Submitted to a Candid World

Our friend the Lay Scientist is getting some well-deserved diggs for this assessment of Andy Schlafly’s gambit in the Lenski affair, a.k.a., When Homeschoolers Attack.  L.S. (as he shall henceforth be known) theorizes that Schlafly needn’t, and doesn’t plan to, win the scientific argument. Rather, he supposes, Schlafly is just trying to leverage the fact that Lenski won’t disclose his data – and in fact, can’t disclose his data, since Schlafly won’t ever say exactly what he wants – into a mistrust of science.  I think that’s spot-on accurate.

L.S. worries that this gambit may eventually win the day; but I think, there, he overestimates Schlafly’s reach.  As L.S. points out, bloggers like myself and P.Z. Myers don’t have much reach or appeal beyond the choir of people who already agree with us (although I’m very proud of this site’s bipartisan appeal), but he stops short of making the further connection, that Conservapedia doesn’t reach beyond its own choir, either.  Conservapedia – and especially Schlafly’s stance on the Lenski affair – have largely both becoming laughingstocks.  As of now, Schlafly is deserted by even his own sysops (can’t link – the site is down – but even hard-line creationists have abandoned Schlafly and reminded him that they told him to avoid this in the first place).  I think he’s managed to alienate even those that have rallied to him when none others will.  As of now, his “point” about mistrust of science will only be picked up by other creationists as a cautionary tale, not to go head-to-head with real scientists.  And THAT, as we say in the business, is an epic fail.

I do mostly agree with that assessment. On the one hand, it only needs one “good” creationism promoter to pick up the meme and run with it to start creating problems.

On the other hand though, as you allude to, Conservapedia is the most ridiculously inefficient public relations tool in all of Christendom. Andy spends so much time keeping his fellow nutters in line that he’s not actually promoting his ideas at all. I wonder if there’s a single other creationist site linking to his Lenski remarks at the moment.

You wonder if the sheer impotence of Conservapedia in this instance might lead Andy to lose interest in the site? That said, I don’t think any of them realize how poor their viewing figures actually are.

Comment by Martin July 7, 2008 @ 2:31 am

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Other creationist organizations have responded with the expected three canards: ‘it’s just microevolution: they’re still E. coli’, ‘it’s simply a matter of expressing previously encoded information’, or finally, ‘those mutations are damaging the normal function of a protein and losing information’.

The buzz at Uncommon Descent generally agrees that Schlalfly is off on his own. AFAIK, there is zero pickup on the ‘fraud’ line of attack.

Comment by Argon July 7, 2008 @ 9:53 am

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Yes, I tend to agree so far. Answers in Genesis certainly aren’t picking it up. It makes me wonder if even other creationists like Andy…

Comment by Martin July 7, 2008 @ 6:50 pm

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