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Talk:Robert J. Marks II

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Contents

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[edit] Evolutionary informatics redirect

As my user page indicates, I'm Tom English -- someone who's worked on "no free lunch" (and related) theorems since 1995. I've written a book chapter criticizing intelligent design, to appear in April. In my opinion, Marks' delineation of evolutionary informatics is legitimate. I think it's a bit narrow, however, and I hope to broaden the scope in coming years.

If you read No free lunch in search and optimization, where the material on evolutionary informatics presently resides (I'm working on extending the evoinfo content a bit), you'll see the applicability of the NFL theorems to the real world is somewhat in question. I anticipate that "evolutionary informatics" will be a nice replacement term when "no free lunch" no longer holds center stage.

The upshot is that I don't think anyone should equate evolutionary informatics with ID.ThomHImself (talk) 06:41, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi. sorry if I over-reacted. William Dembski has, to say the least, a rather low reputation for honesty and that tends to colour some of our judgements in issues where he is involved (and the term "evolutionary infomatics" is sufficiently obscure that it is difficult to find much about it except in connection with Dembski's trumpeting of the dispute between Marks & Baylor). Given ID's frequent sleights-of-hand it is at times difficult to tell where legitimate scholarship ends, and misrepresentation of that scholarship in the furtherance of pseudoscience begins. It would probably be useful, both for enlightenment of readers and to avoid further misunderstandings among editors, to have some sort of well-cited delineation of what the legitimate field of evolutionary informatics deals with, and what (if any) abuses ID makes of it. HrafnTalkStalk 07:58, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
Evolutionary informatics begins with the no free lunch theorems, and that's how information on the EvoInfo lab made it's way into the "Intelligent design" section of the article. The best definition of evolutionary informatics is ostentative -- look at the papers Dembski and Marks cite, not just what they say. You're right that things need to be made clearer for readers, but at the moment what exists is an explanation of the key notion of active information, along with a suggestion that Dembski and Marks are subtly preserving aspects of specified complexity in their work. What I've written is certainly not a whitewash. But I'm also conscious of avoiding ad hominem arguments. I'll try to get an evolutionary informatics stub in place in the next few days.ThomHImself (talk) 10:54, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
There's a passable evolutionary informatics article in place now.ThomHImself (talk) 13:54, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Marks, the "ID proponent"?

To my knowledge, Marks speaks unequivocally in terms of creation. Just follow the Wiki link to the quotes of him. If you know anything about Campus Crusade for Christ, you know that the members are not inclined to "hide their light under a bushel." Marks is no doubt sympathetic to intelligent design, considering that "creation = design + fabrication." But I believe that he, personally, is an overt creationist, not a stealth creationist (IDist).

Marks and I had an email exchange regarding whether the EvoInfo lab promoted ID. He said there was an element of ID, given his interest in where information in systems comes from, but that he didn't consider himself to be doing ID research.

The upshot is that unless someone comes up with a citation clearly indicating that Marks is an ID proponent, I'm going to remove the claim that he is one. Doing work with Dembski that Dembski might use to support his ID arguments does not make Marks into an ID proponent. ThomHImself (talk) 05:34, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Hrafn used hearsay from a blog source (unacceptable under WP:BLP) in an attempt to justify the claim that Marks is an IDist. But Marks is said to have referred overtly to the Genesis account of creation in his presentation. This actually supports my hunch that he is a neo-creationist, not an IDist. Marks has been careful to avoid labeling, and I believe that attaching one to him at present is inherently contentious (unacceptable under WP:BLP). ThomHImself (talk) 22:30, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Resolved: Marks could not be more overt in identifying God as the creator of the universe and attempting to reconcile a close parse of Genesis with scientific data than he is in "Genesis and Science: Compatibility Extraordinaire." This resides both at Baylor's website and one of his private websites. In short, however misguided you may regard him, he is a good, honest creationist. Even Dawkins has acknowledged that such a thing exists. ThomHImself (talk) 22:23, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Dubious sources

I have to question the appropriateness of using the Panda's Thumb (a shared weblog) and The Austringer (a personal weblog) as sources in an encyclopedia article. (I sincerely doubt that whoever added them would stand for similar use of material at Uncommon Descent.) If the weblog entries are well sourced, then use their sources directly in the article and acknowledge where you got them. ThomHImself (talk) 06:29, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Any comparison between the Panda's Thumb (blog) and The Austringer on one hand and Uncommon Descent on the other is a bit like comparing Salon.com to Worldnetdaily. While superficially similar, they are far apart in their standards and the reputability of their contributors. The former (in each comparison) are widely considered WP:RS, the latter are not (except as to the personal opinions of their contributors). HrafnTalkStalk 06:59, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
The introduction to WP:RS clearly states that there are special restrictions on sources for biographies of living persons, and that WP:BLP applies. And WP:BLP exhorts, "Be very firm about the use of high quality references. Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about living persons — whether the material is negative, positive, or just questionable — should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion..." It also states, "Self-published books, zines, websites, and blogs should never be used as a source for material about a living person, unless written or published by the subject of the article..." I am acting immediately and without further discussion, as instructed by unambiguous Wiki policy, and will take the matter to administrators if an edit war ensues. ThomHImself (talk) 22:01, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
OK, I didn't feel good about doing it without discussion. ThomHImself (talk) 01:27, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

You realise that if we go down this road, most of the article disappears? I'm removing the 'Technical contribution' section as the entire section is interpretation of primary sources without secondary sources as the basis for this, in violation of WP:PSTS & WP:SYNTH. HrafnTalkStalk 02:52, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Only some parts were in violation. And WP:BLP does not specify immediate removal under these circumstances, anyway. The section is easy to fix. I am reverting and then working on it. ThomHImself (talk) 17:33, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "See also" link to Discovery Institute intelligent design campaigns

The policy on biographies of living persons WP:BLP calls for high-quality sources of claims, and there is no such source to support the notion that Marks participated in a DI campaign. To suggest that he did so is inflammatory, and I am going beyond what is called for in WP:BLP by discussing the content prior to deleting it. ThomHImself (talk) 22:54, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The website controversy

The fact that a living person has been involved in controversy does not give editors license to violate WP:BLP in his biography. The controversy may be treated elsewhere with fewer restrictions on sources. I am going beyond what is called for in WP:BLP by discussing the content prior to deleting it. ThomHImself (talk) 22:54, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I have given the reader enough information to guess that Marks may have created the impression that the EIL was a Baylor-sponsored organization, that there was bad blood between Dembski and Baylor, that Marks may have been trying to get Dembski through the back door, and that Baylor was responding accordingly. But we really don't know what happened, and we certainly don't have sources that satisfy WP:BLP. And this is, first and foremost, a biography of Bob Marks, no matter that the ID project regards it as it's own. ThomHImself (talk) 01:20, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I have moved the detailed discussion of the Evolutionary Informatics Lab controversy to the main article on the entity. It is possible in that article to draw on sources that are not permitted in biographies of living persons. I moved material that used to be here into the main article. ThomHImself (talk) 11:21, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] When did the EIL come into existence?

The article claimed July and August 2007, but discussion is time-stamped June 2007 at no free lunch theorems. I am making the date no more specific than 2007 for now. ThomHImself (talk) 23:10, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Marks and ID

What goes into biographies of living persons must be well sourced. See WP:BLP. I have found no evidence that Marks advocates ID. No one has supplied a source here. I've said a lot about this above. Yet people keep showing up to tag Marks with ID. This has degenerated to an edit war, in my opinion.ThomHImself (talk) 04:19, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

To user:orangemarlin: If you read the source supporting the statement that Marks is an overt creationist, you will see it contains nothing like advocacy of ID. It is dishonest to insert text suggesting that the slides for his creationism presentation support the claim that he advocates ID. So I'm a "nutcase" for requiring you to treat Marks as ethically as required by WP:BLP? Every sourced statement that ever appeared in this article is still in the encyclopedia. I created Evolutionary Informatics Lab bending over backwards to avoid the appearance of bias. Any statement that had a source allowed by WP:BLP stayed here. All other sourced statements about Marks moved to the other article. Please explain clearly what you object to in that. ThomHImself (talk) 07:01, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

See WP:DUCK. Have a fine evening. OrangeMarlin Talk• Contributions 07:19, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
That was clear. ThomHImself (talk) 11:21, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

As I write this, a sentence of the introduction begins, "A noted proponent of intelligent design and overt creationist..." I noted the fraudulent sourcing above. Now, noted by whom? ID opponents have said it so many times to themselves in the blogosphere, they don't realize they never had a source. Marks sympathizes with IDists, and IDists like him, so he must be one. Right? In reality, the slides for Marks' apologetics presentation on the concordance of scientific and Biblical accounts of the history of the universe (including the appearance of biological types) are anathema to ID. If you go around the world proclaiming that God created everything just as your holy book says, you are no IDist. You are not participating in the intelligent design movement. The movement cannot achieve its primary goal of getting a challenge to evolutionary theory into public-school biology curricula without denying religious motivation and using bizarre language to avoid all forms of the word create. You cannot be both an overt creationist and an ID advocate. And no one has provided verifiable evidence that Marks ever advocated ID.

As I write this, the last sentence of the introduction is "Marks has been involved in several of the more notable controversies around the Discovery Institute intelligent design campaigns promoting intelligent design." This is an attempt to come as close as possible to saying Marks has participated in DI campaigns promoting ID without actually saying it. The implicit source is a Wikipedia article, and this is not a reliable third-party source, as required by WP:SOURCES. And there's really only one controversy -- Baylor's deletion of the Evolutionary Informatics Lab website. From Discovery Institute intelligent design campaigns:

The closure of the short-lived Evolutionary Informatics Lab formed by Baylor University engineering professor Robert J. Marks II, which included Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary research professor in philosophy William Dembski as a postdoctoral researcher. The lab was shut down and its website was deleted because Baylor's administration considered that it violated university policy forbidding professors from creating the impression that their personal views represent Baylor as an institution. Baylor however permitted Marks to resume work in the informatics lab on his own time and maintain his website, provided a disclaimer accompany any intelligent design-advancing research makes clear that the work does not represent the university's position.

The title of the article does not make this into a DI campaign. None of the sources identifies this as a DI campaign. The treatment of the lab as a DI campaign promoting ID is a contentious conjecture. The use of the article title in Marks' biography is not merely misleading, but defamatory. The other block of text on Marks is this:

In 2007, the Discovery Institute nominated Robert J. Marks' 'Evolutionary Informatics Lab' web-site as "Banned Item of the Year", after it was deleted from the Baylor University server

I get four Google hits for "Banned Item of the Year" AND "Evolutionary Informatics Lab" -- two stories at the DI's "Evolution News" site, a video starring DI's Casey Luskin, and a good ol' Wikipedia article. There is no controversy here.

The claims I am removing (by reverting) are not verifiable. I am again going beyond WP:BLP to discuss this prior to reversion:

Editors should remove any contentious material about living persons that is unsourced, relies upon sources that do not meet standards specified in Wikipedia:Verifiability, or is a conjectural interpretation of a source (see Wikipedia:No original research). The three-revert rule does not apply to such removals, though editors are advised to seek help from an administrator or at the BLP noticeboard if they find themselves violating 3RR, rather than dealing with the situation alone. Content may be re-inserted only if it conforms to this policy.

ThomHImself (talk) 11:21, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Who says it is contentious? Marks himself has been quite open about his association with and support for ID. That is a ludicrous assertion. Sorry.--Filll (talk) 17:33, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Guilt by association. "Support" is a well chosen ambiguity. If he has been "quite open," it should be easy for you or someone else to come up with at least one source allowed by WP:BLP. Please do so. ThomHImself (talk) 00:40, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The edit war

The fight is over the last two sentences of the intro, which I say contain unverified claims:

A noted proponent of intelligent design and overt creationist,[2] he is a subject of the 2008 pro-intelligent design motion picture, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.[3][4] Marks has been involved in several of the more notable controversies around the Discovery Institute intelligent design campaigns promoting intelligent design.

Reference 2, "Genesis and Science: Compatibility Extraordinaire," is Marks' creationist presentation. There is no ID content. Reference 3, "Baptist professors featured in new film," Southern Baptist Texan, verifies that Marks is in Expelled, not that he is a proponent of ID. Reference 4 is an Expelled press release. It does not mention Marks, but verifies that the film is pro-ID.

A "noted proponent of ID" should have written about ID somewhere. He should at least have pro-ID statements quoted in some reliable source.

There is no third-party source for the second sentence. Marks has been involved in just one controversy -- Baylor's deletion of his website, which had no ID content. There is no evidence that the Discovery Institute was involved. ThomHImself (talk) 02:17, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] what the hell is an "overt creationist"?

Just curious. How is it contrasted from a "covert creationist"? I think Marks ideas on ID and creationism are nutty but smearing the guy makes Wikipedia look stupid. I know guys like Odd Nature have a hard on for Marks and are comfortable using Wiki as a vehicle to smear him but maybe setting up a blog would be a better place to do a hatchet job? Seriously Angry Christian (talk) 02:50, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Do we call Billy Graham and overt creationist? Do we call Ted Haggard and overt creationist? Do we call Al Sharpton an overt creationist? For that matter do we call Richard Dawkins an overt atheist? This is just too weird. We're supposed to be an encyclopedia. Please use a blog to grind your axe. Angry Christian (talk) 03:19, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree that the phrase is hideous, and reflects poorly on Wiki. But ID is covert creationism, and Marks is not covert in his embrace of creationist views. On April 1, I located his creationist presentation, and changed

He is also a noted proponent of intelligent design and has been involved in several of the more notable controversies around the Discovery Institute intelligent design campaigns promoting it.

to

Although overt in his expression of creationist views, he is a subject of the 2008 documentary motion picture on intelligent design, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.

Hrafn had to call him a name, and changed it to

An overt creationist,[1] he is a subject of the 2008 pro-intelligent design motion picture, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.[2]

with the comment ""Although" is WP:WTA (and out of place -- ID is Neo-creationism), the movie is blatantly partisan." Yes, dogs are canines and jackals are canines, so a dog is a jackal. That's straight out of Monty Python. I left in "overt creationist" as compromise. Someone later reintroduced the "several of the more notable controversies" pap.
I am going to rewrite, taking your remarks into consideration. Thank you. ThomHImself (talk) 04:14, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Let's see:

  1. Marks hires an extremely prominent ID proponent (through what seems to be a bizarre post-doc, given that he's already a prof at a nearby seminary), which said proponent trumpets as a triumph for ID.
    1. This is paid for by a grant from another ID proponent.
  2. He presents at a symposium sponsored by the principal ID organisation (and named after an earlier symposium famous in creationist circles).
  3. He features in an ID propaganda movie.

But you don't think that we can call him an ID proponent? HrafnTalkStalk 04:34, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Association fallacy. You need WP:BLP#Reliable_sources, not "reasoning." You can't find any because Marks has never advocated ID. Marks did not present on ID at the Wistar Retrospective (why did you omit the title in your citation?). Marks has told me his collaborative work with Dembski does not "smack of ID." Interesting choice of words for an ID advocate, don't you think? Too bad I can't use my email as a source (and you can't use hearsay from the PT blog). ThomHImself (talk) 06:45, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
The ID movement is an explicitly (in Phillip E. Johnson‎'s word) 'big tent' movement that encompasses a wide range from out-and-out YECs, through OECs to those like Michael Behe who accept some neutered form of evolution and common descent. ID is simply a convenient and pseudoscientific wrapper, couching in terms of 'Complexity' and 'Information' (c.f. Dembski's fictitious Law of Conservation of Information and his International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design), what they really have in common -- a bunch of tired old creationist anti-evolution arguments. What did Marks present on at Wistar II? The Need for Active Information in Evolutionary Search. But no, it couldn't possibly have had anything to do with ID, could it? What he said had nothing to do with "things from the evolutionary literature that have been pointed out to me by Bill [Dembski]..." or ad hominem attacks on Richard Dawkins. The "active information" of his title couldn't possibly be the same 'information can't arise naturally but has to come from some external intelligence' canard that Dembski has been pushing in the aforementioned 'Law' for years? I'm sure it likewise had nothing to do with Dembski's paper: Conservation of Active Information in Evolutionary Search (though it's funny that Dembski's title does sound a lot like it involves his 'Law'). Daniel Brooks must have gotten that all wrong -- probably zoned out in the middle of Marks' presentation and accidentally read Dembski's mind in a hitherto undocumented instance of telepathy. HrafnTalkStalk 08:20, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Your notion of ID doesn't jibe with the featured article on intelligent design. It says that ID "is a modern form of the traditional teleological argument for the existence of God, modified to avoid specifying the nature or identity of the designer as a method to avoid scrutiny from the courts." This is absolutely correct. If you look at the end of Marks' slide presentation on Genesis and science, you'll see his assertion that science and the Bible give different causes for the events we have seen in nature, and that it is simply faith that leads to acceptance that the cause is God. This is a rejection of all arguments for the existence of God. Furthermore, Marks has never said anything like "Maybe extraterrestrials did it" in an attempt to get around U.S. law. He will tell you unequivocally that God did it. To call a man who does not embrace the teleological argument and who is doing nothing to subvert U.S. law an ID proponent is defamation. Marks believes by faith that the Bible is scientifically correct. Unlike Dembski, he's not trying to trick anyone.
This is not a guy who is trying to sneak Designer into the public-school biology classes. Your only response is that he hangs out with people who are. Obviously he has some similar interests. But he doesn't fit what Wiki says an IDist is, and I think that is a good reason not to call him one. ThomHImself (talk) 11:27, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
In concluding I'd say that if he turns up to ID events to mouth ID arguments, then he's an IDer. Guilt by his own actions, not by association. HrafnTalkStalk 08:20, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Would you care to explain active information to me, just so I know what level to interact with you on? I have worked in evolutionary informatics since 1995, and I do understand active information. Did your "nixplanatory filter" not allow these presentations to pass into consciousness:
# "Computational Intelligence: A Free Source of Information?" International Symposium on Neural Networks (ISNN), Chengdu, China (May 29, 2006) A Keynote Talk.
# "Conservation of Information in Evolutionary Search Algorithms: Measuring the Cost of Success," University of Missouri, Columbia, (November 12, 2007). IEEE CIS Distinguished Lecture.
Do you have the least notion of what it means to give the keynote at ISNN or to be named a distinguished lecturer of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society? He is not mouthing ID arguments, and he is making his arguments to some fine audiences. To put the Wistar Retrospective presentation into the article and leave these out is to violate WP:NPOV. ThomHImself (talk) 10:36, 18 April 2008 (UTC)


There is no need for me to "explain active information" -- Mark Perakh has already done so, in the context of Dembski's arguments, here:

After a while, a reply to Olle's article was posted, seemingly authored by both Marks and Dembski (see Active Information in Evolutionary Search). One of the main themes of this reply is the idea that evolutionary algorithms can succeed (in particular outperforming blind search) only if they are assisted by what the authors call "Active Information." (AI). As opposite to what they call "endogeneous" information, suggest Dembski and Marks, AI can only be either front-loaded into the search algorithm, or supplied by an outside source -- which, most importantly, can be a certain intelligent agent (which is just another rendition of Dembski's earlier vigorously promoted "Displacement problem." ...

Tom also asserts that, unlike Dembski's CSI, which Tom has strongly criticized, "active information" is a useful and reasonable concept. I agree that the concept of AI as such may be construed as reasonable. However, the question is not whether AI as a concept has contents, but rather whether or not evolutionary algorithms can only succeed if the AI is ether front-loaded or supplied from outside sources. This question is related not only to Dembski's "displacement problem" but also to the significance of the NFL theorems for biological evolution.

This appears to be exactly the argument Dembski used to make for CSI, which Perakh mentions you, Tom English have apparently stated that Dembski abandoned for the concept of AI. Perakh's account of Marks' (mis)use of AI also seems remarkably similar to Brooks'. Coincidence? I would also point out that this 'no endogenous information myth' is so well-worn a creationist argument that it features here in a New Scientist list of Evolution: 24 myths and misconceptions

As to why Marks was able to present AI-related stuff to such august bodies, I can suggest two possibilities:

  1. He concentrated on the "useful and reasonable" aspects of AI, and left out the suspect limits-to-evolution ones; and/or
  2. What John W. Patterson described as:

Engineering societies seem to be uninterested in policing themselves, as regards either ethical irresponsibility or scientific incompetence. Thus engineers can publicly endorse ludicrous forms of pseudoscience without being publicly chastised by their professional societies. My experience is that examining boards simply brand the embarrassing utterances as being outside their purview, even though the engineer involved may be flaunting his engineering status while proclaiming the most absurd distortions of engineering science. Were biologists, geologists, or paleontologists to endorse publicly a pseudoscience such as creationism, their chance of achieving or retaining prestigious academic positions would be greatly undermined, as would their chances for high office in professional societies. Only in Bible colleges, seminaries, and creationist ministries can the latter succeed as outspoken creationists.

I would conclude by suggesting that the combination of your association with Marks, combined by your defence of his reputation on multiple fora, places you in a WP:COI on this article, and would request that you desist from editing it, per that wikipedia policy. HrafnTalkStalk 11:43, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

My efforts to persuade people to treat Marks fairly have damaged my professional reputation. You cannot make a case against me under WP:COI when I am so clearly acting against my own interests.
I haven't updated my vita recently. I am not a member of the IEEE. I have never met Marks. We have never collaborated. The extent of my participation in the Evolutionary Informatics Lab was to lend my name in protest of what I regarded as Baylor's infringement on his academic freedom. You will find comments in no forum in which I called for anything but fair treatment of Marks or neglected to state in strong terms my opposition to ID. Thus I may use the sources you consider damning to document my longstanding NPOV. Marks is the only person I know of who is mistakenly called an ID proponent. Calling on you to stick by the standards laid out in WP:BLP is nothing but a continuation of my call for fair play.
My Wiki contributions related to Marks are not only here, but in the articles on the lab, evolutionary informatics, and no free lunch in search and optimization. In the article on the lab, I listed myself as a former affiliate, despite the fact that it is detrimental to my reputation. In the articles on the lab and no free lunch in search and optimization, I pointed out how the use of active information is related to the Dembski's past use of specified complexity. All of the inadequately sourced material I removed from this article per WP:BLP#Reliable_sources is in the article on the lab.
If you contact Mark Perakh, he'll tell you that he knows from personal communication with me that when I joined the lab, I planned on posting a new "free lunch" theorem that would have severely undermined the work of Dembski and Marks. I intended to hold Marks to the principle that adversarial scholars must stand up for one another's freedom of expression. I was not able to complete the proof before Dembski and / or Marks unethically revised the paper containing data that had been shown bogus. (This incident should be reported in the article on the lab. There are only blog sources to draw upon, so it can't appear here.) That was when I left the lab. So there is further evidence that I am acting ethically, and am not giving Marks a pass. 74.221.114.73 (talk) 19:54, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
P.S.--Perakh's blog assessment of active information belong in Evolutionary Informatics Lab. Please add it there. Blog sources are not allowed in biographies of living persons. ThomHImself (talk) 21:46, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wiki policy relevant to labeling Marks an ID proponent

I insist simply that this article adhere to Wikipedia policy on biographies of living persons:

This page in a nutshell: Wikipedia articles can affect real people's lives. This gives us an ethical and legal responsibility. Biographical material must be written with the greatest care and attention to verifiability, neutrality and avoiding original research, particularly if it is contentious.

Statements obtained by synthesis, a form of original research, are permitted nowhere in Wiki. There is no reliable source in which Marks directly advocates ID. There is no reliable source for a biography of a living person demonstrating that Marks' position is actually that of intelligent design. The "ID proponent" label has come only from disallowed sources and synthesis.

My only deletion of content from Wiki is the claim that Marks is an ID proponent. I created the Evolutionary Informatics Lab article to include statements verified by sources not permitted in BLP's. But WP:BLP applies also to statements about Marks' person in the other article. You are free to say more about his activities there, but you have no more latitude in labeling him.

Please respond only to policy in this section. ThomHImself (talk) 21:46, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Presentation at Wistar Retrospective Symposium

Hrafn has used a footnote to introduce blog sources (including hearsay) not allowed in a BLP. I invite him to add material (but not hearsay) on Marks evolutionary informatics presentations to Evolutionary Informatics Lab. To maintain NPOV, he should report on all of Marks' presentations on the topic, not just the ones that cast Marks in a bad light. The content of Marks' slides is strictly technical. The (inadequate for BLP's) DI source bills the symposium as technical. The blogged hearsay of an incensed scientist does not trump the prima facie evidence that the presentation was technical. Thus I am moving the publication back to "Technical contributions" and including the title, and removing all sources not allowed by WP:BLP#Reliable_sources. I again invite Hrafn to contribute to the EvoInfo Lab's article, where he will have greater latitude in sourcing.

I have justified my action with Wiki policy. Please do not revert without discussing how the original is justified. ThomHImself (talk) 22:23, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

A Statement by a DI official that the DI organised a symposium and an email from another DI official actually implementing that organising process is hardly "hearsay". Given that I only used these sources to substantiate the DI's own activities, they are hardly a violation of WP:BLP#Reliable_sources. The creationist/anti-evolution implications of calling it 'Wistar' was pre-emptive, in case of a challenge that although the pro-ID DI had organised it, it wasn't a pro-ID event. Not all events a neo-nazi organisation organise are necessarily neo-nazi -- but they wouldn't call one that wasn't 'Hitler's Birthday Party'. I again invite ThomHImself to cease and desist editing on an article where he has a clear WP:COI, due to his association with Marks. HrafnTalkStalk 06:56, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
I invite you to actually make it clear that I have a conflict of interest. I invite you to detail my violations of NPOV. Do it in a new section, please.
I shall compromise on Marks' presetation. I believe that working disallowed sources into a footnote is wrong. But I'll give on that. What I expect in return is that you accept that you are imposing your own POV when you characterize a presentation at the symposium as a religious activity. Furthermore, leaving out the title and a link to the slides is very poor practice. You keep the footnote, but the presentation, it's title, and a link to the slides move to technical contributions. Furthermore, it is entirely appropriate to tell the reader that this is the kind of material that's at the EvoInfo lab. It makes the pieces of the article fit together. I want to add the other presentations on evolutionary informatics later. WP:NPOV requires balance, and you are not justified in selecting just the presentation that casts him in the worst light. ThomHImself (talk) 07:54, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, but I just looked at the source for the letter Dan Brooks supposedly received. It is utterly unreliable, and I think you know that. The "editor's note" at the top is garbage. We have no idea who the editor is. We have no idea where the letter actually originated. Please justify using it before returning it to the article. ThomHImself (talk) 08:30, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WP:COI

[Tom English] also provided the reasons he chose to get affiliated with Marks's virtual informatics lab. He praised Marks as an outstanding scientist, and, while objecting to ID as such, acknowledged the legitimacy of the concept of "active information" (AI) promoted by Dembski (who, Tom suggests, has given up his Complex Specified Information concept replacing it with the AI). ...

In his comments Tom asserts that Robert Marks is a great scientist and has nothing to do with ID. ...

Tom also asserts that, unlike Dembski's CSI, which Tom has strongly criticized, "active information" is a useful and reasonable concept. I agree that the concept of AI as such may be construed as reasonable. However, the question is not whether AI as a concept has contents, but rather whether or not evolutionary algorithms can only succeed if the AI is ether front-loaded or supplied from outside sources. This question is related not only to Dembski's "displacement problem" but also to the significance of the NFL theorems for biological evolution.

– Mark Perakh, Olle, Tom, and "Active Information"

I think this association/advocacy on behalf of Marks, his ties to ID, and the legitimacy of 'Active Information' gives you a WP:COI on this article. HrafnTalkStalk 08:57, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Why did you quote this secondary source, a highly opinionated response, rather than the primary source? My neutral point of view is documented in posts on the web. The only way you can get around that fact is by appeal to authority. The point of view I have advanced prior to editing this article is that assigning guilt by association is fallacious, and that Marks' and Dembski's collaborative work must be evaluated from scratch, with an open mind. I challenge you to find a contradiction to that in my own words. BTW, I have humiliated Salvador Cordova for cherry picking on several occasions. 74.221.114.73 (talk) 18:00, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Filll says in the following section,

I have done a cursory investigation here. Marks signed the pro-intelligent design petition, A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism. He has published several papers associated with intelligent design. He has numerous other associations with intelligent design. This is just ridiculous obfuscation and spurious opposition. ThomHimself, you know and I know and anyone who can use google knows you are full of it, and just trying to be difficult on purpose. The only thing is, I have not bothered to spend several hours building a case and a set of links to bury you, yet. But we both know I can. So I find this sort of WP:BAITing and provocation just sort of tiresome. Please, give it a rest.

No, it is not spurious opposition or WP:BAITing. I learned Wiki policy on biographies of living persons (especially the added restrictions on sources), as well as the great importance Wiki places on abiding by it, only when Hrafn began invoking policy. I am well aware of violations of WP:BLP in other BLP's for subjects of Expelled. Throughout the Intelligent Design WikiProject, I see editors synthesizing statements (adding original research) and selectively reporting opinion on one side of the debate without reporting opinion on the other side.

If you think it would take you several hours to build your case by googling, then you must be contemplating cherry picking. I am more than happy for you to include all of my remarks from any blog thread you find. You're sure to leave out Google scholar, so I've taken care of that for you. Note also that my chapter "Intelligent Design and Evolutionary Computation," which is highly critical of ID, had to pass peer review before being accepted for inclusion in Design by Evolution: Advances in Evolutionary Design edited by Philip F. Hingston, Luigi C. Barone, and Zbigniew Michalewicz (Springer, to appear June 2008). ThomHImself (talk) 20:45, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

From frequently asked questions on neutral point of view:

Lack of neutrality as an excuse to delete

The neutrality policy is used sometimes as an excuse to remove text that is perceived as biased. Isn't this a problem?

In many cases, yes. Many editors believe that bias is not in itself reason to remove text, because in some articles all additions are likely to express bias. Instead, material that balances the bias should be added, and sources should be found per WP:V. Material that violates WP:NOR should be removed.

Hrafn has replaced my appropriately sourced statement specifying precisely what active information is with his inadequately sourced opinion of what it is. He has also deleted my statement indicating that Marks has not only presented on evolutionary informatics at the ID-associated Wistar Retrospective, but in a keynote address at a major engineering conference. This merely balanced his biased selection from Marks' four presentations on evolutionary informatics. I am working to enforce Wiki policy, to make accurate statements, and to achieve balance. I have introduced Hrafn's blog-sourced opinion of Mark Perakh on active information to Evolutionary Informatics Lab, where the source is adequate, to achieve balance in that article. ThomHImself (talk) 20:45, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Hrafn has replaced the material without discussing it here. His characterization of active information is second-hand and factually incorrect. It does not agree even with what Perakh says. He has again deleted the link to the paper in which Marks and Dembski define the concept, preferring to route the reader instead to a blog opinion piece which is disallowed by WP:BLP both as a blog source and as an opinion piece. Active information is defined as the log-ratio of the probability that a given search algorithm A solves a problem instance with n trials ("queries") to the probability that random search solves the instance in n trials. This is just a defined measure of information, and it has no particular significance in itself. The issue is how it's used. There is no peer-reviewed publication on active information, and there is no peer-reviewed criticism of it. Analysis of applied mathematics always calls for rigorous analysis and proof, not an opinion piece by an anti-ID mathematician. I'm reverting to the previous version per WP:BLP#Reliable_sources. Then I will do my best to find something in Hrafn's version to preserve.

Hrafn's statement that active information and specified complexity are similar violates WP:synthesis just as my statement that the definitions of evolutionary informatics and informatics were similar did (see Talk:Evolutionary Informatics Lab). It was Hrafn who pointed out the violation to me, and I removed it. I invite Hrafn to apply the vast knowledge of Wikipedia policy evident in his policing of others to his own editing.

Hrafn, I will gladly engage with you in discussion of how to present information verified by sources allowed in Marks' biography. Sources are the starting point, not the truth you feel must be conveyed. I don't think there's any allowed source on active information but Marks' own work. I have made it clear to you that blogs are not reliable sources for biographies of living persons. You have repeatedly and willfully violated policy. Countering with WP:COI is no justification for your own actions. ThomHImself (talk) 07:29, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Response to Hrafn's apparent refusal to compromise

In my defense of the Wiki policy outlined above, it is "certain that the interests of Wikipedia remain paramount" as required by Wikipedia policy on conflict of interest. It is nowhere more important to adhere to Wiki policy than in biographies of living persons.

I previously offered to allow Hrafn to deviate from policy in a footnote in exchange for non-suppression of information that does not advance his POV. He did not accept my edit embodying that compromise, and did not engage in further discussion of compromise here. Instead he entered additional material "verified" by disallowed blog sources, including a highly slanted opionion piece from a web page, to paint the picture of Marks he prefers. I have invited him to draw on the disallowed sources at Evolutionary Informatics Lab. He has gone so far as to leave out contradictory opinion he knows is included in that article, in clear violation of WP:NPOV.

I am returning to strict enforcement of Wiki policy on biographies of living persons, which specifies immediate removal of inadequately sourced material. I will hack first, and smooth the rough edges later. ThomHImself (talk) 18:37, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

I have done a cursory investigation here. Marks signed the pro-intelligent design petition, A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism. He has published several papers associated with intelligent design. He has numerous other associations with intelligent design. This is just ridiculous obfuscation and spurious opposition. ThomHimself, you know and I know and anyone who can use google knows you are full of it, and just trying to be difficult on purpose. The only thing is, I have not bothered to spend several hours building a case and a set of links to bury you, yet. But we both know I can. So I find this sort of WP:BAITing and provocation just sort of tiresome. Please, give it a rest.--Filll (talk) 18:48, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
This is a comment that belongs in the section here titled WP:COI. I respond there. ThomHImself (talk) 18:41, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Huh? you claim I have some relation to Marks? How? On what basis?--Filll (talk) 00:05, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Balanced treatment of active information using only sources allowed in BLPs

The only reliable sources for a biography of a living person on active information that anyone has provided thus far are Marks' c.v., Marks list of talks, and Marks' own unpublished papers. Until other reliable sources arrive, what we say must be drawn from just those sources. Here is the contested paragraph:

Marks and Dembski disseminate unpublished work at the Evolutionary Informatics Lab website. In it they develop a formal measure of active information, and claim that it "measures the contribution of problem-specific information" to successful search for a solution to a problem.[13] Marks and Dembski argue that experimenters' introduction of active information into computer programs simulating evolution accounts for their reported successes. In June 2007 Marks presented "The Need for Active Information in Evolutionary Search" at the Wistar Retrospective Symposium.[14] In May 2006, he presented "Computational Intelligence: A Free Source of Information?" as a keynote address at the International Symposium on Neural Networks.[15] As of April 2008, Marks' curriculum vitae includes no peer-reviewed publication with "evolutionary informatics" or "active information" or "conservation of information" in the title.[16]

It is certainly appropriate to include Marks' presentation of his ideas on information in search at the Wistar Retrospective. There should come along eventually a reliable source characterizing the symposium. But it would be unfair to suggest that Marks has presented only to a fringe element. The treatment is not balanced unless we include the keynote address at a major engineering conference. I think it's also important to note not only that Marks is making presentations, but that he's not had a peer-reviewed publication on active information and related concepts. I invite Hrafn to explain why he calls this mix of positive and negative "whitewashing" in the revision history.

Perhaps the titles of presentations belong in references rather than in the text. But they must appear in the article. To omit them is very shabby scholarship.

Hrafn's explanation of active information was needlessly vague and factually incorrect: "Marks' and Dembski's collaboration included work on the concept of 'Active Information', which they assert is necessary for evolutionary algorithms to succeed..." Italicizing, not quoting, a new term is appropriate. Even a cursory glance at the paper by Dembski and Marks will reveal that active information is defined for stochastic search algorithms in general, not just evolutionary algorithms. For evolutionary algorithms to succeed? Succeed at what? Succeed at solving a problem. (Note that for simplicity I have made the maximum number of "queries" to solve the problem part of the problem specification, and have reduced "problem instance" to "problem," as is common in the technical literature. I have tried to extend what Hrafn said to make sense without overburdening the reader with technical detail.) Active information is the logarithm of how much more likely a particular search algorithm is to solve a particular problem instance with a given number of trials than is random search. ThomHImself (talk) 09:05, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

  1. Please demonstrate why Perakh's essay is not a WP:RS on the topic of Marks' work on active information.
  2. The 'Wistar Retrospective' was a DI/ID propaganda stunt in which Marks participated -- it was not "fringe", it was outright pseudoscience. This is not in doubt. The only reason it isn't included is because ThomHImself is WP:GAMEing to prevent the DI's words being used toi describe the DI's own actions. This is a grey area of WP:BLP#Reliable_sources, so I have ceased to fight over it.
  3. Your piece is a whitewash as:
    1. it only includes D&M's claims, not the criticism made of them.
    2. it appears to cherry-pick the most innocuous things that D&M have to say, and omits the discussion that appears (both to Perakh, and to my admittedly less discerning eyes) to be implying that evolutionary algorithms can't create new information that wasn't "folded into" them as active information.
  4. 'Active information' was in inverted commas, not quotation marks.
  5. Both "evolutionary algorithms" & "succeed" were employed in the Perakh in the passage I was summarising: "One of the main themes of this reply is the idea that evolutionary algorithms can succeed (in particular outperforming blind search) only if they are assisted by what the authors call "Active Information." (AI)." ThomHImself appears to object to the fact that I was obeying WP:PSTS by relying on a secondary source for interpretation of the primary source, rather than interpreting it myself (which would have been WP:SYNTH). If ThomHImself disagrees with Perakh's interpretation, he is welcome to have his own published. Until that time, Perakh's is the only reliable secondary source we have.

I would conclude by stating that your demand that we include only Marks' own work (as filtered through your apparently overly-sympathetic interpretation) is exactly why we have WP:COI. HrafnTalkStalk 12:57, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Hrafn, You first placed the paragraph in "Religious activities," and tried to synthesize a claim (add original research) that Marks is an ID proponent. Of course, you were also pushing your opinion that the meeting billed as technical was "really" a religious activity. You also worked absurdly unreliable sources -- a letter of unverifiable origin including an editorial note by an unknown editor, and hearsay about the symposium -- into a footnote. After I had moved the paragraph to "Technical contributions" repeatedly, you moved it to the section on the EIL controversy and emphasized active information. You made Perakh's criticism of how Dembski and Marks use active information appear to be criticism of active information itself, ignoring (from your own quote above)

I agree that the concept of AI as such may be construed as reasonable. However, the question is not whether AI as a concept has contents, but rather whether or not evolutionary algorithms can only succeed if the AI is ether front-loaded or supplied from outside sources.

Having gotten your foot in the door, you shoved the rest of the way in with your inclusion of Perakh's opinion that Marks has propounded intelligent design with his work on active information. Beyond that, you laid on guilt by association by pointing that Dembski, whose biography this is not, presented on the topic at the Wistar Retrospective. Evidently to make sure there was no favorable light whatsoever, you suppressed the titles of Marks' and Dembski's presentations.
WP:BLP most definitely does not allow you to synthesize claims about a living person from sources that would be considered unreliable if the claims were drawn directly from those sources. It does not even allow you to use those sources to create negative innuendo.
Moving the paragraph to "The Evolutionary Informatics Lab website controversy" was a tactic. In both your form and mine, the paragraph gives undue weight to a topic that has virtually nothing to do with Marks' notability, and absolutely nothing to do with the website controversy. His attendance of the Wistar Retrospective Symposium also contributes virtually nothing to his notability, and has nothing to do with the website controversy. Characterization of the symposium definitely does not belong in Marks' biography. Discussing it is a bald attempt to do through indirection what you have failed to do directly -- characterize Marks as an ID proponent. This characterization is potentially defamatory, and that means a responsible Wikipedian should add or allow it only with strong evidence, not hearsay and opinion coming from watchdog blogs.
A succession of edits has led us both to lose sight of the relative importance of the material to the subject. The website deletion and its coverage in Expelled, and neither active information nor the Wistar Retrospective presentation, contribute significantly to Marks' notoriety. I will not agree to potential defamation of Marks based on poor sources. You do not like seeing Marks' own characterization of active information unaccompanied by criticism. Thus I am removing the paragraph, as well as the template within the section. ThomHImself (talk) 20:38, 21 April 2008 (UTC)


This is insane. Just do a google search. There are plenty of sources. And if Marks is not an intelligent design supporter, why did he sign A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism? Why did his laboratory get picked up by the Discovery Institute as their laboratory? This makes no sense. Do I have to spend hours to give you 20 references on this obvious point?--Filll (talk) 20:44, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Another Google bluff? You have to find among the hits sources that are permitted in biographies of living persons. More guilt by association? "We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged." Tell me how this implies that Marks propounds "a modern form of the traditional teleological argument for the existence of God, modified to avoid specifying the nature or identity of the designer" (from intelligent design)? As I have pointed out repeatedly, we have a source in which Marks indicates that belief in God as the cause of the events observed in science is a matter of faith rather than "wisdom," and that the observations of science agree with the Genesis account of creation. Your faulty synthesis does not trump Marks' own words about his beliefs.
As stated in Evolutionary Informatics Lab, the grant was for a project, not a lab. Dembski was dismissed from his research assistantship in 2006, when Baylor returned the grant. The EIL did not come into existence until the 2007. ThomHImself (talk) 21:51, 21 April 2008 (UTC)


Well just tell me why he signed the intelligent design petition. And remains on it to this day, if he disavows intelligent design.--Filll (talk) 00:15, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

The signatories expressed doubt in a caricature of evolutionary theory popular with creationists of all stripes, and did not ascribe to an alternative theory. Care to explain how you got "intelligent design petition" out of that? ThomHImself (talk) 01:03, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
The wording of that petition is such that every single serious scientist would agree with the statement. However, it is framed very differently and presented very differently in the public, and used to claim that these signatories support intelligent design. Certainly after the petition first came out six or seven years ago, and became clearly associated with the Discovery Institute, everyone knew that the petition was associated with intelligent design. And those who were tricked into signing before, or who signed a petition blindly and then realized it was being used to promote a position they disagreed with, could then come off the list, as some have. So the fact that he signed the list knowing it was associated with the DI and used to promote ID and then stayed on the list, knowing this, speaks volumes.--Filll (talk) 13:08, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you ThomHImself for the lengthy, grossly WP:AGF-violative, WP:POT rant that gives every appearance of failing to address every one of my points above. Given that, I will repeat them here:

  1. Please demonstrate why Perakh's essay is not a WP:RS on the topic of Marks' work on active information.
  2. The 'Wistar Retrospective' was a DI/ID propaganda stunt in which Marks participated -- it was not "fringe", it was outright pseudoscience. This is not in doubt. The only reason it isn't included is because ThomHImself is WP:GAMEing to prevent the DI's words being used toi describe the DI's own actions. This is a grey area of WP:BLP#Reliable_sources, so I have ceased to fight over it.
  3. Your piece is a whitewash as:
    1. it only includes D&M's claims, not the criticism made of them.
    2. it appears to cherry-pick the most innocuous things that D&M have to say, and omits the discussion that appears (both to Perakh, and to my admittedly less discerning eyes) to be implying that evolutionary algorithms can't create new information that wasn't "folded into" them as active information.
  4. 'Active information' was in inverted commas, not quotation marks.
  5. Both "evolutionary algorithms" & "succeed" were employed in the Perakh in the passage I was summarising: "One of the main themes of this reply is the idea that evolutionary algorithms can succeed (in particular outperforming blind search) only if they are assisted by what the authors call "Active Information." (AI)." ThomHImself appears to object to the fact that I was obeying WP:PSTS by relying on a secondary source for interpretation of the primary source, rather than interpreting it myself (which would have been WP:SYNTH). If ThomHImself disagrees with Perakh's interpretation, he is welcome to have his own published. Until that time, Perakh's is the only reliable secondary source we have.

As to your new points, where they have go beyond framing my edits in the worst possible light into substantive issues:

  1. "I agree that the concept of AI as such may be construed as reasonable" is hardly a ringing endorsement of the underlying value of AI. It is equivocal in the extreme.
  2. Your "guilt by association" accusation is DOA, given how deeply entangled he is by his own volition, in ID-derived funding, ID-collaborations, ID-arguments, an ID petition & an ID symposium. Give it a rest.
  3. It would seem to be unreasonable to simultaneously object to anything that might be WP:SYNTH and then turn around and claim that the bloat that working around these objections has created is WP:UNDUE.

HrafnTalkStalk 01:31, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

The topic of this article is Marks, and WP:BLP does not let you impugn him in any way without reliable source for biographies of living persons. From WP:BLP: "Be very firm about the use of high quality references. Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about living persons — whether the material is negative, positive, or just questionable — should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion, from Wikipedia articles, talk pages, user pages, and project space."
Mark Perakh co-founded the "Talk Reason" site at which his opinion piece appears. He can put anything there he wants to. To call the piece a "publication" is bizarre. Furthermore, an opinion piece is not a reliable source of criticism of technical work. I would not want you to use my objections unless they were supported by counterproofs that had passed peer review. Perakh's informal, unreviewed objections on a website that is essentially his own are no more reliable than Marks' technical papers that have not passed peer review.
You have not justified including the paragraph on active information in the section on the EIL website controversy. Recall that I deleted it. How does it contribute to the notability of the subject, Marks?
It's really interesting that in the podcast Marks indicates he's in a position where he doesn't have to worry much about the consequences of associating with ID proponents, but that he never says he is one, and Luskin never so much as hints that he's one. And as I've said several times above, Marks' Genesis and Science slides say he is not an IDist. Those are WP:BLP#Reliable sources. What's stopping Marks from saying he advocates ID? ThomHImself (talk) 10:33, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
  1. Perakh is a reasonably prominent mathematician and a published author on the topic of intelligent design. He is therefore well-qualified to offer an expert opinion on D&M's claims -- he is a "high quality reference". The authorship of the piece is not in doubt, so it is "well-sourced". That it is not peer-reviewed is covered by WP:FRINGE#Parity of sources -- a claim that is not itself peer-reviewed, has no expectation that the criticism would be be peer-reviewed. None of this violates WP:BLP#Reliable_sources in the least.
  2. Marks' notability is primarily due to the EIL controversy, and to Dembski's/DI's/Expelled's trumpeting of it -- which by appearing in the latter, Marks has actively partaken in. If it weren't for this he'd just be another worthy but unnoticed-outside-his-field academic without any expectation of an article on wikipedia. In evaluating the legitimacy of the EIL enterprise, it is reasonable that the output of this 'Lab', and its validity, is scrutinised. As much (most?) of this output is on the subject of 'Active Intelligence', Perakh's essay seems right on point. It is also the reason why Marks' and Dembski's presentations at Wistar are relevant, as they were explicitly on the topic of AI (which the International Symposium on Neural Networks presentation was not).

For these reasons I am re-including Perakh to the article. If you disagree you are welcome to take the matter to the RS or BLP noticeboards. HrafnTalkStalk 12:16, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] DI podcast interview with Marks

Marks supplies the interview through his faculty web pages at Baylor. This is a reliable source for a biography of a living person (and probably was without Marks' link to it). Marks' own words about the lab are relevant to his biography. They certainly are not spam. Furthermore, the podcast is supposedly part of what got other profs at Baylor complaining about the EIL website. I believe I saw a newspaper source mentioning the podcast. The article would make more sense if we could document that professors complained about the podcast just prior to the deletion of the website.

The idea here to describe what we can on the basis of reliable sources. Marks own words about Marks' beliefs are reliable, irrespective of who disseminated them. Suppression of this information because the "bad guys" did the podcast is unethical -- particularly when the subject of the article implicitly endorses the podcast as representative of his views, and when the podcast itself is a relevant event in the website controversy. ThomHImself (talk) 00:19, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

This is primary source material, which should only be used with care in an article -- particularly given that you've already ejected the main reliable & substantive secondary sources on Marks' beliefs and ID-related work. HrafnTalkStalk 01:53, 22 April 2008 (UTC)


Primary sources are discouraged. How good a source about Sadam Hussein is a speech by Sadam Hussein? How good a source about Hitler is a speech by Hitler? How good a source about Stalin is a speech by Stalin? How good a source about George Bush is an interview with George Bush? These are all sources that we might use, but you would not want to use them in isolation for sure.

If we did that, we would have to assert that

  • The earth is only 6000 years old
  • Several people were reincarnations of Jesus
  • The United States attacked itself on 911 as a pretext to have a war in Iraq

and so on.--Filll (talk) 19:20, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Dembski on EIL, Marks & ID

It seems that Perakh isn't the only one who thinks that the work that D&M were doing was ID. Dembski himself says:[1]

The hard work of developing these ideas into a rigorous information-theoretic formalism for doing science really began only in 2005 with some unpublished papers on the mathematical foundations of intelligent design that appeared on my website (www.designinference.com). With the formation of Robert Marks's Evolutionary Informatics Lab in June 2007 (Marks is a distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering at Baylor University), and work by him and me on the conservation of information (several papers of which are available at http://www.EvoInfo.org), I think ID is finally in a position to challenge certain fundamental assumptions in the natural sciences about the nature and origin of information. This, I believe, will have a large impact on science. ...

In any case, it became clear after that publication of that book that I would need to fill in the mathematical details myself, something I have been doing right along (see my articles described under “mathematical foundations of intelligent design” at www.designinference.com) and which has now been taken up in earnest in a collaboration with my friend and Baylor colleague Robert Marks at his Evolutionary Informatics Lab (www.EvoInfo.org). ...

[I know about the Biologic Institute and the work of Dr. Minnich. Are there any other laboratories currently doing ID work?]

The Evolutionary Informatics Lab: www.EvoInfo.org. I knew of another ID lab that another faculty member at Baylor (not Robert Marks) was intent on starting, but with the witch-hunt against Marks, that’s not going to happen any time soon.

[Is your (still incomplete) monograph, Mathematical Foundations of Intelligent Design, supposed to be a more complete or rigorous explanation for inferring design?]

For now, this work will be published as separate articles in collaboration with Robert Marks. I expect that eventually we will be co-authoring a monograph on this topic together, though we may not give it that title given the climate of hostility against ID. The emphasis in this work shifts from detecting or inferring design to the need for information in search. These are related problems since information that enables successful search can trigger a design inference.

(Interviewers questions, where necessary to establish context, in square brackets.)HrafnTalkStalk 19:31, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of Perahk's irrelevant opinions; Hrafn's apparent misconduct

Hrafn seems to have purposefully misconstrued Perahk's opinion piece Olle, Tom, and "Active Information". In an earlier version of the article he wrote,

Mathematician Mark Perakh states that in a reply, "seemingly authored by both Marks and Dembski", (previously) posted on the EIL website, to "an article critical of Dembski's concepts" by Swedish mathematician Olle Häggström:

and used the citation of Perakh's work to justify the entire statement. After I removed Perakh's comments, observing that they certainly could not be included if the author was not sure he was commenting on Marks' work (considerations of reliable sources for BLP's aside), Hrafn produced this version:

Mathematician Mark Perakh states that in a reply to "an article critical of Dembski's concepts", "seemingly authored by both Marks and Dembski", to Swedish mathematician Olle Häggström, previously posted on the EIL website:

It is obvious that Hrafn has deleted the indication that the comments do not belong in the article. What is not obvious is that Perakh does not claim that Dembski-Marks paper ever appeared at the Evolutionary Informatics Lab's website. What Perakh actually writes is

After a while, a reply to Olle's article was posted, seemingly authored by both Marks and Dembski (see Active Information in Evolutionary Search).

He provides a link to a page on a Baylor University server,

http://web.ecs.baylor.edu/faculty/marks/T/Hag2.pdf.

(This page no longer exists.) In fact, Perakh says absolutely nothing about the EIL or its website. It appears that Hrafn has invented a "reliable" source for the connection to the EIL controversy in order to get negative comments about Marks work, not to mention a link to opinion that Marks' intentions are to develop ID theory, into the article.

Perakh's comments are opinion posted on a website he helped create. They constitute a secondary source referring to a primary source that is no longer available. There is a version of the paper at Dembski's designinference.com website, but we have no idea how much it differs from the version that Perakh reviewed. Most importantly, linking to a low-quality source that claims Marks has disguised his development of ID theory was never justified. WP:BLP does not allow potentially defamatory claims to come through the back door.

Hrafn has also persisted in entering into the lead paragraph the potentially defamatory claim that Marks is "an intelligent design proponent" or "a notable intelligent design proponent." Potentially defamatory claims require very high quality sources, per WP:BLP, and no editor has been able to provide one. ThomHImself (talk) 20:23, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you ThomHImself for that appalling violation of WP:AGF

I will not lower myself to your level by replying in kind, but will instead limit myself to the slim pickings of substantive issues in the above rant.

  1. The EIL is, to a substantial degree, simply a label (and an internet domain name) for Dembski and Marks' collaboration. It has no formal existence. It is therefore unsurprising that Perakh refers to 'Dembski and Marks' rather than to 'EIL'.
  2. Hag2.pdf was part of the EIL Lab. When the EIL site was moved off Baylor to cayman.globat.com it was initially moved as part of it (as is evidenced by links to it at that site here and here).
  3. Hag2.pdf was titled Active Information in Evolutionary Search and Active Information is a major topic of the EIL's work. The is demonstrated by the fact that one of the four headline EIL publications is explicitly on this topic (Horizontal and Vertical No Free Lunch for Active Information in Assisted Searches).

Therefore discussion of Dembski and Marks' work on the subject of Active Information referring to Hag2.pdf is directly relevant to EIL.

I have already addressed the reliability of Perakh's piece above. Nothing that you have added here undercuts what I said. That they were "posted on a website he helped create" does not undercut that he is a highly-qualified mathematician, a published writer on the subject of ID, and thus well-qualified to offer an expert opinion. That D&M have seen fit to remove the document that he is referring to does not detract from his value as a secondary source. That the document existed is well-documented, and there is no evidence that Perakh has misrepresented it (and in fact Daniel Brooks' account of Wistar corroborates Perakh's characterisation of their claims). HrafnTalkStalk 08:36, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Notice: Potentially defamatory claim that Marks is an ID proponent requires high-quality source

There is absolutely no gray area in WP:BLP when it comes to introducing potentially defamatory claims about living persons. They must be directly supported by high-quality sources. They may not be brought through the back door with sources that make potentially defamatory claims in addition to other claims.

I will take various actions specified in Wikipedia policy in response to all future introductions of potentially defamatory claims that are not supported by references to sources permitted in biographies of living persons. ThomHImself (talk) 20:34, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

For the members of Intelligent Design WikiProject to engage together in reversion to potentially defamatory and inadequately sourced claim is less than intelligent. From OrangeMarlin to Hrafn at User_talk:Hrafn#Robert_J._Marks_II: "Need you back watching. DI whitewashing by Ducks. OrangeMarlin Talk• Contributions 07:21, 17 April 2008 (UTC)" Hrafn's current talk page ThomHImself (talk) 21:08, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Um, can these be deemed a legal threat? Because the ship is certainly pointing in that direction. Watch yourself Thom. Baegis (talk) 21:56, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
I was waiting for him to do something that will get him blocked. I always enjoy this shit. See WP:NLT.OrangeMarlin Talk• Contributions 21:59, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
I've made no legal threat whatsoever. I've added warning templates to two editors' pages. I added a template to the article indicating that it is a BLP under dispute, but OrangeMarlin removed that. Those are the actions specified in WP:BLP. I've pointed out repeatedly that Wikipedia incurs legal risk in disseminating claims about Marks that are not supported as required by Wiki's own policy. I am not the subject of the article, and I have no legal standing in the matter of defamation of the subject. At present, none of the Intelligent Design WikiProject members who have edited this article divulge their identities on their user pages. I have identified myself as Thomas M. English of Lubbock, Texas USA. ThomHImself (talk) 23:51, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia in violation of its own policy on biographies of living persons?

Administrator Philippe has protected the page in this form from editing. The article presently begins,

Robert Jackson Marks II (born August 25th, 1950) is a Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Baylor University and proponent of intelligent design. From 1977 to 2003, he was on the faculty of the University of Washington in Seattle. He was the first president of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Neural Networks Council (now the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society) and the editor-in-chief of the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks. Marks has over 300 peer-reviewed technical publications, and is a fellow of the IEEE and the Optical Society of America.[1]

This creates the impression that reference [1], dubbed "Marks' expanded biography," covers the statement that Marks is a proponent of intelligent design. In fact it does not. As I have pointed out many times on this talk page, there is no reliable source for a biography of a living person in which Marks propounds intelligent design. Neither is there a reliable source in which Marks is established to propound intelligent design.

As discussed above, I have produced a reliable source, Marks' own slide presentation "Genesis and Science: Compatibility Extraordinaire," in which he embraces creationist views distinct from those of intelligent design proponents. Wikipedia's own articles on creationism, neo-creationism, and intelligent design bear me out when I say that not all creationists are ID proponents. Furthermore, we presently have in the article an interview of Marks conducted by an ID proponent, Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute (the nexus of the intelligent design movement). Luskin never identifies Marks as an ID proponent, though he asks Marks about the hazards of associating with ID proponents. Marks responds that he is in a position to act with relative impunity, but never identifies himself as more than an associate of ID proponents. Though the synthesized statement that these two reliable sources support the notion that Marks does not propound ID cannot appear in the article, we can consider its veracity here.

Even if Marks secretly embraces the ideology of ID, this is not a tabloid (see WP:BLP). This is not the place to "out" him. No reliable source has come to light in which he says he embraces ID. No high-quality source has come to light in which someone shows methodically that his stated beliefs are equivalent to those of an ID proponent. The arguments above that he is an ID proponent amount to guilt by multiple associations. I respond that if a creationist has common interests with an ID proponent and associates quite a bit with ID-related entities, that does not make him an ID proponent. Again, there is evidence in reliable sources that he does not propound ID.

There is at the least considerable uncertainty as to whether Marks embraces the ideology of intelligent design. I contend that it is unethical to stigmatize Marks in the presence of such uncertainty. The label "proponent of intelligent design" is certainly harmful to the reputation of a scholar in engineering. From Wikipedia policy on biographies of living persons: "An important rule of thumb when writing biographical material about living persons is 'do no harm'." Basic human decency dictates that we label Marks an ID proponent only if there is little uncertainty about it. ThomHImself (talk) 00:54, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

And how is being identified with intelligent design harmful? That is a ludicrous claim for which you have no backing.--Filll (talk) 01:15, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Marks is notable as Expelled subject. How is he characterized there?

Does Marks propound ID in Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed? Does the film characterize him as an ID proponent? I presume that if the answer to either question were yes, we'd have heard about it here. Surely the filmmakers would have loved to present him as a persecuted ID advocate. Is there a good Wikipedian who has seen the film and would care to answer my questions? ThomHImself (talk) 03:19, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Glad you asked. Of course someone who's seen the film and given their own impression would be unsuitable original research, but fortunately we have a reliable source – Expelled Exposed > Robert Marks.:
Robert Marks,The Claim
“A few months after this interview Baylor University shut down his research website once they discovered a link between his work and intelligent design.” (Ben Stein, Expelled)
The Facts
Baylor UniversityRobert Marks’s “Evolutionary Informatics Laboratory” website – touting intelligent design – was originally hosted on a Baylor University server. ..... etc.
Hope you find that helpful. .. dave souza, talk 13:51, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
Participants the Intelligent Design WikiProject, which "supports" this article, have no reliable source for the claim that Marks is an ID proponent. A fundamental guideline for new editors is to line up reliable sources and write statements that are directly supported by those sources (without synthesizing their own conclusions from the sources or using sources selectively to advance a point of view). I believe there is abundant evidence on this page that the ID WikiProject committed to a point of view on Marks when it began "supporting" his biography.
It surprises me that administrator dave souza enters the text "reliable source" with a Wiki link to general policy on reliable sources, when that policy is trumped here by policy on reliable sources for biographies of living persons. The latter states that websites are not reliable sources. The Wikipedia policy on biographies of living persons emphasizes that this follows not only from legal concerns, but ethical concerns. It indicates explicitly that an encyclopedia biography is not an exposé, and "Expelled Exposed" is thus an interesting choice of "reliable source." ThomHImself (talk) 02:36, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Appeal to Wikipedia administrator dave souza to enforce Wikipedia policy

I call on Wikipedia administrator dave souza to assist in getting the claim that Marks is an ID proponent removed from the article until someone produces here a source that Wikipedia considers reliable for biographies of living persons. It is a matter of ethics to see that Wikipedia abide by its own policy even when a group of editors agrees by "consensus" that policy should be ignored. The Wikipedia policy on biographies of living persons indicates that inadequately sourced claims are to be removed immediately. At present, administrative action blocks precisely that from happening. dave souza has shown interest in this discussion, so now I call on him to do the right thing. ThomHImself (talk) 02:36, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] This has moved to the BLP Noticebaord

After, repeated suggestions from myself, ThomHImself has finally taken this to WP:BLP/N. It can be found at WP:BLP/N#Many insertions of possibly defamatory claims in Robert J. Marks II & WP:BLP/N#Robert J. Marks II. Editors may wish to express an opinion there. HrafnTalkStalk 08:59, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] No, discussion does not fork to the discussion board

I think you are confused about the function of the discussion board. ThomHImself (talk) 02:50, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Perakh's web-published opionion

Perakh refers to an evidently retracted paper. The paper is not on the web anymore. It does not appear on his vita. The title appears at Dembski's DesignInference.com, but the link is to a new paper. Perakh does not indicate that the paper was at the EIL website. It certainly was not there in June 2007, when I reviewed the EIL site for the No free lunch in search and optimization article (see the talk page). So why is his opinion about how Marks intends to use work in a non-existent paper that did not appear on the EIL website when Baylor deleted it in the section on the EIL website controversy?

Do we REALLY include in biographies of living persons web-published opinions about what they intended to do with ideas developed in retracted, unpublished papers? This seems utterly bizarre to me. How do we even connect Perakh's comments on that paper's treatment of active information when we can't confirm that Dembski and Marks have not since changed the treatment? Perhaps some Talk-Reason-connected editor can get Perahk to post that he's sure the treatment has not changed. Then we could make this encyclopedia even better by adding Perakh's opinion that his opinion about Marks' intentions is still valid. ThomHImself (talk) 08:17, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

By the way, why do we have detailed discussion of the technical content of the EIL website in Marks' biography when there is an article on the EIL website? ThomHImself (talk) 08:19, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

It occurs to me now that not only did our source for the Dembski-Marks paper vanish, but so did Perakh's. Thus Perakh's web-published opinion of Marks' work is no longer sourced, and is thus no longer a reliable source for Wikipedia. Please discuss here rather than revert. ThomHImself (talk) 08:55, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Tag team: "Come on, you just can't invent reasons that a source is not realiable"

Please read the comments above. Add to them the more direct observation that Perakh is stating his opinion that Marks is out to bash evolutionary theory, but bases that opinion on writing that no longer exists. The burden is on you to show how this squares with WP:BLP#Reliable sources. Have you read the text Hrafn has deleted from the article?

At the Talk Reason: Arguments Against Creationism, Intelligent Design, and Apologetics website, mathematician Mark Perakh criticizes an unpublished technical paper by Dembski and Marks, "Active Information in Evolutionary Search," indicating that it resided among Marks' faculty web pages at Baylor, not at the Evolutionary Informatics Lab's website.[2] As of May 5, 2008, the paper appears neither on Marks' curriculum vitae nor in the Baylor.edu web domain nor at the Evolutionary Informatics Lab's website nor at Dembski's DesignInference.com website. Perakh states that the paper responded to "an article critical of Dembski's concepts" by Swedish mathematician Olle Häggström. There is presently no reference to Olle Häggström at the Evolutionary Informatics Lab's website or in the Baylor.edu web domain.

ThomHImself (talk) 09:45, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WP:CIVIL violation in calling a WP:CONS a "Tag team"

I find it absurd that you simultaneously denigrate the article consensus as a "tag team" while requesting that we "engage in consensus building". There is a consensus on this article. It is that Marks is a proven ID advocacy, that EIL and the work on Active Information is part of this advocacy, and that the Perakh article is WP:RS criticism of this advocacy. You appear to be the sole dissenter against all of these points, and have edit-warred against each of them. This is clearly disruptive editing. Combined with your clear WP:COI on this topic, this makes you a very undesirable editor on this article. HrafnTalkStalk 11:56, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Taking turns reverting without discussing the fact that a source has disappeared has nothing to do with consensus. ThomHImself (talk) 02:30, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
I have yet to hear any explanation for how it is that someone who is not a supporter of intelligent design has signed the intelligent design petition that is used in their anti-science activities, and then remained on the petition for years, in spite of the obvious use of the petition in this way. Hmm....--Filll (talk) 02:34, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT from ThomHImself, who continues to edit this article in direct violation of WP:COI

  1. Perakh is a reasonably prominent mathematician and a published author on the topic of intelligent design. He is therefore well-qualified to offer an expert opinion on D&M's claims -- he is a "high quality reference". The authorship of the piece is not in doubt, so it is "well-sourced". That it is not peer-reviewed is covered by WP:FRINGE#Parity of sources -- a claim that is not itself peer-reviewed, has no expectation that the criticism would be be peer-reviewed. None of this violates WP:BLP#Reliable_sources in the least.
  2. Marks' notability is primarily due to the EIL controversy, and to Dembski's/DI's/Expelled's trumpeting of it -- which by appearing in the latter, Marks has actively partaken in. If it weren't for this he'd just be another worthy but unnoticed-outside-his-field academic without any expectation of an article on wikipedia. In evaluating the legitimacy of the EIL enterprise, it is reasonable that the output of this 'Lab', and its validity, is scrutinised. As much (most?) of this output is on the subject of 'Active Intelligence', Perakh's essay seems right on point. It is also the reason why Marks' and Dembski's presentations at Wistar are relevant, as they were explicitly on the topic of AI (which the International Symposium on Neural Networks presentation was not).
  1. The EIL is, to a substantial degree, simply a label (and an internet domain name) for Dembski and Marks' collaboration. It has no formal existence. It is therefore unsurprising that Perakh refers to 'Dembski and Marks' rather than to 'EIL'.
  2. Hag2.pdf was part of the EIL Lab. When the EIL site was moved off Baylor to cayman.globat.com it was initially moved as part of it (as is evidenced by links to it at that site here and here).
  3. Hag2.pdf was titled Active Information in Evolutionary Search and Active Information is a major topic of the EIL's work. The is demonstrated by the fact that one of the four headline EIL publications is explicitly on this topic (Horizontal and Vertical No Free Lunch for Active Information in Assisted Searches).
Therefore discussion of Dembski and Marks' work on the subject of Active Information referring to Hag2.pdf is directly relevant to EIL. I have already addressed the reliability of Perakh's piece above. Nothing that you have added here undercuts what I said. That they were "posted on a website he helped create" does not undercut that he is a highly-qualified mathematician, a published writer on the subject of ID, and thus well-qualified to offer an expert opinion. That D&M have seen fit to remove the document that he is referring to does not detract from his value as a secondary source. That the document existed is well-documented, and there is no evidence that Perakh has misrepresented it (and in fact Daniel Brooks' account of Wistar corroborates Perakh's characterisation of their claims). HrafnTalkStalk 08:36, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

ThomHImself tendentiously threads the needle give the impression that this paper was unconnected with EIL when it is clear that it was: http://cayman.globat.com/~trademarksnet.com/T/Hag2.pdf HrafnTalkStalk 11:12, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

The fact that Marks & Dembski deleted (not' retracted) the paper does not detract from the fact that it is clearly representative (per Daniel Brooks) of opinions that Marks has expressed to a wide audience. If ThomHImself would like to present WP:RS evidence (as opposed to WP:OR interpretation of the deletion) that Marks no longer holds these views then we will consider it. Otherwise WP:V means we go with what we've got. Further the fact that we no longer have the primary source available does not affect the reliability of the secondary source. HrafnTalkStalk 11:37, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

This nonsense is one of the reasons that Wikipedia has no academic reputation whatsoever. A quarter of the article is quotations refuting his claims (that he may or may not still be making). If nobody but ThomHImself is trying to clean it up, it's because nobody but ThomHImself understands the technobabble. Just because someone doesn't accept evolution doesn't mean that their article should be an attack piece. --B (talk) 19:40, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
Oh give me a break. It's easy to make assertions like yours, but a lot harder to back them up, B. I understand the topic and its technical aspects well. Very well. I can tell you right now that ThomHImself has not been simply trying to clean it up but less than subtly promoting a particular view, that of ID proponents, and violating the undue weight requirement of WP:NPOV. If you don't understand the topic well enough to see it then perhaps you should reconsider your position and defer to those who do. Particularly since there's something like six others or more who agree with me and not you, several of which are respected admins. Odd nature (talk) 20:48, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm confused. How does it promote a POV to not include two lengthy quotations from "an article critical of Dembski's concepts"? This is a biographical article, not an essay on the correctness of ID, evolution, last Thursdayism, or any other such thing. Biographical articles should focus on ... well ... biographies. The movie in question has a detailed article criticizing it - the biography of every person related to the movie doesn't need to be a WP:COATRACK. There is a reason that WR refers to BLP subjects as "BLP victims". If you guys consider it appropriate to use BLP articles as a forum for trashing anyone who doesn't believe in evolution, then you need to not edit BLPs. --B (talk) 22:01, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
BLP does not trump NPOV, period. If a fact or view is verifiable by a reliable source and is relevant, then NPOV requires it be presented, regardless of whether the subject wants it in their article or not. No doubt science deniers like ID proponents want their activities and views presented in the best light possible, and failing that, not at all, but that's called POV promotion there's simply no policy that provides for that, hiding behind bogus BLP issues notwithstanding, and there is a policy that precludes it: WP:NOT. As for ThomHImself's specific edit, using the response of credible scientists to a fringe theory as 'proof' that the theory is more credible than it is a very, very common tactic amongst promoters of ID and other pseudosciences. I don't think you're so clueless as have never noticed that. Odd nature (talk) 22:44, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
Looking at his most recent edit [2], deleting the response of the scientific community to Mark's notions is clearly the deletion of a significant viewpoint that leaves the impression that Dembski and Marks views are unchallenged; again, promoting the ID POV. Odd nature (talk) 22:44, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
(ec, reply) Actually, BLP does trump NPOV should they ever be in conflict. This is fundamental to Wikipedia - it is not an ID issue, it isn't a creationism info, it isn't a science issue. But in this case, they are not in conflict. You used a key word - "relevant". Why are lengthy quotations from an article critical of the concepts in the Expelled movie relevant to a biographical article? They are only relevant if you have an objective - if the article is an essay advocating a position on the person, not an unbiased presentation. Heck, just the presentation shows bias. Just about every well-written biography we have goes in roughly chronological order. Look at George W. Bush - it goes from early life to his governorship to his presidency. But this article spends most of its time talking about content covered in Evolutionary Informatics Lab and Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, including rebuttals of the same. Then it mentions oh and by the way, in the 1990s and 2000s, he had some really important contributions to technology. You seem to be under the impression that NPOV demands lengthy criticism or coverage of criticism. But that just isn't the case. "Bob believes X" is a neutral statement. "Bob believes X, which most scientists dispute" is possibly more helpful. "Bob believes X, which most scientists dispute" followed by a list of reasons that scientists dispute X turns the article from one designed to convey information into one designed to advocate against X. That is the definition of a coatrack. --B (talk) 23:01, 5 May 2008 (UTC)


This is a bit hard to understand. Here is someone who is a long time signatory of the pro-intelligent design petition, who ran one of the intelligent design laboratories, who has several lines of intelligent design research and has written papers in support of intelligent design, who has collaborated with one of the two main "scientists" involved in intelligent design, who appears in a pro-intelligent design movie as someone who is discriminated against terribly by the horrible authorities as his religiously oriented collge for his pro-intelligent design views and activities, and we have several creationists and intelligent design supporters who are frantic and desperate to state that this person is not involved with intelligent design. Makes very little sense to me. And this guy is really only notable for his intelligent design activities. Sorry. Otherwise, there would be no particular reason to have an article about him. Period.--Filll (talk) 23:49, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what petition you are talking about (the Discovery Institute one?) but whatever it is, it isn't mentioned in the article. That aside, never ONCE did I say that the article should not mention ID or any such thing. I said that it doesn't need to have lengthy quotations attacking his viewpoints. --B (talk) 00:02, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
There is propaganda on both sides of the ID issue, and some things are named to encourage people to judge them without examining them. The "pro-intelligent design" petition is A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism, but "pro-science" editors rarely refer to the article. The signatories affirm, "We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged." Although this statement was prepared by the Discovery Institute, the nexus of the intelligent design movement, it is obviously anti-Darwinist and pro-nothing. ThomHImself (talk) 04:16, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
"who has several lines of intelligent design research" The "several lines" is utter fabrication. The "intelligent design" should not be decided by "consensus," but by reliable sources. This was treated in a balanced fashion at one point in Evolutionary Informatics Lab. (I created the article expressly as a content fork. I copied other editors' text, not appropriate for a BLP, from this article to that one.) I moved Perakh's opinion of Marks' work there. When I added the countering opinion of Mark Chu-Carroll, another well known opponent of ID, I was suddenly advancing a POV due to COI. Go figure. The balanced presentation was entirely deleted by, if memory serves, Odd Nature (who insists above on balanced presentation). It seems to me that a block of editors does not want it to appear in Wikipedia that knowledgeable, mathematically-adept opponents of ID disagree on Marks' work. ThomHImself (talk) 04:16, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
"written papers in support of intelligent design" Both "support" and "intelligent design" are ambiguous. Many people who believe that the universe was designed (as part of creation) by a deity do not engage in the dishonesty of claiming that scientific evidence for ID exists and declining the identity of the designer. Thus they do not embrace intelligent design in the sense of the intelligent design movement. Marks has never said that the scientific evidence is in place, and he has never suggested that the designer would be any entity but God. Certainly Marks knows that Dembski will use their collaborative work to advance the ID movement, so it can be said that he is supporting the movement to some degree. His presently available papers are limited to analysis of computer programs (weakly) simulating evolutionary processes. They do not address biological evolution. The no-longer-available paper objected to a published article addressing Dembski's treatment of biological evolution, but did not itself make claims about biological evolution. That explains why the second quote of Perakh in the bio is so convoluted at the end. Perakh is trying to tag Marks with Dembski's beliefs about biological evolution, even though the Dembski-Marks paper did not restate them. ThomHImself (talk) 04:16, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
A pattern I have observed in biographies of "ID proponents" is to downplay their notable technical achievements and play up their ID advocacy. The most notable of the putative proponents is Henry F. Schaefer. His bio indicates that he is "the author of a large number of scientific publications," and suppresses the fact that there was a six-day conference entitled "Theory and Applications of Computational Chemistry: A Celebration of 1000 Papers of Professor Henry F. Schaefer III." (By the way, the reference by Barbara Forrest, a highly regarded investigator of the ID movement, indicates that Schaeffer is not an "active proponent" of ID, but "supports" ID by allowing himself to be listed as a fellow of a Discovery Institute center. I suggest that Wikipedia distinguish between active proponents and supporters as Forrest does.) Marks was more impressive in earlier versions of the article. His notability in the field of computational intelligence far exceeds that of David B. Fogel (who is much younger). Nobody is going suggest removing David from Wikipedia. ThomHImself (talk) 04:16, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
In Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, Ben Stein indicates that Baylor linked the website content to ID, not that it was in fact ID. I believe it is true that Baylor made the link, but we do not have a reliable source even for that. ThomHImself (talk) 04:16, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
"we have several creationists and intelligent design supporters who are frantic and desperate to state that this person is not involved with intelligent design" More fabrication, more neat ambiguity. I'm the only holdout, and I'm a scholar who has dismantled some of Dembski's ID theory. Which sense of "intelligent design"? In the podcast interview cited in the bio, Marks states that he and Dembski found they had common interests. It happens that I share their interest in the quantity and source of information that allows engineered search algorithms to outperform purely random search. I have taught hundreds of students in artificial intelligence the importance of intelligent design of search algorithms. I am, in a sense, an ID proponent. I have been involved with intelligent design in a various senses. So what? ThomHImself (talk) 04:16, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Well B, it might be worth your while to look at the talk page history a bit.--Filll (talk) 00:14, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Multiple web sources have vanished

Read before you revert. All I'm doing now is repairing the article. I've removed material I wanted in the article in compliance with WP:BLP's dictate that unsourced claims about living persons be removed immediately. Recall that I want to argue that Marks is an honest creationist, not someone who falsely claims that there is scientific evidence for an unidentified designer of life. I have just lost my reliable source. Hrafn's URL indicating there used to be a URL for the withdrawn Dembski-Marks article has gone dead. Removing a reference that is nothing but two dead URL's is a no-brainer. Does anybody really want to argue that point? ThomHImself (talk) 05:24, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Marks' faculty entry at Baylor now links to his private web space. He has removed his apologetics page there. His apologetics presentations are not listed anywhere, as best I can tell. ThomHImself (talk) 05:40, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Marks' publication list now indicates that he and Dembski have a publication in press, but doesn't specify where. Thus the pending publication is unverifiable. But we can no longer say that Marks indicates that he and Dembski have no publications. ThomHImself (talk) 06:51, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Two replacement citations for the authorship and title of this paper provided (dead links are not a valid reason for summary deletion of a footnote). Incidentally, the DI themselves provide confirmation that this paper was part of the original (Baylor-hosted) EIL site here. HrafnTalkStalk 07:03, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
Your reference supposedly showed that a link existed in Marks' online publication list, but when I clicked on the link to the publication list, the link was broken. I have checked Marks' current publication list, and the paper is no longer there. To create the appearance of a reference when you in fact have none is not exactly good practice, in my humble opinion. WP:BLP doesn't let you use any web source but Marks' own to back up a claim that he did something (e.g., wrote a paper). So Discovery.org is not an option. ThomHImself (talk) 07:36, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Clear defense of WP:BLP

Marks has removed from the web our main sources about his religious beliefs and activities, including his creationist presentation. According to WP:BLP, claims about living persons with no source or with low-quality sources must be removed immediately. ThomHImself (talk) 06:51, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] My constructive editing

I have not merely removed material. I hunted down replacement material, and have fixed several broken links. I also removed a false claim about what is (not) on Marks' publication list. The reversions are destroying quite a bit I have fixed, and are thus irresponsible. If you want something returned to the article, get a source and put it back in. ThomHImself (talk) 07:41, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Frankly, it is far too difficult to distinguish between any possible constructive edits you have made, considering the extreme amount of disruption you have caused on this article for spurious grounds. Please, please stop disrupting the article and make the case for changes on the talk page. This project is built on consensus. Your current editing pattern leaves a lot to be desired. Baegis (talk) 08:07, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
Then you're far too lazy to edit. ThomHImself (talk) 11:11, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
Given that you yourself are unable to keep track of what you are doing (see below where you blame me for a link you broke), it would seem to be wholly unreasonable for you to expect others to do so. HrafnTalkStalk 13:50, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Major restructure of Baylor Engineering/Computer Science website

This website that contains Marks' Baylor webpages has been radically restructured. All page URLs appear to have been changed, to a radically different structure, and the number of Marks' pages seems to have been reduced. However some of these pages may still exist at Marks' personal site: http://www.robertmarks.org/ (or elsewhere). I would therefore request that people don't disrupt the page by precipitously deleting material until we can sort out what is, and what is not, sourcable. If a link is broken then tag it: {{citation broken}}. HrafnTalkStalk 08:32, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I've managed to find replacement references for all but one of the links that were to Marks' Baylor site. It would seem therefore that ThomHImself's edit-warring had no basis whatsoever in WP:BLP. The one missing ref can be found Google-cached at his personal site here, so is WP:V at least for the next few days. If a replacement cannot be found in this timespan, then we'll have to delete or modify the statement sourced to it. HrafnTalkStalk 08:57, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
No, there is not a single link you have fixed that I had not already. And your claim that there's been major reorganization at Baylor is false. Marks removed most of his pages at Baylor and provided a link to his private web, which he has complete control over. Google gives no indication that his apologetics presentation "Genesis and Science: Compatibility Extraordinaire" still exists on the web. And I have told you this already. And you have not flagged the link to the presentation as "broken." WP:BLP says that first you have a source, and then you make a claim about a living person. It says that the unsourced claims about Marks' religious beliefs and activities must be removed immediately. Evidently Marks has decided to have some privacy. Common decency, let alone WP:BLP, tells us to respect that. ThomHImself (talk) 11:11, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
I indicated that Marks and Dembski have an article in press. Why did you leave the claim about no peer-reviewed publications in the article? Why did you leave a broken link to Marks' c.v. at Baylor? Have you really checked the links? ThomHImself (talk) 11:33, 6 May 2008 (UTC)


  • "No, there is not a single link you have fixed that I had not already." Factually incorrect. Your last version before I started was this one. It contains the following broken link: http://web.ecs.baylor.edu/faculty/marks/Marks/P/Articles/070825_EvolInf/070720_interview.htm, which I corrected.
  • "And your claim that there's been major reorganization at Baylor is false." Factually incorrect. As can be seen by the wholly different old (http://web.ecs.baylor.edu/faculty/marks/Marks/CV/cv.htm) versus new (http://www.ecs.baylor.edu/engineering/faculty/index.php?id=31104) URLs of his CV.
  • "Google gives no indication that his apologetics presentation "Genesis and Science: Compatibility Extraordinaire" still exists on the web." Actually it does still exist on Google's search engine and cache. As I don't have Powerpoint installed I took Google's word for it -- a mistake. It would seem that Marks has been purging the apologetics section of his webpage.
  • "And you have not flagged the link to the presentation as 'broken.'" I did not say that I had -- for the simple reason that I did not know that it was broken (see above). It was Marks' apologetics page that I so tagged.
  • "WP:BLP says that first you have a source, and then you make a claim about a living person." What WP:BLP says on the matter is:

Editors should remove any contentious material about living persons that is unsourced, relies upon sources that do not meet standards specified in Wikipedia:Verifiability, or is a conjectural interpretation of a source (see Wikipedia:No original research).

Given that they are based on what Marks himself wrote, this was not "contentious" material and there is thus no need for precipitous deletion (and in any case, we have Google cache as temporary verification in the mean time).
  • "Evidently Marks has decided to have some privacy. Common decency, let alone WP:BLP, tells us to respect that." (1) By making himself a party to Expelled, Marks made himself into a very public figure, thus severely diminishing any right to privacy he might previously had. (2) He himself put that information into the public sphere. He thus has no legitimate expectation that it should immediately disappear the moment he deletes it off his site.
  • "Why did you leave a broken link to Marks' c.v. at Baylor?" I didn't! My last edit had it linked to his new Baylor CV URL: http://www.ecs.baylor.edu/engineering/faculty/index.php?id=31104 You broke this link with this edit. Kindly stop blaming me for your own cack-handed editing.

I would like to conclude by thanking ThomHImself for this series of wild, generally baseless, and thoroughly WP:AGF-violative stream of accusations. It clearly demonstrates what a completely out-of-control WP:DIK he is being. HrafnTalkStalk 12:41, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

  • I stand corrected. You fixed exactly one link I had not fixed and broke a couple I had fixed.
  • Your "evidence" there has been a reorganization of the Baylor web is pathetic. All that has changed is the links in Marks' entry in the engineering faculty listing. Do you really think universities dramatically reorganize faculty webs the week before final exams?
  • Yes, you did know the links were broken. I indicated above that they were, and I indicated in the article history that the reverts were screwing up the article. I left a note on your user talk page asking you to edit the corrected version.
  • The "Genesis and Science: Compatibility Extraordinaire" presentation was not in the Google page cache when I first searched, honest editor that I am, for a replacement link. I just checked the eight hits again, and there is only one Powerpoint presentation. It is not in the cache, and the link for the hit is broken. What did you see?
  • No, I did not break the link to Marks' vita. I removed the reference with the bad link in one section, where it was associated with the misleading statement that Marks and Dembski had no peer-reviewed publications. Then I fixed it in a later section, just as I had a number of reversions prior to the versions you're looking at. Hence "Fixing broken link to Marks' vita AGAIN" in the article history.
  • As for your notion that Marks is a "very public person," either you are obsessed with a tiny world, or you, with your British spelling, have no idea what privacy is about in America. I raised the issue of ethics, and you responded with legalism. I'll give you another shot. Do you truly believe that the way you're treating Marks is ethical?

ThomHImself (talk) 15:15, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

So signing an anti-science petition and standing by it for years and then appearing in a piece of intelligent design creationist propaganda which is being used to bellow at great volume all across the United States that all scientists are atheists and the very embodiment of evil in the modern world that only exist to cause death and destruction, and to declare loudly and longly on this platform that it is unfair that Marks was treated badly because Marks believes in intelligent design and is trying to promote it, is him not seeking the spotlight and not being a public person? Well there is a legal definition of "public person" which I am sure Marks has passed by his repeated actions. But even if not, we do not use that standard on Wikipedia at this point in time. Perhaps if and when we decide to use the US legal definition of "public person" as our standard, we can revisit this and see if Marks passes that threshold. It is highly unlikely that as an obscure faculty member he would be notable without this propagandizing activity, however, in my view.--Filll (talk) 15:36, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Very interesting. Just as I said above, ThomHImself wants to have it both ways. He supports ID, but he does not. Marks supports ID, but does not. Marks appeared in a multimillion dollar propaganda piece, but he really is not in the public. Marks signed a petition promoting ID, but he did not. This purposeful obfuscation and misrepresentation and nosense falls within the realm of WP:DE and WP:TE and is just begging for administrative sanction.--Filll (talk) 13:36, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ethical versus non-illegal behavior

User:Odd nature has used Internet Archive: Wayback Machine to locate Marks' former web page listing apologetics presentations. WP:Copyrights permits this, not because it is ethical, but because it has not been established as illegal in U.S. law. The archived page has a working link to "Genesis and Science: Compatibility Extraordinaire." Someone should either delete the reference or fix the link.

Recall that it was I who introduced the presentation to the article. I did this because only the clueless would fail to see that it establishes that Marks is not an active proponent of ID, but a supporter (to use Barbara Forrest's apt distinction). But Marks has demonstrated that he no longer wants to share information on his religious presentations with the world, and I believe that anyone with an ethical notochord, let alone an ethical backbone, would respect his wishes. WP:BLP emphasizes basic human dignity and presumption of privacy. ThomHImself (talk) 21:00, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I would be much more inclined to hear you out on this particular case if you did not continually disrupt every single article related to Marks and accuse a least a half dozen experienced editors as editing in bad faith. So, you can take this slightly veiled legal threat and continue to be blissfully unaware of the problems of you editing this article. Or you could work with everyone else to establish consensus. Your choice, even though it is already clear what you have chosen. Baegis (talk) 21:36, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
So you attack the man who points out ethical responsibility and then wash your hands? ThomHImself (talk) 00:06, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
Only in response to you already attacking Odd Nature on, at minimum, ethical grounds. Careful there, it appears kettles have a hard time looking into mirrors. Baegis (talk) 00:27, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
Show me the attack. From beginning to end, I have involved myself in this article to gain fair treatment for Marks. Once I was in the thick of it, I developed a dread fascination with the ID WikiProject. I generally spend my time on much more valuable activities than this. (I just downloaded five papers to review for the Tenth International Conference on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature.) There was a time when I thought I would recoup my losses here by writing up the experience for publication, but it turns out that many people have beaten me to writing in the WikiHorror genre. ThomHImself (talk) 02:27, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Tendentious &WP:AGF-violative accusations of unethical behaviour

Robert J. Marks II placed his beliefs in the PUBLIC sphere by:

  1. Publishing them on the web.
  2. Participating in a very public spat over the hosting of the EIL website.
  3. Participating in a high-profile propaganda movie touting his purported 'persecution' over his claims and beliefs on this issue.

By any reasonable standard (legal or ethical) Marks has no expectation of privacy on this issue.

On the "proponent" issue, what Forrest actually said was:

Thanks in part to the Wedge's academic networking, a fair number of academics with religious and political convictions similar to those of Wedge advocates support intelligent design, even if they are not necessarily active proponents. Many—such as Robert Kaita of Princeton, Henry Schaefer III of the University of Georgia, Robert Koons and J. Budziszewski of the University of Texas at Austin, and Guillermo Gonzalez of Iowa State—are fellows of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture (CSC), the main institutional home of intelligent design. Prominent academics who, although not officially associated with the CSC, sympathize with the Wedge's aims include Alvin Plantinga of Notre Dame, Huston Smith of Syracuse, and Frank Tipler of Tulane. And efforts are under way to recruit students to the cause: according to the "Wedge Document," what intelligent design needs is "an initially small and relatively young group of scientists . . . able to do creative work at the pressure points." In a 1999 interview with Communiqué, a quarterly journal for Christian artists and writers, Johnson advised such students to "keep your head down while you're getting your PhD."

[3] (My emphasis.) Given Marks' activities with the EIL, Wistar & Expelled, it would be hard to claim that he is not active, but merely passive, in his support for ID. HrafnTalkStalk 03:21, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Well, ain't that a bold assertion that I'm making accusations of unethical behavior!

Why not quote my accusations? Can you find even one?

Responding to your enumerated points above (and not the kitchen sink):

  1. Marks has "un-published" his religious presentations. Whether the third-party web archive violates his copyrights is undecided in U.S. law. It is up to us to decide whether to get away with everything we can in "nailing the bastard."
  2. Rodney King participated in a "very public spat." To my knowledge, only a few small newspapers covered the EIL incident. The world does not make as much of The Panda's Thumb as the ID WikiProject does.
  3. Marks consented to an interview as an aggrieved party. There have been about one million paid theater admissions to Expelled at this point. Thus at most 1 in 300 Americans has seen the film. Most people who know about the incident at Baylor cannot call Marks' name.

You are slinging the term expectation of privacy with zero understanding its meaning in U.S. law. (Your spelling is, of course, British.) You invoke the word "ethical," but you again offer nothing but legalism. ThomHImself (talk) 06:10, 8 May 2008 (UTC)


  1. You can't put the genie back into the bottle. Once you make something public, you can't magically make it private again simply by taking down the webpage.
  2. Comparing removing material from the Baylor website (but placing no restriction on Marks publishing it elsewhere) with a brutal assault is dishonest in the extreme, and has zero probative value.
  3. "Marks consented" to make it a very PUBLIC, highly publicised issue. All the rest of your hand-waving on this point is irrelevant.

Marks made it public. It is public, and will not suddenly become private because Marks took down a few websites and because Tom English doesn't like this, or any other WP:SPADE statement that mentions the obvious fact that Marks is a, currently very active and high-profile, intelligent design advocate.

When I said "expectation of privacy" (neither capitalised or linked), I was thus using it in its common rather than technical meaning. If you want to be a hair-splitting pedant about it, what I should have said was that Marks would "have no reasonable expectation that reporting this issue would be an impermissible (legally or ethically) invasion of privacy on this issue". What a mouthful -- and really sheds no additional light. The point of issue was what level of privacy Marks had a reasonable "expectation" of. The relevant (legal) section is Privacy laws in the United States#Public disclosure, and makes very clear that for it to be an invasion of privacy it must involve de nova publishing of what previously was private, not mere republishing of what the subject had himself made public in the first place. To the best of my knowledge there is no widely accepted ethical reasoning that disapproves of the latter either.

Unless ThomHImself can cite some WP:RS stating that such an ethical expectation exists, I would suggest that there is neither legal, ethical, nor wikipedia policy reason to put this genie back in the bottle. HrafnTalkStalk 08:41, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

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