The Pianka dust-up

April 4, 2006 in Political Animals | 4 comments

Kit Jarrell, known for applauding the bombings of US mosques, has stuck her shit-covered foot in her mouth again. In her post entitled Five Billion People Need to Die From Ebola, she writes:

The title of the post is probably what brought you here. In fact, you’re probably wondering how I could even say something so horrifying.

However, I didn’t make that statement. A renowned leftist scientist did.

Except, of course, that Dr. Eric Pianka said no such thing. Like the rest of the credulous scribblers who infest the right-wing blogs, Kit has swallowed uncritically a recent accusation from Forrest M. Mims III. Mims claims that Pianka
…champion[s] the notion… that the Earth can only be saved if ninety percent of the human beings alive today are purged form the planet. He championed airborne Ebola as the most efficient virus to accomplish this. And while he stopped short of calling for terrorist action to bring this result about, he clearly implied that this was a right and proper future for our species and our planet.
It’s now very clear that Mims’ claims are, at best, misleading. It should also be noted that, shortly after Mims published his account, William Dembski of the Discovery Institute, a creationist “think tank”, proudly announced that he had reported Pianka to the Department of Homeland Security. Note that Mims is a fellow of the Discovery Institute. No possibility of collusion there, right?

Some points to ponder:

  1. Mims provides no transcript of the speech.
  2. Mims claims the video camera in the hall were turned off before Pianka’s speech. He provides no corroborating evidence.
  3. No one else who attended the speech reports that Pianka “advocated” the deaths of billions.
  4. A careful reading of Pianka’s actual philosophy does not support Mims’ attack on Pianka.

PZ Myers correctly points out that a second account of Pianka’s talk does not support Mims’ claims. Myers also provides, I think, the most trenchant analysis of the situation:

I suspect that what we have here is a vocal scientist who tactlessly spoke an unpleasant truth—we are burning through the resources of our world at a prodigious and unsustainable rate, heedless of the future, and we can expect Nature in the form of a devastating disease to strike back—and once again, a kook from outside the reality-based community is using that as an excuse to demonize the messenger.

Let’s be real clear on one fact: Even if Pianka said everything exactly as Mims reported it, he is guilty only of expressing a repugnant opinion. Nothing more. Certainly he is not guilty of “plotting” the murder of 90% of humanity. The right to hold and express a repugnant opinion happens to be enshrined in the United States Constitution. The right to libel another person — which I believe Mims and Dembski have done — is not.

The whole thing has gotten badly out of hand, and the radical right-wingers like Kit are only to happy to fan the flame. Pianka and other members of the University of Texas faculty are now getting death threats. Isn’t that great, Kit? If one of the UT faculty is killed, you’ll have something else to celebrate on your blog!

I’d bet a week’s salary that not one single right-wing blogger did any fact-checking at all when Mims published his accusations. Not one. Asking careful questions, searching out the facts, and critical thinking simply are not part of the radical right-wing mindset. Thanks, Kit Jarrell, for helping to illuminate that sad fact yet again.

UPDATE 04/07/06 12:40 EDT: PZ Myers notes that Mims is threatening Kathryn Perez of the University of North Carolina. Dr. Perez is polling those who attended Pianka’s speech, and finding no support at all (thus far) for Mims’ interpretation. Mims’ response? He’s threatening a lawsuit. Seems that when he’s caught out as a grand liar, Mims calls his lawyers.

Also, The Questionable Authority compares the transcript of Pianka’s speech and the Seguin Gazzette article about the speech. To no one’s surprise, the article does not accurately report what Dr. Pianka actually said.

UPDATE 04/08/06 07:30 EDT: Virtually all mention of Pianka has vanished from the website of the Seguin Gazette-Enterprise, the local paper that started the hysteria over Pianka’s speech. Golly gee, I wonder why?

Other articles of note on the Pianka matter include:

4 comments

Comments feed for this article

April 6, 2006 at 11:09 am

Lone Commenter

From UPI:

“I’ve found that it takes courage to tell people what they don’t want to know,” Pianka, 67, told the newspaper.

A Gazette-Enterprise reporter who heard Pianka speak Friday on the same topic quoted him saying disease “will control the scourge of humanity. We’re looking forward to a huge collapse.”

*****************
From the Seguin Gazette:

James Pitts, who recieved a Ph.D. in physics from UT-Austin, [is] the second to publicly chastise Pianka when he filed a complaint Saturday with the UT board of regents. He insists a state university is no place to disseminate such views.

He writes:

“Pianka’s message does not fall within the realm of his professional competence as a biologist, because it is a normative claim, not a descriptive one. Pianka is encouraged to use his ecological expertise to predict the likely consequences of certain technological and reproductive strategies, but to evaluate some as good, bad, or worthy of prevention by genocide is the realm of philosophy or political science, not science. His message falls no more within his professional competence than it would for a physicist to teach religion in class or a musician to encourage racism.”
[...]
Because Pianka includes his doomsday material in his coursework, Ebola and its potential play a notable role in some students’ studies…In an evaluation of Pianka’s course – performed anonymously in keeping with university policy – one student offered:

“Though I agree that conservation biology is of utmost importance to the world, I do not think that preaching that 90 percent of the human population should die of Ebola is the most effective means of encouraging conservation awareness.”
[...]
Brenna McConnell, a biology senior, said she and others in the audience “had not thought seriously about overpopulation issues and a feasible solution prior to the meeting.” But though McConnell arrived at the event with little to say on the issue, she returned to Seguin with a whole new outlook.

An entry to her online blog captures her initial response to what’s become a new conviction:

”[Pianka is] a radical thinker, that one!” she wrote. “I mean, he’s basically advocating for the death for all but 10 percent of the current population. And at the risk of sounding just as radical, I think he’s right.”

“There was a good deal of shock and just plain astonishment at what he had to say,” [McConnell] said. “Not many folk come out and talk about the end of the human population in as candid of a manner as he did. Dr. Pianka received a standing ovation at the end of his talk, if that says anything. What he had to say was radical, no question about it, but that is not to say that at least some of what he had to say is not true.”

April 8, 2006 at 1:21 pm

Russell

First: Kit Jarrell refers to Pianka as “A renowned leftist scientist”. It’s my understanding that Pianka considers himself somewhat right of center.

Second, the letter from Pitts “corroborating” Mims’s account, looks remarkably similar to everything else I’ve seen spewing out of the right-wing spin machine on this. Is there any reason to credit his account any more seriously than all the other dutiful spin-amplifiers, just because he has a degree (in an unrelated field) from UT-Austin? Most particularly: did he hear the speech in question, or is he just taking Mims’s account at face value?

April 8, 2006 at 5:17 pm

CD318

The Discovery Institute is not a “think tank.” It is a “think” tank.

April 10, 2006 at 6:36 pm

Dave Thomas

Surprise, the articles have all been restored. Seems they were deleted by mistake.

Mike Dunford explains why at Panda’s Thumb:
http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/04/the_seguin_gaze_1.html

Cheers, Dave