Apparently there are political problems at The Panda's Thumb, a community site of bloggers who write about evolution and science. Some people wanted to respond strongly to the reported attack on Paul Mirecki. Others didn't and, in private, viciously attacked Mirecki for his ridicule of fundamentalist Christianity. Sounds like a great bunch.

PZ Myers writes a final post by Gary Hurd on the Mirecki issue and his refusal to be associated any more with some of the people there:

[T]here was a huge amount of backchannel argument over what should be said, and Gary’s post should be read as an angry reaction to a lot of disreputable and baseless speculation about Mirecki and blame-the-victim games that were flying back and forth in email. No names, no details, but let’s just say that there are a few people in the group who would be more comfortable with Michelle Malkin’s innuendo or John Altevogt’s slanders than with supporting an academic critic of fundamentalism.

There was an interesting (in an unpleasant way) social dynamic going on. Instead of coordinating our responses, the email backchannel paralyzed them: a few timid reactionaries could throw up a fog of unfounded hypotheticals and completely lock up any action. These same people are now patting themselves on the back for not making any “mistakes” and not saying anything that might require retraction or modification in the future. Of course, they’ve accomplished this mighty feat of perfect performance by not doing anything. That trivial point seems to have escaped their notice. ....

Criticizing “fundies” is a bad, bad thing, and will cost you the support of many of the Panda’s Thumb gang. Mirecki should be grateful that he isn’t an atheist; I definitely got the feeling that there’d have been anti-Mirecki diatribes publicly washing our hands of him if that had been the case. At least, I don’t feel particularly welcome there, and definitely perceive that I’m a third-class citizen in the hierarchy (heck, I didn’t even know there was a hierarchy until recently).

Myers insists that Panda’s Thumb will remain a strong resource for the debates over creationism and evolution, but that it’s abdicated its leadership on the matter. This sounds awfully generous to me — based on what Myers writes, I’d argue that Panda’s Thumb has abdicated responsibility, not merely leadership.

First and more obvious is the abdication of the responsibility to provide a leading voice on these matters. There is also an abdication of professional responsibility that occurs when people in their position actually work to undermine their own position. Finally, there is the serious abdication of ethical responsibility that occurs when someone does all of this deliberately and attacks the victim of a crime simply because he is critical of religion in a harsh manner.

It sounds like Panda’s Thumb is broken for a couple of reasons. First, it’s broken because individual contributors can be largely thwarted from responding to and commenting on a major issue so easily. Second, it’s broken because it’s reputation has been tarnished by this — two people deeply involved with the group have described it leaning so far to the right that atheists and religious critics are treated with contempt and hostility.

Finally, it’s broken because right now it’s hard to believe that it can be trusted. Next time you read something there, how can you trust that it hasn’t been pointed in a certain direction because of pressure from those who prefer innuendo about critics of religion over serious engagement with the problems caused by creationism? Indeed, how do you know that it wasn’t written by such a person — by someone who won’t address creationism directly because that would be “rude”?

 

Read More:

• Evolution vs. Creationism
• Science vs. Religion
• What is Science?