Nazi racial ideology was religious, creationist, and opposed to Darwinism

• The Curious Disconnect: Introduction (March 19, 2010).
• The Mutationism Myth 1. The Monk’s Lost Code and the Great Confusion (March 29, 2010) describes how the mutationism story is told in books and articles.
• Theory₁ vs Theory₂ (April 13, 2010) explores a hidden distinction that will prove very useful later.
• The Mutationism Myth, 2. Revolution (April 30, 2010) will show you how to think about evolution the way Darwin did.
• The Mutationism Myth, 3. Foundations of Evolutionary Genetics (May 19, 2010) shows some of the synthetic thinking of the Mendelians.
• The Mutationism Myth, 4. Mendelian Heterodoxies (May 25, 2010) explains their views of mutation as a source of initiative, discontinuity, creativity and direction.
• The Mutationism Myth, 5.  The Restoration (June 14, 2010) tells how the Modern Synthesis restored “Darwinism”, at least in name.
• The Mutationism Myth, 6. Back to the Future (August 31, 2010) wrap ups the Mutationism Myth series and sets the stage for the future by locating the primary weakness of the 20th century neo-Darwinian consensus in its theory of variation.

Arlin is contemplating starting a new blog where this kind of topic could be explored and discussed, so stay tuned.

Is Richard Dawkins a scientist? “How can you ask that? He’s probably only one of the most famous scientists in the world!” I don’t advertise myself as an actor, even though I was an extra once. Or as an artist, even though I did some cartooning some time ago. And I even got paid for it. Dawkins has a doctorate in science, is a great synthesizer of other people’s science, one of the greatest advocates for science around, but when was the last time he did any original science? When did he last analyze any data?

…

The “general public” is famously unable to name a single living scientist. That they cannot may be due in part to a lot of people being described as scientists when they are not actively involved in science. Professional scientists have clear marching orders: Test hypotheses by generating data, and publish the results. (Yes, I know theoreticians don’t necessarily generate their own data, so don’t come bugging me.) Should scientists, as a profession, be a little more assertive about who gets to use that professional label?

Zen Faulkes, Who Gets to be a Scientist? at NeuroDojo

The problem I find with your definition of scientist being a PI is that it links the term ‘scientist’ (which the public perceives as “people who actually do science”) to academic titles, which are not necessarily indicative of quality or intelligence. I’ve read papers by established PIs that would make an undergrad blush. I think what matters more than title is how close the author is to the bench, figuratively speaking. People like Dawkins, despite him having been a ‘proper’ PI in the past, do not make the cut for being ‘practicing scientists’, in my view (in agreement with Zen Faulkes’ post), as they have been removed from the bench (or field) for decades. In this view, Dawkins is no more deserving of the ‘practicing scientist’ title than Random Blogging Grad Student. He’s a practicing science WRITER, as you would probably argue. I’ve definitely felt more like a scientist when running experiments, etc, than I do now in my writing job, even though my current job is a bit more intellectually demanding and requires lots of reading and thinking about scientific literature.

Comment by Psi Wavefunction

I’ll leave the discussion open as to whether others should/shouldn’t be excluded from the category of “professional scientist” as we have been defining it. I will note, though, that my original post said the following:

For the purpose of this post, “professional scientist” is defined as someone who does scientific research for a living, publishes research in peer-reviewed journals, and is funded by granting agencies to do it. Not just writes about it, or is studying it, or doing some of it as a grad student, or only teaches it. Science bloggers — people who have blogs partly or mostly about science — are not necessarily, or even usually, professional scientists.

This was never meant to be just about graduate students, but I wanted that discussion to play out first. Now let’s talk about profs.

COMMENTS ARE NOW CLOSED ON THIS POST. Any further discussion will be continued here.

Hammering away at an ideology, substituting stridency for contemplation, pummeling its enemies in absentia: ScienceBlogs has become Fox News for the religion-baiting, peak-oil crowd. Though Myers and other science bloggers boast that they can be jerky in the service of anti-charlatanism, that’s not what’s bothersome about them. What’s bothersome is that the site is misleading. It’s not science by scientists, not even remotely; it’s science blogging by science bloggers. And science blogging, apparently, is a form of redundant and effortfully incendiary rhetoric that draws bad-faith moral authority from the word “science” and from occasional invocations of “peer-reviewed” thises and thats.

In fact, I kinda think she hit the nail on the head with some of this. ScienceBlogs hasn’t been a source of serious science content for me for quite some time, since many of the best science writers have gone one by one to more science-focused venues. But Virginia, don’t lump all science blogs in with ScienceBlogs — there are some excellent ones written by scientists and science writers.

* For the purpose of this post, “professional scientist” is defined as someone who does scientific research for a living, publishes research in peer-reviewed journals, and is funded by granting agencies to do it. Not just writes about it, or is studying it, or doing some of it as a grad student, or only teaches it. Science bloggers — people who have blogs partly or mostly about science — are not necessarily, or even usually, professional scientists.

[NOTE: Before you post yet another comment about "what about industrial scientists?" or "but not everyone receives grants", just go to the new discussion here].

The only blog I still read there regularly is Laelaps, but maybe I’ll just wait for the book instead.

Recommended instead of ScienceBlogs:

Not Exactly Rocket Science and The Loom, among others at Discover Blogs.

Adaptive Complexity and others at Scientific Blogging

Catalogue of Organisms and Sex, Genes & Evolution at Field of Science

Sandwalk

NeuroLogica

Evolving Thoughts

The Tree of Life

Rationally Speaking

Recursivity

Small Things Considered

John Hawks Weblog

Evolutionary Novelties

Genomicron (that’s me!)

And just for fun:

Dr. Twittenheimer