Thoughts in a Haystack

David Klinghoffer has taken a shot at me over at the Undiscovery Institute's propaganda outlet, Evolution News & Views, the motto of which was once (but still remains, in principle): "The misreporting of the evolution issue is one key reason for this site."

Now, I can't get too upset. I've taken one or two (or a a whole bunch) of shots at David in the past. My favorite was "Dungeon Master God" and David had the good grace to show up in the comments to say "John, this was very funny. Keep up the good work!"

But I have to point out that David played a little dirty pool this time. He quote mined my post (though, to his credit, he linked to it).

In my post (though not a reason for it, as will be later seen), I listed a number of critical reviews of Stephen Meyer's Darwin's Doubt (and have been adding to it since).

David's "premise," such as it is, is that the IDers "have exhaustively debunked the critiques offered by ... Matzke, Prothero, Cook, and Farrell," who were among the people who reviewed Darwin's Doubt I listed. Quite beyond the fact that most of the "exhaustive" debunkings were by attack chihuahua, Casey (what does "eponymous" mean?) Luskin, that was not what my post was about.

But David nonetheless went on to say:

The champions cited by the two Darwin defenders include Matzke, Prothero, Cook, and Farrell. Pieret himself cheers,

The Discovery Institute crowd have complained that reviewers aren't seriously engaging with the arguments in Stephen Meyer's Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design.

Be careful what you wish for.

But I wasn't talking about those reviews (or the lame "rebuttals" of them by the likes of Luskin) when I said that. I was talking about the detailed review being done by Smilodon's Retreat.

So far, the only "rebuttal" that the DI has attempted of Smilodon is a contentless, nervously mocking post by Donald McLaughlin, who is ... cough ... as eminently qualified to be waxing scientific as Casey and David.

Really, David, if EN&V ever gets around to permitting comments, I'll drop by to compliment you on how funny you are ... but today wouldn't be one of those days.