If I criticize someone’s ideas on this site, and they want to reply here, I usually give them space above the fold. And that’s what I’ll do for Henry Gee, senior biology editor for the magazine Nature. Gee, using the pseudonym “cromercrox,” has made two comments below my critique of his Guardian piece on the faults of scientists. I’ll put those comments here:
Given that his responses are nearly identical to what he emitted on Twitter (see below), I”m certain that these responses (in my comments) are from Gee himself. In fact, reader Veronica Abbass (in a comment on my earlier post) has verified this, as “Cromercrox” is the name Gee gives himself on his website, The End of the Pier Show.
Besides making no effort to conceal his identity, I’m also sure this is Gee because these comments are nearly identical what he’s been emitting on his Twitter feed, where in the last 20 hours or so he’s posted elebenty gazillion rants and “defenses” of his remarks. To wit:
[Grok? Didn’t that go out in the sixties?]
My response to his comments? I don’t believe for a minute that Gee was being ironic or humorous. This is simply a post facto attempt to cover up his ham-handedness. There was no irony or humor evident in his piece, or else they were SO subtle that they were lost on not only my readers, but those of the Guardian as well, where Gee’s been taking a severe drubbing for two days. The old defense “I was just being ironic” is often used when someone is caught flat-footed purveying nonsense.
As for my “longer rant” which supposedly proves Gee’s point—that scientists are intolerant of criticism—he’s completely off the mark. What we’re intolerant of, Dr. Gee, is not valid scientific criticism, which is the meat of our field, but stupid arguments that compare science to a religion, blame science for creationism and other forms of pseudoscience. or argue that science itself is responsible for excesses of technology often motivated by mendacity, capitalism, or greed.
Gee is being a real crybaby here, and doesn’t seem to understand the difference between valid criticism of his views and a Muslim “fatwa”. Who among us has offered a price on our opponents’ heads? And are we supposed to refrain from responding to your views, Dr. Gee?
Finally, as for Gee’s religiosity, I went by only the only thing I could find on the internet about his beliefs: his 2006 Nature piece in which he said the following:
I am one of those people for whom Dawkins would no doubt reserve his most trenchant criticism. Dawkins thinks that science itself provides sufficient awe and wonder to replace an instinct for the supernatural. I don’t. Religion, for all its ills and inequities, is one of the few things that makes us human: I am with the scientists of an earlier age, who found that their motivation in advancing the cause of knowledge was to magnify the name of the Creator.
Gee, in other words, saw himself as a latter-day William Paley.
And I did check out that piece (the link is above!). If Gee has abandoned his faith since 2006, I didn’t find that when I Googled “Henry Gee atheist.” So if I missed something, I apologize. But if I didn’t miss anything, I’m excused, for I don’t—thank God!—have a direct pipeline to Dr. Gee’s mind. Still, his accommodationism, extreme even for an atheist, helps me understand why Nature has spent so much space lately osculating the rump of religion.
Note, too, that Gee has not responded to Pinker’s criticism that he misrepresented the use of statistics in testing scientific hypotheses.
Finally, a word of advice to Gee: it’s not always wise to respond to internet criticism. More often than not, by so doing you’ll wind up looking worse than ever, just as you’ve done here. And don’t pretend that you’re being humorous and ironic when you’re not. Was Gee “humorous and ironic” when he wrote this intemperate comment on Nature network forums four years ago?:
The subtle irony—it burns! And what is that about “acne-ridden little numpties” with “no girlfriend, no penis, and no life”? That is SO funny that I spit out my coffee.
But what distresses me in Gee’s comment above is the equation of Dawkins’s followers with the Hitler Youth; Gee apparently lacks the notion that comparisons can ever be over the top. And having just been to Auschwitz, an experience that will change you forever if you’re a sentient human, I am even more upset that Gee (who is apparently of Jewish descent) has played the Nazi card before, as here on Pharyngula:
I am not asking to be liked, I am not asking that people join in … I am asking to be accorded the choice that is the privilege of all civilized societies to be allowed to practice their beliefs without molestation or being vilified for what they do, irrespective of how rational they think it.
But of course, some of you probably think I am an untermensch, as did the people who killed my grandparents and my two aunts — one a toddler, I have recently discovered, the other a babe in arms, and then recycled them as soap and lampshades, and presumably deserving of no better fate.
To equate criticism of Henry Gee with the extermination of his relatives by the Nazis is an invidious and self-pitying ploy. If this were not a civilized website, I would tell Dr. Gee where to get off, and in no uncertain terms.
This is no way to have a rational, much less intellectual, discussion, but I’ve come to expect this from Aslan. Like Chopra (who, by the way, has not blocked me), Aslan is afflicted with Chronic Maru’s Syndrome (inability to not enter any box he sees), and responds to disagreement with childish and ad hominem insults. This is not exactly what I’d call a response to what Sam said. Further, who is obsessed with whom? Aslan takes every opportunity he can to go after Sam and also Richard Dawkins, for he knows that he can dine out on attacking the New Atheists. And the stuff about not giving Harris a second thought is simply a lie: Aslan talks about him constantly.