Nick Matzke

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Nicholas J. Matzke is the former Public Information Project Director at the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) [M 1] and served an instrumental role in NCSE's preparation for the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial. [1] One of his chief contributions was discovering drafts of Of Pandas and People which demonstrated that the term "intelligent design" was later substituted for "creationism". This became a key component of Barbara Forrest's testimony. [2] [M 2] After the trial he co-authored a commentary in Nature Immunology , [M 3] [M 4] was interviewed on Talk of the Nation, [3] and was profiled in Seed as one of nine "revolutionary minds". [M 5]

Contents

Training and career

Matzke earned a B.S. in Biology and Chemistry from Valparaiso University, and a Master's degree by research in Geography from U.C. Santa Barbara. [M 1] [M 6] He undertook Ph.D. studies in evolutionary biology at the University of California, Berkeley with John Huelsenbeck [M 1] earning his degree in 2013. [M 7] He was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis. Matzke is currently a phylogeneticist at the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Auckland, [M 8] having previously been a Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA) fellow at the Australian National University.

Work and publications

Matzke has written many in-depth pieces and has made frequent posts online, including regularly blogging at The Panda's Thumb. In 2003, he wrote a lengthy paper about the evolution of flagella [M 9] and has continued to challenge claims from intelligent design proponents that flagella are irreducibly complex. [M 10] [M 11] [M 12] He co-authored a critique of Stephen C. Meyer's paper that became important in the Sternberg peer review controversy. [M 13] [4] He also wrote a chapter-by-chapter critique [M 14] of Jonathan Wells' book Icons of Evolution , [5] which he described as a "travesty of the notion of honest scholarship" that is "shot through with misrepresentations." In addition to "a bevy of its own errors," Matzke stated that the book contained "numerous instances of unfair distortions of scientific opinion, generated by the pseudoscientific tactics of selective citation of scientists and evidence, quote-mining, and 'argumentative sleight-of-hand,' [by which Matkze means] Wells's tactic of padding his topical discussions with incessant, biased editorializing." [M 14] While still with the NCSE, he collaborated with Paul R. Gross to contribute a chapter on the use of critical analysis by antievolutionists [M 15] to their 2006 book Not in Our Classrooms . [M 16] In less serious or formal work, he co-authored a research parody based on NCSE's Project Steve. [M 17] He first made a name for himself posting on talk.origins as "Nic Tamzek". [6] He has also written articles on such topics for the popular press. [M 8]

He is the author of the 2013 R package BioGeoBEARS, [M 18] which enables statistical comparison of probabilistic models of how the geographic ranges of species evolve on phylogenies, such as models that include or exclude founder-event speciation, [M 19] geographic distance, [M 20] or dispersal-influencing traits. [M 21] He also authored a 2015 paper in the journal Science conducting a dated, Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of antievolution legislation proposed or passed in the United States in the decade following Kitzmiller v. Dover. [M 22] [M 23]

Related Research Articles

Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as "an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins". Proponents claim that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." ID is a form of creationism that lacks empirical support and offers no testable or tenable hypotheses, and is therefore not science. The leading proponents of ID are associated with the Discovery Institute, a Christian, politically conservative think tank based in the United States.

Irreducible complexity (IC) is the argument that certain biological systems with multiple interacting parts would not function if one of the parts were removed, so supposedly could not have evolved by successive small modifications from earlier less complex systems through natural selection, which would need all intermediate precursor systems to have been fully functional. This negative argument is then complemented by the claim that the only alternative explanation is a "purposeful arrangement of parts" inferring design by an intelligent agent. Irreducible complexity has become central to the creationist concept of intelligent design (ID), but the concept of irreducible complexity has been rejected by the scientific community, which regards intelligent design as pseudoscience. Irreducible complexity and specified complexity, are the two main arguments used by intelligent-design proponents to support their version of the theological argument from design.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Center for Science Education</span> Nonprofit supporting the teaching of evolution and climate change

The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) is a not-for-profit membership organization in the United States whose stated mission is to educate the press and the public on the scientific and educational aspects of controversies surrounding the teaching of evolution and climate change, and to provide information and resources to schools, parents, and other citizens working to keep those topics in public school science education. Based in Oakland, California, it claims 4,500 members that include scientists, teachers, clergy, and citizens of varied religious and political affiliations. The Center opposes the teaching of religious views in science classes in America's public schools; it does this through initiatives such as Project Steve. The Center has been called the United States' "leading anti-creationist organization". The Center is affiliated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The evolution of flagella is of great interest to biologists because the three known varieties of flagella – each represent a sophisticated cellular structure that requires the interaction of many different systems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Behe</span> American biochemist, author, and intelligent design advocate

Michael Joseph Behe is an American biochemist and an advocate of the pseudoscientific principle of intelligent design (ID).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eugenie Scott</span> American anthropologist (born 1945)

Eugenie Carol Scott is an American physical anthropologist, a former university professor and educator who has been active in opposing the teaching of young Earth creationism and intelligent design in schools. She coined the term "Gish gallop" to describe a fallacious rhetorical technique of overwhelming an interlocutor with as many individually weak arguments as possible, in order to prevent rebuttal of the whole argument.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephen C. Meyer</span> American author, educator and advocate of intelligent design creationism

Stephen C. Meyer is an American author and former educator. He is an advocate of intelligent design, a pseudoscientific creationist argument for the existence of God and helped found the Center for Science and Culture (CSC) of the Discovery Institute (DI), which is the main organization behind the intelligent design movement. Before joining the DI, Meyer was a professor at Whitworth College. Meyer is a senior fellow of the DI and director of the CSC.

<i>Darwins Black Box</i> 1996 book by Michael Behe

Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution is a book by Michael J. Behe, a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. In the book Behe presents his notion of irreducible complexity and argues that its presence in many biochemical systems therefore indicates that they must be the result of intelligent design rather than evolutionary processes. In 1993, Behe had written a chapter on blood clotting in Of Pandas and People, presenting essentially the same arguments but without the name "irreducible complexity," which he later presented in very similar terms in a chapter in Darwin's Black Box. Behe later agreed that he had written both and agreed to the similarities when he defended intelligent design at the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial.

<i>Of Pandas and People</i> Creationist supplementary textbook by Percival Davis and Dean H. Kenyon

Of Pandas and People: The Central Question of Biological Origins is a controversial 1989 school-level supplementary textbook written by Percival Davis and Dean H. Kenyon, edited by Charles Thaxton and published by the Texas-based Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE). The textbook endorses the pseudoscientific concept of intelligent design – the argument that life shows evidence of being designed by an intelligent agent which is not named specifically in the book, although proponents understand that it refers to the Christian God. The overview chapter was written by young Earth creationist Nancy Pearcey. They present various polemical arguments against the scientific theory of evolution. Before publication, early drafts used cognates of "creationist". After the Edwards v. Aguillard Supreme Court ruling that creationism is religion and not science, these were changed to refer to "intelligent design". The second edition published in 1993 included a contribution written by Michael Behe.

The "teach the controversy" campaign of the Discovery Institute seeks to promote the pseudoscientific principle of intelligent design as part of its attempts to discredit the teaching of evolution in United States public high school science courses. Scientific organizations point out that the institute claims that there is a scientific controversy where in fact none exists.

Wesley Royce Elsberry is a data scientist with an interdisciplinary background in marine biology, zoology, computer science, and wildlife and fisheries sciences. He also became notably involved in the defense of evolutionary science against creationist rejection of evolution.

<i>Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District</i> 2005 court case in Pennsylvania

Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, 400 F. Supp. 2d 707 was the first direct challenge brought in the United States federal courts testing a public school district policy that required the teaching of intelligent design (ID), ultimately found by the court to not be science. In October 2004, the Dover Area School District of York County, Pennsylvania, changed its biology teaching curriculum to require that intelligent design be presented as an alternative to evolution theory, and that Of Pandas and People, a textbook advocating intelligent design, was to be used as a reference book. The prominence of this textbook during the trial was such that the case is sometimes referred to as the Dover Panda Trial, a name which recalls the popular name of the Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee, 80 years earlier. The plaintiffs successfully argued that intelligent design is a form of creationism, and that the school board policy violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The judge's decision sparked considerable response from both supporters and critics.

The Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE) was a Christian non-profit organization based in Richardson, Texas, which represented itself as a “Christian think tank”. It published textbooks and articles promoting pseudoscientific creation science and intelligent design, abstinence, and Christian nationalism. In addition, the foundation's officers and editors became some of the leading proponents of intelligent design. The FTE developed close associations with the Discovery Institute, hub of the intelligent design movement and other religious Christian groups. The FTE operated from 1981 to 2016. Foundation for Thought and Ethics Books is now listed as an imprint of Discovery Institute Press. From the outset its aim was to develop a "scientific critique" of evolution, which was published as The Mystery of Life's Origin in 1984, to be followed by "a two-model high school biology textbook".

The Sternberg peer review controversy concerns the conflict arising from the publication of an article supporting pseudoscientific intelligent design creationism in a scientific journal, and the subsequent questions of whether proper editorial procedures had been followed and whether it was properly peer reviewed.

Charles B. Thaxton is a proponent of special creation who went on to become one of the first intelligent design authors.

<i>Creationisms Trojan Horse</i> 2004 book by Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross

Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design is a 2004 book by Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross on the origins of intelligent design, specifically the Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture and its wedge strategy. The authors are highly critical of what they refer to as intelligent design creationism, and document the intelligent design movement's fundamentalist Christian origins and funding.

The Discovery Institute has conducted a series of related public relations campaigns which seek to promote intelligent design while attempting to discredit evolutionary biology, which the Institute terms "Darwinism". The Discovery Institute promotes the pseudoscientific intelligent design movement and is represented by Creative Response Concepts, a public relations firm.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Timeline of intelligent design</span> Outline of the topic

This timeline of intelligent design outlines the major events in the development of intelligent design as presented and promoted by the intelligent design movement.

<i>Explore Evolution</i>

Explore Evolution: The Arguments For and Against Neo-Darwinism is a controversial biology textbook written by a group of intelligent design supporters and published in 2007. Its promoters describe it as aimed at helping educators and students to discuss "the controversial aspects of evolutionary theory that are discussed openly in scientific books and journals but which are not widely reported in textbooks." As one of the Discovery Institute intelligent design campaigns to "teach the controversy" its evident purpose is to provide a "lawsuit-proof" way of attacking evolution and promoting pseudoscientific creationism without being explicit.

Talk Reason is a website dedicated to opposing creationism and promoting evolution. Talk Reason provides a forum for the publication of papers against creationism and intelligent design. For example, the website hosts Nick Matzke's 2003 paper on the evolution of flagella that challenged the claims of intelligent design proponents that such structures are irreducibly complex, in which he concluded that "there are no major obstacles to gradual evolution of the flagellum."

References

Primary

  1. 1 2 3 "Nicholas J Matzke – Graduate Student". Department of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley. 2012. Archived from the original on May 24, 2012. Retrieved November 7, 2019.
  2. ↑ I guess ID really was "Creationism's Trojan Horse" after all Archived 2008-06-24 at the Wayback Machine , Panda's Thumb
  3. ↑ Bottaro, Andrea; Inlay, Matt; Matzke, Nick (2006). "Immunology in the spotlight at the Dover 'Intelligent Design' trial". Nature Immunology . 7 (5): 433–435. doi:10.1038/ni0506-433. PMID   16622425. S2CID   29396637.
  4. ↑ PT posters in Nature Immunology, The Panda's Thumb, April 22, 2006
  5. ↑ Seed Magazine — “Nick Matzke, Legal Beagle” The Panda's Thumb, October 3, 2006
  6. ↑ Matzke, Nicholas Joseph (2003). Remote Sensing and Geostatistical Analysis of Anthropogenic Biomass Burning and Forest Degradation in Madagascar (MA). Santa Barbara, CA: University of California, Santa Barbara.
  7. ↑ Matzke, Nicholas Joseph (2013). Probabilistic Historical Biogeography: New Models for Founder-Event Speciation, Imperfect Detection, and Fossils Allow Improved Accuracy and Model-Testing (PDF) (PhD). Berkeley, California: University of California, Berkeley.
  8. 1 2 Baker, Matt A. B.; Matzke, Nicholas J. (November 7, 2019). "Evolution or Intelligent Design? The Story of the Bacterial Flagella Motor". ABC Science . Australian Broadcasting Corporation . Retrieved November 7, 2019.
  9. ↑ Matzke, Nick (2003). "Evolution in (Brownian) space: a model for the origin of the bacterial flagellum" (PDF). Retrieved November 7, 2019– via Talk Reason.
  10. ↑ Matzke, Nick (November 10, 2003). "BACKGROUND to 'Evolution in (Brownian) space: A model for the origin of the bacterial flagellum'". Talk Reason . Retrieved November 7, 2019.
  11. ↑ Flagellum evolution Archived 2006-09-27 at the Wayback Machine in Nature Reviews Microbiology , The Panda's Thumb.
  12. ↑ Pallen, Mark J.; Matzke, Nicholas J. (2006). "From The Origin of Species to the origin of bacterial flagella" (PDF). Nature Reviews Microbiology . 4 (10): 784–790. doi:10.1038/nrmicro1493. PMID   16953248. S2CID   24057949.
  13. ↑ Meyer's Hopeless Monster Archived 2009-02-10 at the Wayback Machine , The Panda's Thumb
  14. 1 2 Matzke, Nick (January 23, 2004). "Icon of Obfuscation: Jonathan Wells' book Icons of Evolution and why most of what it teaches about evolution is wrong". The TalkOrigins Archive: Exploring the Creation/Evolution Controversy . Retrieved November 7, 2019.
  15. ↑ Matzke, Nicholas J.; Gross, Paul R. (2006). "Analyzing Critical Analysis: The Fallback Antievolutionist Strategy". In Scott, Eugenie Carol; Branch, Glenn (eds.). Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design is Wrong for Our Schools . Beacon Press. ISBN   9780807032787.
  16. ↑ "Not in Our Classrooms". National Center for Science Education. September 21, 2006. Retrieved November 7, 2019.
  17. ↑ Scott, Eugenie C.; Branch, Glenn; Matzke, Nicholas (2004). "The Morphology of Steve" (PDF). Annals of Improbable Research . 10 (4): 24–29. doi:10.3142/107951404781540554. S2CID   60656868.
  18. ↑ "BioGeoBEARS - PhyloWiki". 2017-11-14.
  19. ↑ Matzke, Nicholas (2014). "Model Selection in Historical Biogeography Reveals that Founder-event Speciation is a Crucial Process in Island Clades". Systematic Biology . 63 (6): 951–970. doi: 10.1093/sysbio/syu056 . PMID   25123369.
  20. ↑ Van Dam, Matthew; Matzke, Nicholas (2016). "Evaluating the influence of connectivity and distance on biogeographic patterns in the south-western deserts of North America". Journal of Biogeography . 43 (8): 1514–1532. doi: 10.1111/jbi.12727 .
  21. ↑ Matzke, Nicholas (2016). "Trait-dependent dispersal models for phylogenetic biogeography, in the R package BioGeoBEARS". Integrative and Comparative Biology . 56 (suppl 1): e251–e400. doi: 10.1093/icb/icw001 .
  22. ↑ Matzke, Nicholas (2015). "The Evolution of Antievolution Policies After Kitzmiller v. Dover". Science . 351 (6268): 10–12. doi: 10.1126/science.aad4057 . hdl: 2292/41354 . PMID   26678877.
  23. ↑ Matzke, Nicholas J. (December 17, 2015). "Matzke 2015 Science Paper on the Evolution of Antievolution". PhyloWiki. Retrieved November 7, 2019.

Secondary

  1. ↑ "Farewell, Nick". National Center for Science Education. August 20, 2007. Retrieved August 26, 2007.
  2. ↑ testimony of Barbara Forrest, Kitzmiller v. Dover
  3. ↑ "Science, Intelligent Design and a 'Flock of Dodos'". Talk of the Nation. February 23, 2007. Retrieved 2008-08-17.
  4. ↑ Weitzel, Robert (August 28, 2005). "Creationism's Holy Grail: The Intelligent Design of a Peer-Reviewed Paper". Skeptic . 11 (4): 66–69. Retrieved November 7, 2019. available here at the Talk Reason website and archived at the Wayback Machine on May 6, 2019.
  5. ↑ Wells, Jonathan (2002). Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? (paperback ed.). Regnery Publishing. ISBN   978-0895262769.
  6. ↑ Dembski, William A. "Biology in the Subjunctive Mood: A Response to Nicholas Matzke". ARN.org. Retrieved 16 August 2022.
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