Law journal "note" slams Selman v. Cobb County decision

Again we have an example of a student's law journal article being called a mere "note" because of snobbery and jealousy in the law profession.

History of the Selman v. Cobb County case: A disclaimer sticker which the Cobb County Board of Education inserted in biology texts said, “Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.” A federal district court judge found the stickers to be unconstitutional, the stickers were consequently removed, and the decision was appealed. The appeals court vacated and remanded the decision because important pieces of evidence -- a public petition and a letter to the board -- were missing. The board of education finally made an out-of-court settlement that included the following provisions: (1) payment of $166,659 for partial reimbursement of the plaintiffs' expenses and (2) a promise that the board would not try to reinstate the stickers in the future. The appeals court panel indicated that it was leaning towards reversing the decision and the lawsuit was no financial hardship for the school district because the school district was quite rich and was receiving or was offered a lot of free legal representation, so it is clear that the board of education took a dive. So far as the courts are concerned, the district court decision is now worthless because it was vacated and the case was then settled out of court.

In an article in Evolution News & Views, Casey Luskin quotes the following from a student "note" in Temple Journal of Science, Technology & Environmental Law:
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Although the sticker categorized evolution as theory, the court improperly found that this categorization would have the effect of endorsing religion and favoring certain religious viewpoints. Under the Establishment Clause, the government is prohibited from taking "sides" regarding questions of religion. … [T]he sticker made no mention of preferring one religion over another or preferring religion to non-religion. The sticker stated that evolution is a theory, which neither undermines its widely-accepted nature nor contradicts any scholarly definition of evolution . . .

. . . . By finding that presenting evolution as theory rather than fact violated the Lemon Test's effects prong, the court fundamentally created a new precedent making it unconstitutional per se for a school to even suggest that evolution is theoretical.

(Kaitlin DeCrescio, “An Education in Evolution: Silencing Scientific Inquiry in Selman v. Cobb County School District,” 25 Temp. J. Sci. Tech. & Envtl. L. 285, 301-303 (some internal citations may have been removed from the above quotation))

In ruling that the sticker passed the first prong -- called the "purpose prong" -- of the "Lemon" test, the district court opinion said,

. . . after considering the additional arguments and evidence presented by the parties and evaluating the evidence in light of the applicable law, the Court remains convinced that the Sticker at issue serves at last two secular purposes. First, the Sticker fosters critical thinking by encouraging students to learn about evolution and to make their own assessment regarding its merit. Second, by presenting evolution in a manner that is not unnecessarily hostile, the sticker reduces offense to students and parents whose beliefs may conflict with the teaching of evolution. For the foregoing reasons, the Court concludes that the Sticker satisfies the first prong of the Lemon analysis.

As the law journal note said, the judge ruled against the sticker in the analysis of the "effect prong" -- i.e., the second prong -- of the Lemon test, saying that an "informed, reasonable observer" would perceive the stickers as being an endorsement of religion because they have the support of Christian fundies and other creationists:

While the School Board may have considered the request of its constituent and adopted the Sticker for sincere, secular purposes, an informed, reasonable observer would understand the School Board to be endorsing the viewpoint of Christian fundamentalists and creationists that evolution is a problematic theory lacking an adequate foundation. Of course, the amicus brief filed by certain biologists and Georgia scientists indicates that there are some scientists who have questions regarding certain aspects of evolutionary theory, and the informed, reasonable observer would be aware of this also. On the whole, however, the Sticker would appear to advance the religious viewpoint of the Christian fundamentalists and creationists who were vocal during the textbook adoption process regarding then (sic) belief that evolution is a theory, not a fact, which student should critically consider.

The critical language in the Sticker that supports the conclusion that the sticker runs afoul of the Establishment Clause is the statement that "[e]volution is a theory, not a fact, concerning the origin of living things" This statement as (sic) not problematic because of its truth or falsity, although testimony from various witnesses at trial and the amicus brief submitted by the Colorado Citizens for Science, et al, suggest that the statement is not entirely accurate. Rather, the first problem with this language is that there has been a lengthy debate between advocates of evolution and proponents of religious theories of origin specifically concerning whether evolution should be taught as a fact or as a theory, and the School Board appears to have sided with the proponents of religious theories of origin in violation of the Establishment Clause. (citation omitted)

To repeat, the district court judge ruled against the sticker on the basis that some people perceived the sticker as an endorsement of religion mainly because the sticker had the support of Christian fundies and other creationists. IMO this finding of "guilt by association" is a grotesque misinterpretation of the establishment clause. Also, in the above quote, the judge appears to side with those who believe that evolution should be taught as a fact rather than a theory, so IMO the student note was correct in saying, "By finding that presenting evolution as theory rather than fact violated the Lemon Test's effects prong, the court fundamentally created a new precedent making it unconstitutional per se for a school to even suggest that evolution is theoretical" (the decision is now not officially a "precedent" in the legal sense because it was vacated and the case was then settled out of court).

It seems that more often than not, law journal articles and other expert opinions about those two recent cases on evolution education, Selman v. Cobb County and Kitzmiller v. Dover, have found a lot of fault with the decisions. Information and discussions about Selman and expert opinions about Kitzmiller may be found by clicking on the labels below.

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Criticism of Wickedpedia grows

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The clowns who run Wickedpedia. Picture is courtesy of the Wikitruth website. "NPOV" stands for "Neutral Point of View," the name of one of the Wickedpedia content policies and a policy that Wickedpedia frequently ignores.

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A website called Wikitruth says,

Wikitruth is a website dedicated to the subject of flaws and issues with the Wikipedia, another website run by Jimbo Wales and a massive, insane army of Wikipedians that he controls with his mind rays. It's very hard to really explain Wikipedia, but if you visit it, it says it wants to be "the free encylopedia that anyone can edit". Instead, however, it is often filled with crazy people, experiences some issues with manipulative personalities, and falls prey to abuse and censorship. And that's a real shame.

Jimmy "King Jimbo" Wales -- I like the sound of that name. It sounds like the name of a cult leader -- like Jim Jones of Jonestown. King Jimbo is a cult leader who has suckered thousands of people into donating their time to work on Wikipedia while he runs the show and reaps the rewards.

The Tech Law Prof Blog says,
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The stories in the press and on the web about the Wikipedia editor Essjay, real name Ryan Jordan, are unfortunate. That's the same term that Jimmy Wales used in describing the situation where Essjay misrepresented his credentials as a tenured professor of theology when in reality he was a college drop out. Now Jordan is gone and Wikipedia is now going to verify the credentials of the 650 or so general editors of the project.

What's interesting about this is not that this occurred at Wikipedia. It could have happened at Britannica, or any of the other web sites that promote online expertise. It's the response that the other editors have to verify their claimed credentials. Wikipedia started out as a populist project to harness the knowledge of (the) people and to document it. Events happened such as politicians enhancing their bios and smearing those of opponents. Disgruntled individuals made outrageous claims about other individuals that rose to the level of defamation.

Darwinists have been misusing Wikipedia as a "grudge factory" for defaming critics of Darwinism.

Links to several media articles about the Essjay scandal are at the bottom of this webpage. One of the articles quotes a disgruntled Wikipedia editor as saying,

We've stopped being an encyclopedia. We've stopped using common sense. We've taken our eye of (sic) the big picture and focused on ourselves, our myopic power games, our petty process, and our internal need to keep every one in line. We count sources to determine notability -- because we need objective rules. Never mind the fact it is absurd . . . . I'm sick of the little people and their little rules. For now, I want no part of them. I thought there were signs of hope. And I was wrong.

Verifying the credentials of the 650 Wikipedia administrators is not going to do any good because highly credentialed people are as capable of being as biased and manipulative as anyone else. Without a fundamental change in the way Wikipedia operates, verifying the administrators' credentials is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. I strongly recommend my simple suggestion of resolving really serious disputes on Wikipedia by adding the disputed item along with (1) a statement that the item is disputed and (2) links to external websites that discuss or debate the dispute. Adding a disputed item to a printed encyclopedia would have the disadvantage that no instant links to outside discussions or debates could be provided; however, Wikipedia is an Internet encyclopedia, not a printed encyclopedia, and there is no reason to run it like a printed encyclopedia.

The frustration that I and some others experienced in trying to get "Of Pandas and People" -- the book that Judge Jones ruled could not even be mentioned in public school classes -- added to the Wikipedia list of banned books was only the tip of the iceberg. Those control freaks over at Wikipedia would not even accept my sensible proposed compromise of listing the book along with (1) a statement that the listing was disputed and (2) links to external websites that discussed and debated the dispute. Because many people feel that the book should be listed as a banned book, merely saying that my proposed compromise was pointless because the book was not really a banned book does not resolve the dispute. The arbitrariness of those jerks who run Wikipedia is like something out of Alice in Wonderland.

The Wickedpedia organization is now locked into an ever-widening spiral of intellectual and moral degeneracy -- its wickedness tends to attract wicked people and repel decent people, making it even more wicked, which in turn increases the attractiveness to wicked people and the repulsiveness to decent people, and so forth.
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Proposed reforms of Wikipedia rules

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"I don't make the rules." Famous restaurant scene in "Five Easy Pieces"

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There is no question that Wikipedia is in serious trouble. There is now a big debate going on over the reliability of Wikipedia as a reference. For example, the history department at Middlebury College has decided to prohibit students from citing Wikipedia as an authoritative reference -- see this and this. There is also a big debate going on over legal citation of Wikipedia by court opinions and other court documents -- see this, this, and this.

Many people falsely believe that Wikipedia's reliability problems are solely the result of its open editing policy which allows editing by unknowledgeable and biased people. Wikipedia also has a severe problem of censorship by favored editors who have hijacked Wikipedia for their own partisan purposes. The censorship of the attempt to add "Of Pandas and People" -- the book that Judge Jones ruled could not even be mentioned in public school science classes -- to Wikipedia's list of banned books is an excellent example of this censorship problem. Of course, sometimes censorship of attempted Wikipedia additions is appropriate, as in cases involving invasions of privacy, threats, defamation, violations of copyrights, violations of confidentiality, etc.. Censorship on Wikipedia is a particularly serious problem because Wikipedia is a single source whereas blogs are multiple sources so that what is censored on one blog could appear on another -- there are of course other online encyclopedias besides Wikipedia, but Wikipedia is by far the biggest and most consulted.

Wikipedia is supposed to be a very democratic website that is open to editing by all, but it is obvious that some Wikipedia editors are more equal than others -- they have the power to tyrannize Wikipedia by locking up Wikipedia articles to prevent any editing, censor edits that they don't like and insist on keeping edits that they do like, and temporarily or permanently block the IP addresses of rank-and-file editors (I have commented extensively on the evils -- and frequent ineffectiveness -- of IP address blocking). I don't even know what to call these people -- administrators, chief editors, monitors, arbiters, or whatever (the latest term is "constables"). I have no idea how they were chosen for their positions. A recent Christian Science Monitor article reported the following scandal:

Just this month a dark cloud fell over Wikipedia's credibility after it was revealed that a trusted contributor who claimed to be a tenured professor of religion was actually a 24-year-old college dropout. He was also one of the appointed "arbiters" who settled disputes between contributors.

Wikipedia has three content policies: NPOV (neutral point of view), Verifiability, and No original research. Wikipedia says, "Because the policies are complementary, they should not be interpreted in isolation from one another, and editors should try to familiarize themselves with all three." The problem is that the Wikipedia administrators have been overemphasizing the "Verifiability" and "No original research" policies at the expense of the NPOV policy, sometimes to the point of absurdity.

Here are my proposed additions and changes to the Wikipedia rules:

(1) Where possible, disputes should be resolved by adding the disputed item along with a note that the item is disputed and external links to websites where the dispute is discussed or debated. This new rule would have the following advantages: (a) the note that the item is disputed would show that the item is not endorsed by Wikipedia; and (b) the external links would eliminate any need to clutter up Wikipedia with long discussions and debates over disputed items (for this reason, the disputed item on Wikipedia should be as brief as possible). Also, the existence of discussions and/or debates on external websites would be evidence that there is a serious dispute over the item. That's the "NPOV" way of doing it. IMO the "Verifiability" and "No original research" requirements should be waived for Wikipedia items satisfying this new rule, because there would be no suggestion that these items are endorsed by Wikipedia. This new rule would -- or should -- help prevent the "edit wars" that frequently go on at Wikipedia. Wouldn't it be wonderful if what can easily be done on the Internet -- adding notes that something is disputed along with instant links to discussions or debates about the dispute -- could be done with all printed matter? Welcome to the 21st century!

(2) A requirement that rule #1 above be followed whenever there is a significant dispute over an item that a Wikipedia administrator (or "arbiter," "monitor," or whatever) insists on keeping.

(3) The "reliable published source" requirement should be scrapped. There is often no agreement as to what is such a source. Also, it would be difficult to find a "reliable published source" that verifies something that is obvious or self-evident, e.g., the sun rises in the east, bears shit in the woods, and "Of Pandas and People" is a banned book. Also, in many areas, finding a "reliable published source" is nearly impossible -- for example, the book "Monkey Girl," which is about the Kitzmiller v. Dover intelligent design case, is supposed to be neutral but is in fact heavily biased in favor of Darwinism.

Trying to deal with the obstinate Wikipedia staff is reminiscent of the iconic restaurant scene in the movie "Five Easy Pieces" where Bobby (Jack Nicholson) is trying to get a side-order of toast with his omelet but the waitress tells him that it is against the rules:

Waitress: I'm sorry, we don't have any side orders of toast. I'll give you a English muffin or a coffee roll.
Bobby: What do you mean "you don't make side orders of toast"? You make sandwiches, don't you?
Waitress: Would you like to talk to the manager?
Bobby: You've got bread. And a toaster of some kind?
Waitress: I don't make the rules.
Bobby: OK, I'll make it as easy for you as I can. I'd like an omelet, plain, and a chicken salad sandwich on wheat toast, no mayonnaise, no butter, no lettuce. And a cup of coffee.
Waitress: A number two, chicken sal san. Hold the butter, the lettuce, the mayonnaise, and a cup of coffee. Anything else?
Bobby: Yeah, now all you have to do is hold the chicken, bring me the toast, give me a check for the chicken salad sandwich, and you haven't broken any rules.

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Why so few court citations of blogs?

Originally I was somewhat surprised that court opinions have begun to cite blogs -- now I am surprised that there have been so few court citations of blogs. In fact, they are almost scarcer than hens' teeth. A recent survey (Aug.-06-06) listed only 27 court opinions that cited blogs, and all but 8 of these court opinions cited just one blog, Sentencing Law and Policy. In contrast to just a handful of citations of blogs, the courts have cited thousands of law journal articles over the past several decades -- see this post and this post. Of course, blogs are relatively new, but they have been around for a few years. Also, there have been a few hundred citations of blogs in law journal articles.

Here are some things that are related to court opinions' citations of blogs:
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Courts' acceptance and adoption of Internet technology: I don't see this as a potential problem area that might be inhibiting court citations of blogs. Many courts -- particularly big, important courts -- are taking full advantage of Internet technology, e.g., many courts instantly post opinions on-line and even allow litigants to file and serve court documents electronically. Also, the frequent citation of law journal articles set a precedent for citations of sources other than court opinions, thus setting a precedent for the citation of blogs.

The great increase in numbers of court case precedents has reduced the need to cite other sources: Points of law in court opinions today are often followed by long strings of court case precedents. I assert that the great increase in the numbers of court case precedents over the years has greatly reduced the need to cite other sources, including blogs and law journal articles, and I think that this helps to explain the great decline in the frequency of court citations of law journal articles. Other reasons have been given for the decline in the frequency of citation of law journal articles, but I dispute these reasons: (1) law journals have become more interdisciplinary; (2) law journals articles have become more theoretical as opposed to dealing with actual cases; and (3) the Internet has made it easier for judges and court staffs to do their own research rather than depend on law journal article authors to do research for them.

Opportunities for citations of blogs by court opinions: I am not aware of any rule prohibiting litigants from citing blogs in court documents, so I presume that it is common for litigants to include blog citations in their court documents, and so it seems that judges who adopt the reasoning of litigants would tend to cite blogs that were used to support that reasoning. Also, judges and their staffs can do their own Internet searches to find blog material. Judges can also find blog material in law journal articles, which have cited hundreds of blogs.

Court customs and traditions: Of course, court citation of blogs is not a long-established court custom or tradition, but I am not aware of any court rule against court citation of blogs or any organized national effort to discourage court citation of blogs. Decisions on whether or not to cite blogs are basically decisions of individual judges, and I can see no basis for a general collective decision of judges to avoid citing blogs. I do not see this lack of a custom or tradition of citing blogs as a possible explanation for the great scarcity of court citations of blogs, except in regard to the snobbery of judges (I discuss this snobbery factor separately below). Even if, say, 90 percent of judges had a policy against citing blogs, that would not even come close to explaining the great scarcity of court opinions' citations of blogs.

Possible bias or one-sidedness of blogs: The problem of one-sidedness exists to an even greater extent with law journal articles -- which have been cited by the thousands in court opinions over many decades -- because blogs allow (theoretically at least) instant unlimited debate and presentation of differing viewpoints. The more popular blogs -- e.g., the Volokh Conspiracy and Balkinization law blogs -- receive large numbers of visitors and comments and so get a wide range of views on different subjects. This problem of possible one-sidedness can be minimized by a policy of not citing blogs whose bloggers arbitrarily censor comments. IMO a blog that is cited by a court opinion becomes like an official governmental public hearing that must accept all comments -- and when a court cites a blog it is too late to uncensor comments that were censored. Also, severe cyberbullying (e.g., credible threats of physical harm as opposed to just letting off a little steam), which discourages people from blogging and commenting on blogs, needs to be discouraged. Also, if bloggers demand civility from one side, they should also demand it from the other. Anyway, knowing typical judges, I don't think that this censorship issue would be a factor in most judges' decisions on whether or not to cite blogs.

Credentials of bloggers and blog commenters: Because law is a subject which many laypeople are able to discuss intelligently, credentialism is rampant in the law profession and many legal professionals have a jealous disdain of any legal opinion expressed by a layperson (attorneys have told me that judges are prejudiced against pro se litigants). For example, law journal articles -- regardless of their length -- that are written by law students are just called "notes" rather than "articles." Also, it is relatively easy to be self-taught in the law, particularly in a narrow specialty (e.g., I probably became the world's foremost authority on federal issues concerning California's grossly unconstitutional smog impact fee). Even some prison inmates with little formal education have become skilled "jailhouse lawyers." In contrast, I know as an engineer that many engineering subjects cannot be discussed intelligently by people who do not have long formal training in the engineering specialty being discussed (as a mechanical engineer, I am often unable to discuss electrical engineering subjects or even some specialties in mechanical engineering). However, many if not most bloggers on law blogs are law professionals: law professors, attorneys, and maybe even judges. Also, many of the bloggers on other scholarly blogs are professionals in their fields. It is noteworthy that of the few court citations of blogs, many of the citations are of the visitors' comments rather than the original blog articles, even though the visitors are much more likely than the bloggers to be laypeople. In the law, the legal background of a person stating an opinion is usually irrelevant because the opinion can be evaluated on its own merits -- as the saying goes, "you can't judge a book by its cover."

Instability of blogs: Blog articles, their comment threads, and associated URL links are of course subject to deliberate erasure, accidental loss, and alteration, and this instability might be a deterrent to court citations of blogs. However, this instability problem is easily surmountable -- electronic and/or paper copies of this blog material can be added to the court records. The same problem exists with citations of obscure paper documents, which could be hard or impossible to find.

Snobbery and the low prestige of blogs: Snobbery might help explain the low frequency of court citations of blogs. For example, the main law journals (as distinguished from specialized journals) of Ivy League law schools -- particularly the Harvard law school -- have been cited with far higher frequency than other law journals. However, it seems that judges should try to cite the best sources, regardless of the sources' levels of prestige. As the saying goes, a book cannot be judged by its cover, and accordingly a law journal article should not be judged by the title of the law journal. The old adage "it's not what you know, it's who you know" applies with a vengeance in the field of law. Ironically, the reputation of journals should be less important -- not more important -- in law than in, say, science and engineering, because errors, flaws, and weaknesses are generally much easier to spot in law journal articles than in scientific or engineering journal articles. In scientific and engineering journal articles, experimental and analytical results would often take too long to reproduce and so the reader is often dependent on the knowledge, carefulness, and honesty of the authors. I have heard of scientific journal articles being exposed as frauds because of fabrication of data, but I have never heard of a law journal article being exposed as a fraud because of fabrication of references. However, a policy against citing blogs would have to be nearly universal among judges in order to explain the great rarity of court opinions' citations of blogs.

Citations of unpublished court opinions vs. citations of blogs: There is a very controversial new national federal court rule authorizing the citation of unpublished court opinions in any federal court, though the individual federal courts have the discretion of not using these unpublished opinions as binding precedent. Some of the criticisms of this new rule are: the case histories given by the unpublished opinions are sketchy or even non-existent; the judges' reasonings are too sketchy; some court cases are not suitable to be precedents; often the opinions' authors themselves do not want the opinions to be cited; many unpublished opinions are written only to satisfy the litigants that there was some reasoning behind the decision; as a result of this rule, sometimes judges will spend more time writing unpublished opinions, increasing court backlogs and taking judges' time away from writing published opinions; judges will stop issuing unpublished opinions in many cases in order to avoid being cited; many unpublished opinions are written by court clerks; there is too big an expansion of citable precedents; it increases the likelihood of conflicts between precedents; and pro se litigants, who often do not have access to the best online legal search engines and who are likely to be unfamiliar with unpublished opinions in particular areas, are at an even greater disadvantage. Etcetera, Etcetera, etcetera. The pros and cons of the new rule are also discussed here and here. There has been a tendency of the courts to expand the kinds of sources that may be cited, e.g., I am confident that the 9th Circuit federal court of appeals once had a rule that no district court opinion -- published or not -- could be cited in any court of the 9th Circuit. Could the practice of citing blogs be any worse than the practice of citing unpublished opinions? After all, many blog articles and their comment threads are often much more thorough than unpublished opinions, since the blog articles are often carefully written and can have dozens or even hundreds of comments, many of them written by very knowledgeable people. Also, blogs, unlike unpublished opinions, are not court precedents. Though this new national court rule allows federal courts to continue treating unpublished opinions as non-binding precedents, a federal court that chooses to disregard an unpublished opinion risks being accused of inconsistency.

Citations of Wikipedia vs. citations of blogs: The courts are now citing Wikipedia as well as citing blogs. It is often assumed that errors in Wikipedia are caused solely by its open editing policy which results in editing by unknowledgeable and biased people, but Wikipedia has a severe censorship problem as well. This censorship problem is even worse in Wikipedia than in blogs because Wikipedia is a single source whereas blogs are multiple sources, i.e., something that is censored on what blog could appear on another blog. A good example of censorship on Wikipedia occurred in the recent effort to add the book "Of People and Pandas" -- the book that Judge Jones ruled could not even be mentioned in public school classrooms -- to the Wikipedia list of "banned books." Favored editors who have hijacked Wikipedia kept insisting that they would not list the book unless a "reliable non-partisan source" could be found that verified that the book was actually banned. That is like trying to find a "reliable non-partisan source" that verifies that bears shit in the woods. The Wikipedia requirement of a "reliable non-partisan source" was obviously intended only for things that are not self-evident or that could not be independently verified. I proposed a compromise of listing the book along with a note that the listing was disputed and links to external websites where the dispute was discussed and debated, but to no avail. Trying to deal with those stubborn jackasses over at Wikipedia is reminiscent of that famous restaurant scene in the movie "Five Easy Pieces". Those lousy jerks over at Wikipedia decided to completely rewrite the whole "banned books" article rather than concede that the Pandas book was banned or even "challenged." The reputation of Wikipedia as a reliable source of information is rapidly going down the tubes -- for example, the history department at Middlebury College has ruled that students may not cite Wikipedia as an authoritative source.

Well, this article was more long-winded than I originally intended it to be, but I wanted to cover all the bases as best I could.

Overall, IMO there does not appear to be any really good reason(s) for the apparent reluctance of judges to cite blogs in their written opinions.

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Faint praise from Fatheaded Ed Brayton

On his blog Dispatches from the Culture Wars, Fatheaded Ed drivels,

Folks, I know this is going to be hard to believe but it's true: I've found someone who makes Larry Fafarman seem like Mortimer Adler by comparison. I mean howl at the moon, voices in his head, out of his freaking mind gone. His name is George Shollenberger.

In his last article about me in particular, Ed was forced to concede that his actions would be illegal in the UK and possibly elsewhere in Europe.

Also, Sleazy PZ Myers on his Pharyngula blog called this blog a "bottomless pit of stupidity".

I don't mind. The more good publicity I get for this blog, the better -- and ridicule from these two jerks is good publicity.

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Cyberbullying and arbitrary censorship of comments

When I posted the article on cyberbullying, I did not realize that cyberbullying and arbitrary censorship of comments are both symptoms of the same sick Internet culture that tolerates and even approves preventing and/or discouraging people from expressing their ideas on the Internet. I am talking about extreme cyberbullying, e.g., credible death threats as opposed to mere zealous advocacy or just letting off some steam. And by "arbitrary" censorship of comments, I mean censorship of comments solely because a blogger or other website manager disagrees with them. This general approval or tolerance of arbitrary censorship of comments even extends to the authoritative citation -- e.g., by court opinions and scholarly journals -- of blogs whose bloggers arbitrarily censor comments. The irony of all this is that the Internet had the potential to be a gargantuan leap in our ability to disseminate and debate information and ideas.

Cyberbullying can take subtle forms, e.g., when bloggers look the other way when their self-appointed goons taunt dissident commenters and then pounce on dissident commenters who dare to retaliate.

The New York Times article on cyberbullying quoted the following astute observation:

"Any community that does not make it clear what they are doing, why they are doing it, and who is welcome to join the conversation is at risk of finding it difficult to help guide the conversation later,” said Lisa Stone . . ."

Once you have played the part of a fox, cooperated with foxes, or even just ignored foxes, it is difficult to get a job guarding a henhouse.

Repent, you sinning bloggers and blog commenters -- before it's too late.

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Thomson-Scientific admits wrongdoing

Well, almost but not quite. I received the following very suspicious-looking email from the general counsel of Thomson-Scientific (background info on this matter is here, here, here, and here). Don't anyone try charging that this email is a forgery -- there is no way I could forge this email because the header is provided by my ISP:
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Dear Mr Fafarman
I am the General Counsel for Thomson Scientific.
I understand from Allison Hagan, our Director of PR and Communications, that you have raised a complaint relating to our inclusion of the 'Panda's Thumb' website in the index of the Web of Knowledge. We have carefully reviewed your complaint but, for the reasons explained to you by Kathleen O'Donnell, we will not be removing the website from that index.
We regard this as the end of this matter. We have instructed Allison and the members of our customer support team neither to take your calls nor respond to your emails.
If you continue to harrass Allison, the Customer Support team or any other employees of Thomson Scientific, we will have recourse to all legal remedies available to us.
Yours sincerely
Jane Reeves
General Counsel Thomson Scientific

As for your statement, "We regard this as the end of this matter," my answer is that "it ain't over until the fat lady sings," you blustering shyster.

The threat to sue me is of course an idle threat -- I can't be sued just for exercising my legal right of protesting the company's practices. The email's defensiveness and attempt at intimidation does raise some very big suspicions, though. I of course cannot compel any Thomson-Scientific employee to respond to my communications, but why would the company deny its employees the discretion to respond to my communications? That is very fishy -- it implies that the company is afraid that the employees might expose some wrongdoing.

Anyway, one thing I want is information about any government funding that the ISI Web of Knowledge may have received. This is something I have a right to know, and if Thomson-Scientific won't tell me, I hope to get this information by means of a Freedom of Information Act request. Our tax dollars should not support Thomson-Scientific's condoning of arbitrary censorship of our views, and particularly not the condoning of the abominable practice of IP address blocking, which is hardly even censorship because it often blocks comments from a large number of people who share the same ISP proxy IP address.

As for other points in the email:

. . . you have raised a complaint relating to our inclusion of the 'Panda's Thumb' website in the index of the Web of Knowledge.

That was only part of my complaint -- my complaint was much broader than that.

We have carefully reviewed your complaint but, for the reasons explained to you by Kathleen O'Donnell . . .

Kathleen O'Donnell did not explain any reasons at all -- she did not answer any of the points that I raised. Also, O'Donnell edits the index only in the areas of agriculture, biology, and environmental science, and there was no evidence that she was also speaking for the editors in other areas of science.

. . . we will not be removing the website from that index.

I did not expressly request that Panda's Thumb be removed from the ISI Web of Knowledge index.

If you continue to harrass Allison, the Customer Support team or any other employees of Thomson Scientific, we will have recourse to all legal remedies available to us.

One must start doing something before one can continue doing it. I did not "harass" those people -- I did not telephone them with any great frequency, and in many cases they did not respond to my telephone messages.

Also, I asked that this matter be brought to the attention of Thomson law affiliates Thomson-West et al., who sponsor the Law Professors Blogs network, but there is no evidence that this was done.

In a way I am glad that Thomson-Scientific brought this matter to a head quickly rather than string me along for a long time.

Anyway, folks, please keep those protest emails coming -- they are obviously having an effect.
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Dr. Egnor, reverse engineering, and Wikipedia reform

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(additions as noted were made to this post on 04-23-07)

In an article in Evolution News & Views, Dr. Michael Egnor wrote,

On April 4th, the Wikipedia reference to biological reverse engineering was airbrushed out. It was changed to:

Reverse engineering … is the process of discovering the technological principles of a device or object or system through analysis of its structure, function and operation. It often involves taking something (e.g. a mechanical device, an electronic component, a software program) apart and analyzing its workings in detail, usually to try to make a new device or program that does the same thing without copying anything from the original. The verb form is to reverse engineer.

This was airbrushed:

Reverse engineering is essentially science, using the scientific method. Sciences such as biology and physics can be seen as reverse engineering of biological 'machines' and the physical world respectively.

The biological reverse engineering analogy was part of the original definition, and had been present until the day that I linked to it in my post. Someone (perhaps a Darwinist?) went to work with an eraser.

The history of the redactions shows that "DrLeeBot" deleted the phrase applying reverse engineering to the scientific method. He wrote, "Removed reference to scientific method; the analog [sic] is too abstract to be worth mentioning."

I feel that the airbrushed statement above is only partly right. Reverse engineering can of course use engineering methods as well as scientific methods, so it is wrong to say, "Reverse engineering is essentially science, using the scientific method." And in a broader sense, reverse engineering sometimes uses neither scientific methods nor engineering methods but just produces a copy of the original. Also, I feel that the purpose of reverse engineering is to recreate or reproduce some object or function, and this is not the purpose of a lot of biology and physics, so I think it is wrong to make the broad statement, "sciences such as biology and physics can be seen as reverse engineering of biological 'machines' and the physical world respectively." However, Egnor apparently did not compose the airbrushed Wikipedia statement, and a clarification of his views are here, where he cited this airbrushed statement in an article that he posted on April 3. For example, he said that "much" -- not all -- of modern biological research is reverse engineering: "Much of modern biological research, and most research in molecular biology, is reverse engineering." As Egnor said, the airbrushed Wikipedia statement was airbrushed on April 4, only one day after he cited it! Those usurpers who tyrannize Wikipedia did not waste much time!

Though the term "reverse engineering" usually refers to reverse engineering of man-made things, the process is essentially the same for "reverse engineering" of things in nature. If two processes are essentially the same, why not use the same term for both of them? If "reverse engineering" of things in nature is not going to be called "reverse engineering," then what should it be called? Words are not always used literally or in their original senses -- for example, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory once had a "Station for Experimental Evolution" (it merged with the Eugenics Record Office to form the Carnegie Institution's Dept. of Genetics ). The term "experimental evolution" appears to be oxymoronic -- maybe a more appropriate term would be "experimental breeding." Well, maybe "experimental evolution" could mean a simulation of evolution in a hypothetical situation. Anyway, here the term "evolution" is used in a broad, figurative, high-falutin, or even jocular sense, just like using the term "engineering" in "reverse engineering" of things in nature.

One of the best examples of reverse engineering is the airplane. IMO without the example of the birds, we might never have realized that sustained heavier-than-air human flight is possible. Insects and bats fly but do so only by rapid flapping of wings, a poor model for aircraft -- the root of the word "aviation" means "bird," not "insect." In fact, it is commonly believed that theoretically a bumblebee cannot fly. There are also "flying" (actually gliding) mammals and fish, but these are also natural examples of "flying." Birds directly inspired the "flying wing" designs of Jack Northrop, who thought that flying wings were closer copies of birds -- particularly soaring birds -- than were conventional aircraft; however, all modern airliners basically have the same layout as the DC-3 of the 1930's. Most examples today of flying wings are stealth aircraft (the flying wing design helps make the aircraft stealthy), but stealth is a disadvantage in commercial and private aircraft (just ask any air traffic controller). Of course, finagling Darwinists could argue that the airplane is not really an example of "reverse engineering" because birds know nothing about aeronautical engineering.

"Reverse engineering" is also extensively used in "bio-engineering" and "biomedical engineering." Cybernetics is also reverse engineering -- the Wikipedia article on cybernetics says, "cybernetics is the study of feedback and derived concepts such as communication and control in living organisms, machines and organisations."

And what about "genetic engineering"? This involves reverse engineering and it is even called engineering. The term reverse engineering should be applied to any analysis of an existing thing for the purpose of modifying it. (this paragraph added on 04-23-07)

Sometimes "reverse engineering" is not really engineering at all, but just production of a knock-off of the original design. For example, Wikipedia itself says,

As computer-aided design has become more popular, reverse engineering has become a viable method to create a 3D virtual model of an existing physical part for use in 3D CAD, CAM, CAE and other software. The reverse engineering process involves measuring an object and then reconstructing it as a 3D model.

If it is OK to apply the term "reverse engineering" to copying something without analyzing it at all, then why is it not OK to apply the term to an engineering or scientific analysis of something in nature as opposed to something that is man-made? (this sentence added 04-23-07)

Also, as quoted above, Wikipedia also says of reverse engineering,

It often involves taking something (e.g. a mechanical device, an electronic component, a software program) apart and analyzing its workings in detail, usually to try to make a new device or program that does the same thing without copying anything from the original. (emphasis added)

IMO, the above bolded statement is an overly restrictive generalization. As the quotation preceding the above quotation says, reverse engineering often involves nothing but copying. IMO, reverse engineering should be a broad term and any attempt to restrict the term's meaning is arbitrary.

Of course, knock-offs were produced long before we had computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM -- also called "computer-aided machining").

Many references on the web define reverse engineering as just involving computer hardware and software, but this definition is of course much too narrow. BTW, in reverse engineering of software, the terms "black box," "white box," and "gray box" are used:

White-box analysis

White-box analysis consists of analyzing and understanding the program code, without running the program. Static analyzers are used by taking the program file(s) as input and outputting not only the potential program but also statistical data on some of the characteristics of code.

Black-box analysis

Black-box analysis consists of probing the external behavior of a program with inputs. Black-box analysis helps in identifying areas of white-box analysis exploration. Black-box analysis is usually done first.

Gray-box analysis

Gray-box analysis consists of using black-box analysis in conjunction with white-box analysis. For instance, nested code segments can be treated in a black-box fashion and then upon diving further into the code segment white-box analysis can be conducted.

IMO these terms "white box," "black box," and "gray box" could be applied to reverse engineering generally. "White box" reverse engineering could be considered to consist of examination of the original in detail and "black box" reverse engineering could mean just reproducing the function of the original. A good example of "black box" reverse engineering was the Soviet spacecraft "Buran", a reproduction of the USA's Space Shuttle. The Buran orbiter vehicle looks like a dead ringer for the Space Shuttle but the Soviets did not have access to the Space Shuttle itself or Space Shuttle drawings and specifications. Again, I think that the term "reverse engineering" should be used very broadly.

Anyway, the usurpers who tyrannize Wikipedia insist on allowing only entries that they approve and barring entries that they disapprove, often using Orwellian reasoning. For example, they refused to add the book "Of Pandas and People" to the Wikipedia list of banned books, essentially claiming that Judge Jones did not really ban the book but merely "removed" it from the curriculum.

Wikipedia could often handle disputes simply by adding the disputed entry along with a note that the entry is disputed and links to external websites where the dispute is discussed or debated. This method of handling disputes is nowhere suggested in the Wikipedia rules. I suggested this method for handling the dispute over the Pandas book, but to no avail. To the Wikipedia usurpers, "it's my way or the highway."

I could make another "edit war" on Wikipedia like the one I made over "Of People and Pandas," but these edit wars are futile because the Wikipedia usurpers are arbitrary and unyielding. The only solution for Wikipedia is to throw the bums out.

Wikipedia is squandering the good reputation it once had, e.g., Wikipedia was rated as comparable to the vaunted online Encyclopedia Britannica in accuracy on scientific subjects. However, recently the history department at Middlebury College ruled that students could not use Wikipedia as an authoritative reference.
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NY Times on standardized blog comment policies

A recent (04-09-07) front-page New York Times article reported (this is a two-page article -- do not miss the second page):

Last week, Tim O’Reilly, a conference promoter and book publisher who is credited with coining the term Web 2.0, began working with Jimmy Wales, creator of the communal online encyclopedia Wikipedia, to create a set of guidelines to shape online discussion and debate . . . .

Chief among the recommendations is that bloggers consider banning anonymous comments left by visitors to their pages and be able to delete threatening or libelous comments without facing cries of censorship.

"Able to delete threatening or libelous comments without facing cries of censorship"? Holy crap, I'd be happy if bloggers just stopped censoring comments merely because of disagreement with the comments' opinions or arguments!

The New York Times article continues,
.

A recent outbreak of antagonism among several prominent bloggers “gives us an opportunity to change the level of expectations that people have about what’s acceptable online,” said Mr. O’Reilly, who posted the preliminary recommendations last week on his company blog (radar.oreilly.com). Mr. Wales then put the proposed guidelines on his company’s site (blogging.wikia.com), and is now soliciting comments in the hope of creating consensus around what constitutes civil behavior online.

Mr. O’Reilly and Mr. Wales talk about creating several sets of guidelines for conduct and seals of approval represented by logos. For example, anonymous writing might be acceptable in one set; in another, it would be discouraged. Under a third set of guidelines, bloggers would pledge to get a second source for any gossip or breaking news they write about.

Bloggers could then pick a set of principles and post the corresponding badge on their page, to indicate to readers what kind of behavior and dialogue they will engage in and tolerate. The whole system would be voluntary, relying on the community to police itself.

Will there be a "seal of (dis)approval" logo for a policy of censoring comments merely because the blogger disagrees with them? That is now the policy of many of the blogs that I have encountered -- e.g., Panda's Thumb, Dispatches from the Culture Wars, Pharyngula, and Uncommon Descent. It is also a policy that is approved by Thomson-Scientific, whose policy is to list arbitrarily censoring blogs in the ISI Web of Knowledge scientific database. Ed Brayton of the popular Dispatches from the Culture Wars blog kicked me off his blog permanently because my literal interpretation of a federal court rule did not agree with his preconceived notions of the purpose of the rule -- he did not even give me a chance to answer his reply to my comment.

The NY Times article says,

Mr. Wales and Mr. O’Reilly were inspired to act after a firestorm erupted late last month in the insular community of dedicated technology bloggers. In an online shouting match that was widely reported, Kathy Sierra, a high-tech book author from Boulder County, Colo., and a friend of Mr. O’Reilly, reported getting death threats that stemmed in part from a dispute over whether it was acceptable to delete the impolitic comments left by visitors to someone’s personal Web site.

One of the causes of this "firestorm" is an Internet culture that approves of blog comment censorship for the most trivial of reasons, including a blogger's disagreement with the opinions or arguments presented in a comment. The accepted rule of netiquette should be that if you can't tolerate comments that disagree with you, then either you shouldn't blog or your blogs should not accept any comments at all. "If you can't stand the heat, then get out of the kitchen" (Harry Truman) And it should be understood that blogs whose bloggers insist on exercising their right to arbitrarily censor comments will not be referenced for any official authoritative purpose, particularly not by a government entity or by an entity that receives direct or indirect government support.

Blogs that are authoritatively referenced -- e.g., by court opinions and scholarly journals -- should be expected to meet exceptionally high standards of comment tolerance. Authoritative referencing of arbitrarily censoring blogs is not generally considered to be a form of "cyberbullying," but it sure as hell should be. It is a particularly virulent and vile form of cyberbullying because it has the wholehearted approval of the courts, government agencies, scholarly journals, etc..

Other articles about cyberbullying are at --

Business Week

Yahoo! News

Yahoo! News

For more articles on Internet censorship, just click on "Internet censorship (1 of 2)" and "Internet censorship (2 of 2)" in the post label list in the left sidebar (the list is not visible on the webpages of individual blog articles).

Arbitrary censorship and other forms of cyberbullying defeat the Internet's very purpose, whick is supposed to be a speedup in the exchange of information and ideas.

Larry Fafarman

Founder, Association of Non-Censoring Bloggers
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EU stops short of blanket ban on holocaust denial

A BBC news article reported,

European interior ministers have agreed to make incitement to racism an EU-wide crime, but have stopped short of a blanket ban on Holocaust denial.

The agreement makes it an offence to condone or grossly trivialise crimes of genocide -- but only if the effect is incitement to violence or hatred.

The deal follows six years of talks, and will disappoint Germany, which pushed hard for a Holocaust-denial law.

Berlin has also had to drop a proposal for an EU-wide ban on Nazi symbols.

The European Network Against Racism said most European countries already had laws against incitement to racism, and the "weak text" would leave many national legal codes unchanged.

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Form letter, new email addresses for protesting arbitrary blog comment censorship

To help increase responses, I am providing a form letter here. Of course, a protest in your own words is best, but this form letter is far better than nothing. Please send me a copy at LarryFarma@aol.com to help me gauge the support for this protest. For background info on this protest, see this post.

Do not underestimate the power of your email. I knew a dissident engineer who was getting nowhere in trying to get an invitation to testify before a Senate committee -- then 50 of his supporters sent in form letters and he was invited immediately.

I have also provided some new email addresses for this protest. Most of these new email addresses are for bloggers on the Volokh Conspiracy and Balkinization blogs. I selected these two blogs because (1) both have high numbers of citations by law journal articles -- 62 citations and 32 citations respectively according to a fairly recent study -- and (2) I have seen these two blogs frequently cited on the Internet. These long lists of email addresses are necessary -- it would be a tremendous help if just one of these bloggers were persuaded to post an article on this subject. I have also combined the new email address list and the old email address list to form a single list that is ready for insertion into your email. I can't make it any easier for you.

Suggested subject line: Protest of authoritative referencing of arbitrarily censoring blogs

Suggested text:

By arbitrary censorship, I mean that comments and/or commenters are censored for the sole reason that the bloggers disagree with the opinions and/or arguments of the comments or the commenters. Bloggers who arbitrarily censor comments have shown an intention to present just one side of controversial issues and the blogs of these bloggers should therefore not be quoted, cited, or listed for authoritative purposes -- e.g., by court opinions, scholarly journals, and scientific databases. Citation of blogs by law journal articles is already widespread and citation of blogs by court opinions has begun -- see

http://3lepiphany.typepad.com/3l_epiphany/2006/08/law_review_arti.html

-- and --

http://3lepiphany.typepad.com/3l_epiphany/2006/08/cases_citing_le.html

Arbitrary censorship on blogs can include IP address blocking, which is disreputable and irresponsible as well as often being ineffective. IP address blocking can block comments from large numbers of Internet users who share the same ISP proxy IP address.

IMO, a blog that is cited by a court opinion becomes like an official governmental public hearing that must accept all comments.

For more information, see --

http://im-from-missouri.blogspot.com/2007/04/protest-of-authoritative-referencing-of.html

Sincerely,

- - - - - - - - - -

===========================================
(end of proposed letter)

Additional email addresses:

Bloggers on the Volokh Conspiracy blog:

dalecarp@umn.edu,
dbernste@gmu.edu,
David.Post@temple.edu,
jaffe@esjpc.com,
volokh@law.ucla.edu,
isomin@gmu.edu,
jlindgren@law.northwestern.edu,
jha5@case.edu,
choset@gmail.com,
okerr@law.gwu.edu,
paul.ohm@colorado.edu,
rbarnett@gmail.com,
korobkin@law.ucla.edu,
volokh@post.harvard.edu,
benjamin@law.duke.edu,
tzywick2@gmu.edu,
tcowen@gmu.edu

Bloggers on the Balkinization blog:

jackbalkin@yahoo.com,
ian.ayres@yale.edu,
lee-epstein@northwestern.edu,
mgraber@law.umaryland.edu,
sgriffin@tulane.edu,
shorto@law.columbia.edu,
akoppelman@law.northwestern.edu,
marty.lederman@comcast.net,
slevinson@law.utexas.edu,
david.luban@gmail.com,
kimlane@princeton.edu,
dsolove@law.gwu.edu,
tamanahb@stjohns.edu,
mtushnet@law.harvard.edu


Webcontent.gov -- Guide to Managing U.S. Government Websites, General Services Admin.:

Sheila.campbell@gsa.gov,
webcontenttoolkit@gsa.gov,
webmanageruniversity@gsa.gov

Additional Thomson-Scientific:

jane.reeves@thomson.com,
ts.current.web.contents@thomson.com,
GeneralInfo@Thomson.com

==============================================

Combined email list -- this post's email addresses plus the email addresses from the previous list here.
(Reminder -- please send me a copy at LarryFarma@aol.com to help me gauge the support for this protest)

allison.hagan@thomson.com,
kathleen.odonnell@thomson.com,
marylou.warwick@thomson.com,
jane.reeves@thomson.com,
ts.cts.amer@thomson.com,
service@techstreet.com,
rs.info@thomson.com,
rs.sales@thomson.com,
foundation-press@thomson.com,
west_lawschool@thomson.com,
support@westacademic.com,
paul.caron@uc.edu,
berman.43@osu.edu,
nancy.soonpaa@ttu.edu,
faigmand@uchastings.edu,
David.Kaye@asu.edu,
Michael.Saks@asu.edu,
JSanders@central.UH.edu,
edward.cheng@brooklaw.edu,
mgiangra@depaul.edu,
ianbest@sbcglobal.net,
joe.hodnicki@gmail.com,
JONESRE@UCMAIL.UC.EDU,
jaywex@bu.edu,
quarter@wulaw.wustl.edu,
rosenhjd@jmu.edu,
nmsrdave@swcp.com,
abottaro@pandasthumb.org,
ed@pandasthumb.org,
brauer@pandasthumb.org,
reed@pandasthumb.org,
welsberr@pandasthumb.org,
rbh@pandasthumb.org,
garyhurd@pandasthumb.org,
minlay@pandasthumb.org,
jkrebs@pandasthumb.org,
jml@pandasthumb.org,
ianfmusgrave@pandasthumb.org,
pz@pandasthumb.org,
tara@pandasthumb.org,
wilkins@pandasthumb.org,
webmaster@seedmediagroup.com,
newblogger@seedmediagroup.com,
advertising@seedmediagroup.com,
dalecarp@umn.edu,
dbernste@gmu.edu,
David.Post@temple.edu,
jaffe@esjpc.com,
volokh@law.ucla.edu,
isomin@gmu.edu,
jlindgren@law.northwestern.edu,
jha5@case.edu,
choset@gmail.com,
okerr@law.gwu.edu,
paul.ohm@colorado.edu,
rbarnett@gmail.com,
korobkin@law.ucla.edu,
volokh@post.harvard.edu,
benjamin@law.duke.edu,
tzywick2@gmu.edu,
tcowen@gmu.edu,
jackbalkin@yahoo.com,
ian.ayres@yale.edu,
lee-epstein@northwestern.edu,
mgraber@law.umaryland.edu,
sgriffin@tulane.edu,
shorto@law.columbia.edu,
akoppelman@law.northwestern.edu,
marty.lederman@comcast.net,
slevinson@law.utexas.edu,
david.luban@gmail.com,
kimlane@princeton.edu,
dsolove@law.gwu.edu,
tamanahb@stjohns.edu,
mtushnet@law.harvard.edu,
Sheila.campbell@gsa.gov,
webcontenttoolkit@gsa.gov,
webmanageruniversity@gsa.gov,
ts.current.web.contents@thomson.com,
GeneralInfo@Thomson.com
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Thomson-Scientific is violating law in UK

An email that I received from Thomson-Scientific contained the following information:

The Thomson Corporation PLC is a company incorporated under the laws of England and Wales (registered number 2978875) having its registered office and address for service at First Floor, The Quadrangle, 180 Wardour Street, London W1A 4YG

That really surprised me because I always thought of Thomson affiliate Thomson-West as being a quintessentially American company -- it is one of the largest publishers, if not the largest publisher, of law books in the USA. Maybe Thomson-West once was an independent American company -- I think it was known as Westlaw (at least that was the name printed in law books). Talk about globalization!

Anyway, as I pointed out, a Thomson-Scientific scientific database, the ISI Web of Knowledge, lists the Panda's Thumb blog, which practices IP address blocking, which -- as I show here and here -- is illegal in the UK, where Thomson-Scientific is incorporated. So Thomson-Scientific is in cahoots with bloggers who are violating the law in the very country where Thomson-Scientific is incorporated!

American courts have not only started to cite blogs but have also started to cite foreign laws. So maybe American courts could convict Thomson-Scientific under UK laws (that would save me the trouble of suing Thomson-Scientific in a UK court). LOL
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Blog comment censorship discussed in UK

A recent editorial in the Guardian Unlimited discussed the issue of arbitrary censorship of comments on blogs. It is noteworthy that neither the editorial nor the following comment thread raised legal issues as I did -- the legal issues I raised particularly concern the possibility of court opinions citing blogs whose bloggers arbitrarily censor comments (incidentally, several court citations of blogs were of the visitors' comments rather than the bloggers' initial posts). IMO a blog that is cited by a court opinion becomes like an official governmental public hearing that must accept all comments.

The editorial uses the same kind of doublespeak as used by prevaricating Darwinists who claim that Judge Jones did not really "ban" the book "Of Pandas and People" -- he merely "removed" it from the curriculum. The editorial says,
.

I've become increasingly uncomfortable with the notion that the removal of an individual's comments on a blog amounts to censorship, partly because it cheapens the word. Censorship is what China does to search engines, prison warders do to letters and the Lord Chamberlain used to do to plays. It is not the action of a blogger who decides to remove your comment from the bottom of their post.

Whether or not it is called "censorship," the end result is the same -- so we might as well call it what it is.

BTW, just a personal anecdote --
When I was fighting California's grossly unconstitutional vehicle smog impact fee, my name appeared 31 times in a 49-page ruling of the US Environmental Protection Agency, even though my comments did not specifically address the subject of the public hearing! LOL
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Thomson-Scientific refers blog comment censorship issue to legal counsel

I have been informed by telephone that Thomson-Scientific has referred the blog comment censorship issue to its legal counsel and that other staff will not discuss the issue further with me. I don't know if this referral means that Thomson-Scientific and its affiliates in the field of law are giving this matter more attention or less attention.

Arbitrary censorship of comments on blogs is not necessarily a legal issue, but IMO it can be. IMO it is definitely a legal issue when a blog is cited by a court opinion. It might be feebly argued that court citations of blogs are no different from the courts' thousands of citations of law journal articles -- however, several of the court opinions' citations of blogs cited visitors' comments rather than the bloggers' original posts. An important legal decision can hinge on whether or not a particular comment or commenter was arbitrarily censored by a blogger. Listen up, Darwinists -- theoretically you could lose an important case against the fundies because some blogger arbitrarily censored your comment. Also, IMO this censorship is a legal issue whenever a blog is referenced by any authority -- such as a scholarly journal or a scholarly database -- that receives direct or indirect government support.

Please send in your protests (see this post) -- and please send me a copy so I have some idea of the amount of support I am getting ( my email address is LarryFarma@aol.com ). Even if your blog comments have not been arbitrarily censored in the past, they might be arbitrarily censored in the future. If it happens to you and you did not join this protest, you will have no one but yourself to blame.
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Chuck Norris on bible courses in public schools

Superfundy Chuck Norris should go back to doing what he does best, playing a Texas Ranger on TV.

Public-school courses in the-bible-as-literature are becoming widespread. Norris wrote an article that called the following proposed additions to a Texas bill concerning these courses "unnecessary":

(1) Mandate that teachers have appropriate academic qualifications and sufficient training on legal and constitutional issues surrounding instruction about the Bible in public schools.

(2) Require rigorous, scholarly reviewed textbooks and other curriculum materials for all courses.

(3) Include strong and specific language that protects the religious freedom of students and their families by barring the use of Bible classes to evangelize or promote personal religious perspectives.

(4) Require the Texas Education Agency to regularly monitor and report on the content of public school Bible courses to ensure that they are academically and legally appropriate.

(5) Continue to allow districts the option to offer – or not offer – such courses.

Superfundies like Chuck Norris fuel the paranoia of those -- e.g., the Anti-Defamation League -- who are trying to outlaw and taboo the mere mention of Darwinism's weaknesses in public schools. An ADL press release said,

Philadelphia, PA, December 20, 2005 …The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) welcomed today's ruling in the Dover, PA Intelligent Design case as "a win for public school students and science education."

No, ADL, it was a win for the ADL, not for the students. The ADL couldn't give a tinker's dam about the students -- the ADL just sees the students as pawns in its efforts to promote its extremist paranoid agenda on the "separation of church and state." Who in the students' lives are as well qualified to inform them about ID as their science teachers? Outlawing ID and other scientific or pseudoscientific criticisms of Darwinism in public-school science classes promotes ignorance.

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Protest of authoritative referencing of arbitrarily censoring blogs

At last, my piece de resistance -- an organized protest of arbitrary Internet censorship. This post has a list of email addresses and telephone numbers for participating in the protest. I am posting this stuff because I have not been getting adequate responses to my own protests.

By arbitrary censorship, I mean that comments and/or commenters are censored for the sole reason that the bloggers disagree with the opinions or arguments of the comments or the commenters. If you get pissed off at bloggers who arbitrarily censor your comments, you are not alone. This arbitrary censorship is bad enough by itself, but IMO it becomes intolerable when blogs whose bloggers arbitrarily censor comments are quoted, cited, or listed for authoritative purposes -- e.g., by court opinions, scholarly journals, and scientific databases. Bloggers who have shown an intention to present only one side of controversial issues do not deserve to have their blogs used for authoritative purposes. That's all there is to it.

Comment censorship in blogs is discussed in the posts listed here and here (these lists of posts may also be found by clicking on "Internet censorship (1 of 2)" and "Internet censorship (2 of 2)" in this blog's left sidebar). These posts show that the use of blogs as authoritative references is already widespread and is growing.

If you don't mind such authoritative use of blogs that have arbitrarily censored your comments, then I beg you to not join this protest (in a Scotch whiskey ad -- I think it was for Glenlivet whiskey -- the brewmaster said, "if you won't drink this whiskey in the proper way -- that is, warm instead of on the rocks -- then I beg you to drink another Scotch"). And no, Voice in the Wilderness, you don't need to thank me for the opportunity to make a counterprotest -- I don't need your thanks for helping you and your pals to make complete fools of yourselves.

To Darwinists who might be reading this post: there is no law, regulation or policy that says that the anti-Darwinist Uncommon Descent blog, for example, may not be referenced for an authoritative purpose. This arbitrary censorship is not just an anti-Darwinist issue, it is not even just an evolution-controversy issue -- it is a universal issue.

IMO a blog article that is cited by a court opinion becomes like a governmental administrative public hearing where all comments must be accepted (of course, by the time a blog is cited by a court opinion, it is too late to accept comments that were previously censored). And blogs may indirectly influence court opinions through the opinions' citations of scholarly journals that cite the blogs. Actually, any blog that is referenced by an entity that is supported by our tax dollars should be considered to be a public forum.

Arbitrary censorship on blogs can include IP address blocking, which is disreputable, irresponsible, and possibly illegal as well as often being ineffective. IP address blocking can block comments from large numbers of Internet users who share the same ISP proxy IP address. If we do nothing else, let's put an end to this abominable IP address blocking.

Aims of protest:

(1) Discouraging authoritative use of blogs whose bloggers arbitrarily censor comments and/or commenters.

(2) General discouragement of arbitrary censorship on blogs. Creating an Internet culture of disapproval of such censorship. At the least, this censorship is very inconsiderate because often a lot of time is spent writing comments.

(3) Ending the abominable practice of IP address blocking.

(4) Discouraging blog services from aiding and abetting this arbitrary censorship. Blog services aid and abet this censorship by offering IP address blocking or other means of censorship. Discouraging blog services from leaking commenters' IP or email address information to bloggers (such leakage may already be illegal in Europe).

(5) Discouraging comment "moderation" (the holding up of comments pending approval by the blogger). Comment moderation prevents the timely posting of comments, disrupts and greatly slows down discussions, loses comments, and leaves commenters up in the air wondering when and if their comments are going to be posted.

(6) Encouraging bloggers to post a comment policy. This blog's comment policy is linked at the bottom of the left sidebar.

(7) Establishment of a government agency that certifies blogs as being free of arbitrary comment censorship. Government rules prohibiting citation of uncertified blogs by courts, government agencies, people or organizations receiving government funds, etc.. (this idea was added on 04-20-07).

(8) Automatic archiving of censored comments on blogs. Then if there is an intention to authoritatively reference the blog, the archive can be checked to see if there are any arbitrarily censored comments (this idea was added on 04-20-07).

(9) When a blog article and/or its visitors' comments are authoritatively quoted or cited by a court opinion, scholarly journal, etc., then the article, its comment thread, and any linked websites should be permanently and securely archived somewhere for possible future reference (this idea was added on 04-21-07).

(10) Bloggers who practice arbitrary comment censorship should not be considered to be eligible to receive blogging awards (this idea was added on 04-21-07).

(11) Prevent or discourage the "banning" of particular commenters. It makes no sense to ban particular commenters and then complain when they post comments under false names or multiple names in an attempt to evade the ban (this idea was added on 04-24-07).

List of email addresses and phone numbers:

The following email list includes the following:

(1) Staffers of Thomson-Scientific, which maintains a scientific database called the ISI Web of Knowledge. They told me that it is their policy to include arbitrarily censoring blogs in this database.

(2) Email addresses of Panda's Thumb bloggers. PT practices arbitrary censorship and is listed in the ISI Web of knowledge. PT admits to practicing IP address blocking.

(3) Email addresses for Thomson-West, a law publisher that is affiliated with Thomson-Scientific. Thomson-West sponsors a group of law blogs called the Law Professor Blogs.

(4) Emails of the bloggers on Law Blog Metrics, a member of the Law Professor Blogs network. A Law Blog Metrics blogger, Ian Best, sent me a very rude email refusing to post a comment of mine -- fortunately one of his co-bloggers posted the comment. Ironically, my comment was a complaint about the possibility of a court opinion citing an arbitrarily censoring blog.

(5) Some other emails of bloggers on the Law Professor Blogs network. Law blogs are particularly likely to be cited in law journal articles and court opinions.

(6) Scienceblogs blog service. Scienceblogs is a blog service with a lot of "science" blogs. Commenters' IP and email addresses are leaked by Scienceblogs to Scienceblogs bloggers. Scienceblogs has enabled IP address blocking. There is a fair chance that a Scienceblogs blog may be used for an authoritative purpose.

I have made it easy to create a single string of email addresses by keeping interruptions in the email list to a minimum.

Your protest email could, for example, state the aims of this protest or describe incidents of arbitrary censorship of your comments by bloggers. You might also say that the "show me" guy from Missouri sent ya. You could also send a copy of your protest to me at LarryFarma@aol.com You could also tell your friends about this protest.

Take advantage of the power of the Internet to make your thoughts widely known.

Remember, folks, if this protest fizzles, the situation will be worse than it was before -- the protest will then be seen as evidence that people don't care about authoritative referencing of blogs whose bloggers arbitrarily censor comments.

Thomson-Scientific:

allison.hagan@thomson.com,
kathleen.odonnell@thomson.com,
marylou.warwick@thomson.com,
ts.cts.amer@thomson.com,
service@techstreet.com,
rs.info@thomson.com,
rs.sales@thomson.com

Thomson-West et al.:

foundation-press@thomson.com,
west_lawschool@thomson.com,
support@westacademic.com

Law Blog Professors Network:

paul.caron@uc.edu,
berman.43@osu.edu,
nancy.soonpaa@ttu.edu,
faigmand@uchastings.edu,
David.Kaye@asu.edu,
Michael.Saks@asu.edu,
JSanders@central.UH.edu,
edward.cheng@brooklaw.edu,
mgiangra@depaul.edu

Law Blog Metrics bloggers:

ianbest@sbcglobal.net,
joe.hodnicki@gmail.com,
JONESRE@UCMAIL.UC.EDU

Misc. law:

jaywex@bu.edu,
quarter@wulaw.wustl.edu

Panda's Thumb bloggers:

rosenhjd@jmu.edu,
nmsrdave@swcp.com,
abottaro@pandasthumb.org,
ed@pandasthumb.org,
brauer@pandasthumb.org,
reed@pandasthumb.org,
welsberr@pandasthumb.org,
rbh@pandasthumb.org,
garyhurd@pandasthumb.org,
minlay@pandasthumb.org,
jkrebs@pandasthumb.org,
jml@pandasthumb.org,
ianfmusgrave@pandasthumb.org,
pz@pandasthumb.org,
tara@pandasthumb.org,
wilkins@pandasthumb.org

Scienceblogs:

webmaster@seedmediagroup.com,
newblogger@seedmediagroup.com,
advertising@seedmediagroup.com

Also, there are these telephone numbers:

Thomson-Scientific:

1-800-336-4474

Allison Hagan, ext. 1881
Department of Public Relations and Communications

Marylou Warwick, ext. 1591

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Hahvahd Law School snobbery

Ivy League law schools -- particularly the Harvard Law School -- are grossly overrepresented in the Supreme Court and in court opinions' citations of law journal articles.

Appendix A of a report from the staff of the Cardozo Law Review shows the dominance of the Harvard Law Review in frequency of citations in court opinions -- the main law reviews of two other Ivy League schools, Columbia and Yale, are also shown as dominant in comparison to the NYU and the California-Berkeley law reviews (the unidentified diamond symbols are for the Berkeley law reviews). The law reviews selected for this comparison were supposed to be among the law reviews with the highest frequencies of court citations. In the 1970-79 decade, for example, the numbers of court citations for each of the law reviews in Appendix A were as follows: Harvard Law Review, 4410; Yale Law Review, 1800; Columbia Law Review, 1062 (increased to 1497 in 1980-89); NYU Law Review, 506; and Cal.-Berkeley Law Review, 497. These are just the figures for the main law journals of these law schools -- each of these law schools also has specialized law journals, e.g., the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review (this blog reviewed an article in that journal). This list has thirteen different Harvard law journals, including the one and only Harvard Law Review. The court citation counts for the specialized journals are shown in Appendix B of the Cardova study.

Also, on the current Supreme Court, five of the justices are Harvard law school grads, two are Yale law school grads, and one attended Harvard law school and graduated from Columbia law school; only one is a graduate of a non-Ivy League law school, Northwestern. Most of their undergraduate degrees are from Ivy League schools and Stanford. The previous CJ, William Rehnquist, got his undergrad degree from Stanford, a masters degree from Harvard, and a law degree from Stanford. Recently retired Justice Sandra O'Connor got both her undergrad degree and her law degree from Stanford.

This kind of concentration of influence of particular schools is unheard of in other disciplines, e.g., science, medicine, engineering, and liberal arts. IMO this concentration of influence promotes elitism, good-ol'-boyism, sectionalism, and intellectual inbreeding. I am amazed that the charge of a lack of balance in law school representation has not been made whenever an Ivy League law school grad -- particularly a Harvard law school grad -- or a Stanford law school grad is nominated for the Supreme Court. Maybe what the Supreme Court needs is an affirmative action program for candidates who are not graduates of the Ivy League or Stanford law schools.

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Georgetown Law Journal "note" on Kitzmiller case

This 40-page Georgetown Law Journal (Vol. 95:855) "note," "Divided by Design: Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, Intelligent Design, and Civic Education", by Kevin Trowel, assumes (1) that intelligent design is just a religious concept and (2) that there are only two possibilities, evolution and ID (this concept of only two possibilities was given the name "contrived dualism" by the opinion in McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education ), and therfore all scientific (or pseudoscientific) criticisms of evolution theory are parts of ID (as I have frequently pointed out, there are also non-ID criticisms of evolution, e.g., criticisms concerning co-evolution and the propagation of beneficial mutations in sexual reproduction).

This "note" says (the first page number is that of the pdf file and the second page number is that of the journal),
.

. . . . "the framers of the Constitution . . . cherished the Enlightenment ideal that science could illuminate everything from chemical reactions to political theory. But the framers were also descendants of people who had come to America in large part seeking religious freedom." This delicate balance between science and religion is part of what underlies the Establishment Clause. (page 14, page 868)

Here we go again with another example of stereotyping of the "true" religion of the founding fathers. The founding fathers have been called virtually everything from a bunch of godless bible-burning atheists to a bunch of bible-pounding holy rollers. Even if the founders were uniform in their religious beliefs and we could discern those beliefs today, we would still have no good reason for blindly following those beliefs. I am just sick and tired of hearing about the religious beliefs of the founding fathers.

The "note" says,

Intelligent design theory . . . . rejects the idea that science and religion can coexist.(page 16, page 870)

Wrong -- intelligent design says no such thing.

The "note" says,

Instead, intelligent design offers only a "negative argument against evolution." (page 16, page 870)

So what is wrong with that? When someone accused Thomas Edison of not making progress in his efforts to create a practical electric light, he answered, "I've made lots of progress -- I now know lots of things that don't work."

And why isn't evolution viewed as a "negative argument against intelligent design"? LOL

The "note" says,

The possibility that teaching creationist theories may limit students' educational opportunities reappeared recently when the University of California admissions department instituted a system-wide policy to reject all applicants taught from the Bob Jones University science text, which includes lessons in Biblical creationism. ( page 18, page 872 )

The Bob Jones University biology text also includes about 15 pages on evolution. Also, representatives of the University of California admitted that they had no evidence that freshmen who are graduates of fundy high schools are deficient in knowledge of science. See this and this.

The "note" says,

. . . standard "culture war" battle lines of ideology and religion alone are insufficient to explain the conflicts -- within the affected communities, both adherents and opponents of intelligent design tend to be conservative and religious. ( page 22, page 876 )

That is stereotyping.

The "note" says,

For the purposes of analyzing intelligent design controversies, this note will adopt the model of civic education described by Professor Sherry, who argues that students should learn "three major things: moral character, critical thinking, and cultural literacy." When intelligent design is examined against this standard, its failure to contribute to the creation of civic-minded citizens becomes clear. First, given the importance of science in American culture, students educated in antievolution classrooms will be deprived of true cultural literacy. They "will learn only a distorted version of the common culture." Second, critical thinking is necessary to provide children with the tools to "understand and to evaluate competing conceptions of the good life and the good society." Intelligent design, directly and as a proxy for Biblical literalism and the rejection of "secular standards of reasoning that make evolution clearly superior as a theory to creationism," is often explicit in its intent to undermine (emphasis in original) critical thinking . . . . . . Finally, "the most basic moral requirement of republican citizens, of course, is an inclination to participate in the republic, to engage in rational deliberation. " This Note has thus far attempted to demonstrate how intelligent design proponents may actively invite divisiveness and welcome their own social exclusion. Such exclusionary behavior undermines the republican idea. ( page 29, page 883 )

First, since questioning and disbelief of Darwinism are important parts of our common culture, the students who are not learning about the criticisms of Darwinism are the ones who are learning "only a distorted version of the common culture." Second, dogmatically teaching Darwinism to students by means of spoonfeeding and brainwashing them does not help them develop "critical thinking" skills. And finally, since public opinion polls show that the majority of the public questions or rejects Darwinism, it is the Darwinists who invite divisiveness and their own social exclusion by demanding that public schools dogmatically teach Darwinism while excluding criticisms of Darwinism.

The "note" says of the "endorsement test,"

As Judge Jones explained in Kitzmiller, the endorsement test as currently formulated "consists of the reviewing court determining what message a challenged governmental policy or enactment conveys to a reasonable, objective observer who knows the policy's language, origins, and legislative history, as well as the history of the community and the broader social and historical context in which the policy arose." Justice O'Connor's opinion in Lynch [i.e., Lynch v. Donnelly] makes clear that divisiveness could be considered evidence of an observer's perception of endorsement; as the endorsement test has developed, it has become clear, in turn, that an observer's perception of endorsement is sufficient to render a policy unconstitutional. Therefore, it appears that a sufficient showing of divisiveness may play a significant role in considering the constitutionality of a government action under the endorsement test. (pages 36-37, pages 890-891 )

If "an observer's perception of endorsement is sufficient to render a policy unconstitutional," then any policy can arbitrarily be "rendered" unconstitutional, including policies that are not religious at all. Judge Jones in fact banned all official criticism -- whether religious or not -- of Darwinism in public schools: " . . we will enter an order permanently enjoining Defendants . . . from requiring teachers to denigrate or disparage the scientific theory of evolution . . ." So Judge Jones also banned, for example, criticisms of co-evolution theory. However, intelligent design is not necessarily part of the criticisms of co-evolution theory. And without intelligent design, there is no supernatural designer. Without a supernatural designer, there is no god. Without a god, there is no religion. Without religion, there is no establishment clause violation.

Also, this "note" focuses on the "divisiveness" aspect of the endorsement test. However, teaching Darwinism in the public schools is itself divisive, so divisiveness cannot be avoided just by dogmatically teaching Darwinism in the public schools while suppressing all criticism of Darwinism there. I feel that attorney Edward Sisson correctly focused on the "political insider/outsider" aspect of the endorsement test instead of the "divisiveness" aspect. An open letter he wrote about the Selman v. Cobb County evolution disclaimer textbook sticker case says,

The fact that all available textbooks teach evolution, and that the Cobb County school board chose the most hard-line pro-evolution text, and chose to include that evolution material in the curriculum, clearly communicates to those who endorse evolution that they have become the dominant political insiders, and the Sticker merely shows that they do not have absolute monopoly control -- yet.

It is deeply disturbing that the trial court felt that failure to give the pro-evolution side absolute monopoly control was equal to sending a message to the pro-evolution side that they are "political outsiders." Nonsense. Denying someone monopoly control of an issue is not the same as declaring that person a political outsider on that issue. That the trial court could judge such a record to have such an effect bespeaks an extreme bias.

This post has a longer discussion of the "endorsement test."

The "note" says,

. . . proponents of creationism have in recent months attempted to answer courts' concerns about the lack of peer review of intelligent design. But peer review alone cannot and should not be sufficient to render legal a policy that is otherwise violative of the Establishment Clause. Although factors like the absence of peer review may be relevant to courts' Establishment Clause analysis, such factors have become false targets in a cat-and-mouse game between the courts and the theory's proponents. (pages 39-40, pages 893-894 )

"A cat-and-mouse game between the courts and the theory's proponents"? So now there is an adversarial relationship between the courts and proponents of ID? Should the Dover case have been titled "Jones v. Dover" instead of "Kitzmiller v. Dover"?

And I thought that "peer review" was the gold standard of the Darwinists. Saying now that peer review doesn't matter is not just moving the goalposts -- it is removing the goalposts altogether.

Regarding why this 40-page paper is called just a "note" rather than an "article" (the author himself calls it a "note" ) -- I have been informed that the only law journal papers that are called "articles" are those written by law school graduates -- the papers of others are just called "notes." The author of this paper was not yet a law school graduate when he wrote the paper (his bio at the bottom of the first page says that he expects to receive his J.D. degree this year). To me, this distinction between an "article" and a "note" is very elitist and snobbish. I cannot think of any other field where there is such a distinction based on the educational credentials of the author. Ironically, law is one field where someone with little or no formal professional education can write a good paper -- I cannot say that the same is generally true of my field, engineering.
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