

Gelernter claims that "machines do just what we tell them to". This would be forgivable for an ignorant layman, but it is really unforgivable for a computer science professor. It's wrong in two ways: even extremely simple programs can be capable of complex and difficult-to-predict behaviors that can surprise their programmers. And second, many modern computers have access to truly random numbers (for example, arising from radioactive decay) that can make their behaviors truly unpredictable and not "just what we tell them to" do.

Gelernter hates the idea that brain is essentially a computer (even though this is supported by everything we know about neuroscience). But he can muster no coherent argument against it. His "simple facts" that dispute this are laughably inapposite:

1. You can transfer a program easily from one computer to another, but you can’t transfer a mind, ever, from one brain to another.

How does Gelernter know that you can't do this? We can't do it now, but how does he know we can't "ever" do it? In fact, I'd argue that every kind of communication between people is transferring a piece of one person's mind to another.

2. You can run an endless series of different programs on any one computer, but only one “program” runs, or ever can run, on any one human brain.

Again, how does Gelernter know this? Furthermore, this claim is disputed by, for example, Marvin Minsky's vision of the mind as constructed out of many different kinds of simpler programs running in parallel; see his book Society of Mind.

This silly reason is equivalent to saying that airplanes and birds don't both fly, because airplanes can carry many different passengers, while a bird only carries one.

3. Software is transparent. I can read off the precise state of the entire program at any time. Minds are opaque—there is no way I can know what you are thinking unless you tell me.

That may have been true in the 1500's, when Gelernter's brain seems to have been formed, but we've learned a bit in 500 years. It is now, in fact, quite possible for us to be able to determine what other people are thinking in some simple domains, and our ability to do this is likely to increase.

4. Computers can be erased; minds cannot.

Again, how does Gelernter know this cannot be done, ever? Just this week, there is a paper in Nature that suggests the opposite. And, as I get older, I find that more and more of my brain is being erased automatically.

5. Computers can be made to operate precisely as we choose; minds cannot.

Oddly enough, it's religion that has proven to be one of the best kinds of mind control. And there are others. Again, how does Gelernter know for sure that minds cannot be made to operate as we choose? If we can do it for cockroaches, why couldn't we (in principle) do it for humans?

These reasons are all so bad that I'm surprised Gelernter didn't say "computers are plugged into the wall socket, but minds aren't".

Gelernter's rant goes on and on. He seems to think that "students have been taught since kindergarten that you are not permitted to question the doctrine of man-made global warming, or the line that men and women are interchangeable, or the multiculturalist idea that all cultures and nations are equally good". Funny, I never heard any of these claims; it seems to be some sort of bizarre conservative delusion. Of course you are "permitted" to question anthropogenic global warming; but if you do, you should know what the current scientific consensus is, a bit of the relevant science, and apprise yourself of the goals of and funding behind the relatively small number of voices in opposition. No one says men and women are "interchangeable"; but it does seem to be true that many cultural beliefs about what women can't do are based more on tradition than some inherent biological limitation. (Read, for example, what was claimed about women and marathons.) Nobody says "all cultures and nations are equally good", but that doesn't mean we are obligated to teach our children exclusively about Western history in school. Maybe Gelernter would be happier in this kind of America.

Finally, he closes with this admonition: "The best and deepest moral laws we know tell us to ... treat all creatures, our fellow humans and the world at large, humanely." This from the same guy that a few paragraphs earlier was likening critics of Nagel to "punks" and a "lynch mob" and a "mass attack of killer hyenas". Really, you can't make up this kind of hypocrisy.

Another Crazy Journal Solicitation

Dear Shallit, Jeffrey,

With great sincerity, we are writing to you today.

We happened to have the opportunity to read your paper titled "On NFAs where all states are final, initial, or both" recently and are impressed by your research work in this field. Given that you share the same research interest with our journal Progress in Nanotechnology and Nanomaterials (PNN), we are writing to sending you our earnest invitation for paper submission.

No, you morons, nanotechnology has basically nothing to do with nondeterministic finite automata.

Denial Has Many Forms

Recently I spent about a week in Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. I ate a lot of good food (I can recommend Parker's Barbecue in Greenville, NC) and met some genuinely nice people, including some distant cousins.

But some things I saw reminded me that the states of the former Confederacy are, in some ways, very, very different, even today, from the North. It's not just the statues of the confederate soldiers (here, from Windsor, NC):

(When I was in Colerain, NC in the summer, I met a guy with a Glock on the passenger seat of his pickup who told me to visit this statue in Windsor before "the niggers" got it taken down. He told me that the gun was to "put the fear of God" into anyone who would try to take it away from him.)

In Richmond I visited the Museum of the Confederacy. There were two men out in front, waving Confederate flags and handing out literature. The current museum location is scheduled to join forces with the American Civil War Center and move to a much larger venue elsewhere in Richmond. The protesters complained that the new sites are not "Confederate-friendly" and are "all about slavery".

I pointed out to one of the men protesting that slavery was obviously an important cause of the Civil War, but he denied this.

I find it a little surprising that 150 years later, there are still people fighting this war. In order to do so, they have to deny the words of the secessionists themselves. For example, here's what Mississippi wrote (in part):

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

Here's what Texas wrote (in part):

In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color-- a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.

And so forth.

I certainly concede that Lincoln didn't believe in the equality of races. I certainly concede that there were major issues other than slavery that contributed to secession. I certainly concede that the Civil War took a huge toll on both Confederate and Union lives, and had disastrous consequences for the South. I'll even concede that war might possibly have been avoided if Lincoln had attempted to simply buy the freedom of all slaves in the South. But to claim, as the men protesting outside the Museum of the Confederacy tried to do, that slavery was not an essential cause of the Civil War, is either dishonesty or lunacy. The seceding states themselves admitted it in detail.

When I came out of the museum, the protesters were gone. I saw a guy standing outside the museum, smoking a cigarette and walked over to him. It turned out to be S. Waite Rawls, CEO of the museum. In response to my question about the protesters, he rolled his eyes and said, "You can't reason with those folks." And I think he's right. The zeal of those protesters and their willingness to ignore the evidence reminds me of Holocaust deniers and evolution deniers. They have invested so much of their own identity in believing a falsehood that nothing could possibly convince them of the truth.

Virginia Heffernan Exemplifies What is Wrong With Journalism

Both my parents were journalists. In fact, in 1939, my mother was the first woman reporter at the Florence Evening Star in South Carolina -- a newspaper started by Melvin Purvis, the FBI agent who helped capture Pretty Boy Floyd and John Dillinger. My mother was a good writer who wrote about many topics, but she didn't write about science or mathematics. She never wrote about those topics because she didn't know anything about them. In fact, she never mastered long division. But she could write emotional and moving stories that would bring tears to your eyes. So I have great affection for journalism and its practitioners.

But my mother, and the editors who hired her, understood her limitations. They wouldn't have sent her to cover a science story because they all knew what her areas of competence were. Reporters were expected to know the basics of the area they covered.

That doesn't seem to be true for much of modern journalism. I hear over and over from scientists that whenever they read a popular article that touches on their area of competence, the writer gets everything wrong. And it's often true, in my experience, for articles discussing my own areas of mathematics and computer science.

This also seems to be the affliction of Virginia Heffernan, a writer who "came out" as a creationist earlier this year. According to Wikipedia, Heffernan has no advanced training in science or technology at all. Yet she happily wrote about technology and was described as an "Internet guru".

In her widely criticized Yahoo article, she claims to have read Darwin, but summarizes his argument incorrectly as "Whatever survives survives". (Has she been reading Michael Egnor?). She confuses evolutionary psychology with evolutionary biology; she doesn't understand the difference between "hypothesis" and "theory"; yet she feels competent to comment on evolution. Likewise, she characterizes the Big Bang theory as "something exploded". Maybe she confused the scientific theory with the TV show.

In her article, she cites Yann Martel for justification as follows: "1) Life is a story. 2) You can choose your story. 3) A story with God is the better story."

No, Virginia, science doesn't work like that. The universe isn't a story you can just "choose". The virtue of the scientific method is that it gives a way to distinguish between stories that make you feel good and the real state of affairs, using hypothesis testing, strong skepticism, and peer review. Despite her Harvard education, Heffernan doesn't show any sign of understanding this. You'd think that would make her question the value of her Harvard Ph. D., instead of questioning the science that allows her to post drivel on Yahoo.

Heffernan reminds me of another journalist: Malcolm Muggeridge. Muggeridge didn't understand or care very much about science either; he once wrote, "It is true that in my lifetime more progress has been made in unravelling the composition and the mechanism of the material universe than previously in the whole of recorded history. This does not at all excite my mind, or even my curiosity." Muggeridge's lack of interest in science had consequences: he once confused a good photographic film with a miracle. That's the kind of nonsense that happens when you think the universe consists of stories whose truth you can just choose at your whim.

Heffernan willingly exposed the limits of her competence and discredited herself. (In another example, she recommended a denialist blog here; it didn't seem to raise many alarm bells at the New York Times.) In the future, no responsible editor should hire her to cover science and technology. The real issue now is whether editors get the message Heffernan conveys, and do a better job assigning reporters to cover stories in their competence.