Saturday, October 28, 2017

#1916: Christopher Macosko

Christopher Macosko is a Professor at the University of Minnesota most famous for receiving Templeton funding (apparently) to “study” intelligent design. Macosko has a PhD in Chemical Engineering, and no expertise in any field related to evolution, but promoters of intelligent design creationism take what they can get; the purpose of funds for studies in any case not scientific inquiry but outreach.

Macosko apparently became a born-again Christian as an assistant professor after a falling-out with a business partner, and for many years he taught the freshman seminar “Life: By Chance or By Design?” According to Macosko “[a]ll the students who finish my course say, ‘Gee, I didn’t realize how shaky evolution is’,” which tells you quite a bit about Macosko’s course and nothing about the foundations for the theory of evolution (the title, though, tells you a bit about how poorly Macosko understands that theory).

Since he does possess a PhD, in an unrelated field, Macosko is also a signatory to the Discovery Institute’s sad and ridiculous petition A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism.

Diagnosis: Pseudoscientist, but unlike most pseudoscientists, Macosko is affiliated with a real university, which might give a sheen of legitimacy to his efforts to those who don’t know better. Still pseudoscience.

No comments:

Post a Comment