York Daily Record: Ten Years Since Kitzmiller

The York Daily Record has an issue on the ten year anniversary of the Kitzmiller decision that devastated the intelligent design movement.  Among the articles, an interview with Judge Jones, the fate of the book that started the problem, Of Pandas and People, and the social and legal consequences of the decision. About Pandas:

In a deposition, school board member Bill Buckingham said he did not know how they were donated to the high school. Another member of the board, Alan Bonsell, denied that he knew anyone, except his father, who was involved in giving copies of the books.

During the trial, Buckingham said members of his church felt there was a need to give money, but that he did not consider that a collection. Bonsell said that he got an $850 check from Buckingham.

U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III wrote in his decision that the "inescapable truth" is that both Buckingham and Bonsell lied during their depositions.

Today, only one "Of Pandas and People" book remains, in the Dover Area School District's administration building, according to the library catalog. The catalog also reports there's one copy of the book that's listed as "lost."

So, what happened to the other 48 books? With the exception of three copies, nobody seems to know.

Hopefully, into the circular file. That is certainly where it belongs.

Judge Jones, when asked about the misconceptions that the Intelligent Design community derived from the case:

I would say the main one is the role of precedent.

In the Kitzmiller case, there's a very clear line of cases from higher courts, including the Supreme Court of the United States, that set out tests that we use in deciding whether a particular policy violates the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment. Those are etched in stone.

Now, people may disagree with those tests, but I have to, had to, as a federal judge, apply them. I have frequently said since the Kitzmiller case that I think any federal judge in the United States would have decided it exactly the same way that I did by applying those tests.

Now, they may have written the opinion a little bit differently, but the result would have been the same. That is, that the board, at that time, had a clear religious motivation, and violated the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment by its policy introducing intelligent design into the curriculum. The misconception arises because, frankly, people either deliberately — or from a lack of understanding — think that we make this stuff up as we go along, and that we're not bound to apply these precedents, these mandates, from higher courts. And that's exactly what I did in deciding the case.

All of the articles are fascinating examinations of the make up of the ID movement and its aftermath.

Hat tip to the NCSE.

Josh Rosenau Calls Casey Luskin on the Carpet

Josh Rosenau of Thoughts from Kansas notes that Casey Luskin's recent apology for misreading Kenneth Miller comes off a bit lacking in factual integrity. Luskin wrote:

In a recent post, I noted that Ken Miller misrepresented Michael Behe’s arguments on the irreducible complexity of the blood clotting cascade in his book, Only a Theory. When I blogged at the end of last year about Miller’s similar mistakes at the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial, Dr. Miller responded by making me aware of something I did not previously know: apparently Michael Behe wrote the section in Of Pandas and People on blood clotting.

Rosenau responds:

Under normal circumstances, it would suffice to congratulate Casey for finally acknowledging his ignorance, but alas, we must not pause to revel in that minor miracle. Like so many miraculous claims, it vanishes under investigation.

First of all, it is implausible that Casey wouldn't have been aware of Behe's involvement in Pandas. Casey, after all, has been involved with Behe, Pandas, and the broader ID movement for long enough that ignorance of any widely known fact in any of those three areas is a dubious claim.

Indeed, Casey was at the Dover trial when Behe discussed his involvement in writing parts of Pandas. He even used that involvement to browbeat reporters during the trial itself, writing:

"Behe was a contributor to Pandas, it was on the blood clotting cascade section (found in Chapter 6, "Biochemical Similarities")…"

I would like to think that Mr. Luskin forgot this little bit of information. We all forget things. Luskin's account of the differences between Behe's early work with Of Pandas and People and what showed up in Darwin's Black Box goes like this:

I contacted Behe about the differences between the two works, and he informed me that the differences between the treatment of blood clotting in Pandas (1993) and Darwin’s Black Box (1996) were the result of his refining, tightening, improving, and revising his arguments before publishing Darwin's Black Box. There's nothing wrong with Behe updating and improving his arguments.

That is fair enough. The rest of Luskin's post is an attack on the "random, undirected processes of mutation and natural selection" language that shows up in several places in Miller and Levine's textbook on biology. I do not have a copy of this book so I have no reason to doubt Luskin on this. There may be more than enough fuzzy memories to go around on this one.