It’s amazing to see anti-evolutionists repeat again and again that credentials mean nothing, brushing aside the judgements of thousands upon thousands of scientists, and then do the opposite. Intelligent Design’s latest proponent is a highly-skilled neurosurgeon named Dr. Michael Egnor, and he’s been invited not only for an interview on the Discovery Institute’s low-listenership podcast, but is now repeating age-old debunked arguments against evolution on the DI’s news blog. Wildly claiming that evolution has nothing to do with medicine, Dr. Egnor has revealed to us that on this subject, he is woefully ignorant.

The “flavor of the month” of the IDists, Dr. Michael Egnor responded to an online article stating that no natural processes produce new information. Then, when several knowledgable individuals responded saying, yes, according to the only quantitative information concept, Shannon Information, natural processes do - for example, duplication of genes. Egnor responded by moving the goalposts, instead saying that it doesn’t increase “specified” information, which is William Dembski’s vague, undefined, pseudoscientific concept of information that bastardizes the field of information theory.

But it didn’t stop there, Egnor continued, claiming on his authority as a doctor that medicine has absolutely nothing to do with evolution, and that no medical doctors do research on evolution, and no classes on evolution are taught in medical schools. False, False, and finally, False. Many science bloggers have done us all the job of debunking these and many more claims of Egnor’s, so there’s no need for me to whip out my DICER enzyme and cut them to shreds any further. Go here for an excellent fisking of several of Egnor’s claims.

No, instead I’m going to say a few words about authority and its misuses. Authorities are people who are knowledgeable about a subject, such that you can trust their judgement to a degree. I am, for an example, a bit of an authority on honeybees. I’m also pretty knowledgeable about plant genetics, the philsophy of science, and a whole host of other things. I’m preparing to go to graduate school this year where I will get a thorough grounding in plant genetics and gain experience for a career in the field. Once I have my Ph.D., I’ll be certified as having the background knowledge and ability to begin to address tough problems in the field in a rigorous manner.

The Ph.D. would NOT make me right. There are tons of people with Ph.D.s who peddle nonsense, and you should be wary of someone who wears their credentials on their sleeve. What makes someone right or wrong is the evidence and the logic that you use to string ideas together into a cohesive whole. When Ph.D.s line up on either side of an issue, does it mean that there’s no way to decide who’s right or who’s wrong? Only if you are trying to use someone’s degree instead of the evidence and arguments themselves.

This does not mean that it is wrong to cite authorities. When you have a preponderance of evidence for one position on an issue, and little to nothing on the other side, you will see intelligent, scientific authorities line up on that side. We see this in evolution, global warming, genetic engineering, stem cells, and more. The collective opinions of scientists, most importantly those with specialist knowledge of the field in question, are a good indicator of which side has the most evidence, or any evidence at all.

Having specialist knowledge is very important. Unless you have a great deal of background knowledge (say, from getting a degree in the field), or experience (from being an active researcher), it can be very easy to misread results of scientific research. Minute details such as how exactly you read the statistics, to what exactly can be concluded from the research, are extremely important. As I said, a Ph.D. certifies that you can begin to address tough problems.

There is a lot of evidence for the theory of evolution, from varying fields and using a wide array of techniques. No anti-evolutionists have ever found evidence against evolution, they have only found areas that are not well understood, yet. When you have a minority of people with Ph.D.s who do not accept evolution, most of whom do not have specialist knowledge in the field they are criticizing - you don’t have much of an “other side” to the issue.

Journalists strive for balance, but the joke is that if a journalist today tried to balance a story about the shape of the Earth, you would have a tragically horrible article as a result. Journalists need to pay attention to the opinions of relevant experts, and how much weight they carry in the field, not the public eye. But more than that, Journalists HAVE TO pay attention to what the evidence is, what the science says, and inserting contrarian viewpoints to create an artificial balance can only be described in one way - Biased reporting.

Kirsten Sanford of This Week in Science is weathering a bit of “show the other side” demands to artificially insert balance into global warming science coverage, and her response is right on.

As I have stated previously in other locations, I would be thrilled if the science stories that passed my desk suggested anything other than the warming trend that we are currently experiencing, and I would report it. The fact is, that research is not prevalent. Indeed, not reporting news that doesn’t exist doesn’t make me biased. I would be more biased in the reporting of any story if I were (in the name of “fair and balanced reporting”) to search out the one person who doesn’t agree. Sure, it might be nice to know that someone doesn’t agree and why, but giving their views equal time or weight to the majority is dishonest.

String Theory, for example, is one where experts line up on either side roughly equally, and many collectively admit that we don’t have the evidence to decide one way or the other on it. But one thing most of them do agree about is that there are experiments that they are preparing to conduct that may shed some light on this issue. One difference between a real scientific controversy, and a public controversy over science.

So what about Michael Egnor? I would like to point out that he is a medical practicioner (M.D.), and it sounds like he’s a damn good one at that. But he is not a research scientist, and he has demonstrated not even a modicum of knowledge about the state of evolutionary science, and its implications for medicine. Asking him for in-depth knowledge about evolutionary science is like asking me about in-depth knowledge about brain surgery. Unlike him, I know my limitations.

So he’s not even an authority on the subject, he makes blatantly false statements about it, and has demonstrated that he doesn’t have the background knowledgee to begin to address difficult questions in the field. That doesn’t mean that he can’t dissent, but it means that his opinion does not carry the weight that the IDists would like you to believe. For people who say over and over again that the credentials of research scientists who work in the field of biology and evolutionary biology don’t matter, they sure like to harp on meaningless credentials when is suits them.

In response to his combination of arrogance and ignorance, Egnor has been dubbed “Egnorant,” and Coturnix at A Blog Around the Clock has compiled a list of the responses to Egnor’s misrepresentations of evolution. The goal is, for future journalists, and especially for the public, that if they want to check the facts about what this doctor has been saying, they can look up all the responses to them. In the long run, Dr. Michael Egnor is pretty insignificant as one ignorant doctor, what really matters is getting people to care about getting their facts straight, and being true to the science.

UPDATE: PZ Myers put up a post about a Young-Earth Creationist group adding an Astronaut to their ranks. Same sort of deal.