We’ll have to call it Barnum’s Universal Law of Creationist Arguments. The acronym isn’t catchy. Maybe somebody can think of something better.

I dunno, BULCA is one syllable short of bull-caca, which is highly amusing and appropriate.

Yea, Godwin’s Law is pretty amazing. It is just about as spot-on as Moore’s Law. Not too many “unscientific” laws are as accurate as those two. Godwin certainly has expanded to pretty much any medium of the internet. At the time it was coined, usenet was pretty much the only discussion format available on the internet, so replacing usenet with “internet discussion medium” is not a stretch of the spirit of the law at all.

The flip side of this is when a particular person becomes known for a single idea that was only a small, often contextless, part of their greater work. Adam Smith comes to mind. The Invisible Hand, for which he is so well known, in barely an afterthought in The Wealth of Nations, a single statement in work of more than a thousand pages.

I just visited that page at the Talk Origins Archive that you linked to. I guess I hadn’t seen that page. It’s great! It lists all of the most common nuggets mined from scientists.

I noticed that Gould had more quotes on there than anyone, even Darwin.

Thank you for that excellent example! That’s exactly what I’m talking about.

I like your statement:

Q: What’s the First Rule of Creationist Quote Mining?

A: If there’s an ellipsis in the quote, it’s probably mined.

That’s probably a near-universal truth, far stronger than either Vjack’s Law or Britton’s Law. It wouldn’t be fair to call it Baker’s law, though. P.T. Barnum was famous for this. He’d take bad reviews of his shows and turn them into raving endorsements by judicious use of elipses. We’ll have to call it Barnum’s Universal Law of Creationist Arguments. The acronym isn’t catchy. Maybe somebody can think of something better.

Art Battson does it right here in the first paragraph of his recent comment about my exposé of his anti-evolution website.

You’ll primarily see this law in action on web pages, less so in comment threads. Maybe I should rephrase the law somehow to reflect that (anyone have a good rewrite?). Kevin Wirth notwithstanding, quote mining occurs more frequently on web pages than in comment threads. It seems that most creationist web sites that have quotes will manage to find gold in Gould.