(2018-01-20, 04:14 PM)Kamarling Wrote: My but you can drag things out to the point of absurdity. My point was simple, I said "Anyone who challenges the orthodoxy is controversial. Even the so-called Third Way proponents are considered controversial."
They aren’t considered controversial with respect to whether their ideas are valid, though, which is what I asked for. The Laland article, which you ‘liked’, goes to great pains to clarify this.
They are controversial because of what proponents in the Darwin thread have done - taken what would be a minor controversy about characterizing the field (well within the bounds of scientific debate, in any other field) and pretended that it’s a controversy about the validity of evolutionary theory (for various narrow and exquisitely outdated definitions of “evolutionary theory”) in general.
Your quotes illustrate that the ire directed against them (deserved or not) relates to their perceived complicity in adding fuel to creationists and IDers misrepresentations. Their participation in debating/researching new mechanisms for variation, heredity, and selection is not drawing that ire.
Linda