Crackpot sues noted science blogger for calling him a crackpot

Are we seeing the next step in the creationists battle against common sense and reality? Perhaps.

Stuart Pivar, author of the book "Lifecode" and it's re-release "Lifecode: From egg to embryo by self-organization", is suing noted science blogger PZ Myers aka Pharyngula for libel, after Myers reviewed said book.

Myers, a developmental biologist, was unimpressed with Pivar's work, which supports an alternative to some of Darwin's principles, namely in structuralism and self-organization:

This is not a scientific theory, and it isn't even a collection of evidence: it's a jumble of doodles. I read through it all this afternoon (there really isn't that much to read), and I have to conclude it says nothing about the development or evolution of biological organisms, although it is relevant to something else.

and:

Pivar is a classic crackpot, and Lifecode isn't a science book by any measure. There is no theory there, and no evidence or observation. I can't believe any scientist would be taken in by it.

Pivar, who has been pointed to as trying to further a creationist agenda by EvolutionBlog's Jason Rosenhouse, is a wealthy businessman who can afford to toss about lawsuits - he's been named as a plaintiff in at least 25 cases according to the Scientific America blog.

But can ordinary scientists and the science minded afford such lawsuits. And is this what our legal system is based upon? To keep creationists and the non-scientific from being debunked? Because Myers' criticism was harsh, but he backed it up. At the very least, this is part of the scientific method at its simplest form - scientists are notoriously brutal on work which they disagree.

"What if PZ didn't work for Seed? If people start going after individual bloggers without the resources to defend themselves, that would have a chilling effect on the whole field," wrote Scientific American's Christopher Mims in a comment to a blog post by Wired's Brandon Keim.

Pivar's lawsuit needs to be thrown out, with malice. The suit appears to be little more than a scare tactic to shut up the scientific. We already live in a world where science news is handled by the distinctly non-scientific in the mainstream media. If the truly scientific amongst us are scared away from giving honest, blunt opinions, we will have taken yet another large step to being a nation where pseudoscience and creationism reigns.

--WKW

Crossposted at Williamkwolfrum.com