Remembrance Of Zings Past

OH for pity sake.

Yeah, I've heard of David Gorski before, I had a number of brawls, at least three with him back when he was blogging at Jeffrey Epstein's and Ghislaine Maxwell's groovy sceincy project of the 2000s, The Science Blogs, back when he styled himself "Orac"and spouted in a predictable way about a number of things. Some of those things he was right about, the man is competent within his subject matter but like so many self-styled men of science, as soon as he leaves it he tends to go for the common received wisdom of his  youth which is only as good as it was ever wise, or at least founded in evidence and primary documentation. Since encountering such people online I've found you can load their unevidenced claims with huge amounts of primary documentary refutation and it won't make the slightest bit of difference.  And the resistance to evidence seems to climb instead of diminish with the level of credentialing they can tack onto their names. 

After being told about his piece condemning the "Great Barrington Declaration" (about which he's, of course, right)  the ass had to use his piece to take a pot shot at "creationists".    

 

I went looking for the brawl I had with him over his contention that "only creationists use the word Darwinism" contained in that piece from last week.  Then, during our brawl I proved to him with citations starting in 1860 when Darwin's bulldog Thomas Huxley used the word repeatedly and gave it its present day meaning of someone who believed in Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. Since he hadn't yet given himself cooties back then and he was the darling of the bloggy, atheist-sceincy set, I included quotes from Richard Dawkins claiming Darwinism for himself.

 

 Previously "Darwinism" had meant someone who believed his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin's theory of evolution, I believe I included that bit of trivia. 

 

Alas Orac doesn't seem to have preserved the record of our brawl. I gave him, oh, half a dozen to a dozen different conventional Darwinists using the term to name their own biological faith in natural selection, such as that was variably believed by them over the more than a century and more after Thomas Huxley used it. The parade of eminent scientist who have called themselves Darwinists is an extremely long one.

Nothing made a dent in the asses claim, for which he produced quotes by creationists. I pointed out that if they got the habit of using the word it would probably be because Darwin's acolytes used the word to mean the same thing the creationists use it for. IT'S THE DEFINITION THAT'S LISTED IN STANDARD DICTIONARIES, FOR PETE'S SAKE. Much as Gorski might not like it, his ideological opponents have every right to use standard English vocabulary as much as an arrogant surgeon scribbler does.

As an aside, it was one of the few times one of my sworn enemies at Eschaton blog supported something I said, she pointed out that as a surgeon it's not surprising that Gorski thinks he's beyond questioning.

As to his unsurprising attempt to blame "herd immunity" on creationists, there is absolutely no doubt, whatsoever that the many hundreds of signatories to the appalling Great Barrington Declaration, all of those I looked at members of faculties at big name universities, Oxford, Harvard, etc. SO ONE THING IS ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN, NOT ONE OF THEM IS LIKELY TO BE ANYTHING BUT A CONVENTIONAL DARWINIST. I can't imagine that anyone who is suspected of such unacceptable heresies as creationism or even scientific assertions of intelligent design would be allowed to sign onto it. Though I can well imagine that some creationists, especially the stupider, more cultish ones who are Republican-fascists and Trumpists might sign onto it for that reason, I would suspect there are others, especially those who have done what I doubt Gorski ever has done, read Darwin and the literature of Darwinism - much of it eugenic literature - would recognize "herd immunity" as a concept that may well have originated in Charles Darwin's scientific assertions.

Look at this famous and famously infamous passage from The Descent of Man 

 

There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

That is "herd immunity" from start to finish, "herd immunity" is not only a thoroughly Darwinist concept, the entire thing including comparing human beings and human society to animals kept in a commercial breeding operation, where they would be disposed of as economically desired and with an eye to improving the economic "fitness" of the animals in a herd (which is in no way comparable to their survivability and reproductive success in the wild) his complaint that one of the most successful public health measures in history, smallpox vaccination, had a dysgenic effect on the human species is essentially the one the GBD signers attribute to containing the disease.  

No, Gorski, you ass, "herd immunity" was promoted by ol' Chuck in his own words, as science, you don't get to lie without someone pointing that out.

I'm kind of surprised, looking for the old Science Blogs post, I don't find that but I find that Gorski perserved his wrongheaded screed which I answered, brawl ensuing, but not the comment thread where I kicked his ass. He does, though, preseve others. One of those where I also brawled with him. I wonder why he didn't post the one about Darwinism.