Wesley R. Elsberry

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Wesley R. Elsberry
Born (1960-01-23) January 23, 1960 (age 64)
Lakeland, Florida, U.S.
Alma mater University of Florida
Known forNotable marine biologist and critic of Intelligent Design
Scientific career
Fields Marine Biology
Thesis Interrelationships Between Intranarial Pressure Andbiosonar Clicks In Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops truncatus)  (2003)

Wesley Royce Elsberry (born January 23, 1960) 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. [1]

Contents

Early life

Elsberry was born in Lakeland, Florida. He was brought up in the Evangelical United Brethren church, which merged with the Methodists in 1968 to form the United Methodist Church. He attended a public elementary school, an evangelical junior high, and a Catholic high school. He received a National Merit Scholarship and earned a B.S.(Bachelor) in zoology from the University of Florida in 1982. During that period, he worked as a staff photographer for the Independent Florida Alligator newspaper.[ citation needed ]

Career

After graduating from the University of Florida, he worked for Media Image Photography in Gainesville, Florida. In 1983, he became a lab technologist for the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Florida and in 1985 became a biologist in the Department of Physiological Sciences of the College of Veterinary Medicine. He worked with Professor Richard H. Lambertsen on the histology, physiology, and epidemiology of fin whales. [2]

He then entered a program in artificial intelligence, obtaining an M.S.C.S. in computer science from the University of Texas at Arlington in 1989. Following graduation, he was employed by General Dynamics Data Systems Division, programming fire-control computers for F-16 fighters. In 1991, he became a research scientist at the Battelle Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, working on a mapping system for the U.S. Air Force. [3]

In 1993, he began his doctoral studies in wildlife and fisheries sciences at Texas A&M University with Professor William Eugene Evans as his major advisor. He collaborated with the U. S. Navy Marine Mammal Program in 1995 to investigate marine mammal hearing at depth. He periodically traveled to San Diego to continue collaboration on temporary threshold shift in marine mammals, until he was employed as a Behavioral Research Programmer for Science Applications International Corporation. He collaborated with Ted W. Cranford on a study of dolphin biosonar sound production in 1999. In 2001, he was awarded the Society for Marine Mammalogy's Fred Fairfield Award for Innovation in Marine Mammal Research. He completed his Ph.D. in 2003. [4]

Elsberry was a visiting researcher at Michigan State University from 2007 to 2009. There, he worked on the Avida artificial life project and extended the Avida-Ed software system. [5] [6]

Creationism

Elsberry became interested in the political controversy between creationism and science in February 1986, when he attended a lecture by a Young-Earth Creationist geologist. He found it superficially convincing and the lecturer gave him a copy of The Scientific Case for Creation by Henry M. Morris. Elsberry later recalled; "As I read that book, I started highlighting things that were pretty obviously counterfactual", and by 1977 only about five pages lacked highlighting. He said "I was just appalled at what I was reading. I came to believe that to stand by and not say anything about what he was doing to science and to religion would have made me complicit in that." Using his knowledge of biology and computer science, Elsberry became heavily involved in online discussions on the topic. [1]

He took up criticizing antievolution claims in letters to the editors of newspapers and in online forums. [7] His stance in these matters has been one of theistic evolution, with the concern that science be taught in science classes, and non-science be taught elsewhere. He participated in Fidonet echoes, particularly the Science Echo, from 1988 to 1994. In 1989, he began operating his own BBS, first as an RBBS-Net node and later as a Fidonet node. He started the Neural-Net Echo in 1989, and the Evolution Echo in 1991. He became a participant in the Usenet talk.origins newsgroup in 1991. By 1995, he had contributed a FAQ on punctuated equilibria to the TalkOrigins Archive, as well as the Jargon and Biographica compilations. He also created his own set of web pages dealing with scientific creationism in 1995. [8]

In 1997, he presented at the "Naturalism, Theism, and the Scientific Enterprise" conference held by intelligent design advocates in Austin, Texas, giving a defense of methodological naturalism. [9] He also assisted the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) that year with regard to the review of science textbooks undertaken by the state of Texas. [10] [ failed verification ]

In 2001, he presented opposite William A. Dembski at the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences/American Association for the Advancement of Science "Interpreting Evolution" conference at Haverford College, Haverford, Pennsylvania. Brett Vickers turned over care and maintenance of the TalkOrigins Archive to him late in 2001. He established a group of about a dozen volunteers, the TalkOrigins Archive Delegation, to handle needed maintenance and updates of the site. He also established the Antievolution.org site in 2001 as a place to collect critical information on the antievolution movement. In 2002, he presented at the "Evolution and Intelligent Design" session of the CSICOP 4th World Skeptics conference in Burbank, California, along with Massimo Pigliucci, Kenneth Miller, Paul Nelson, and William A. Dembski. [11]

In 2003, he took the position of Information Project Director at NCSE. [12]

In 2004, he helped establish the Panda's Thumb weblog and founded The Austringer.

The Austringer

The Austringer is the personal blog of Elsberry, initiated during a 2004 hospitalization as a convenient way to keep friends and family updated on developments. [8] The title derives from falconry jargon for a person who flies a short-wing hawk. While posts cover falconry, science, wildlife, computation, and media issues, the most notable posts concern science education and the antievolution movement. These have included substantial materials concerning Discovery Institute intelligent design campaigns, the Sternberg peer review controversy, and Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. [13]

This blog has figured significantly in the ongoing defense of science against anti-evolutionism. For example, The Austringer is a major contributor to the Florida school science curricula debate. [14] [15]

Awards

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.

<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.

<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.

Project Steve is a list of scientists with the given name Stephen or Steven or a variation thereof who "support evolution". It was originally created by the National Center for Science Education as a "tongue-in-cheek parody" of creationist attempts to collect a list of scientists who "doubt evolution", such as the Answers in Genesis's list of scientists who accept the biblical account of the Genesis creation narrative or the Discovery Institute's A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism. The list pokes fun at such endeavors while making it clear that, "We did not wish to mislead the public into thinking that scientific issues are decided by who has the longer list of scientists!" It also honors Stephen Jay Gould. The level of support for evolution among scientists is very high. A 2009 poll by Pew Research Center found that "Nearly all scientists (97%) say humans and other living things have evolved over time."

<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.

Specified complexity is a creationist argument introduced by William Dembski, used by advocates to promote the pseudoscience of intelligent design. According to Dembski, the concept can formalize a property that singles out patterns that are both specified and complex, where in Dembski's terminology, a specified pattern is one that admits short descriptions, whereas a complex pattern is one that is unlikely to occur by chance. Proponents of intelligent design use specified complexity as one of their two main arguments, alongside irreducible complexity.

Theistic science, also referred to as theistic realism, is the pseudoscientific proposal that the central scientific method of requiring testability, known as methodological naturalism, should be replaced by a philosophy of science that allows occasional supernatural explanations which are inherently untestable. Proponents propose supernatural explanations for topics raised by their theology, in particular evolution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wedge strategy</span> Creationist political and social action plan

The Wedge Strategy is a creationist political and social action plan authored by the Discovery Institute, the hub of the pseudoscientific intelligent design movement. The strategy was put forth in a Discovery Institute manifesto known as the Wedge Document. Its goal is to change American culture by shaping public policy to reflect politically conservative fundamentalist evangelical Protestant values. The wedge metaphor is attributed to Phillip E. Johnson and depicts a metal wedge splitting a log.

Cheri Pierson Yecke is an author and retired conservative Republican professor in the United States.

Robert T. Pennock is a philosopher working on the Avida digital organism project at Michigan State University where he has been full professor since 2000. Pennock was a witness in the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial, testifying on behalf of the plaintiffs, and described how intelligent design is an updated form of creationism and not science, pointing out that the arguments were essentially the same as traditional creationist arguments with adjustments to the message to eliminate explicit mention of God and the Bible as well as adopting a postmodern deconstructionist language. Pennock also laid out the philosophical history of methodological and philosophical naturalism as they underpin to science, and explained that if intelligent design were truly embraced it would return Western civilization to a pre-Enlightenment state.

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Neo-creationism is a pseudoscientific movement which aims to restate creationism in terms more likely to be well received by the public, by policy makers, by educators and by the scientific community. It aims to re-frame the debate over the origins of life in non-religious terms and without appeals to scripture. This comes in response to the 1987 ruling by the United States Supreme Court in Edwards v. Aguillard that creationism is an inherently religious concept and that advocating it as correct or accurate in public-school curricula violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">TalkOrigins Archive</span>

The TalkOrigins Archive is a website that presents scientific perspectives on the antievolution claims of young-earth, old-earth, and "intelligent design" creationists. With sections on evolution, creationism, geology, astronomy and hominid evolution, the web site provides broad coverage of evolutionary biology and the socio-political antievolution movement.

"A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism" was a statement issued in 2001 by the Discovery Institute, a Christian, conservative think tank based in Seattle, Washington, U.S., best known for its promotion of the pseudoscientific principle of intelligent design. As part of the Discovery Institute's Teach the Controversy campaign, the statement expresses skepticism about the ability of random mutations and natural selection to account for the complexity of life, and encourages careful examination of the evidence for "Darwinism", a term intelligent design proponents use to refer to evolution.

Nicholas J. Matzke is the former Public Information Project Director at the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) and served an instrumental role in NCSE's preparation for the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial. 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. After the trial he co-authored a commentary in Nature Immunology, was interviewed on Talk of the Nation, and was profiled in Seed as one of nine "revolutionary minds".

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The relationship between intelligent design and science has been a contentious one. Intelligent design (ID) is presented by its proponents as science and claims to offer an alternative to evolution. The Discovery Institute, a politically conservative think tank and the leading proponent of intelligent design, launched a campaign entitled "Teach the Controversy", which claims that a controversy exists within the scientific community over evolution. The scientific community rejects intelligent design as a form of creationism, and the basic facts of evolution are not a matter of controversy in science.

References

  1. 1 2 Jeffrey P. Moran (March 7, 2012). American Genesis: The Evolution Controversies from Scopes to Creation Science . Oxford University Press. pp.  161–. ISBN   978-0-19-991348-0.
  2. ↑ Lambertsen, Richard H. (1986). "Serum chemistry and evidence of renal failure in the North Atlantic fin whale population". Journal of Wildlife Diseases. 22 (3): 389–396. doi:10.7589/0090-3558-22.3.389. PMID   3735585. S2CID   26646061. Archived from the original on December 9, 2019. Retrieved December 9, 2019.
  3. ↑ "Curriculum Vitae". Academia. Archived from the original on December 9, 2019. Retrieved December 10, 2019.
  4. ↑ Elsberry, Wesley R. "Interrelationships Between Intranarial Pressure Andbiosonar Clicks In Bottlenose Dolphins(Tursiops truncatus)" (PDF). Oaktrust Library. Archived from the original (PDF) on November 3, 2018. Retrieved December 10, 2019.
  5. ↑ Elsberry, Wesley R. "Cockroaches, Drunkards, and Climbers: Modeling the Evolution of SimpleMovement Strategies Using Digital Organisms" (PDF). Devolab. Michigan State University. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 18, 2017. Retrieved March 18, 2017.
  6. ↑ Grabowski, Laura M. "On the Evolution of Motility and Intelligent Tactic Response" (PDF). Devolab. Michigan State University. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 30, 2016. Retrieved March 30, 2016.
  7. ↑ Matus, Ron (June 26, 2007). "Candidate: Story on me is wrong". St Petersburg Times. Archived from the original on October 23, 2017.
  8. 1 2 Elsberry, Wesley R. "First News from the Mews". The Austringer. Archived from the original on September 22, 2017. Retrieved December 9, 2019.
  9. ↑ Elsberry, Wesley R. (December 5, 1996). "Enterprising Science Needs Naturalism: Written for the 1997 UT Austin conference on Naturalism, Theism, and the Scientific Enterprise". Talk Reason. Retrieved August 23, 2013.
  10. ↑ Matsumura, Molleen. "Milestone, 1997: NCSE Submits Brief in Creationism Case". NCSE. Archived from the original on December 10, 2019. Retrieved December 10, 2019.
  11. ↑ "Fourth World Skeptics Conference in Burbank a Lively Foment of Ideas". The Skeptical Inquirer. Vol. 26, no. 5. The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. October 2002. Retrieved November 7, 2017.
  12. ↑ "Happy Darwin Day!". National Center for Science Education. February 12, 2004. Archived from the original on December 9, 2019. Retrieved November 7, 2017.
  13. ↑ "Flunked, Not Expelled: Anti-Evolution Film Misappropriates the Holocaust". The Austringer. Archived from the original on December 9, 2019. Retrieved December 9, 2019.
  14. ↑ Matus, Ron (July 3, 2007). "Blogger riles state's No. 2 school chief". The Miami Herald . pp. Page B8.
  15. ↑ Chambliss, John (November 21, 2007). "Lakeland Native Elsberry Speaks Out". Archived from the original on November 23, 2007.
  16. 1 2 Young, Matt; Edis, Taner (2006). Why Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism. Rutgers University Press. p. 224. ISBN   0-8135-3872-6.
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