I have my suspicions that when the Republicans talk up “tort reform” to stop “nuisance lawsuits”, they’re not exactly talking about stuff like this:
Some of you may have heard about the latest in frivolous lawsuit madness: PZ Myers and his blog’s mothership, Seed Magazine, have been sued for FIFTEEN MILLION DOLLARS.
He’s been sued in New York’s Southern District Court because he panned a book by Stuart Pivar, a tool of creationists who has sinned against the truth by writing books denying that Stephen Jay Gould—yes, that one—didn’t really believe in evolutionary theory, specifically defined as believing that selection was a “creative” force. I love when people speak for the dead, knowing full well that the dead can’t defend themselves, such as the people who erroneously claim that Margaret Sanger’s main motivation was eugenic in nature (which means that you can’t have your basic rights, wouldn’t you know?).
My first inclination was to fear for the blogosphere if the next strategy is abuse-by-court strategies, but looking over the complaint (PDF), I suspect this will become a dog and pony show that will end up being most humiliating for the plantiff, even if it gets aired in court. And this has “thrown out by the judge” written all over it, so we may not even get that far. Generally speaking in the U.S., the standards for libel are pretty high. Pivar would have to prove he’s definitely not a “classic crackpot” as PZ called him, and if I’m not mistaken, he’d have to prove that PZ knew he wasn’t a “classic crackpot” when he called him that. Which, if the case doesn’t get thrown out right away, could mean that Pivar’s theories get aired in court, which is hardly what he wants if he wants people to take him seriously.
Pivar would have to argue in court that there’s nothing crackpot-ish at all about claiming that prominent biologist Gould was the victim of some sort of academic censorship/oppression of his theories. The entire situation seems to be like a classic creationist wedge. That there’s a rather obscure, nit-picking disagreement between biologists about the exact patterns of evolution is being trotted out as a reason to believe that the theory is about to collapse on itself. I have my theory as to why creationists or global warming denialists act like minor disagreements on the particulars would collapse an entire scientific theory. It’s the infallibility of the Bible thing—a lot of people are familiar with the idea that the Bible is infalliable, which would mean a single erroneous sentence would cause their “theory” to implode. It’s easy to frame scientific theories that way. But since no one claims that global warming theories or evolutionary theory is the received word of god, brought to us perfect and in no need of tweaking or further research, their infallibility framework doesn’t quite work.
If you haven’t seen too much about this on the blogs, it’s because the science bloggers at Seed are all holding their keyboards until this is over. So if those of you not under their umbrella would like to blog your support of PZ and of science blogging, particularly that kind which pushes back against political enemies. In the meantime, the Dover case—where creationists humiliated themselves by creating a situation where they had to put their pseudo-theories side by side with the real theories of biology in court and demonstrate how their “theories” aren’t really theories at all—is instructive reading on why it’s probably best for opponents of evolutionary theory to refrain from bringing their ideas into the light.
45 Responses to “An attempt to silence a defender of science”
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
“classic crackpot”
If this is the sole basis for the libel claim, it is likely to get thrown out on a motion to dismiss, as a libel claim must be based on a false statement of fact, not merely expression of an opinion.
Yeah, if you read it, it’s all basically based around the word “crackpot”. There’s a thin attempt to argue that this is an attack on Pivar’s livelihood, but there’s no there there. He doesn’t make a living trotting out theories about Gould’s sympathy for creationism. That’s more a hobby of his. I just find it funny that he’s claiming libel in a situation where Gould’s estate might have a better case against Pivar.
I dunno. I think a remake of Inherit the Wind is exactly what this country needs right now.
This is only tangentially related to the post, but that statement right there is a perfect example of something that absolutely gets on my last nerve. Lots of people do not understand that “theory” in science does not mean the same thing as “theory” in everyday usage. I’m sure you understand the difference, but very many people do not. And so when scientists start talking about evolution, or big bang, or whatever else, the general population equates it with their “theory” about what the next door neighbors get up to on the weekend or some other idea they have. It also has a big impact on scientific reporting or debates if the reporters themselves and their target audience don’t understand the difference. And it makes for a highly misinformed and undereducated voting population.
I have only one comment on this story:
HAHAAHAHAHAHHAHAHA!!!!
Okay, I’m better now. Oh wait, just a bit more: hahaahahHAHhahahahahHAHHAAAahaha!
Thank you for the opportunity to air my opinion on this lawsuit.
I hope the court sees it my way.
The plaintiff’s lawyer fails law school. There is no federal subject matter jurisdiction. The plaintiff and one of the defendants (the company, which is headquartered in New York) are both citizens of New York for diversity purposes under 28 U.S.C. s.1332. Paragraph 5 of the complaint is false: there is not complete diversity. The judge should throw it out.
My problem is that I would like to hear his argument in short form just so I could know how you come to something like that.
My guess is that because Gould said that evolution wasn’t directed in anyway and that winding the clock back and letting it play out again wouldn’t necessarily produce the same result. . . no that doesn’t make any sense.
I can’t come up with the stupid I have to have it spoon fed to me.
I just find it funny that he’s claiming libel in a situation where Gould’s estate might have a better case against Pivar
A technical point–you can’t libel (or slander or defame) a dead person, becasue they’re dead, and can’t be injured by having a bad reputation . . .
This thing is going to get tossed right away on one of two grounds: lack of complete diversity of jurisdiction (to get into federal court, all parties must be citizens of different states, and both plaintiff and Seed can be considered citizens of New York) and failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted (Rule 12(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure).
The standard for a 12(b)(6) motion is, basically, that even if you take all facts alleged in the complaint as true, there still isn’t any way the plaintiff can win. And since PZ’s statement was one of opinion and not fact, voila.
However, I kind of hope this thing survives and goes to discovery and through summary judgment. The attorney for Pivar is a solo practitioner who obviously does most of his work in state court (from the way this is drafted), knows little about defamation law, and has been admitted only two years. This tells me that Pivar couldn’t get a good attorney and found someone who’d just sign the papers for him because he needed the work.
In addition, this is before Shira Scheindlin, whose opinions are very thorough and well-researched, much more so than the average district judge. It would be a pleasure to read an opinion of hers debunking all the science to get at whether “classic crackpot” fact or opinion, and if fact, whether it was true.
Lots of people do not understand that “theory” in science does not mean the same thing as “theory” in everyday usage.
This drives me absolutely NUTS. I am forever grateful to my totally awesome middle school science teacher who really grilled into us the concept of the scientific method, and also the difference between a scientific law (which says what happens, like PV=nRT which is the only scientific law I can remember anymore) and a scientific theory (which attempts to explain how things happen, like, well, evolution) as well as the fact that those words mean very different things in science.
…to all the scientists out there: am I remembering the seventh grade more or less correctly, or did I just make an ass of myself?
A technical point–you can’t libel (or slander or defame) a dead person, becasue they’re dead, and can’t be injured by having a bad reputation . . .
Totally OT, but isn’t it true that you can in fact do this in Britain?
lack of complete diversity of jurisdiction
Or, “lack of complete diversity of citizenship.”
Not enough coffee.
Gah. And when I say, “debunking all the science,” I of course mean, “debunking all the pseudoscience.”
Oh, sweet coffee, elixir of life, where are you?
“I have my theory as to why creationists or global warming denialists act like minor disagreements on the particulars would collapse an entire scientific theory….”
I am sure you are correct.
These kinds of minds NEED whole, impenetrable ‘truths’.
The very manichaean binary thinking systems critiqued so well by Greenwald.
Either/or. White or black.
[”No fucking greys in MY world!”]
If you can organize the world into simple dichotomies…
You just don’t have to think…so much.
And for them thinking…hurts.
So they relegate it.
zuzu, you can have some of mine, we got it for free. *grinds up beans real small so they will go through the internet without clogging the tubes*
You all have heard the balloon animal angle on this, haven’t you? (With lolballooncat in the comments!)
Isabel, F = ma (Newton’s second law) is shorter and useful in many more situations. Everything always comes back to F = ma. It’s my go-to example of a law. Also, you’re right.
And for Isabel and ks..
Altogether spot on on the ‘theory’ word.
Gets scrambled and perverted either in perception,
definition OR usage.
[or all of the foregoing, and sometimes intentionally]
Exactly like the ‘believe’ word.
[I can invoke at least 4 manifestations for this single word]
I didn’t read the complaint, buy I wonder if Seed/Myers would have grounds to file a Rule 11 motion? (For those not versed in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a Rule 11 motion seeks sanctions against a party and/or its attorney for filing frivolous papers in a Federal court.) There is a high burden for demonstrating frivolity, and I guess the argument that calling someone a “crackpot” is a statement of fact is not completely totally insane.
It’s true that the scienceblogs people are staying quiet, but besides the Panda’s Thumb thread you linked, there are discussions going on at Majikthise, Making Light, and Bad Astronomy– and of course the Boing Boing post that lead to Pivar’s book being eviscerated on Amazon.
Why should the crackpot care about the case getting thrown out? That will just be one more example of how thoroughly the scientific establishment censors alternative views. And it will cost Seed and PZ some money they could otherwise spend on useful things. Win/win.
he-he-here’s the coffee….
Oh dammit, I have been trying to change my moniker for days now. First I wanted to be “Louis, the Commenter Previously Known as Louise”, then today it was “Louise, Jittery Provider of espresso”. Phooey.
We don’t need a repeat of Scopes because in spite of Darrow’s brilliant cross-examination, it was a legal and political failure for evolution. Bans on evolution instruction remained the law of the land until the 50s when the fed decided to step into education standards as part of the cold war.
I have to put in a plug for Monkey Girl for anyone who wants to understand what went on behind Dover. It documents in painful detail the ways in which the school board was invaded and replaced by fundamentalists who had no understanding of the policies they put in place.
I’m happy to line up against the looney ideas of crackpot creationists (you should see some of the things I write on my UK blog) but we have to keep monitoring the scientists too.
My link today goes to a story featuring two “scientific” projects, one proves older people (i.e. those with pubic hair) can’t fathom new technology because our frontal lobes turn to mush. The second proposes that blue eyed people are more intelligent and strategic but brown eyed people can run faster. It makes no mention of the fact brown eyed people usually have darker skin. If you know what In mean
Except that if this gets thrown out as a “frivolous case” Pivar’s on the hook for the court costs and will probably get slapped with a fine as well.
the Republicans talk up “tort reform” to stop “nuisance lawsuits”
This has been pointed out many times before, but all the GOP talk about “tort reform” as a means of stopping nuisance lawsuits is a classic example of bait and switch.
There is a problem with nuisance lawsuits. Indeed, many of the people engaging in these lawsuits, from the record company that sued Jim Fogerty for plagiarizing his own song, through the Clinton suits to this, have been either corporate fat-cats, GOP funded individuals or random, usually right wing, nuts.
However, unless you believe that people who engage in frivolous lawsuits are Bayesians who carefully calculate their expected winnings from the suit such that lowering the maximal reward (which the plaintiff has a small, but non-zero probability of obtaining) will lower the expected utility of the suit and cause it to happen less offen, “tort reform” does nothing to stop nuisance suits. Indeed, when the purpose of suing is that the suit per se is a nuisance, why should the potential monetary reward matter to the plaintiff when the purpose of the suit is something else?
The real goal of tort reform, contra the rhetoric about “personal responsibility”, is to enable bad actors to avoid being held fully responsible by the courts. It’s just that those bad actors are using the presence of nuisance lawsuits (in which their allies engage) to rally support for a completely different (though it sounds related) change in laws.
Classic bait and switch, if ya ask me.
I had the great privilege of learning evolutionary theory from the man himself. Gould brow beat us with the fact that there is no ultimate goal of evolution, no evidence of intelligent design, nothing. How anyone could interpret his work any other way is beyond me.
Amanda,
Persecution and censorship imply an exercise of greater power over lesser, e.g. the state deciding what can be published, or the abnegation by fiat of equal rights. I don’t see how the filing of a lawsuit can be considered in this category. We are all at the same liberty (in theory) to have access to civil courts, just as we all have an equal claim to free speech. Pivar may be a prima donna, and this lawsuit may be comically absurd, but unless you have some sort of actual evidence it has emerged from an organized smear campaign, the idea that this is an attempt to muzzle Myers is just a fantasy on your part.
Secondly, where do you get the idea that Pivar is a creationist? Even Myers (never shy about rooting out religious agendae) does not cast Pivar’s book as arising from a secret creationist doctrine, but rather as a misreading of structuralist view of development, which Myers is not entirely unsympathetic to. There’s no mention of supernatural forces in Myers review or on Pivar’s website (I can’t speak for the book itself), and the fact that creationists have found common cause with him because he makes certain unverifyable claims about SJ Gould doesn’t make Pivar a creationist. He may well be one, or he may be a Raelian for all we know, but there is nothing inherently religious or anti-scientific about his theory. It just happens to be bad science.
Plenty of hardcore atheists are pursuing the self-organization model (Stuart Kaufmann being the most notable). Just because it challenges certain features of standard neo-Darwinism doesn’t make this anti-scientific.
Pivar appears to be a fool, filing a foolish suit. But let’s not package this as some kind of conspiracy against the forces of reason. That’s just paranoid.
Ack, I meant to clarify that he’s a tool of the creationists. I’ll fix. I have no idea what Pivar’s actual stances are, but he’s being used as a wedge by creationists hell-bent on implying that because scientists may disagree on arcane details that aren’t really accessible to workaday Joes, then we can toss evolutionary theory completely.
As for the notion that I have to defend the idea that nuisance libel suits are an attempt to silence—um, yeah. The only other legit interpretation is “money-making scheme”.
What DAS said. Tort reform is a scam to insulate the powerful from the consequences of their actions.
re: #27 I don’t deny the creationists love all the ammo they can get, but you haven’t shown any causal link to show that Pivar is being used as a “wedge.” It’s plausible, but no more or less than the possibility that Pivar is just an egomaniac who can’t stand to be criticized.
The suit will stand or fall on its own merits (probably the latter). If there’s a muzzling effect, the fault isn’t the suit, it’s the failure of the judicial system to manage this.
Honestly it all comes down to “crackpot.” If Myers had merely called the *book* ludicrous rather than the author, there would be no grounds for suit even for the most unscrupulous of attorneys . I’m not saying “crackpot” is libel. It’s clearly not. There is no way to objectively determine whether someone is “actually” a crackpot or not. It cannot rise above opinion. My point here is just that the power to silence critics with a libel suit is actually quite limited. There is nothing actionable about saying anything you like about another person’s ideas.
re: #28, you supplied one alternative, and there are surely others, such as my enraged narcissist suggestion above. You have no way of knowing this an organized attempt to stifle speech, and you’ve offered nothing except speculation posing as common sense.
ps those anti-spam numbers are really hard to read
Ahem: Stuart Pivar is a classic crackpot and his book is doodoo.
There, can I get sued, too?
is it true that you can in fact do this in Britain?
i don’t know, but i do know that in britain the burden of proof in a libel case is on the DEFENDANT. meaning when david irving sued barbara lipstadt* for calling him a “holocaust denier”, she had to prove (a) that he denied that the holocaust happened and (b) that the holocaust did in fact happen. and she won, of course, which is both ridiculously “well i should hope so” and ridiculously awesome because the jerk got trounced so publicly and at such painful length. ha.
(who taught at my college, maybe that’s why i know about this — is this story widely known to the rest of y’all?)
This will get tossed the second the judge gets the chance. On top of the opinion/fact problem, there is a specific privilege for book reviews. Seems like PZ has a a reasonable shot at getting Rule 11 sanctions for the attorney, given just how laughable the suit is, and thereby can recover attorney’s fees.
roula:
I know about it because I used to edit David Irving’s Wikipedia article, but I don’t believe that the case is common knowledge in the States.
I suspect this will become a dog and pony show that will end up being most humiliating for the plantiff, even if it gets aired in court.
If he’s a creationist, he can’t be humiliated.
First of all, it’s Deborah Lipstadt, not Barbara. Her book, “History on Trial” recounts the preparation for the lawsuit as well as what went on in the courtroom. It’s a very. very good book (one of those that had me up until 3:00am and until my vision became to blurry to read because it was so compelling).
Hmmm. Doing some thinking about adding a bit to one of my classes all of a sudden. A selection from this alongside Niewert’s “Strawberry Days” which I’m already teaching, which will both lead incredibly well into Gilroy’s “Against Race” which I’m also teaching again. Damn, I should not be adding things to syllabi.
I had also previously read her book, Denying the Holocaust, which is part of what Irving used in his lawsuit. I bought it at the Holocaust Memorial in DC.
Peace, health and strong Sumatra be upon Zuzu.
As for the complaint, it is an unedited hunk of garbage not from a legal point of view (though certainly that too, in spades) but from a typographical, formatting and capitalization point of view. Look at the tabs, the headings. On and on. It doesn’t pass the 10th grade English class test.
It is said that for an attorney, by your pleadings you are known. That attorney will soon wish he had puked on the trial table in front of a camera rather than filed this hunk of steaming excretion. When I imagine my own name rather than his on such a document, I want to vomit.
Regarding British libel law:
Free trade organizations have been used to undermine environmental laws, etc. How come some news conglomerate hasn’t used GATT or something along those lines to overturn British libel laws as bad for inter-national trade in newspapers? Oh yeah … ‘cause most news conglomerates don’t actually care about reporting actual news …
Yes, Christopher Hitchens was a big defender of Irving.
Erika..
“Gould brow beat us with the fact that there is no ultimate goal of evolution,…”
If that’s what he taught…
Is thesis - as allegation or statement of belief or conviction.
Unprovable, undisprovable and lacking ancillary support.
[They tell me it’s really hard to prove a negative.]
The Anthropic Principle/Goldilox Universe people
(among whom I think I might like to be included - incorporates some good scientists)
believe and allege otherwise…and cite
The Goldilox Universe itself as AN evidence, if NOT proof at all.
And systems themselves, however self-organizing
(see:Chris Schoen), are neither argument
for or against Intent, Purpose or Prima Causa.
And so the ‘God’ thing gets back in the mix.
I think it’s worth trying to be added to the case. I called Pivar a classic crackpot on my blog. I think everybody should do the same.
I have my suspicions that when the Republicans talk up “tort reform” to stop “nuisance lawsuits”, they’re not exactly talking about stuff like this
I guess that is why tort reform blog Overlawyered covered the lawsuit two days before Pandagon did. Not sure how you missed that given that the blog post is linked in the post your linked to. But why let facts get in the way of a perfectly good smear?
Stranger Fruit posted a copy of a letter from retired law professor Peter Irons to Stuart Pivar, discussing the libel case’s complete lack of merit. It’s an enjoyable read.
Deborah Lipstadt, not Barbara.
oh, oops. that’s what i get for being lazy and not fact-checking myself. thanks for the fix, majeff.