From the 'Science is fun and Conservatives are funny' dept. Ann Coulter recently posted an op-ed in Human Events:
The Flash Mob Mentality of Scientific Inquiry." If you can't bring yourself to read such tripe (I don't blame you!), Coulter takes every chance possible to associate the hate-word "Liberal" with evolution; after all, right-wingers have spent years turning 'Liberal' into a hate word, why shouldn't they use that as an 'argument' every chance they get? It's called 'Poisoning the Well,' associating your opponent's argument with something hated and (supposedly) discredited.
Coulter spent about a third of her 2007 book:
Godless attacking evolution. She was aided and abetted in this by William Dembski, among others, of the Discovery Institute, which of course is dedicated to promoting creationism and 'intelligent design.' By the way, I love the way that astronomer and science blogger Phil Plait refers to them as "The Disco Tute." He also refers to them as "a hive of scum and villainy!"
Where does the "Giant Flatulent Raccoon" theory come into this? Well, the Coultergeist has a running battle with science writer Carl Zimmer, proprietor of
The Loom blog. She actually mentioned Carl in
Godless after she read one of his articles. Carl recently reposted his answer to Coulter:
Ann Coulter Nostalgia: Behold, For I Am the Giant Flatulent Raccoon:
I just want to make one thing clear. When
Ann Coulter talks about her
Giant Raccoon Flatulence Theory, she’s talking about me. Don’t let anyone else tell you that they are a giant flatulent raccoon. They’re all just a bunch of wannabes. For I am the One True Giant Flatulent Raccoon.
Allow me to explain…
Coulter dedicates the last four chapers of her new book Godless to evolution. She claims that it is nothing more than the religion of liberalism (as opposed to the foundation of modern biology, as 92 national scientific academies and dozens of scientific societies attest.)
Carl, for obvious reasons, had little time to follow Coulter's nonsense, until friends clued him into her mention of him and his connection to The Giant Flatulent Raccoon Theory."
To summarize the backstory, Carl had a bout with appendicitis. After his appendectomy, his editor wanted him to write an article about the appendix and its evolutionary purpose.
I eventually wrote an essay (which you can read
here) in which I explained what is and is not known of the appendix. I included a speculation from one of the scientists, Rebecca Fisher of Midwestern University, about why the appendix is still with us. She suggested that the appendix provided a net evolutionary benefit. It killed some people with appendicitis, but it also protected them by boosting the immune function in children. Testing this hypothesis is possible, although it will demand an analysis of a lot of medical records. But it is certainly plausible, since biologists have documented similar trade-offs.
This caused Coulter a great snit, which appears on page 214 of Godless:
So there it is: the theory of evolution is proved again. When the appendix’s use was a mystery, it proved evolution. When the appendix was thought to help humans resist childhood diseases–well, that proved evolution, too! Throw in enough words like imagine, perhaps, and might have–and you’ve got yourself a scientific theory! How about this: Imagine a giant raccoon passed gas and perhaps the resulting gas might have created the vast variety of life we see on Earth. And if you don’t accept the giant raccoon flatulence theory for the origin of life, you must be a fundamentalist Christian nut who believes the Earth is flat. That’s basically how the argument for evolution goes.
For some people, this outburst has come to epitomize Coulter’s empty rhetoric. A pretty good
analysis of her scientific errors published Friday on the web site Media Matters is entitled, “Ann Coulter’s ‘Flatulent Raccoon Theory.’” The report has triggered the spread of the flatulent raccoon meme around here at scienceblogs, and elsewhere. It has even earned its own Wikipedia
entryThe next paragraphs discuss the way Carl's writings have been distorted by "Coulter's mangling machine." He also gives a brief discussion of how evolutionary scientists
actually work.
Carl closes with a gentlemanly admonition to his readers: "Comments about Coulter’s physical appearance (and other personal details) are irrelevant and, in my view, mean-spirited. They will not be accepted here."
The comments for this post are worth reading too; most of The Loom's readers are more science literate than the general population.
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