Welcome back to "Doggerel," where I ramble on about words and phrases that are misused, abused, or just plain meaningless.I'm sure everyone knows what those three letters stand for: "Unidentified Flying Object." Too often, however, believers in alien encounters seem to forget what the first letter stands for:
For a UFO to be a UFO, it has to be unidentified. That means you don't know what it is. For alien enthusiasts, however, UFO is synonymous with "alien spacecraft." If you've labeled a dot in the sky as a Romulan warbird, that means you've identified it, hence it is no longer an Unidentified Flying Object.
Sorry to go on about the definition so much, there, but I felt it had to be said.
One of the other things I often get in my dealings with ufologists is "You can't identify it with all your precious science, therefore it's an alien!" No. If we can't identify it, we can't identify it.
"Sir, the most elementary and valuable statement in science... the beginning of wisdom... is: 'I do not know.' (indicates the void in the viewscreen) I do not know what that is." -Lt. Commander Data, Where Silence Has LeaseIt should be noteworthy that often, when a ufologist says something hasn't been identified, it may have already been. Mysteries are often preserved by people who don't want to look for answers. The unknown is a blank canvas where anyone can put their egotistical fantasies. Seeking out knowledge of the unknown removes that possibility, so they're often disinclined to do so.
Also, even if the skeptic hasn't identified a UFO, that doesn't mean it's remarkable. Ufologists will often ramble on about how an object 'maneuvers beyond the capabilities of any Earth craft' before they identify how far away it is. What appears to be a distant object zipping across the sky may actually be a fly passing in front of the camera. You can seldom tell. UFO videos are often shot from just one angle, which make range finding difficult. Multiple cameras with recorded locations would make triangulation easier.
The sky is often filled with weird and interesting things. The same is true for life in general. Pretending that every tiny little not-yet-explained oddity is proof of something that could profoundly alter humanity's perception of the world is just absurd. If you want to prove that something is an alien spacecraft, you have to do a lot more than just bring up mundane oddities.
Dr Greg Clarke, a philosopher of science, recently gave a seminar on Richard Dawkins. Greg mentioned that he had heard Richard Dawkins was last cited on ISI in 1981, i.e., that Dawkins has not been a research active scientist for a long time. ISI (Science Citation Index) is the international yardstick used to assess the quality of a scientist’s work. There are two indicators:
1. The number of publications they have that are listed in ISI.
2. The number of times other scientists have cited these papers.
I decided to check this out for myself. In doing an ISI analysis of Richard Dawkins (actually Clinton Richard Dawkins), I was shocked. He has ONE reference in Science Citation Index. It is from 1966 (the year he got his doctorate), and NOBODY has cited it.
A typical Australian doctoral student in about 2nd or 3rd year would have about the same level of presence on ISI as Richard Dawkins.
Just to be sure I got the right man, I looked up all R* Dawkins and C* Dawkins to see if there was somebody in there with a signigficant number of citations called R Dawkins (with our without any 2nd initial) or C Dawkins (with our without any 2nd initial). There was not. I also looked up the publications of all R Dawkins and C Dawkins, and none of them were in his field. So it is true, Richard Dawkins has about the same impact in Science Citation Index as a 2nd or 3rd year postgraduate student.
To give some context, I looked up the ISI record of two Australian Professors, both aged around 60 years, neither of them a public figure, neither would be at all known in the public sphere outside their narrow field of endeavour, but within their field they are considered world class scientists.
Professor 1. 289 Publications Listed. 3,741 citations.
Professor 2. 600 Publications Listed. 3,696 citations.
I was frankly very suprised by the low research profile of Dawkins so I looked up his career history, it looks like he went straight from graduating with his DPhil into a junior lecturing role, and then 10 years later published his first popular science book.
One could surmise that he has not done any actual scientific research since 1966, that the 10 years between 1966 and 1976 were taken up with the very burdensome life of a junior teacher, followed by the gestation and writing of his first popular science book. Thereafter, all he has done is lecture and write popular science books.
So Richard Dawkins is clearly not a research scientist at all, he is an educator. He has ONLY ONE peer reviewed paper, and NOBODY has cited it. He has no more scientific authority than a suburban school teacher.
1. Richard Dawkins is completely irrelevant to the topic.
2. A valid argument is a valid argument is a valid argument. I haven't seen anyone point out any invalid arguments or significant made by Richard Dawkins. Do you know of any?
3. What is this "authority" you speak of? Whatever it is, it doesn't really exist in science. Richard Dawkins just relays some knowledge of the data and methods to relative laypeople. If you can point out any serious flaws in Dawkin's efforts, please do so.
4. You don't need to do the experiments personally to lay the smackdown on woos. You just need a knowledge of logical fallacies, and, when necessary, the ability to understand what the research says.
The valid argument is that Richard Dawkins is a failure as a scientist at the least. A complete idiot in most counts.
So, then, what's the point of bringing that up? I don't think of him as a scientist, just a science writer.
As for being an idiot, you'll have to present some really good evidence. Care to mention any nasty logical fallacies he's performed?
How exactly does this relate to "intuition," anyway?
Shutup dumbass. Go get a job. Nobody reads your posts anyway.
Someone call the waaaaahmbulance. Dial 9-whine-whine. Insert other cliche.
Let's see:
I pointed out the pointlessness of your post, after all, the arguer is irrelevant to his arguments, so if you were going on the enthymeme I thought you were going on, that would mean you went off-topic in your already off-topic post.
I asked for evidence of Dawkins being an idiot, which was met with a call for me to shut up, from which I infer that you don't have any.
Lately, I've been getting around 350 visits a day. Had one legendary day last year where I got 4,200 in a single day. So, I think it's safe to say that some people do read my blog, as if that meant anything.
Oh, and I have a (pretty well-paying) job. The data's been moving slowly around the office lately, which is why my post count has been rising: Less stuff for me to work on. We even had to reject one set and send it back.
Of course, even if I was unemployed, that wouldn't change the validity of anyone's argument. Reality is objective, after all.
So, with anonny/'your mom' backing out on such a simple request, I think we have a declaration of forfeiture on her part.
Oh, well, at least I've got a few more doggerel ideas out of the otherwise pointless exchange.
Have you done "Get a job" before? I don't remember and, quite frankly, I'm too lazy to visit the index and search for it.
Shutup dumbass. Go get a job. Nobody reads your posts anyway.
Stunning comeback, really.
Well, I read the posts. And I think annoying concern trolls who cut and paste large amounts of text and post them in blogger comment threads not relative to the weak point they are trying to make are the true dumbasses who need jobs; obviously you're no good at debate.
Here's some advice for next time you find some drivel and want to make a point with it - summarize and show how it's relevant. I find it truly hillarious that you conclude with
So Richard Dawkins is clearly not a research scientist at all, he is an educator.
on a cut and paste troll post. Well, at least you can Ctrl + C...
Fucking moron.
Don't worry. It's been added to the list.
Personally, I'm tempted to call Poe's Law on this guy. It's just too perfect a combination of a C&P job followed by Doggerel (whether or not it has yet been covered).
Still BD, it is kinda cute you have a pet troll again. The kind that smears it's dung all over Tir Asleen and runs away when Bavmorda's army shows up.
Can I be Madmartigan? Mmmmm, Joanne Whaley circa 1988...Ahhhh.
We'll need to see if she comes back, first.
Your mom is a fine example of why I dropped out of the iSchool. She's judging a person's academic worth by how many times they've been cited in the literature, as if that were the only criterion.
Actually, to be fair to the iSchool, that's not the reason I dropped out, not that I should have been there in the first place, or even brought it up for that matter. Now you're going to have a bunch of iSchool people dropping by wondering what the hell any of that has to do with this post.
That said, your mom would rather drudge up some irrelevant figures rather than confront an argument, not that any of this has anything to do with intuition.
Though I'm curious to know how many citations Dr. Greg Clarke has.
I was mid-reply with my own search for Richard "Fuck off with your God" Dawkins, when Blogger did something obnoxious and destroyed it.
Suffice to say I am amused by the troll, and my own search for Dawkins in the ISI Web of Science turned up multiple recent publications, including peer-reviewed articles in journals such as "Biology and Philosophy" and the "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B - Biological Sciences", as well as non-peer-reviewed publications in "Nature", "New Scientist", and "Natural History". I also found lots of things he'd written that I couldn't tell if they were peer-reviewed or not - he's got lots of articles in "Nature", for example, but most of them are probably commentaries, which are not peer-reviewed. Incidentally, most of these publications appear to have been cited at least once each.
It's also worth mentioning that ISI doesn't track everything in science - books and book chapters don't show up, for example, as well as a large number of journals that are too new, too obscure, or too specialized for the database. My own single publication, for example, does not show up in WoS, apparently because the journal ("Zebrafish") is still quite young.
None of this should be misconstrued as suggesting any validity to the troll's arguments-from-authority. I just now question the troll's competence with a search engine.
I just now question the troll's competence with a search engine.
Or the incompetent moron from whom the troll Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V'd :)
Though I'm curious to know how many citations Dr. Greg Clarke has.
On it. This is much more fun that what I'm supposed to be doing.
AU=(Clarke G)
444 hits (2/3 the number of the beast!)
OK, obviously this is a pretty common name, a quick dive into the results... nah, too many.
I narrowed it down to 34 hits by specifying an author address of "Australia".
Without knowing more about this philosopher of science person, it's hard to narrow these 34 down to a likely single author. Amoung the top 10 (most recent) hits, there's a recent article in the "Journal of Religious History" (one cited reference, zero times cited), an article about the urban geology of Darwin, Australia (there's an irony in there somewhere), several papers about rat hearts (unlikely to be our man, I think), and my personal favourite: "Rectal washout eliminates exfoliated malignant cells" in the journal "Diseases of the colon and rectum". Read into that what you will.
Thanks! I'm checking the Philosopher's Index right now, though I can't find anything. That could be my fault, but so far it's not looking good.
It's fun like this that makes me enjoy troll roasts.
Of course, I didn't really bother to concern myself with the obvious-in-retrospect copy/paste job, since silly red herrings are still silly red herrings. Doesn't matter how much typing and alleged effort goes into the original.
Funny, I just did a quick search on ISI, and came up with 14 hits, limited to the last 5 years. I would be willing to bet that The Selfish Gene, widely considered one of the most important books in recent biology, has probably been cited fairly often. Just choosing two of the abstracts at random, one is an article from "Social Biology" which cites a Dawkins paper from 1989, another is from "Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology" and cites a Dawkins and Guilford paper from '91. Now, it's possible that some of those are other Dawkinses, but at least a couple of the articles are responding to works written by the famous Richard Dawkins, and I found a couple more articles written by the same. Seems your search wasn't very broad. Then again, the ISI Biological Abstract search only goes back to 1997 (as far as I was able to tell), which rather eliminates the first 30 years of Dawkins's research experience, and cuts well into his tenure as a popularizer of science.
But that's neither here nor there. I bet if I searched for Stephen Jay Gould or Carl Sagan, I'd find that their journal output tapered off as their popular output increased. Are Gould and Sagan less viable as scientists because they focused their efforts on educating the masses rather than educating the scientific community? I daresay they aren't, and neither is Dawkins.
And golly gosh, you say "So Richard Dawkins is clearly not a research scientist at all, he is an educator" like it's a bad thing. Someone needs to educate the masses; again, I'm certainly not going to hold it against Sagan, Gould, Dawkins, and their ilk for publishing popular books rather than journal articles.
I'm beginning to doubt if a philosopher of science by the name of Greg Clarke even exists.
Dr. Greg Clarke used to be the director of CASE (Centre for Apologetic Scholarship and Education) at New College, UNSW, but it looks like he has changed his position recently:
"I will be leaving New College to take up two new positions at the end of this week. The first is Director of the Macquarie Christian Studies Institute at Macquarie Uni. The second is co-director (with John Dickson) of a city-based centre for Christian cultural engagement."
Source
As to wether he is a philosopher of science, or has said the text attributed to him, I cannot say.
I saw PZ Myers the other day and he was getting screwed by a monkey. Dawkins was on the side taking notes.
The lengths one goes to to find the missing link.
Yeah, just go and pretend Lucy doesn't exist. Or that we need fossil evidence of every single individual organism before we can make predictions. Or that monkeys are somehow relevant to human evolution. Or that sex jokes make your point more valid.
But most of all, we must never, ever make specific criticisms, otherwise the eeeee-villutionists will rebut them like they have so many others.
Cranks like this guy are hilarious, but not in the way they intend.
Then Bronzedog stopped by and figured he can do a better job but forgot to remember that his penis has not evolved yet.
Now I understand why he acts like a faggot.
Ah, teh gay jokes!
Trolldom level 3!
Notice that anonny/your mom has failed to refer to any of the data or the arguments. Too pansy to deal with the actual issue, so she transparently flails against any irrelevant thing even tangentially associated with the issue, and even some things that aren't.
Hate to see what'd happen if he was a politician: "Anyone who disagrees with my bill to torture baby puppies for no reason is a COMMUNIST!"
Since noone likes to hire a faggot, Bronzedog resorts to creating a blog and fill it with stupidity. Since the noone reads his nonsense, he calls his monkey friends once in a while to post a few comments.
Loser.
Maybe if you stop being a faggot and stop spooning with PZ then someone will hire you.
Get a job loser.
Ha! Your so easy to make fun of.
Ha! Your so easy to make fun of.
Anyone else having flashbacks of another troll who used to start every other sentence with "Ha!"?
Especially since all you have to do is make stuff up about me like children usually do when they've got nothing to go on.
Just keep changing the subject, bearing false witness, and maybe someone might actually be fooled into thinking you've made a point when you haven't.
I believe at this point of your desperate flails, including bad attempts at impersonation, you qualify as being PWN3D! or something.
So, got any actual data, or are you going to keep going about the childish route of making up whatever you wish about me instead of dealing with the fact that you've avoided all actual argument?
I have proven that Richard Dawkins is a failure, PZ Myer is a fanatic, and that you are a faggot.
"Yes, Alex, I'd like Horrible, Naked Truth, for 1000, please!"
""A troll that's pestering Bronze Dog.""
"What is a childish moron who thinks he's pleasing his Lord Jesus by doing everything Jesus told him not to do?"
"That's correct!"
Anonymous Troll/your mom:
I think you have proven yourself worthy of a Rockstar nickname. I dub thee
Wetspot.
I saw PZ Myers the other day and he was getting screwed by a monkey. Dawkins was on the side taking notes.
What were you doing there? Did you enjoy it? Where does someone go to get screwed by monkeys, and why do you know where it is?
HA! Wetspot knows where to go to get screwed by monkeys! UR teh GHEYWAD FAG!
Well, this guy's moved on over into a river in Africa.
He's ignoring all the other people who led some successful searches for Dawkins texts, and pretends that somehow all of Dawkins's good arguments magically poof away because of what he asserted. Must be convenient living in a newage (rhymes with sewage) world where truth is relative.
Of course, he hasn't proven anything about PZ, unless I missed a citation.
And as for teh gay! jokes, well, you can feel the desperation in the air as he tries to deflect his monumental failure by making up stuff about me, as if anything about my sexual preferences magically altered the laws of thermodynamics or something.
Again, it must be convenient to live in a newage world where reality is relative.
Here's a suggestion for you, anonny.
Maybe if you stop being a faggot and stop spooning with PZ
HA! Wetspot, how do YOU know? Were you spying on them? Not enough ghey secks in ur life?
Fucking Wetspot...
Well, I think I've done enough to his red herrings. I think we can begin to sort out, via psychoanalysis, in a funny, derisive manner while we're at it, what made wetspot such a little emo.
God damn it. You don't pay attention for a couple days and you miss out on what is maybe the hands down most immature troll I've seen in a while. I mean what has become of the blogosphere when you can even get a good quality scripture quoting circular logic troll? This is pathetic.
The contrast between the first comment by "your mom" and the subsequent hurrrrr commentary makes me think the previously advanced hypothesis of a CTRL-C / CTRL-V event of an incompetent's ramblings by an incoherent secondary troll has some strong validity.
Granted, "your mom"'s rather melodramatic (nobody seriously believes "I was frankly very suprised", do they?) rambling, argument-from-authority initial post was by no means a tower of intellectual rigour, but it has a certain style superiority over the later "Shutup dumbass." series of mini-comments.
I like the name wetspot for this one.
Indeed.
Better trolls please.
I like to see BD shredding them,
but this one has no meat on it.
I absolutely love comments from trolls who say "Ha! No one reads your blog!" (So what are you doing here, troll? Huh? Huh?) Like Bronze Dog, I have a real job that pays the bills. (Well, I'm a teacher. That's real most of the time.) We blog for fun and to instruct the ignorant. And that, dear readers, is where the trolls come in!
(I surely do hope that all of that italic use didn't come across as too faggy!)
Ryan,
I am sorry to say but I was the one who instigated PZ Myer to get screwed by the monkey.
Honestly, I did not think he was going to enjoy it so much.
Since your dad could not satisfy me, I conducted an experiment myself. Now I am addicted.
You should try to stop playing with yourself and try it. We may be on the verge of a new scientific breakthrough.
Are there any original lines of argumentation you're going to try, wetspot? Do you lack them, or is the middle-schooler between pr0n surfs style just part of your act?
Personally, I'm beginning to wonder if he's, you know, 'compensating' for something, given how much he talks and talks about penis size and gay sex.
Cut Wetspot some slack, Bronze Dog. He only calls you a faggot because he's angry that you fucked his dad. Honestly, I think he's just upset that you got there first.
Hey, Wetspot, for future reference "playground insults" do not constitute evidence for anything except your own immaturity.
Honestly, "faggot" as an insult? So 1993.
Zeno: what I love even more is trolls who come onto someone's blog and tell the blog owner to get a job/life/girlfriend. Hey, troll-boy, if you have so much life, why are you posting on the blog of someone who you claim has none?
Sigh...Wetspot's not as funny as Cocksnack. At least Cocksnack pretended to be intelligent.
I have to ask... Did Cocksnack get his nickname here, too, or is Wetspot the first?
Dear Wetspot,
I was trying to show you what an absolute Wetspot you are by holding a mirror up to you. Apparently you don't even recognize your own reflection.
And you're really a boring troll - insult trolls are so easily roasted. Since you're probably only 12 or 13, maybe when you're older you can do some good bible quoting style lecturing. But just for fun...
Since your dad could not satisfy me, I conducted an experiment myself. Now I am addicted.
I called Dad over lunch, he said he's never met a 13 year-old practicing homosexual playing with a monkey while experimenting on himself. So now you're also a liar. You're not doing very well Wetspot.
Ryan dubbed him thus.
Did you ask him why he can't satisfy me?
It's been fun, but this is approaching tedious and pitiable. Only so much idiocy I can deal with before it turns really sad.
yawn
This is obviously some kid who couldn't argue its way out of soiled sheet.
It would be interesting if it actually had something to go after. Instead it's just the same playground BS.
I say ban that IP.
Yeah, copy/paste a contentless insult an illion times, and name stealing again. Yeah, this guy is a master of debaters.
Oh dude, delete that one.
Kill teh stupid! Kill it!