Apparently the Conservapedia morons are planning on sending their second message to Dr. Lenski today.  It reads:

Dear Prof. Lenski,

This is my second request for the data underlying your recent paper, “Historical contingency and the evolution of a key innovation in an experimental population of Escherichia coli,” published in PNAS (June 10, 2008) and reported in New Scientist (”Bacteria make major evolutionary shift in lab,” June 9, 2008).
http://myxo.css.msu.edu/lenski/pdf/2008,%20PNAS,%20Blount%20et%20al.pdf
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/dn14094-bacteria-make-major-evolutionary-shift-in-the-lab.html

This work was taxpayer-funded, and PNAS represents that its authors will make underlying data available. I’d like to review the data myself and ensure availability for others, including experts and my students. Others have expressed interested in access to the data in addition to myself, and your website seems well-suited for public release of these data.

If the data are voluminous, then I particularly request that access to the data made available to the peer reviewers of your paper, and data relating to the period during which the bacterial colony supposedly developed Cit+. As before, I’m requesting the organized data themselves, not the graphs and summaries set forth in the paper. Note that several times your paper expressly states, “data not shown.”

Given that this is my second request for the data, a clear answer is requested as to whether you will make the key data available for independent review. Thank you.

Andy Schlafly, B.S.E., J.D.

cc: PNAS, New Scientist publications

Emphasis is mine.  Again, the data are in the paper! Yes, authors should make data available, but in this case they already are.  The only data that aren’t already available are, as the letter itself mentions, noted in the text of the paper.  And I should note that there are exactly three instances where data are not shown, and none are directly related to the emergence of Cit+.  So unless the Conservapedia gang wants data on the inhibition of growth on citrate by 5-fluorocitrate, or on the “intraday dynamics of mixtures of Cit- and Cit+ cells”, there is literally nothing the Lenski lab could provide that is not in the paper already.

The cluelessness continues when he suggests that reviewers of the paper were given something other than a draft of the paper.  This is not the case, and anyone who understands how peer review works would know this.  Reviewers are only given the paper under consideration.  If they have any objections, they raise them.  For example, a reviewer might read the paper and feel that the authors need to do other experiments.  This request will be sent back to the authors who will then decide if they will do the suggested experiments.  The reviewer might then see data that aren’t shown in the paper, but otherwise reviewers only see what is in the text and figures to be published.  The notion that reviewers are routinely sent spreadsheets full of raw data or copies of lab notebooks is just plain false.

I still don’t know what Schlafly and pals have in mind when they ask for “organized data”.  For the work described in the paper, the “raw data”, if you will, are going to consist of stacks of hand-written lab notebooks from the experimenters.  These are not “organized data”.  In fact, it is the most unorganized data anyone could request.  That is what published papers do, they organize data accumulated over months or years into a coherent, presentable form.

But here is what I really don’t get.  If these dolts suspect that Lenski might be committing fraud, what would prevent him from doctoring lab notebooks?  It makes no sense that Lenski would publish a fraudulent paper, apparently in an attempt to undermine the truth of creationism, but then hand over material revealing that fraud to creationists.  If he isn’t above submitting a fake paper, he certainly isn’t going to blink at faking lab notebooks or spreadsheets.

In any case, if Lenski responds, it will be to tell these buffoons that the data are in the paper or to express puzzlement about what the jackasses are asking for.  Although I’m sure he’ll get a chuckle at the thought of Andy Schlafly and his army of homeschooled numbnuts checking his work.  It’s hard to contemplate a more unqualified pool of reviewers.

Update above

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 at 9:17 am and is filed under Creationism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.