Re: Phillip Johnson wiki

On 9/3/2024 4:18 AM, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:

On 2024-08-30 07:50:27 +0000, Athel Cornish-Bowden said:
 

On 2024-08-30 02:39:01 +0000, Chris Thompson said:
>

RonO wrote:

On 8/29/2024 2:26 AM, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:

On 2024-08-29 01:16:08 +0000, RonO said:
>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillip_E._Johnson
>
Earlier this month I noted that someone had remove the Johnson capitulation quote from the Johnson wiki.  There seems to be no valid reason for removing the quote, and Athel claimed that he had emailed the editor that made the edit to see what was going on.  I guess nothing has come of the request.

>
No. I had a back-and-forth discussion with the editor in question, mainly consisting of me suggesting a wording that he would accept and refrain from editing it back to what it was. He objected to all of these, except the last, which he hasn't replied to. I thought I'd leave it a month and then fix it.

>
If you do not get this guys buy in, can he just remove it again?  What were his reasons for removing a perfectly valid quote, and Johnson's admission about the ID scam when Johnson never retracted what he had said.
>
In the previous thread I note other people using the quote including Ken Miller in a public presentation, and I do not recall any blow back from Johnson.
>

>
It's instructive to look at Laurence Moran's attempts to correct Wikipedia on the subject of junk DNA. A long-term editor/contributor (who is not a biologist/chemist/biochemist) to Wikipedia put up a ream of garbage on the topic and Larry rewrote it. The editor deleted Moran's work and put his own back up. They went around a few times but of course Larry's expertise meant nothing and the buffoon's seniority at Wikipedia meant everything.
>
If the person who changed the Johnson page is someone with an ax to grind and has been at Wikipedia for any length of time, it's probably useless to try to present anything (s)he doesn't like.

>
In his User Page, GuardianH describes himself as follows:
>
"I'm an American high school student from Massachusetts with a passion in history, philosophy, and law along with an additional interest pertaining to sociology and higher education. I write and edit primarily on topics concerning constitutional law and legal scholarship."
>
No obvious expertise in Intelligent Design, therefore, but he has been a very active editor, with more than 40000 contributions to Wikipedia. I'm not sure he has an axe to grind, but he's just stuck his heels in.

 I have found one suitable secondary source that refers to Johnson's retreat:
 https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/why-intelligent- design-fails
 However, it would e nice to have two. It surely must have been mentioned in reputable newpapers: New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, etc., but I haven't found anything. Any suggestions? Maybe something in Nature or Science?
 

The National Geo ref uses the link that no longer works.  The Wayback link that works is the archived copy of the article.  You shouldn't even need a secondary citation.  The link that the Nat Geo article uses is also broken just like the link used by the Panda's Thumb article.
As I indicated the quote was used on Panda's Thumb and by Kenneth Miller.
This is where I, probably, first got the quote.
https://pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/01/intelligent-des-43.html
At that time the Berkeley Science Review linked worked, but access was lost when they reformated their web site around 2013, and I had to find the Wayback copy because Nyikos kept lying about what Johnson had admitted.  In a rare instance Nyikos eventually accepted reality, and acknowledged that Johnson had really given up and had made those claims but it took around 3 years after his initial denials.  Nyikos' last uses of the Johnson quote were as if he had agreed with Johnson from the beginning.  Nyikos' initial denial was due to the fact that he was then lying about Johnson ever wanting to teach the ID scam junk in the public schools, and he was in denial that Johnson had ever given up on doing it.
Ken Miller used the quote in one of his presentations.
https://www.toxicology.org/groups/rc/nesot/docs/09Miller.pdf
I put up these links in the previous thread.
A pdf copy of the article is still accessible through Wayback.  There should be no verification needed for the existence of the original journal article.  The Journal used to be available in hard copy, and those should exist somewhere.  The wayback comes from their copy of the Berkeley Science Review web site.  Wayback doesn't copy everything, but it did copy that pdf.  It is a Berkeley Science Review link that was copied and archived.
It looks like the Berkeley Science Review lost electronic copies of many of their back issues, but they likely have hard copy magazines unless they also lost those (I recall that they claimed to be physically moving when the web links went broken).
Ron Okimoto