A Disappearing Comment at Amazon

In February 2018, I wrote a comment at amazon for Dr. Robert J. Marks II’s, Dr. Dr. William A. Dembski’s, and Dr. Winston Ewert’s book Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics (1st Edition):

We are all waiting for the ultimate book on Intelligent Design, written by R. Marks and W. Dembski. Instead we get a “textbook”, another attempt to explain the concepts to laymen. I got the impression that the authors used this setting to avoid the necessary rigour: they just do not define terms like “search” which they use hundreds of times. This allows for a lot of hand-waving, like the following sentence on p. 174:

“We note, however, the choice of an algorithm along with its parameters and initialization imposes a probability distribution over the search space”

That unsubstantiated claim is essential for their following proofs on “The Search for a Search”!

And then there are details like this one:

p. 130: “For the Cracker Barrel puzzle [we got] an endogenous information of I = 7.15 bits”
p. 138: “We return now to the Cracker Barrel puzzle. We showed that the endogenous information […] is I = 7.4 bits”

I tried to solve this conundrum, but I came up with I = 7.8 bits. I contacted the authors, but got no reply.

(Details about the Cracker Barrel puzzle – if you are interested)

I gave it a generous two stars. By chance, I looked up my link to my comment today, but I could not find my review – though it was up there for at least a couple of months. Does anyone know what has happened? Surely, The Three Doctores would not steep so low to eliminate unwanted critique!

16 thoughts on “A Disappearing Comment at Amazon

  1. Have you tried to email Amazon? Maybe your comment was flagged by the publisher? Or by another commenter?

    You could have done this logical move before posting the OP in which you accuse the authors of something you have no shred of evidence for…

  2. Mung:
    Has Amazon had anything to say?

    Nothing besides the auto-generated bla bla bla – thanks for your inquiry – here is a link to our terms and conditions…. bla bla bla

    Merry Christmas!

  3. DiEb,

    Comments submitted prior to publication of the book, including one by Jonathan Bartlett, were deleted after I complained about false advertising. My best guess is that someone at Amazon glanced at your first sentence, and mistook what you’d written as a pre-publication comment.

  4. Tom English:
    DiEb,

    Comments submitted prior to publication of the book, including one by Jonathan Bartlett, were deleted after I complained about false advertising. My best guess is that someone at Amazon glanced at your first sentence, and mistook what you’d written as a pre-publication comment.

    What a bloody joke!!!
    Content now: LMAO

  5. phoodoo:
    How did you “by chance” look up your link from a year ago?

    More probabilities?

    I was informed of a spam comment at my blog. I tried to look up the first article and – butterfingered as I am at my phone – hit the first link in said article – which turned out to be dead.

  6. Tom English:
    DiEb,

    Comments submitted prior to publication of the book, including one by Jonathan Bartlett, were deleted after I complained about false advertising. My best guess is that someone at Amazon glanced at your first sentence, and mistook what you’d written as a pre-publication comment.

    I wrote the comment roughly a year after the book was published.

  7. phoodoo:
    DiEb,

    So you bought the book?

    No, that was not necessary: Lucky for me, the library of the University in Hanover had bought the book (the only one to do so in northern Germany), so I could borrow it via Fernleihe for just 1.50€: I had not to wait, there was not much demand for it after all….

  8. DiEb,

    So if you didn’t buy it from Amazon, why should you have a right to review it on Amazon?

    What evidence is there that you even read it? It seems a crazy system if anyone was allowed to just slam any book they wanted on Amazon just because they felt like it, without even needing to buy or read it.

    Seems like Amazon did the right thing then.

  9. phoodoo:
    DiEb,

    So if you didn’t buy it from Amazon, why should you have a right to review it on Amazon?

    What evidence is there that you even read it?It seems a crazy system if anyone was allowed to just slam any book they wanted on Amazon just because they felt like it, without even needing to buy or read it.

    Seems like Amazon did the right thing then.

    *LOL*

  10. phoodoo: So if you didn’t buy it from Amazon, why should you have a right to review it on Amazon?

    Per Amazon:
    To contribute to Customer features (for example, Customer Reviews, Customer Answers, Idea Lists) or to follow other contributors, you must have spent at least $50 on Amazon.com using a valid credit or debit card in the past 12 months.

    Don’t engage in name-calling or attack people based on whether you agree with them.
    You may question the beliefs and expertise of others as long as it is relevant and done in a respectful and non-threatening manner.

  11. I should have lifetime qualification by now.

    But for what it’s worth, if you bought the product at Amazon, your review will be marked Confirmed Purchaser.

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