c0nc0rdance Profile picture
Aug 16, 2021 9 tweets 3 min read Read on X
Let's talk about "The Wedge Strategy" as it applies to creationism, vaccines, and science denialism of all stripes.

The name derives from a document drafted in 1998 by staff at the Discovery Institute & marked "Top Secret" and "Not For Distribution", leaked by an HR contractor.
It made explicit the aims and strategy of the Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, a group led by Stephen Meyer that rebranded creationism as intelligent design.
Their goals, stated plainly:
"To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies"
"To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God"
The Discovery Institute wasn't about discovery. The Wedge Document lays out their PR efforts, apologetics & legal strategies as an effort to teach religion in public schools, funded by Christian Dominionists who want to overthrow secular US government by theocratic dictatorship.
They knew teaching creationism was unconstitutional, so they developed a stealth approach that pretended to be scientific, to give cover to their ideologically motivated deceptions.
To be explicit: they don't believe in the utility of intelligent design as an objective research program. They're just creationists: theologians or religious apologists. It's a ruse to soft-sell religious takeover of science instruction in public schools.
Irreducible complexity was invented as a ruse, and it's persuaded 0% of actual research biologists, but as laid out in the Wedge Strategy, it muddies the water by sounding sciencey. That's exactly what the Wedge Strategy document maps out. Obfuscation, deception, misdirection.
As Discovery Institute founder Philip E. Johnson said in an interview:
"Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools."
In a separate thread, I'll describe how vaccine denialists, global climate change denialists & others have adopted the same strategies.

Original Wedge Document is here:
ncse.ngo/files/pub/crea…

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More from @c0nc0rdance

Jul 21, 2023
No-one has ever been able to replicate Gregor Mendel's observations of pea plants.

They're a little "too perfect", lacking even random statistical noise that would have been expected from small sample sizes.

Was it scientific fraud?
Famed population geneticist RA Fisher published this paper in 1936 taking Mendel to task for either concealing, cherry-picking, or omitting parts of his study of pea genetics.

There are three points of contention:
digital.library.adelaide.edu.au/dspace/bitstre…
1. The segregation ratios (as in 'Mendelian ratios') are too perfect. Actual observations are modified by noise and distortion, only land on the 3:1, 1:2:1 ratios in extremely large samples sizes of ideal, perfect genetic models. Image
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Jun 25, 2023
Bear with me: this will be a longish thread.

I want to talk about the Map-Territory Relation in #science & why it matters to many topics in public perception of science.

It's what I think of when people insist that 'science says there are only two genders'.

Maybe you've seen this work by René Magritte, called "The Treachery of Images". The text translates: "this is not a pipe".

It's not. It's an IMAGE of a pipe. It only resembles an actual pipe in one very specific way, from a particular angle, in 2-D.
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British statistician George Box: "Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful. However, the approximate nature of the model must always be borne in mind."
Read 19 tweets
May 10, 2023
But the most interesting story about Benjamin Franklin I've run across is the giant pit filled with human bones that was recently (1997) found in his basement.

Really.

A giant pit of human bones. The remains of at least 28 bodies. In his basement. Cut up with a saw.
Ben Franklin lived at 36 Craven Street in London (now the 'Benjamin Franklin House & Museum').

Workers doing renovations found the bones in a buried pit in the basement, remains including those of infants. Image
He had a special arrangement with a friend of a friend, William Hewson, now called the "Father of Hematology" for his discovery of blood composition and fibrin.

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Read 7 tweets
May 10, 2023
I'm down the rabbit hole on Ben Franklin.

He had an acknowledged illegitimate son, William, who was the last British governor of New Jersey & chief Loyalist, running pro-British military operations from his base in New York.

He died in exile. But HE had an illegitimate son... Image
William Temple Franklin was William's illegitimate son, born while William was in law school, London.

"Temple" accompanied his GRANDFATHER Benjamin & acted as his secretary, worked on Treaty of Paris where France recognized USA.

Brief return to US, then rest of life in France. Image
Temple had an illegitimate son, Théodore, but he died before the age of 5, and an illegitimate daughter, Ellen Franklin Hanbury, who was raised by HER grandfather William.

Ellen married but had no children, so this particular chain of Franklin Bastards reaches its end. Image
Read 4 tweets
May 3, 2023
Hogan's Heroes ran 1965-1971:
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In poor taste, honestly.

Learning about the actors has given me a new perspective:

First, every major German character was played by a Jewish actor. John Banner, Bob Crane, Wer...
Werner Klemperer (Col. Klink) was born in Cologne, Germany in 1920, moved to LA in 1933 with famous composer father Otto.

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He served in the US Army, stationed at Pearl Harbor in WWII. Image
John Banner was born in Austria in 1910 to Jewish parents, fled during the German "unification" 1938.

He enlisted in the US Army in 1942 & rose to the rank of sergeant.

He lost family members to the Holocaust, although I can't find any specifics. Image
Read 11 tweets
May 1, 2023
My hypothesis:
Humans invented hats because we were envious of the marvelous headgear in the animal world.

Let's talk about antlers, horns, ossicones & pronghorns. Irish elk (Megaloceros giga...
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Mechanism of growth similar to bone HEALING: cartilaginous tissue gives rise to bone coated in skin "velvet". Image
Antlers usually only form on males, with one exception: female reindeer grow shortened antlers, which may be functional for snow clearing, or challenge between females over scarce food resources. Image
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