creationists using nature precedings to pre-publish junk science

This paper was added to the Nature Precedings site today.

The title grabbed my attention – “The saltational model for the dawn of H. sapiens, chin, adolescence phase, complex language and modern behavior”. Ok, I’ll admit that it was those Jean Auel books (in 9th grade) that sparked my interest in non-fiction about the origins of our species.

So, first I had to look up saltation – it basically means “a sudden change”. Kind of tipped me off for what was to come.

And then page 3:

I already gave away the punchline in the title, but I’ll be painfully clear: the paper was a poorly written intelligent design argument, thinly disguised as a research paper on ancient skeletal remains.

I’ve seen Journey of Man, so I was interested in how the paper might get around the genetic evidence.. and well, the paper was unintelligible. There was a bunch of handwaving about different pieces of different ancient bones, and comparing them. Maybe dwTheory can tell me what grains of truth might have been mixed in with all the crap.

After wading through all the junk, I decided to find out who one of the co-authors, Omer Faruk Noyan, is. A google search turned up this petition questioning the validity of Darwinism.

I did learn from google that ‘saltational’ is a word often used by creationists. Maybe because is sounds scientifical? Rather than saying “hey, I think God did it!”, it is much better to use a word most people won’t know. Because that’s what science is about – using big words to construct nonsense arguments.

3 thoughts on creationists using nature precedings to pre-publish junk science

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Santosh Patnaik · August 10, 2007 at 2:17 pm ·

This raises questions about how pseudo-science should be defined, and what Nature Precedings’s policy should be towards such pseudo-scientific articles that have already been accepted. I have posted about it on the journal’s forum — http://network.nature.com/forums/precedings/386

selena · August 10, 2007 at 4:59 pm ·

Thanks for pointing me to the discussion.

I see that the ~~editor~~ publisher already replied. I disagree with the response.

I’m glad that you brought this to the Nature staff’s attention – perhaps I should have made my criticism there, rather than in my personal blog.

Timo Hannay · August 13, 2007 at 2:34 am ·

To be clear, I’m not the editor (in the case of Nature Precedings, more properly described as ‘curator’), I’m the publisher.

>> perhaps I should have made my criticism there, rather than in my personal blog.

Yes, good idea! 🙂

3 thoughts on creationists using nature precedings to pre-publish junk science
Comments are closed.

Santosh Patnaik · August 10, 2007 at 2:17 pm ·

This raises questions about how pseudo-science should be defined, and what Nature Precedings’s policy should be towards such pseudo-scientific articles that have already been accepted. I have posted about it on the journal’s forum — http://network.nature.com/forums/precedings/386
selena · August 10, 2007 at 4:59 pm ·

Thanks for pointing me to the discussion.

I see that the ~~editor~~ publisher already replied. I disagree with the response.

I’m glad that you brought this to the Nature staff’s attention – perhaps I should have made my criticism there, rather than in my personal blog.
Timo Hannay · August 13, 2007 at 2:34 am ·

To be clear, I’m not the editor (in the case of Nature Precedings, more properly described as ‘curator’), I’m the publisher.

>> perhaps I should have made my criticism there, rather than in my personal blog.

Yes, good idea! 🙂