Egotistic Ed Brayton is trying to show off again

Ed "It's my way or the highway" Brayton is again trying to show off by pretending that he is an omniscient know-it-all expert on all subjects. He often just pulls "facts" out of thin air. The latest instance is the Smithsonian Institution's Sternberg affair. In two blog articles, here and here, Ed is trying to give the false impression that he knows more than the people directly involved in the investigation. The amount of unsubstantiated detail about the Sternberg affair in Ed's articles is astonishing.

Of course, Ed's adulating commenters praise his great knowledge and research. I don't bother trying to post on Ed's "Dispatches from the Culture Wars" blog anymore even when I can get around his blocks, because I know that he has almost no patience with those who disagree with him. The usual absence of criticism of his posts gives the illusion that he is almost always right.

I vividly remember another instance where Ed just pulled "facts" out of thin air -- in the controversy over whether the new Dover school board should have tried to moot the Kitzmiller v. Dover case by repealing the ID policy prior to release of the decision. Ed pontificated,

All three of these people are diligently trying to hide the fact that the school board's counsel, the plaintiffs' attorneys, the Thomas More Law Center, every legal scholar cited in the press on the subject and the judge himself all said that changing the policy would not void the ruling and would not save the school district any money.

No, Ed, you are the one who was diligently trying to hide the fact that apparently the only unbiased professional legal advice that the board received was to repeal the ID policy immediately to try to moot the case. You also lied about the advice that the board received -- or didn't receive -- from biased sources. At the November meeting of the outgoing school board and again at the December meeting of the incoming school board, a departing board member, David Napierski, presented an attorney's recommendation -- supported by a written report -- that the board repeal the ID policy immediately. Also, a newspaper article reported the following: (1) the plaintiffs' attorneys declined to comment (for obvious reasons); (2) Judge Jones said that the election results would have no effect on his decision (he should not have been giving legal advice no matter how good it might have been -- that remark seriously undermined whatever bargaining position the school board might have had in seeking an out-of-settlement); and (3) Richard Thompson, a Thomas More Law Center attorney who represented the board in the Kitzmiller trial, was opposed to repeal of the ID policy (because he wanted the case to be appealed). All three of the preceding sources of advice were biased. The minutes of the December board meeting announced that the board's former solicitor (presumably who Ed calls "the school board's counsel") was being re-hired but made no mention of any advice that he gave the board about Napierski's proposal. Since this was the first meeting of the new board, the new board had not yet even had a chance to vote on whether to formally request the solicitor's advice. And Ed never gave a single example of an outside "legal scholar cited in the press." So apparently the only unbiased professional legal advice that the board got was to repeal the ID policy immediately in the hope that the courts would declare the case to be moot.

Of course, if I were ever caught telling such lies, I would never hear the end of it.

Ed's blog is a good source of information from other sources, but any unsubstantiated information that Ed himself posts should be taken with a huge grain of salt.

BTW, I think that all the outrage that the Darwinists are expressing about the publication of Stephen Meyer's pro-ID paper in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington is "protesting too much" -- their vehement protests over the paper's publication suggest that they really think that the paper isn't bad.