Wesley R. Elsberry
Posts: 4991
Joined: May 2002
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Some instances of Sternberg's interactions
Given that Sternberg indicates that he has "discourse" with people on all sides of the issues, one might expect that his time and effort would be more or less evenly distributed across those viewpoints. You know, a period spent in the leadership of some atheist materialist group here, editing a skeptical magazine there, giving talks about how criticism of the faults of "intelligent design" was well-founded here and there... as well as the instances of interaction with antievolution given below. However, I don't seem to be coming up with much along those lines. Anyway, here are the bits of antievolution involvement for Richard von Sternberg, the ones that are publicly available.
The Baraminology Study Group
Sternberg holds a position on the BSG's editorial board. Sternberg has a letter on his website from Todd Charles Wood that is careful to say that Sternberg's involvement is despite his not agreeing with the young-earth creationist position. (As mentioned before, not believing in man-walking-and-talking-with-dinosaurs, a global flood, and a less-than-20,000-year-old earth still leaves a lot of creationist and antievolutionist terrain.)
But Sternberg's involvement with "baraminology" goes beyond simply agreeing to provide constructive criticism, as Wood's letter's implies. Sternberg is also involved in legitimizing the analysis methods that the BSG favors, specifically "analysis of pattern" or "ANOPA".
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Cavanaugh, D.P. & R. v. Sternberg (2004). Analysis of morphological groupings using ANOPA, a pattern recognition and multivariate statistical method: a case Study involving centrarchid fishes. J. Biol. Systems 12: 137-167.
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Note also Wood's reference to his introduction to Sternberg being via email. One wonders what email list would bring together such disparate people. The "phylogenist" list makes for a simple hypothesis about this, as an antievolution/"intelligent design" closed list.
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"You can't teach an old dogma new tricks." - Dorothy Parker
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