What happens when you leave the echo chamber.

[rivka]

Michigan State biologist Richard Lenski has been following an E. Coli population for 20 years, and has produced evidence of a major evolutionary shift in response to environmental conditions.

Some puffed-up "Conservapedia" hacks decided that they were competent to take apart Lenski's conclusions, and wrote to him demanding that he release his raw data for "examination by independent reviewers."

The resulting exchange of letters is pretty entertaining. Here's my favorite bit from the exchange:

It is my impression that you seem to think we have only paper and electronic records of having seen some unusual E. coli. If we made serious errors or misrepresentations, you would surely like to find them in those records. If we did not, then – as some of your acolytes have suggested – you might assert that our records are themselves untrustworthy because, well, because you said so, I guess. But perhaps because you did not bother even to read our paper, or perhaps because you aren’t very bright, you seem not to understand that we have the actual, living bacteria that exhibit the properties reported in our paper, including both the ancestral strain used to start this long-term experiment and its evolved citrate-using descendants. In other words, it’s not that we claim to have glimpsed “a unicorn in the garden” – we have a whole population of them living in my lab! [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unicorn_in_the_Garden] And lest you accuse me further of fraud, I do not literally mean that we have unicorns in the lab. Rather, I am making a literary allusion. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allusion]

The Conservapedia talk pages are hilarious. My favorite unintentional bit of comedy: the plaintive heading on the talk archive page "Anyone a biologist?" (Answer: sadly, no.)

(Via Pandagon)

Edited to add: Wait, wait, here's another favorite bit from the talk pages: "I asked Zachary Blount to clarify his statements about whether evolution of Cit+ (citrate-eating) E. coli bacteria was a goal of the experiment. He answered by asking me to go on a wild goose chase by reading the whole paper, which has 8 pages of fine print -- this is called "bibliography bluffing." And when people balk at going on these wild goose chases, they are accused of not wanting to learn."

Man. I can't believe that charlatan Blount expected that anyone wishing to argue about the merits of a scientific paper would read all eight pages of the paper itself. Why would you set up such ludicrously rigorous standards? Only if you have something to hide...

Comments

[elusis.livejournal.com]

Hey, if they want to re-run all the statistics themselves have at it, as long as we can stand over their shoulders and laugh as they flounder with SPSS.

[writingortyping.livejournal.com]

Statistics?

Hey - nobody told me there would be math on this test!!!!

[elusis.livejournal.com]

Really, I think whatever demands they make should be taken absolutely literally and indulged insofar as it's possible. They want all the raw data? Here it is, and you have 36 hours to replicate our statystical analyses but make sure you document your methods! Want part of the colony to be a "steward" of? No problem; here's the name of a good laboratory contractor who can work with you on drawing up an estimate for the job of designing and building an appropriate containment and storage facility, as well as the offices of the relevant federal, state, and local agencies involved in regulating potential biohazards so you can start filing the paperwork.

(Alternatively: "your jar of watery shit will be arriving by courier any day now. Enjoy!")

[rivka.livejournal.com]

The thing is, as far as I can understand, there weren't any complex statistical analyses or huge quantities of data reduction. The data relevant to the results discussed are very simple - mostly just counts and observations - and they're presented in full in the paper. The Conservapediots' claim that relevant information is "missing" seems to be entirely due to their inability to understand standard microbiology techniques.

Which is not a subject for scorn in and of itself, because I don't understand them either. But I don't presume to lecture microbiologists on what they're doing wrong, either.

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

there are a couple of places where it says 'data not included' for reasons of space and Mr L is putting those up on his Web site for completeness - but they've been demanding those without bothering to read the data that is in the paper already...