Creative Ideas of IDists as reviewers

What I find odd about all of this is that Dembski seems impossible to embarrass. You'd think getting caught at something as ridiculous as this would cause at least a bit of sheepishness. Even leaving aside the ethical questions and the intellectual dishonesty, it requires the attitude of a carnival barker to do this sort of thing without walking away with at least a little bit of humiliation on your face.

So, the reasons for thinking that Dembski actually wrote the review in question is that the reviewer recommends one of Dembski's books and *claims* to be from Waco, Tx? The evidence for this hypothesis seems a little thin. Especially if the hypothesis is going to be the basis for a character attack on Dembski. I mean, c'mon guys. You might give people the impression that you're prone to accepting theories on insufficient evidence. ;o)

uh, jeremy, the reason for thinking Dembski wrote the review is that there was a bug in Amazon and it was revealed that he wrote the review. But nice "catch," champ!

Either Jeremy is a parody poster (which I fervently hope) or has an allergy to reading more than one paragraph in a single sitting.

I know a couple of carnival barkers who would resent being compared to Dembski. They quite properly point out that a carnival is primarily for entertainment. Wait a minute… Inscrutable Design/creationism/Dembski seem primarily to be for entertainment, so maybe it's not inapt after all.

All seriousness aside, I think a better comparison is to a "used car dealership," because carnival barkers usually work with a one-level sales scheme. They don't try to make up for anything they have to concede on the sale (biochemistry) with even more needless charges on financing (complexity), backed up with shoddy service (use of outdated and out-of-context support materials).

Doh! I didn't notice the link to the rest of the post and am glad to be corrected. Embarassed too, but probably not as much as Dembski!

I have been reading extensively about ID at various websites in recent months. Prior thereto, I followed The Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences at www.ctns.org and its literature and have not detected whether that organization is pushing ID openly. Its purpose is to bridge theology and science. But I'm not sure that bridge will support much weight. Can someone who is familiar with both ID and CTNS opine how closely these groups are related?

As many here, I'm very familiar with ID but I only know CTNS from review of their site. Based on that I would say there little to no relationship. The large variety of names approvingly dropped at CTNS are almost without exception theistic evolutionists (including its founder and director Robert John Russell), some of whom are opponents of the ID movement. My impression of CTNS is that it is a scholarly academic center which recognizes/acknowledges the wide spectrum of creationists/IDists, does not spend a great deal of effort either supporting or debunking them but thinks their claims should be addressed on their merits without appealing to religious motivations.

I see Dembski was given a forum there on April Fool's Day, 2003.

Bob Russell of CTNS is no friend of "intelligent design". I saw him dress down Discovery Institute Center for Renewal of Science and Culture Director Stephen C. Meyer during a panel discussion in 2000, and have heard that he did much the same for Dembski last year.

Now that is rich! I heard about the Amazon glitch and wondered who would end up with eggs on their faces... somehow it doesn't surprise me that Dembski was one of them.

Isn't there something in the Bible about not lying for God?

The location changed because Amazon reports the same location for all reviews. Dembski must have posted another review and given Reisel as his location. Dembski anonymous reviewing antics are nothing compared to those by John Lott. See here

Clearly, this review is a case of Intelligent Design! Does it fit the Explanatory Filter?

The allegation of Dembski being revealed as the anonymous poster is very interesting. How can I substantiate it?

Good question. It seems there are three choices that I can think of:

1. Ask Google.ca to verify the information. They did release it publicly, and there is at least some slight possibility that they might do so. This would be the best evidence, circumstantial evidence with provenance established by an unimpeachable source.

2. See if anyone who saw the released information on the Google.ca site also happened to store a local copy of the page. This would be circumstantial evidence one step removed from absolute provenance.

3. Find out how many people will attest to having personally seen the released identification on the Google.ca site. Testimonial evidence is the weakest class we can get, but if multiple people come forward, I think we reduce the uncertainty drastically.

I'm sorry, brain fart... It's Amazon.ca that's the relevant source, not Google.ca.

Did anyone here actually see it?

Mark Perakh,

Did you actually see Dembski's name when the glitch occurred? If not, how did you substantiate the claim that he was the anonymous poster? Thanks.

9 of 38 people found the following review helpful: [1 star out of 5] Retreads and Bias, May 2, 2002 Reviewer: A reader from Riesel, TX USA There is virtually nothing new here -- most of the articles are retreads. What's more, many of the articles are readily available online (and not difficult to access as Robert Pennock claims). Intelligent design proponents were not invited to put their strongest foot forward, and intelligent design critics were given the lion's share of the space. These two facts make this a highly biased book. The historical introduction by Barbara Forrest of the intelligent design movement is especially problematic. She makes it all political and agenda driven and ignores that there is a genuine intellectual project here. Worse yet, she distorts the history of the intelligent design movement, placing its beginnings with Phillip Johnson, when in fact people like Polanyi, Schuetzenberger, Thaxton, and Denton were employing design-theoretic arguments well before Johnson. This is a bad and misleading book. Buy it if you must, but supplement it with primary source material from the intelligent design community. Especially recommended here is the work of Behe and Dembski.

Yes, Dembski's name as the author of the review in question was seen on Amazon.ca and there are witnesses who would testify if need be.

If simply by reading Perakh, you think he has decisively demolished intelligent design, you need to read the primary literature. Especially recommended here are John Campbell and Steve Meyer's _Darwinism, Design, and Public Education_ as well as Dembski's _The Design Revolution_, which answers many of Perakh's concerns.

Dembski may be happy, a succesful design inference.

Pim, your comment is very well pointed. Dembski was apparently so eager to pounce on my book that he did not exercise a bit of caution and posted his review prematurely, before the books he refered to were out. There was never, though, a doubt that the infamous review from Waco/Riesel was authored by Dembski even before Amazon.ca made it explicitly revealed. One of the readers (who signed his comment as ms - see comments above)asked whether anybody can assert that he/she has in fact seen Dembski's name as the review's author. I did not want to name such persons without their explicit consent, but now I got a permission to name at least one such person. Alec Gindis has personally seen Dembski's name as the writer of the review in question, on Amazon.ca and on some other version of non-USA Amazon site. He gave his consent to testify anywhere, if need be, to that fact. It is easy to imagine what Dembski would do if he were not in fact the writer of that review - he certainly would have raised a lot of noise complaining about being subjected to slander. But he is deafeningly silent about this matter, as well as all of his cohorts - he and they know that he was caught in an unseemly behavior and all he and they wish - this story to be forgotten ASAP. In his latest post he had the gall to assert (in a derisive tone of superiority) that in his dispute with Tom Schneider he had the last laugh - and the laugh was not at his expense. In fact the opposite is true: Tom dealt with Dembski very well, showing the lack of substance in Dembski's assertions. Unlike Dembski, Tom is a genuine researcher performing interesting experiments, so he had to get distracted from his work to answer Dembski's attack which boiled down to arbitrary asseverations having no foundation in facts. In view of Dembski's flop on Amazon, he should have been more cautious speaking about laughs and at whose expense they occur. Obviously, his aplomb is so great that nothing can embarrass him - even being caught in not very respectable tricks.

Dembski may not be alone.

Walter ReMine has allegedly used the pseudonym LaserThing in the Usenet newsgroup talk.origins to give his work glowing reviews.

Jonathan Sarfati uses the pseudonym Socrates over at TheologyWeb; he gets very sore when anyone tries to make the connection.

High-school science teacher Jan Peczkis uses the pseudonym John Woodmorappe for his creationist writings, like "Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study"

IMHO, using pseudonims is in itself OK - this a tradition and many respectable writers used pen names (including some contributors to this blog) - and there is nothing wrong in this as long as pen names are not used for underhanded shenanigans. In Dembski's case the point is that he used the anonimous review not only to denigrate my book but also to praise his own book, and pretended to be just an unbiased reader while in fact having personal interests at stake. Moreover, since in my book I critiqued his work, his referring to himself in the third person and asserting without argumentation that my critique was defectous amounted to deception.

Thank you for information !

Walter ReMine has allegedly used the pseudonym LaserThing in the Usenet newsgroup talk.origins to give his work glowing reviews.

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Dembski doesn't work for Bridgestone now, does he?