Recursivity

Stephen Meyer's Honesty Problem

2009-07-16T07:04:00.004-04:00

Like most intelligent design advocates, Stephen Meyer, director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for ~~the Renewal of~~ Science and Culture, has a little problem telling the truth.

I first encountered his dissembling at an intelligent design conference held at Calvin College in May 2001. Meyer had written in 2000 that "Systems that are characterized by both specificity and complexity (what information theorists call "specified complexity'') have "information content''."

The only problem is, information theorists don't use the term "specified complexity" and they don't refer to "specificity" when discussing information. At the time, there was precisely one mathematician who was pushing the term "specified complexity", and that was William Dembski, who tried (but failed) to create a new, mathematically-rigorous definition at information which (were it coherent) would be at odds with how information is defined by other mathematicians and computer scientists.

I went up to Meyer at the conference and asked him, "You wrote that 'information theorists' (plural) talk about specified complexity. Who are they?" He then admitted that he knew no one but Dembski (and Dembski himself is not much of an information theorist, having published exactly 0 papers so far on the topic in the peer-reviewed scientific literature).

So the use of the plural, when Meyer knew perfectly well that information theorists do not use the term "specified complexity", was just a lie - and a lie intended to deceive the reader that his claims are supported by the scientific community, when they are not.

(Another anecdote: while I was waiting in line to ask Meyer this question, I was behind a woman who couldn't wait to meet Meyer. She gushed as she shook his hand, saying she was so honored to meet the man who was responsible for recruiting so many people for Christ through his work. He smiled and thanked her. And they claim ID is not religious!)

Meyer was also caught dissembling about the "No Child Left Behind" education bill, falsely claiming that it obligated Ohio to teach about alternative theories.

Now Meyer is back with a new book, and an op-ed in the Boston Globe to help flog his book. In the op-ed, Meyer claims, "Information - whether inscribed in hieroglyphics, written in a book, or encoded in a radio signal - always arises from an intelligent source." But this is the same old bogus ID claim that is repeated endlessly and endlessly, and it's not true. At least it's not true if you understand "information" in the sense that it is understood by mathematicians and computer scientists. For example, in the Kolmogorov theory, any random source produces information.

But then again, Meyer, with his little honesty problem, doesn't seem too concerned with the truth. What's important is, as that woman ahead of me in line told him, saving souls for Jesus.

Martin Luther once said, "What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good and for the Christian church...a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies would not be against God, he would accept them." It seems that Stephen Meyer would agree.

Academic Publisher Elsevier Looking for More Revenue in Odd Places

2009-07-15T14:34:00.003-04:00

Academic publisher Elsevier, not content with raking in the money from all the expensive academic journals they print, is now following in the footsteps of illustrious organizations such as the American Biographical Institute: when your article gets published, they are offering wooden plaques celebrating the glorious occasion.

I recently got the following e-mail from Elsevier:

New! To commemorate your publication, you can now order printed author copies of the journal issue featuring your article, a unique Certificate of Publication, and/or customized full-color posters featuring your article. Please visit https://authororders.elsevier.com/
to learn more.

And indeed, you can find there a wide variety of choices to "commemorate" your publication, including:

- copy of the journal issue in which your article appears;
- "A customized full-color poster commemorating the publication of your article, featuring the article first page and a personalized reference."
- a "Certificate of Publication" which is "delivered ready to display in a high-quality frame, dark brown wood with gold trim."
- "A full-color, 16.5" x 23.4" sized poster of the cover of the issue in which your article appears, displaying a personalized reference to your publication."

Way to be classy, Elsevier!

Another Academic Scam

2009-07-12T07:26:00.004-04:00

Every month or so I get a solicitation in the mail like the following one:

Dear Author

Hello?

As a general chair of GESTS, I am happy to invite you for the acceptance of yourpaper to be published in the GESTS International Transactions.

The GESTS is a nonprofit academic society organized by voluntary members aroundthe world since 2002. Every month, we publish the GESTS international transactionswhich are the regular paper journals on CSE and CSP, written by noble authors in more than 50 different countries.

This e-mail has been sent only to the authors who chose as a high quality paper that had been accepted as one of two parts of GESTS international transactions as follows:

-Part 1:

Paper Number : CSE775-727
Paper Journal: GESTS International Transactions on Computer Science and Engineering
Paper Field : Computer and Its Application

Volume Number: Vol.54 and No.3
ISSN Number : 1738-6438
Publication date: July 30, 2009.
Journal Type : hard copy with a green color cover
Online Journals: publication on the web in parallel to the printed journals.

-Part 2:
Paper Number : CSP775-112
Journal Title: GESTS International Transactions on Communication and Signal Processing
Paper Fields : Information Communication Engineering, Signal Processing, Image and Video Processing, Acoustics, etc.
Volume Number: Vol.13 and No.7
ISSN Number : 1738-9682
Issue Date : July 30, 2009.
Journal Type : hard copy with an orange color cover
On-line Issue: publication on the web in parallel to the printed journals.

Please, click the mouse on the "Major Conference Author's Paper Submission" at the home page, http://www.gests.org/. If the paper will be submitted through the web page, we will e-mail back with the details of how to proceed the submission of registration fees and copyright format.

Important dates for publication of the GESTS international transactions are :
- an improved paper and copyright format by July 27, 2009, ( http://www.gests.org/gests-full.rtf )
- the acceptance notification within ten days receiving your paper,
- the registration format with fees by July 30, 2009,
- the publication of GESTS International journal by July 30, 2009,
- and delivery start from GESTS to authors by August 10, 2009.

If you have a new paper or an improved version to be issued in GESTS international transactions, please, send us the final camera-ready version by July 27, 2009. At least one author of each paper must be accomplished with the registration.

We are looking forward to see your contributions at GESTS.

Sincerely yours,

Dr. Bruce M. Bae, a general chair of GESTS,

http://www.gests.org/

I particularly like the "noble authors" part -- not to be confused with authors who have won the Nobel prize, of course.

The idea is, of course, that you submit your paper to this journal that nobody reads and then they charge you "registration fees". You'd have to be pretty dumb to fall for this one.

Does Reality Exist?

2009-07-11T08:45:00.005-04:00

From Friday's Waterloo Region Record, in the Letters section, comes this gem, from Ray Zehr of Shakespeare, Ontario.

"...My answer is, true reality can only exist if God alone created intelligence because God is perfect then intelligence is true and reality is true.

"If you believe in evolution without God then you have to accept the fact that reality probably does not exist. This is probably the universal question that science has shied away from for centuries and left our youth hanging in the closet..."

It's not our youth, but somebody's brain, that was left hanging in the closet.

Real Moose Don't Litter

2009-07-10T08:20:00.001-04:00

Seen in Hoosick, New York:

The Strangest Book on the Theory of Computation

2009-07-06T08:01:00.004-04:00

Based on the description of the book in the World Scientific Press catalogue, I asked my university library to order a book entitled Automata Theory by Matthew Simon. I did so because it seemed to cover many topics not available elsewhere. I now regret my decision, although looking at the book did provide some amusement value. It is weird.

The first thing that a reader notices is each chapter begins with lengthy quotations about the history of slavery. No, I am not kidding. Chapter 1, for example, begins as follows:

TABLE OF MIXTURES

TO BECOME WHITE

White and Negro produces mulatto
Half white, half black

White and mulatto produces quadroon
Three-quarters white and one-quarter Negro...

etc. This strange choice is explained by the author as follows: "While this book focuses upon language, a reminder of the relationship between language, social being, responsibility, and historical context will start each chapter."

The typesetting and notation are really awful. For example, the author uses the capital letter "X" to represent ×, the cross product symbol. Terms are used without being defined: for example, "semi-automata" is used on page 7 but has not been defined. Some material is simply repeated; for example, both pages 9 and 11 contain a definition of semigroups (which are sometimes written "semi-groups"). The author frequently uses notation and abbreviations that are unique to him, such as "NDFSA" for what everyone else calls "NFA", etc.

Most of the book consists of pages and pages and pages of examples, with little explanation of what the examples are intended to illustrate. When theorems are stated, they often miss the point. For example, the pumping lemma for regular languages is stated as follows: "If an FSA has n+1 states and accepts a string ω where ω = a₀ a₁ ... a_n+1, thus |ω| = n+2, then the FSA accepts an infinite number of strings." But this is not the pumping lemma, which is a statement about languages, not automata.

This is, without a doubt, the strangest book I have every read on the theory of computation. I honestly don't know how this book ever got published.

There is also an interesting positive review of the book on Amazon:

Automata Theory by Matthew Simon is an unusually welcome book. The many examples shown include subjects not often covered, such as: the Chomsky-Schutzenberger Theorem, Kuroda Normal Forms, Ginsberg-Griebach Theorem, Simple Pushdown Automata, Syntactic Pattern Recognition, and Shape Grammers. The use of a consistent and standard notation throughout the book is also welcome, as many different subjects are discussed. The focus of the first chapter is upon Semigroups and Automata Theory(including wreath products), from a more elementary, less abstract, less mathematical viewpoint than that found in the dozen or so books covering this subject. Thus examples from automata theory are emphasized. While departures from the notation of Clifford and Preston do take place, the notation is as close as one can come to being standard, as no standard notation currently exists. Each chapter starts with a commentary or quotes relating to subjects that arise in socially oriented linguistics and automata theory. Such commentary is often omitted in books covering automata theory but is of interest to people studying Anthropological Linguistics, General (historical)Linguistics, Philosophical Linguistics, and other academic areas dealing with linguistics, but often neglected by the engineering, Computer Science and Mathematics communities.

I leave it up to the reader to try to figure out who might have written this review.

United Way Finally Sees the Light?

2009-07-05T12:23:00.005-04:00

For many years I have boycotted the local United Way because of their unwillingness to fund Planned Parenthood. My attempts to address the issue with the leaders of United Way KW were always met with evasion, and in some cases, misleading accounts of the reasons for their refusal. The real reason, of course, was that at Planned Parenthood one could learn about abortion as an option for an unwanted pregnancy (although the local Planned Parenthood does not actually do abortions). At the same time, the local United Way was happy to fund Birthright, an organization which refuses to refer women for abortions if that is their choice.

Now, I'm happy to say, the local United Way has seemingly seen the light. They gave a grant of $8,000 to PP for their "Women's Wellness" educational day and for a pilot project concerning Sudanese and Afghan women. Strangely enough, though, the United Way's list of funded agencies doesn't include Planned Parenthood. Maybe the local United Way still isn't willing to be forthright about their decisions.

I'm going to continue to boycott United Way until they fund Planned Parenthood and proudly say so on their website.

Clueless Palin Sinks to New Low

2009-07-05T06:11:00.005-04:00

Just when you thought the saga of clueless and soon to be ex-governor Sarah Palin couldn't become any stupider, she (via her law firm) is now threatening to sue people who say bad things about her for defamation:

"To the extent several websites, most notably liberal Alaska blogger Shannyn Moore, are now claiming as “fact” that Governor Palin resigned because she is “under federal investigation” for embezzlement or other criminal wrongdoing, we will be exploring legal options this week to address such defamation. This is to provide notice to Ms. Moore, and those who re-publish the defamation, such as Huffington Post, MSNBC, the New York Times and The Washington Post, that the Palins will not allow them to propagate defamatory material without answering to this in a court of law. The Alaska Constitution protects the right of free speech, while simultaneously holding those “responsible for the abuse of that right.” Alaska Constitution Art. I, Sec. 5. http://ltgov.state.ak.us/constitution.php?section=1. These falsehoods abuse the right to free speech; continuing to publish these falsehoods of criminal activity is reckless, done without any regard for the truth, and is actionable."

Considering that Palin is a documented serial liar, it's pretty rich when she threatens to sue others for what she claims is lying.

Janis Ian Demo Tape

2009-07-02T18:32:00.006-04:00

I heard something on WHYY-FM (Philadelphia) last Sunday that positively gave me goose bumps. On the 2nd hour of the show American Routes, they played the demo-tape version of Janis Ian's song, "Society's Child". Janis Ian arrived in New York at the age of 14, and one year later, in 1966, she recorded "Society's Child" on the home tape recorder of Sis Cunningham and Gordon Friesen, publishers of Broadside.

It is a phenomenal recording for anyone, let alone a 15-year-old. You can listen to it here: click, choose the June 24th show, and then click on "Listen to Hour 2". Or you can go directly to the show as an mp3 file here. In both of these links, "Society's Child" begins at 16:20 into the show, so don't expect to hear it right away.

Interview with Joseph Shallit

2009-07-01T12:40:00.005-04:00

Here's a rarity: a July 1967 interview with my father, Joseph Shallit, conducted by interviewer Gene Poll, about my father's piece in the Reader's Digest, "We're Up to Deuteronomy". Yes, we really did read and discuss the Bible at dinner when I was 9 years old. The interview is in mp3 format.

Happy Canada Day!

2009-07-01T10:46:00.001-04:00

This fine moose is decked out to celebrate Canada Day. But it lives in Bennington, Vermont.

Arrow

2009-06-17T07:00:00.000-04:00

Just in case you didn't know what an arrow was, this sign on a Kitchener street helpfully explains it.

Logo Fail

2009-06-16T09:43:00.003-04:00

Whenever I pass by this dry cleaner's, I am always struck by the logo. The arrow through "speedy" is obviously meant to convey speed, but for me it just looks like the word "speedy" has been struck out. They used to be speedy, it says to me, but aren't any longer. Logo fail!

Christian Science Peddled at the University of Waterloo

2009-06-16T08:58:00.006-04:00

Yesterday I attended a talk by Christian Scientist Barbara Fife entitled "The Power of Prayer", held at the University of Waterloo in the building where I work, the Davis Centre. Although the room can hold about 250 people, I would estimate that no more than about 25 people were present.

For those who don't know much about it, Christian Science is a sect of Christianity that maintains unsupported claims about "spiritual healing". (For a critical look at Christian Science claims, see my article here.)

Supposed evidence for Christian Science claims is nearly always anecdotal, and Barbara Fife did not disappoint there. She started with an anecdote about her husband who wanted to quit smoking. She prayed for him, and he was able to quit. This was offered in support of the idea that prayer can bring about change. From a scientific point of view, however, this kind of claim is essentially worthless, since it does not have any control. What if she had not prayed? Maybe her husband would have quit even sooner! Without a control, it is impossible to conclude that prayer was effective.

Ms. Fife discussed various definitions of prayer. In one definition, a prayer is a petition. Prayer, she claimed, is more effective if it is for self-improvement rather than material gain. Her prayer for her husband was unselfish and so it was answered.

Ms. Fife discussed various aspects of Mary Baker Eddy's life. She claimed Ms. Eddy was "scientific", when in fact Eddy conducted no experiments, had no scientific training, and was completely unfamiliar with the notion of double-blind study.

Ms. Fife related the story of her son, who had a bike accident and hit his head while at Principia College, the only Christian Science institution of higher learning in the world. Afterwards he threw up. Although his face was gouged, he was only treated with prayer and cleaning and bandaging of the wound and quickly recovered. Three weeks later at graduation his wounds were hardly visible. Again, this was offered as proving the power of prayer. But it is not surprising at all that one can naturally recover, without prayer, in three weeks from a wound like that. And it is certainly irresponsible, after a head injury with vomiting, that one does not get checked out by a competent neurologist.

She said that "God had a divine purpose" for everyone and nothing could change that, certainly not a bike accident. It makes me wonder, what was the divine unchangeable purpose behind Pol Pot?

Prayer, Ms. Fife claimed, helps us see and think differently. It is not to help God hear us; it is for us to be close to God.

She told the story of a woman who had uterine fibroid tumors. After she took up Christian Science the tumors shrank and disappeared. She did not mention the fact that fibroid tumors often shrink spontaneously, and this is perhaps due to changes in estrogen levels.

Ms. Fife claimed that Mary Baker Eddy's book Science and Health actually heals; there is a 130-year history of healings. Mary Baker Eddy "proved everything she wrote". There is a law of God underlying Creation. Anyone can pray and find healing.

All told, it was a fairly typical Christian Science performance: vague stories of healings, usually with no names given; claims of miraculous healing following prayer; no controlled studies ever referred to. After tepid applause, Ms. Fife did not take questions from the audience.

I went up afterwards and asked her, if Christian Science healing is effective, why is Principia College one of the very few universities in the US that has recurring measles epidemics? Why did Mary Baker Eddy need glasses? Why didn't she heal herself of poor vision? Why do Christian Scientists live shorter lives than non-Christian Scientists? Fife had no answers to any of these questions, saying only that Christian Science healers "need to do better". She said she had not read Simpson's study comparing longevity of Christian Scientists and non-Christian Scientists and she also said she was uninterested in reading it. Clearly, Ms. Fife is a woman whose mind is not open to evidence against her point of view.

Why was the University of Waterloo chosen as the venue for this talk? Possibly it was due to a wildly optimistic forecast of the number of attendees, but I would guess it was partly to give a "scientific" veneer to the claims made.

Canadian "Journalist" Sinks to New Low

2009-06-12T05:28:00.006-04:00

Denyse O'Leary is a local Roman Catholic pro-intelligent-design, anti-evolution "journalist" whose writing is typically at the grade six level -- perfect for her audience. Based on what I've seen, she seems impervious to actual argument, preferring instead to slam what she delightfully calls "Darwinbots". In her writing, she rarely interviews people who disagree with her, and she elevates people who agree with her to the status of authorities. For example, she routinely refers to creationist David Tyler as a "physicist"; I guess that sounds better than admitting that he is a professor of "clothing design and technology".

But today she has sunk to a new low, by attempting to blame the recent murder at the Holocaust museum on Darwin's theory of evolution. Nearly all the commenters point out how insane this is, but, as usual, O'Leary is completely impervious to their reasoning.

If O'Leary were consistent, she'd also be blaming the crash of Air France 447 on Newton's theory of gravity.

Update: no surprise here - O'Leary's claimed "breaking story" isn't original with her; it comes from the odious David Klinghoffer.

Reviews that Hurt

2009-06-05T16:54:00.004-04:00

Mathematical Reviews is a journal that attempts to provide a brief review of every legitimate paper published in the mathematical literature. Reviews are intended to summarize the content of the paper and put it into context, but sometimes the opinion of the reviewer shows through.

Here is one that I stumbled on today: "In the paper under review, ... performs elementary manipulations to produce several equations. The first few of these formulas involve P_r(n,k), the number of partitions of n into k relatively prime parts, while the last few involve R(n,k), the number of decompositions of n into k relatively prime parts. These formulas do not provide insight into the behavior of P_r(n,k) and R(n,k) so much as they demonstrate what sort of formulas result from certain elementary manipulations."

Ouch, that one's gotta hurt.

I have to admit, I wrote a review like that once, too. Here's an excerpt: "Their main result, Lemma 2.1, is equivalent to the statement that multiplication of 2 × 2 matrices is associative."

Jason Brown on Mathematics and Music

2009-05-30T10:59:00.003-04:00

At the recent Canadam conference on discrete and algorithmic mathematics, Jason Brown of Dalhousie gave a great talk on mathematics and music. He accompanied his talk on the guitar, playing excerpts from jazz and rock standards to illustrate his points.

Jason was featured in the Wall Street Journal, among other places, for his work on using the Fourier transform to decode the mysterious opening chord in the Beatles song "A Hard Day's Night" (it turns out that the key ingredient is an F played on the piano).

Jason used his analysis of the mathematical underpinnings of Beatles songs to compose a song in the style of the Beatles, which he then recorded in the studio with musicians Scott Ferguson, Alex Vaughan and vocalist Hal Bruce. There's a great video of the performance of "A Million Whys" here.

Dejean's Conjecture Solved!

2009-05-28T06:09:00.007-04:00

Dejean's conjecture is one of the oldest conjectures in combinatorics on words. Yesterday, at the CANADAM conference in Montréal (where I also gave a talk), James Currie and my former Ph. D. student Narad Rampersad announced the final step in the proof of this famous conjecture. That's Narad at the left and James on the right. (Photo courtesy of Amy Glen.)

Dejean's conjecture concerns repetitions in infinite words. A square is a repetition of the form xx, where x is a nonempty word. We can write this in shorthand as x². Examples of squares include the English word hotshots and the French word chercher. A cube is a repetition of the form xxx; the only example I know of in English is the sort-of-word shshsh. About a hundred years ago, the Norwegian mathematician Axel Thue gave examples of an infinite word over a 2-letter alphabet containing no cubes and an infinite word over a 3-letter alphabet containing no squares. It is easy to see that there are no infinite words without squares over a 2-letter alphabet, or cubes over a 1-letter alphabet.

More generally, one can try to avoid rational powers, not just integer powers. We say a string w is a p/q power if it can be written in the form x^kx' where x' is a prefix of x and the length of w is p/q times the length of x. For example, the French word entente is a 7/3 power, as it can be written in the form (ent)²e. Similarly, entanglement is a 4/3 power.

Dejean's conjecture concerns the largest possible exponent e such that there exists no infinite word over a k-letter alphabet avoiding powers of exponent e or greater. We write this exponent as RT(k), where RT stands for "repetitive threshold". Thue proved that RT(2) = 2. In 1972, Françoise Dejean proved that RT(3) = 7/4. She conjectured that RT(4) = 7/5 (which was later proved by Pansiot) and RT(k) = k/(k-1) for k ≥ 5.

Over the last 35 years the range of exponents for which Dejean's conjecture was known to hold slowly increased. Moulin Ollagnier proved the conjecture for 5 ≤ k ≤ 11; Mohammad-Noori and Currie proved it for 12 ≤ k ≤ 14. A real breakthrough occurred a couple of years ago, when Carpi proved the conjecture for all k ≥ 33. Currie and Rampersad then improved Carpi's construction to resolve k ≥ 27, and more recently they used Moulin Ollagnier's techniques to resolve the remaining cases 15 ≤ k ≤ 26. This competely resolves Dejean's conjecture. You can read Currie and Rampersad's paper here.

At the conference we also learned that (as is often the case in mathematics and computer science) nearly simultaneously, a proof of the remaining cases along different lines has been described by Michaël Rao of the Université de Bordeaux.

So congratulations to James Currie, Narad Rampersad, and Michaël Rao for finally resolving this famous conjecture!

Poll Confirms It: The More Religious You Are, The More Immoral You Are

2009-05-21T14:15:00.003-04:00

Here's a link to a fascinating poll conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

According to the results, 62% of white evangelical Protestants say torture against suspected terrorists can "often" or "sometimes" be justified. But only 40% of the "unaffiliated" agreed with that.

Among those who attend religious services at least weekly, 54% agreed that torture can "often" or "sometimes" be justified. But only 42% of those who "seldom" attend religious services agreed with that.

In other words, the more you are drenched with God-talk, the more you are likely to okay the abhorrent practice of torture.

The next time some theist rails about the immorality of atheists, point them to this poll.

What a Drag!

2009-05-19T18:50:00.001-04:00

I just discovered last night that the slow leak we had in the kitchen sink leaked through the kitchen floor to the basement below. Unfortunately this was exactly where I was storing my issues of Skeptic (I had a complete collection starting with Vol. 1 No. 1) and Skeptical Inquirer, with the result that nearly all of the issues I had been saving have been destroyed by water and mold. I am now, with mask over mouth, removing all the issues and dumping them. Too bad -- I had planned to donate my complete collection of Skeptic to the local public library.

Michael Egnor Misses the Point

2009-05-16T07:09:00.007-04:00

Whenever the Discovery Institute wants to hire a new spokesman, I imagine a conversation like this:

"Who can we get who is abysmally ignorant, illogical, and not afraid to show it?"

"Casey Luskin?"

"No, we already hired him. How about Michael Egnor?"

"Great idea. He has the added bonus of the arrogance of a surgeon. I'll send the invitation off right away."

Michael Egnor read my recent piece criticizing Margaret Somerville's article in Academic Matters. Somerville claimed that when parents decide to abort a child with Down's syndrome, that is a "eugenic" decision. "Only the decision not to abort when the fetus has Down's syndrome", Somerville claimed, "is not a eugenic decision". I pointed out that Somerville was doing here exactly what she decried earlier: labeling a decision she doesn't like as "eugenic", and therefore bad, without explaining why it is bad. I also pointed out that many parental decisions, such as choosing whom to have children with, could be considered "eugenic" in exactly the same way, yet I imagine Somerville would consider those acceptable. Following Somerville's logic, only picking someone at random for your mate "is not a eugenic decision."

But of course, Egnor missed the point entirely (and also managed to misspell my name). The point was not about eugenics, or Down's syndrome children at all; it was about Somerville's hypocrisy.

There are lots of other fallacies in Egnor's piece; you may enjoy spotting them all. Here are a few:

Here is how Egnor defends religion: "The existence of God is not a “ridiculous and unverifiable claim;” it's the conclusion reached by the vast majority of human beings living today and who have ever lived, and is a viewpoint held by most of the best philosophers, ethicists and scientists in history." Here he is using both the Fallacy of Appeal to Belief and the Fallacy of Appeal to Authority. Two fallacies in one sentence; truly a remarkable achievement.

Next, he claims there are thoughtful arguments for atheism (but doesn't provide a single example of an argument he believes is "thoughtful"). Then he dismisses the arguments of "Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Myers, and Hitchens" as "puerile". (Of course, like Somerville, he doesn't give a single reason why he thinks this.) This is the Fallacy of Appeal to Ridicule.

He then invents an argument against Christianity -- ‘some bad things have been done by Christians, therefore Christianity is untrue’ -- and implies it is something that I believe (or that Dawkins et al. believe). This is the Fallacy of the Straw Man.

Next he goes on to smear Planned Parenthood, the National Organization of Women, and the Pro-Choice Resource Project as "eugenic". There's no denying that the word "eugenic" has a nasty reputation in our society, and Egnor doesn't hesitate to exploit it. (For the same reason, creationists love to associate "Darwinism" with both fascism and communism; they know how effective a smear can be to incite the Fallacy of Appeal to Emotion.) I can't resist pointing out that along the way, Egnor confuses "inference" with "implication".

Why does "eugenics" have a nasty reputation? It is not because the goal - to have healthy offspring - is something any parent would disagree with. After all, parents of Asheknazi Jewish heritage get tested for the Tay-Sachs gene, but I don't see Egnor labeling Dor Yeshorim as "eugenic" (but he would have to if he were consistent). No, it is because "eugenics" is equated in many people's minds with the centrally-directed, government-enforced, coercive eugenics advocated by the Nazis. It is one thing - and I think entirely acceptable - for parents to decide to not have a child with Tay-Sachs; it is another thing entirely for the government to murder or sterilize people perceived to have defective genes. Labeling both as "eugenic" is facile -- par for the course for Egnor -- but misses an essential difference.

Egnor goes on to say "In the atheist/Darwinian view, eugenics is moral, even virtuous." Here he is committing yet another fallacy: the Fallacy of Is-Ought. Darwinists (more properly, any scientist or person who understands the theory of evolution) are what they are because they hold to a scientific theory, not a description of ethical behavior.

Egnor then gives three reasons against parental choice. Unfortunately, none of them are very good. His first is "I have fairly traditional Christian beliefs, and I find the assertion that people should be bred and culled like farm animals to be repugnant." But when partners decide not to have children because (say) they both carry a gene like Tay-Sachs, or decide to abort a fetus that will have the disease, that has nothing to do with "be[ing] bred and culled like farm animals", unless the farm animals Egnor is thinking of are breeding themselves. By equating government-enforced eugenics with parental choice, Egnor commits the Fallacy of Equivocation. Furthermore, since 80% of pregnancies end unsuccessfully, with about half that figure attributed to genetic defects, it may be fairly said that Egnor's god is the Great Eugenicist in the Sky.

The second is "eugenics has stained my profession". But again, the eugenics that stained the medical profession consisted of, e.g., forced sterilization, not parents deciding whether to have children or to abort a fetus with a severe defect.

The third reason is that Egnor knows children with cognitive defects and finds they have value. That's nice, but nobody's claiming that these children should be killed or their parents made a mistake. What Egnor misses entirely, because of his sectarian religious viewpoint, is that for many parents, the decision is not between "having this child who will die a painful and gruesome death from Tay-Sachs before age 4" or "not having any child at all", but rather "having this child who will die of Tay-Sachs" or "not having it, and having a healthy child later on".

Finally, recall that my original question was "Why, exactly, would the world be better off with more Down's syndrome children?" Egnor says in response "The world is made better by every person." Even if we ignore the fact that Egnor's Pollyanna claim is clearly untrue (how was the world made better by Hitler or Pol Pot?), his response doesn't address the question. Parents are faced with limited resources. If they choose to raise a healthy child instead of an unhealthy child, why does Egnor want to refuse them that choice?

If Egnor really believes that the world would be better off with more Down's syndrome children, he should be doing everything he can to promote their production. As a medical doctor, he should be counselling couples to postpone having children until the wife is at least 40; after age 45, that increases the chances of having a Down's syndrome child to 1 in 19. Similarly, he should be encouraging older men to have more children, since paternal age is apparently a factor, too. Since he does not, it is clear that even Egnor does not believe that the world would be better off with more Down's syndrome children.

About 90% of parents decide to abort after a Down's syndrome diagnosis. If I shared Michael Egnor's fondness for logical fallacies, I would say that is evidence he is wrong. Instead, I will simply point out that most parents do not view having a Down's syndrome child as a good way to spend their limited parental resources. I don't demand that parents choose the way I would under the circumstances; I have great sympathy for parents faced with such a difficult decision, and I support their right to choose, no matter how they decide. Despite his attempt to tar me with the eugenic brush, it is his viewpoint that has more in common with totalitarian thinking.

And like the totalitarian, Egnor chooses to attack me from a forum that does not allow comments. What is he afraid of?

Monty Hall is out

2009-05-14T07:50:00.004-04:00

A pleasant surprise arrived in the mail today: Jason Rosenhouse's new book, The Monty Hall Problem. I read a first draft of the book and found it excellent.

Alf van der Poorten says that the definition of a good book is that it mentions you. Under that criterion, this is a very good book indeed, as I appear on the back cover, giving the book an endorsement.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in probability.

Weird Google Maps Error

2009-05-10T09:34:00.003-04:00

If you search for 2212 Line 34, Shakespeare, ON on Google Maps, you get a location that is something like 50 km from the true location. Shakespeare is actually between New Hamburg and Stratford, Ontario.

Google Maps seems quite unreliable for Southern Ontario. It used to be that when you searched for the Waterloo-Wellington
airport, you would get a location about 25 km from the true one.

It would be interesting to understand what about the data or algorithm results in such a bizarre error. It would also be nice if it were easier to report errors in Google maps.

Acknowledging Priority

2009-05-06T07:33:00.002-04:00

One of the principles of publishing in mathematical and scientific journals is that, generally speaking, you cannot publish results that are already known.

Of course, publishing known results happens all the time anyway, because authors and referees cannot know the entire literature, and different authors use different terminology and notation. I once rediscovered a simple way to provide a lower bound on the size of nondeterministic finite automata, and published it, but later found out the result had already appeared in the literature -- indeed, the author had even sent me a reprint which, to my chagrin, I found languishing in my files. The point is that

1. Authors should not knowingly attempt to republish known results;

2. Referees should make at least some attempt to verify that the claimed results are new;

3. Editors should not agree to publish papers containing known results presented as if new.

There are some exceptions to these rules, however. Often one needs to state other researchers' results because the statement is crucial to the exposition. In this case, authors must be careful to provide the attribution and correct citation to the literature. In a "survey paper", one often brings together a large number of known results and tries to tie them into an overarching theme. Again, authors must be careful to provide the correct citations.

It is a violation of scientific/mathematical ethics to knowingly publish as new, results that are already known.

Recently a paper was submitted to a journal I edit. I sent it out to a referee, who observed that he/she had already refereed the paper for another journal, and the referee sent me the old report. That report pointed out that several of the results claimed as new were actually already in the literature. The authors had resubmitted the paper to me without making the required changes, acknowledging priority to others. This is a violation of mathematical ethics.

Margaret Somerville in "Academic Matters"

2009-05-02T05:33:00.006-04:00

Here's a piece by McGill philosopher Margaret Somerville in the OCUFA publication Academic Matters. (OCUFA is the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations.) I found it very shoddily argued.

For example, she rightly decries the suppression of speech on campus (something that I have also done; see here). But she then says "some people are going even further: they want to force physicians to act against their conscience under threat of being in breach of human rights or subject to professional disciplinary procedures for refusing to do so". I think these cases are not remotely comparable. The latter question revolves around whether physicians have the right to shirk their professional duty and engage in discrimination simply by calling their view "religious". Would Somerville also support the right of a physician to refuse to treat black patients, because the physician belongs to an Aryan church that views blacks as subhuman? I doubt it. Then how can she support the "right" of physicians to treat lesbian couples differently from heterosexual couples?

She says, "Political correctness operates by shutting down non-politically correct people's freedom of speech. Anyone who challenges the politically correct stance is, thereby, automatically labeled as intolerant, a bigot, or hatemonger. The substance of their arguments ... is not addressed ..." But then, just a few paragraphs later, she labels Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens as "fundamentalists". I do not know exactly what she means by "fundamentalist" in this context, but it seems to me she is doing here exactly what she decried previously: applying a label to them without addressing the substance of their arguments.

Later she says "Only the decision not to abort when the fetus has Down's syndrome is not a eugenic decision". But here she is begging the question: why are decisions that she labels as "eugenic" necessarily bad? Why, exactly, would the world be better off with more Down's syndrome children? By her reasoning, positive assortative mating would be considered "eugenic"; yet most of us practice some form of it.

She seems to imply that religion deserves an equal place at the table as science. But she doesn't say why, other than to point out the obvious fact that many people hold religious views. Many people believe that 9/11 was a US government conspiracy, too, but I don't see why we are obligated to take their views seriously. With respect to religion, why should religious dogma, which maintains ridiculous and unverifiable claims, be treated in the same way as science and rational thinking?

Probably you can find more examples of shoddy argument in this piece. Academic Matters has a history of publishing anti-science and anti-rationalist screeds.