The Interpreter; Bayes Theorem; Nephites and Mayans

[_Everybody Wang Chung]

The Interpreter article is now being expertly dismantled by the Heartlanders. Incredible.

http://interpreterpeerreviews.blogspot.com/

[_DrW]

The Interpreter article is now being expertly dismantled by the Heartlanders. Incredible.

http://interpreterpeerreviews.blogspot.com/

The authors and publisher of the Interpreter paper will now surely claim that it must indeed reflect the truth, if for no other reason than it makes those who believe otherwise, whether Mormon or apostate, so frightened that they persist in attacking it.

[_Dr Exiled]

The authors and publisher of the Interpreter paper will now surely claim that it must indeed reflect the truth, if for no other reason than it makes those who believe otherwise, whether Mormon or apostate, so frightened that they persist in attacking it.

This has got to be the most frustrating things about the mopes. They are so quick to falsely claim that critics are "afraid" of the mopes' unsupported fanciful proclamations when it is so obviously not the case. Or they claim persecution when someone disagrees. They should just stop with the silly claims and the critics won't bother them.

[_Lemmie]

One of the things you would expect form a peer-reviewed (or even properly edited) paper is for quotes and paraphrases of other people's words to be used appropriately. In looking at the way the Dales use Coe's comments from the 1973 Dialogue article, I was disturbed to find a seriously distorted interpretation.

Here are the relevant passages from the Dales:

In an article published in Dialogue in 1973, Dr. Coe summarized his opinion regarding an ancient American setting for the Book of Mormon in these words:

“The picture of this hemisphere between 2,000 bc and ad 421 presented in the book has little to do with early Indian cultures as we know them, in spite of much wishful thinking.”3

Later in the paper, when listing negative correspondences the Dales paraphrase:

For example, in his 1973 Dialogue article and in the 2011 and 2018 podcast interviews, Dr. Coe mentions twelve more specific facts to support the hypothesis that the Book of Mormon is false. These include brass, chariots, sheep, goats, swine, wheat, barley, cattle, silk, asses, a hybrid Egyptian/Hebrew writing system, and the lack of Semitic DNA in the New World.

[bolding added]

Then they reuse the first quote in their final paragraph:

Thus Dr. Coe’s opinion

“The picture of this hemisphere between 2,000 bc and ad 421 presented in the [B]ook [of Mormon] has little to do with early Indian cultures”

is simply not supported by the evidence provided in his own book. Using Dr. Coe’s own book, we find that early Mesoamerica has a very great deal indeed to do with the Book of Mormon.

It seems quite clear, by use of the phrase "specific facts," that the Dales are suggesting that this is all of the negative correspondences Dr. Coe knew of, right? But let's look at the actual Coe statement. You'll notice the last sentence is used by the Dales as a quote, while the second sentence is paraphrased:

First of all, there is an inherent improbability in specific items that are mentioned in the Book of Mormon as having been brought to the New World by the Jaredites and/or Nephites.

Among these are the horse (extinct in the New World since about 7,000 B.C.), the chariot, wheat, barley, and metallurgy (true metalworking based upon smelting and casting being no earlier in Mesoamerica than about 800 A.D.).

The picture of this hemisphere between 2,000 B.C. and A.D. 421 presented in the book has little to do with the early Indian cultures as we know them, in spite of much wishful thinking.

[bolding added]

It is hard to see the phrase "among these" as indicating anything other than the fact that his list is partial, and does not include all negative correspondences of which he is aware.

This is bolstered by an additional quote from Dr. Coe, in a PBS interview:

[interviewer:] What are the main archaeological challenges to the Book of Mormon? As a responsible archaeologist, looking at what's come up, what are the challenges? ...

[Dr. Coe:] The Book of Mormon is very explicit about what the Nephites brought with them to this land: domestic animals, domestic crops, all of Old World origin; metallurgy, the compass, things like that.

Just take domestic animals, for example. I mentioned horses and cattle. Nobody has ever found the bones of horses and cattle in these archaeological sites. Horses were already in the New World, all right, but were wiped out about 7000 B.C. by people coming in from Asia. They never found horse bones in these early sites between the prime period, which is 500 B.C. to A.D. 200.; never found cattle bones there; never found wheat or rye and these other things that they grow in the Middle East.

Plenty of evidence for all kinds of other things that are Native American, but nothing there. And that's the problem: They simply haven't shown up. ...

[bolding added]

Obviously, Dr. Coe didn't intend for his examples to encompass a full list of everything he might consider a "negative correspondence," and the Dales' paraphrasing seems intended to hide that.

It's bad enough they are violating Bayesian principles re: hypotheses, but to also disguise within their limited framework an implication that it is complete when obviously it is not, even by their own biased rules, is pretty irresponsible. Yet another thing a reviewer, or even an editor could have pointed out.

[_honorentheos]

Their method for identifying misses is bizarre. For example, they include horses, elephants, gold and silver as misses because Coe specifically mentions them in The Maya as being extinct without intent to shade the Book of Mormon claims. So to get something to count as misses out of both books they basically looked for specific mentions in The Maya of criticism raised by Book of Mormon critics or so it appears. But since this was woefully disproportionate apparently, they bent the rules to add to that list and did the same using outside sources, relying on specific mentions of exact details.

But when one looks at the VotH or MF, they count misses for mentions of categorical items such as a claim in one the native inhabitants practiced the Law of Moses. Why would The Maya even mention the Law of Moses? In this instance they seem to view it's descriptions of religious practices that differ from that of post exile Hebrew worship as sufficient to score a miss. Similarly, they take a reference to an earthen box to be a miss because it isn't a stone box, yet it isn't clear why given The Maya didn't deny the use of earthen boxes whatever those are. Pottery? Who knows.

Their approach to the misses is a dog's breakfast.

[_Res Ipsa]

Dog’s breakfast indeed. Their approach to negative inferences is completely incoherent. Bayes gives them a coherent approach, but they failed to follow it: instead of trying to subjectively label inferences as positive or negative, just take claimed facts in one book and see what the other has to say on that subject. Ask the questions that will result in the likelihood ratio: given hypothesis X, what the likelihood that the evidence would look like this? Same for hypothesis Y.
The resulting likelihood factor tells you both which hypothesis the evidence supports and how strongly it comparative supports it.

Not doing the proper analysis is what leads the Dales to have an incoherent approach in terms of evaluating the evidence but leads them to treat misses as hits.

[Guest]

It's bad enough they are violating Bayesian principles re: hypotheses, but to also disguise within their limited framework an implication that it is complete when obviously it is not, even by their own biased rules, is pretty irresponsible. Yet another thing a reviewer, or even an editor could have pointed out.

A competent peer reviewer would have had an obligation to point out the problems you mention. Reviewers are depended upon to maintain the credibility of the journals for which they work as well as the credibility of their profession in general.

As the arbiter of last resort, the editor has a responsibility, not only to the readership, but also to the authors. The reviewer and editor have allowed the younger Dale to place himself in professional jeopardy by naming his industrial employer in his biosketch associated with this Interpreter paper.

As contributors to the Interpreter comment page and to this thread have clearly and repeatedly demonstrated, the problems with the Interpreter paper extend beyond the realm of faith and opinion, and well into objective reality concerning the proper use of Bayesian inference. Clearly laid out and well understood mathematical operations have been sloppily or improperly executed to arrive at patently ridiculous conclusions and claims, some of which are well beyond the scope of the paper, as described by the authors themselves.

Dr. Brian Dale should ask himself if he would include the Interpreter paper in the list of publications on his resume when it comes time to move up in the organization or seek other employment. A reasonable person would not list it, which would be a wise decision.

Problem is that the longer this kerfuffle continues in cyberspace, and the more entities that become involved, the greater the chances that it will be picked up on background checks, literature searches, etc. and attributed to him. Online services such as those provided by ResearchGate and Google Scholar greatly increase those chances.

I happen to be an author on a technical paper that was published as a PDF on a company website about 5 years ago. It was intended only for background and general information. That paper passed 1,000 pageviews two years ago and now has almost as many downloads. What we never anticipated was, according to Google Scholar, that paper now has citations in the peer reviewed literature.

With the entry of the Mormon Heartland crowd into the internet fray, the status of the Interpreter paper as a work of crackpottery is now established. The Dales should conduct themselves accordingly.

[_Physics Guy]

The Interpreter article is now being expertly dismantled by the Heartlanders.

Having just seen Godzilla II I can only say, Of course.

(Horribly movie, in which the ostensible lead literally does nothing at all in the whole film and the ostensibly sympathetic villain hired mercenaries to shoot her nice coworkers in the head after they surrender in the first fifteen minutes but that was before we found out she was the villain so she still gets to be sympathetic because she's a mom. Unless you were only watching it for the monsters. And why the hell else would you watch a Godzilla movie?)

[_Lemmie]

Well, Midgley has weighed in:

Louis Midgley > John Kammeyer • 2 hours ago
.... Rodney Meldrum... grants that the Brethern [sp] have never indicated exactly where the Book of Mormon took place in American and then claims, falsely, that Joseph Smith indicated exactly where it took place. This is a way of saying that the Brethren are misleading the Saints.
http://disq.us/p/227e83h

Oh dear. This means that in this Interpreter-published paper, the Dales are also saying the Brethren are misleading the Saints!

There is overwhelming evidence that the Book of Mormon has physical, political, geographical, religious, military, technological, and cultural roots in ancient Mesoamerica.

[_honorentheos]

I'm not up to speed on the apologetics, but Smith DID make multiple statements in his life that clearly indicated he was physically among the remnants of the Nephite civilization. The letters to Emma during the Zion's Camp march are full of such statements, as is the Zelph episode. I'm slightly curious how that argument actually plays between the Mopologist crowd and the Heartland crowd but not so curious I'm going to look for it.