Science censorship row in Turkey
Maxine Clarke
Wednesday, 18 March 2009 18:08 UTC
The biggest crisis in Turkish academia since last year’s lifting of the headscarf ban in universities happened last week, when a portrait of Charles Darwin was taken off the cover of the March issue of the government-backed science magazine Bilim ve Teknik (Science and Technology) just before it went to press. TÜBTAK, Turkey’s national science funding agency, which publishes the magazine, then sacked its editor, Çidem Atakuman. Scientists, assuming censorship, are justifiably outraged and protests are ongoing. Science minister Mehmet Aydn, a historian of philosophy and religion, expressed discomfort at the cover’s removal — but also fanned the flames by commenting: “What kind of a fight can we have with Darwin? The guy is already dead.” According to an Editorial in the 19 March issue of Nature (458, 259; 2009, free to access online), this row has brought into focus two issues that plague Turkish science: political interference in the scientific civil service; and high levels of public support for creationism. This row over a censored magazine and a sacked editor could put the good work that Turkey has done for science at risk. The Editorial concludes that Turkey’s ruling party must keep religion out of science policy, and be seen to be doing so. We welcome your views. Contributions to this Nature Network discussion will be considered for the Correspondence page of Nature.
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First of all I would like to thank Nature editors to bring this subject up, since this is a very upsetting issue for me as a Turkish molecular biologist. Unfortunately I have to disagree with the 3 Turkish scientists above, because this is without a question a science censorship which actually has been going on in Turkey since the current government was elected in 2002. It cannot be said that this is an internal affair of TUBITAK since this institution is not only backed but also ruled by the government. Since the present (Islamic) government took power, they didn’t accept the elected president of the institution and tried to replace him with someone else even though that was unlawful. After this was overruled by the courts, they tried to change the law which was overruled by the president. Then until previous president’s term was over, they appointed the person they wanted as a temporary president of TUBITAK. This resulted in series of resignation from the science committee and several court cases which didn’t result in anything significant. So, right now TUBITAK is mostly governed by people appointed by the prime minister and the president (who was the 2nd person in the ruling party elected as president 2 years ago) who have no appreciation and – if you ask me – understanding of science. After witnessing this obvious corruption in TUBITAK it is not really surprising for me to see Darwin and the evolution being censored in the magazine they publish. By the way the science minister mentioned in the article who is obviously a creationist used to be the minister responsible for the religious affairs before 2007. This is obviously a more suited job for him since he is a theologist and as most of the others in the ruling party has no understanding of evolution. Moreover I find it very disturbing that 3 scientists from Turkey (2 of them being MDs) can say that “Darwinian Theory is not science but just logical”. I also think it is pathetic that they try to change the subject by relating this issue to the denial of global warming by the Bush administration.
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It is a big lie that there is a cencorship against Darwinism in Tubitak. In fact the opposite is true. Tubitak in fact published many books about Darwin. But you cannot find any article regarding Creation.
There are 100 million fossils which shows the Creation. There are NO TRANSITIONAL FORM, which must be there according to the evolution theory. -
What has happened to TÜBTAK is evident from its policies and workings in current times. Scientists in Turkey need support and assistance from their counterparts all over the sane world. But…
“100 million fossils which show the Creation”
Is this person for real? Oh, I see, the tired old canard of “no transitional forms” (and in capital letters, too).Transitional forms can occur between groups of any taxonomic level, such as between species, orders, and so forth, but not necessarily in a linear order. Evolution does not mandate that an intermediary form can have only one line of descendants, or that the ancestral forms have to go extinct when a descendant line evolves (another Creationist-favorite: If man came from monkeys, why are there still monkeys).
Paleontological research has uncovered thousands of transitional fossils, by both the temporally restrictive and the less restrictive definitions; the biologist Stephen J Gould wrote in Natural History (May 1994), “… paleontologists have discovered several superb examples of intermediary forms and sequences, more than enough to convince any fair-minded skeptic about the reality of life’s physical genealogy…” (Gould is a noted biologist who has the unfortunate distinction of being posthumously misrepresented by unsavory Creationists).
Fossil record would always be incomplete for various physical reasons. Again, transitions may occur in a relatively small population, in a geographically restricted area, and/or in a relatively short amount of time. Gould proposed the hypothesis of punctuated equilibrium to explain the relative rarity of transitional forms, and why speciation appears to happen relatively quickly in some cases, gradually in others, and not at all during some periods for some species.
Naturally, the chances of finding fossilized transitional forms are relatively rare. But that does not discount the fact that several excellent sequences of transitional fossils exist. Some notable examples are the transitions from reptile to mammal, from land animal to early whale, and from early ape to human. An excellent list of transitional vertebrate fossils may be found at this website. More examples, and those of some invertebrate groups, may be found at this place.
The misconception about the absence of transitional fossils is perpetuated by creationists because of their lack of knowledge or (I suspect) deliberate misunderstanding of categories and differences. The gradual process of evolution produced forms that had intermediate features of two categories, a good example being Archeopteryx with both reptilian and avian characteristics. It is important to understand that we, as human beings, have assigned categories to the prehistoric life forms for our better understanding – categories that may or may not be sharply demarcated or well-defined. The natural process of evolution is under no constraint to follow those categories.
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There’s a timely addition to support Kausik’s refutation of the preceding comment right here in this week’s Nature.
It would be reassuring to attribute the creationist point of view to either “their lack of knowledge or (I suspect) deliberate misunderstanding of categories and differences”. [I suspect as much sometimes, as well.] However, there is a third, probably majority group, characterized by their non-deliberate misunderstanding – or lack of in-depth knowledge. When you are only exposed to caricature and simplification, no matter how intelligent, the information is not there to make an informed judgement – despite the illusion that there is. The blitzkrieg financed and disseminated by well-heeled people like Adnan Oktar or by different religious branches is particularly dangerous for that reason.
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Heather’s appropriate statement – “The blitzkrieg financed and disseminated by well-heeled people like Adnan Oktar or by different religious branches is particularly dangerous for that reason” – gets me thinking on parallel tack. How is it that people like Adnan Oktar, or organizations like Answers in Genesis and Institute of Creation Research, or financiers like the Templeton foundation, always appear to be so well funded, and never short of cash to fling around to support their efforts to peddle patently bogus stuff?
Whatever happened to the Recession? Why is it only funding to scientific research that tends to dry up?
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I’ll be interviewing Harun Yahya soon, the most prominent of Muslim Intelligent Design advocates, and I was wondering what would be a good direction to take for the interview? Ideas? I may write a blog post on the direction I’m planning to take and it would be great to get your feedback. This issue seems to be a huge concern for Middle East science at the moment.
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