<i>Nature</i> publishes a crank letter

Posted 16 November 2006 by PZ Myers

This week's issue of Nature contains a bizarre letter from a Polish creationist, forester, and member of the Polish parliament. His credentials notwithstanding, it is a very silly diatribe that makes a series of false claims—claims that are trivial to dismiss, but in that fine tradition of the Gish gallop and Hovind's rambling free-association eructations, he makes a lot of them. A whole lot of them; all just plain naked assertions with no evidence to back them up, because the evidence, if he'd bothered to discuss it, contradicts him. Even the title reveals his ignorance of how science works.

Rather than trying to dismantle it piece by piece, I've just added links to his letter that lead to short, simple refutations of his claims.

Continue reading "Nature publishes a crank letter" (on Pharyngula)

9 Comments

William E Emba · 16 November 2006

This week's issue of Nature contains a bizarre letter from a Polish creationist, forester, and member of the Polish parliament. ...
— PZ Myers

It should be pointed out that this is a "letter to the editor" type letter, written by Giertych in respond to the recent Nature news time on the recent creationist stupidity that Giertych promoted in Poland, and that was reported here on PT at the time. References and analysis of the evidence aren't exactly expected in this format. It's simply a standard courtesy. Similar huffy letters from all sorts of ignorami show up across the journals. Of course, it won't take long for our favorite creationist morons to start citing this letter as proof of something or other.

Ron Okimoto · 16 November 2006

Nature sometimes publishes dreck to allow a wide audience to observe that it is dreck. I'm sure that there will be responses.

Remember when they published the junk on water memory? Some guys claimed that they could dilute the active chemical out of solution and the water would still have affects corresponding to the chemical that used to be in it.

Corbs · 16 November 2006

I can see the creationist morons adding a reference to this letter as part of their list of published work. In Nature no less!!

Sir_Toejam · 16 November 2006

I can see the creationist morons adding a reference to this letter as part of their list of published work. In Nature no less!!

citing an letter response to an editorial as substantive to ANY argument?

phht. let 'em.

like you said:

morons.

Henry J · 16 November 2006

Re "Remember when they published the junk on water memory? Some guys claimed that they could dilute the active chemical out of solution and the water would still have affects corresponding to the chemical that used to be in it."

Lemme guess - they found out that the hypothesis was all wet?

Henry

Sean Hunder · 17 November 2006

Hmmm. I'm a Christian, and I believe there is a God who created the world (though not only 6,000 years ago, which the Bible doesn't actually say - the "day" of Genesis can be any length of time) and in at least some form of evolution, but I'm not sure what to call this letter. Comedic relief? A Greek tragedy of misinformation and bogus science? Or maybe that description better fits Henry Morris's books...

Even with Noah's flood (which I doubt was actually worldwide - the original Hebrew text of the Bible doesn't indicate that) and the like, there is pretty much no way for strata to form sideways, even with the incredible violations of physical laws that young-earth creationists use to explain their even more incredible violations of physical laws. His other assertations are even worse.

Just be glad there are some Christains out there with common sense...

J. G. Cox · 17 November 2006

I'm not surprised that they published it. They had published an article which was in many ways an attack on this guy's credibility, and not to publish his reply would have been inappropriate. They also could not simply excise the dreck about evolution at the end. I think that the content had very little influence over their decision to publish the letter.

It's funny though. All that this guy accomplished was to prove that he is an idiot to anyone with the proper expertise who read his reply.

Bill Gascoyne · 17 November 2006

All that this guy accomplished was to prove that he is an idiot to anyone with the proper expertise who read his reply.

And Nature is not routinely read by ID's target audience....

wamba · 19 November 2006

Remember when they published the junk on water memory? Some guys claimed that they could dilute the active chemical out of solution and the water would still have affects corresponding to the chemical that used to be in it.

Yes I do, and Beneviste's paper is still cited by homeopathy advocates.