What's Behe Been Doing Lately?

[eel_shepherd]

It's been some time now since the "intelligent design" trial in Dover, PA. In that trial, the defence team pinned a lot of hope on Michael Behe's analysis of the bacterial flagellum as the centerpiece of the science part of their evidence. Misplaced hope, as it turned out, as it turned back into a pumpkin at midnight right before their eyes. Not their man's best hour, Dover wasn't.

 

But time moves on, and Behe lives on. Presumably still a scientist. What has life been, for Michael Behe, since Dover, does anyone have an update on his current thinking about bacterial flagella and/or other "irreducibly complex" organic phenomena? Is he teaching biology anywhere? Some accredited university somewhere in the world? How is Behe paying his bills these days?

[pandora]

I'm not sure... but I'm guessing he's living off the book royalties and doing the speakers circuit. Maybe trying to find his website would tell.

 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A3DGR...1176708-6988463

 

There you go. Looks like the speaker circuit to me. And he's "a Professor of Biological Sciences at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. I received my Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Pennsylvania in 1978. My current research involves delineation of design and natural selection in protein structures. In addition to teaching and research I work as a senior fellow with the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture."

[YDOAPS]

Didn't he come out with a new book somewhat recently?

[LordofGondor]

Didn't he come out with a new book somewhat recently?

The Edge of Evolution I think.

[YDOAPS]

Yep, that's the one!

[scitsofreaky]

Didn't he come out with a new book somewhat recently?

The Edge of Evolution I think.

At Panda's Thumb, they have chronicled an interesting event where a grad student (female, no less) shreds an argument from the book, and Behe actually admits he was wrong, just not to her. It's really quite fun to read because she gives him hell, and he ends up looking like the douche he is.

 

I'm pretty sure Behe is still teaching at the same school he was before the trial, but I could be wrong.

[Ouroboros]

Behe is irreparable confused.

 

http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/12/a-...-graphic-1.html

 

ID is considered a career killer for scientists. You get 15 minutes of fame, and then your gone.

[Rhia]

Ooh! Ooh! I know!

 

My boyfriend is going to be starting his Master's in Biochemistry soon at Lehigh Univeristy, in Lehigh, PA - and he has to take a class on "The Fundamentals of Biochemistry" with Behe as a core. Luckily, he's doing satellite courses at his job, so he'll never have to deal with Behe face-to-face, but it will STILL suck!

 

Here's Behe's bio on the site. Feel free to read and/or laugh at the disclaimer the University makes him put on his website.

[scitsofreaky]

Behe is irreparable confused.

 

http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/12/a-...-graphic-1.html

 

ID is considered a career killer for scientists. You get 15 minutes of fame, and then your gone.

That's because the evilutionists are conspiring against him. They wont let him publish any of his research

[Ouroboros]

Here's Behe's bio on the site. Feel free to read and/or laugh at the disclaimer the University makes him put on his website.

It's fascinating that smart people can be so dumb. I heard some behavioral scientist talk about it, it's called something like a cognitive blindspot, I think. People who can have very high intelligence, just totally fail to look at other areas using their intelligence. It's like when driving on the road in your car. You have eyes. You can see. The weather is clear. You have mirrors. And yet... there is a spot where cars can drive up next to you and you can miss it, unless you are aware of that danger and look over your shoulder before you change lanes. Intelligent people fail to do this, because they think they're so smart and they stop being skeptic about their own ideas. They fall in love with what they came up with, and can't let it go. I think that's Behe's problem. He thought he got something 10 years ago. And he just can't see when he's defeated.

 

Anyway, Behe's stuff:

I have dubbed such systems "irreducibly complex." (Behe 1996b, 2001) Irreducibly complex systems appear to me to be very difficult to explain within a traditional gradualistic Darwinian framework, because the function of the system only appears when the system is essentially complete. (An illustration of the concept of irreducible complexity is the mousetrap pictured on this page, which needs all its parts to work.) Despite much general progress by science in the past half century in understanding how complex biochemical systems work, little progress has been made in explaining how such systems arise in a Darwinian fashion.

Is he completely ignorant of what he learned from the Dover trial? He was totally pwnd! The mousetrap was debunked to such a level that even the Christian judge understood it, and the whole IR. And the whole "little progress has been made in explaining..", they dumped a stack of books, heavier than he could lift, just explaining one single IR argument.