For instance:

And, perhaps most reprehensibly, a long series of communications discussing how best to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process. How, in other words, to create a scientific climate in which anyone who disagrees with AGW can be written off as a crank, whose views do not have a scrap of authority.

“This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the “peer-reviewed literature”. Obviously, they found a solution to that–take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board…What do others think?”

“I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.”“It results from this journal having a number of editors. The responsible one for this is a well-known skeptic in NZ. He has let a few papers through by Michaels and Gray in the past. I’ve had words with Hans von Storch about this, but got nowhere. Another thing to discuss in Nice !”

–James Delingpole, UK Telegraph

It struck me when I first read this section of the article that this is the exact thing that the intelligent design camp has been saying for years now. Michael Behe even documented his peer-review nightmare here. Intelligent design scientists have been systematically shut out of the peer-review process by being disallowed from the big journals, such as Nature, for years. Michael Behe isn’t the only one. If you haven’t heard of the whole “Sternberg” affair, go and check it out here. The idea that the peer-review system is some type of open process is just a total myth. Robert Higgs wrote about this back in 2007 for Nature:

Journalists, politicians and advocacy groups refer to “peer-reviewed research” and “scientific consensus” as the authoritative last words on controversial matters involving the natural sciences, from climate change to stem-cell research and genetically engineered foods. But many people have an unrealistic view of how the scientific community actually works.

The peer-review process is not, contrary to popular belief, a nearly flawless system of Olympian scrutiny. Any editor of a peer-reviewed journal who desires to reject or accept a submission can easily do so by choosing appropriate referees.

Unfortunately, personal vendettas, ideological conflicts, professional jealousies, methodological disagreements, sheer self-promotion and irresponsibility are as much part of the scientific world as any other. Peer review cannot ensure that research is correct in its procedures and conclusions. A part of the work in every discipline—from the physical sciences to economics—consists of correcting previous mistakes.
At any given time, “scientific consensus” may exist about various matters. Over time, however, new interpretations, tests or observations may demolish that consensus. For instance, in the mid-1970s, an apparent scientific consensus existed that our planet was about to enter another Ice Age. Drastic proposals, such as exploding hydrogen bombs over polar icecaps to melt them. and damming the Bering Strait to prevent icy waters from entering the Pacific, were put forth by reputable scientists and seriously considered by the US government.

The truth is that scientific research at the upper echelons occurs within a fairly small world. Leading researchers attend the same conferences, belong to the same societies, review one another’s work for funding organizations, and so forth. If you do not belong to this tight fraternity, it becomes extremely difficult to gain a hearing for your work, to publish in a “top” journal, to acquire a government grant, to receive an invitation to participate in a scientific conference, or even to place your grad students in decent positions.

“Scientific consensus” often emerges because the members of this exclusive club, and those who support them, have too much invested in the reigning ideas to let go. In this context, it behooves bright young scientists not to rock the boat by challenging anything fundamental or dear to the hearts of those who constitute review committees of funders or journals. The terms “peer review” and “scientific consensus” often serve to suggest a process of disinterested neutrality and saintly pursuit of truth. Like every other human endeavour, however, science is conducted by people with the full range of human emotions and motives.

Good rules of thumb for the non-scientist might be the following: government-funded research that is used to justify that government’s policy should be suspect, whether or not it’s peer-reviewed; and the research of scientists who appear at press conferences in the company of politicians or activists whose agendas they are there to support should be suspect, whether or not the work upholds the consensus opinion.

–Bob Higgs, The Beacon

While I think that it’s great that global warming is in it’s death throws, I think the bigger lesson here is that whenever we hear the words “scientific consensus” it should immediately trigger our skeptic reflex. Science is an ongoing process of revolution and paradigm shift. It always has been. Today’s solid theory is tommorrows waste basket liner. Consensus in world of science is worth about as much as it is in the economics profession. That is to say, not much.

The claim is that this lemur monkey fossil is “the missing link in human evolution.” That’s the claim, and that’s what should be evaluated. It doesn’t matter if it’s a really cool fossil, or if it’s “almost complete”, or any of that. What matters is whether or not it is clearly and distinctly a transitional form between ape and man, as the headlines are blazing it. What you will see, rather, is just a mega-hyped version of the usual stuff. I’ll show you here how to read one of these articles properly. I’ve read so many missing-link articles over the years that I have it down to an art form. I could analyze one and make a sandwich at the same time. Let’s look at the article [my comments in brackets]:

So, there we have it. An entire article about the missing link discovery with only 3 short paragraphs about why it’s actually the missing link. And those paragraphs are just your usual Darwinian fairy tale story turned into science. And looking at the stupid marketing website it becomes really obvious what this is all about and why David Attenborough is so involved:

David over at Crev has a good writeup on it today as well. What a load.

My impression of Hitches is kind of disappointing. He wasn’t as dynamic as I had expected, or heard. I had heard that he broke debate rules a lot and even dropped the f-bomb some during debates. He was on his good manners this time I guess. Maybe he sensed the southern culture wouldn’t tolerate that and changed his style accordingly. I don’t know. Anyhow, most of his arguments just boiled down to the same old arguments that we get from athiests. Religion is silly, and Christians have done some bad things in the past. Pretty much all his material fell into one of those two categories. Of course, those aren’t serious arguments since the first one is the whole point of the debate anyway, and the second one is simply too easily refuted on multiple fronts. I’m going to ignore the simple ad absurdum arguments and focus on number two.

The idea that Christians have done terrible things is as historically accurate as it is theologically consistent. Sure, Christians have done bad things in the past. But Christians don’t do bad things because they are Christians, but because they are human. It’s fully consistent within Christian theology that all men will do evil things because of the sin that is in us. Christians are no exeption and should never claim otherwise. None of that absolves Hitchens from the evil in his own life though. The fact that Christians, as humans, have done bad things does not get atheism off the hook for it’s own atrocities. The question isn’t which worldview produced the most bloodshed or pain. It’s, which of those two worldviews finds such pain and evil acceptable. The answer is obviously, the one that has no mechanism of an ultimate justice. That would be non-theism.

Christianity isn’t just a concept or idea. It’s a created worldview with specific details that flow from the person who created it: Jesus Christ. That’s a simplistic way to describe it, but it serves the point of showing the difference between a religion and a philosophy, like atheism. This is important because, in analyzing the question of past evil comitted, Christianity has at it’s core the command of Jesus to Peter not to use the sword to advance his Kingdom. Any Christian who does use violence to advance His kingdom stands in violation of Christianity itself. In short, he’s not acting as an agent of Christendom at that moment, but of something else, perhaps selfishness. Christianity has a core. A violator of that core can not be properly labeled as an agent of Christianity anymore than Olympia Snowe can be called an agent of conservatism.

Contrast that with atheism. It’s a philosophy that simply holds a non-belief in the supernatural, and therefore God. Historically, a robust idea of atheism didn’t really develop en masse until Darwin enabled it to have a legitimate story to tell about it’s potential history. And atheism remains tied, heart and soul, to that idea of human ascendence through natural selection. Any practical morality is only a by-product – no matter what story is contrived to explain it – of some type of group think or social contract to treat each other well so we’ll all be better off. Tell me then, what part of that worldview is inconsistent with Stalin’s genocide? What part of atheism condemns, logically, the mass murders under Pol Pot? And that’s the point. Christianity is violated by the sword. Atheism, on the other hand, condemns nothing, admonishes nothing and allows horror to flow alongside benevolence, with nothing but personal preference to distinguish between the two.

If you haven’t done so already, you should really add the crev.info RSS feed to your news tracker. They do great work. The link is on the blogroll.

So they are probably ready to re-think the dinosaur timescale, right? Nope:

I for one hope that they do figure out a way to clone T-Rex. A T-Rex New York strip or some T-Rex kabobs for gameday would rock.

The debate over “Lucy” has always been about whether or not it was just a mottled together ape skeleton, or some type of early hominid. This new find so far does almost nothing to change that debate. From the waist down, only a few fragments were found, so you can’t really say what they indicate. The upper body, on the other hand, strongly indicates ape-ness:

This line blows me away though:

Creationists have held for years that the fossil record clearly indicates a world-wide cataclysmic flood event. Call it Noah’s flood if you like. Every ancient culture has a world-wide flood myth, not just Christians and Jews, but for some reason nobody believes there was a world-wide flood. Many dinosaur sites around the world show signs of rapid flood burial. We have sedimentary fossils of fish schools 1000’s of feet up in the Sierra mountains, yet there was no flood?

More good stuff about this find can be found here.