Re: Phillip Johnson wiki

On 8/30/2024 2:50 AM, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:

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.
 

Get the reviewer to understand that the quote has been used publicly, and that Phillip Johnson never retracted his statements, nor supported teaching ID in the public schools after publication of the article. Even though the ID perps at the Discovery Institute continued to claim that ID could be taught in the public schools, Phillip Johnson never came out in support of that effort after Dover.  There is absolutely no doubt that Johnson was the lead cheerleader for getting intelligent design taught in the public schools before Dover, but he sat in the courtroom every day of testimony and changed his mind.
After Dover the ID perps put out their Educator's Briefing Packet telling the educators that the Dover decision was wrong, and that ID could still be taught in the public schools, but Phillip Johnson never supported that effort.  The ID perps last updated the teach ID scam propaganda in 2021, but subsequently reformated the web site and seem to have reverted to their 2018 edition of the propaganda.  They have had it up on their web site since 2007.
https://www.discovery.org/f/1453/
Ron Okimoto