Yesterday’s New York Times carried an article about the Kansas evolution hearings. Well, sort of. While the article discoursed at length about the pro-Darwin scientists who did NOT participate in the Kansas hearings, it never actually got around to mentioning any of the people who DID testify.
That’s a novel way to cover an event — only talk about the people who did not participate in it.
I was interviewed for the article, and I’d like to commend the reporter for (on the whole) quoting me accurately. In particular, she made clear that Discovery Institute does not oppose the teaching evolution, and it does not favor requiring the teaching of intelligent design.
However, I can’t commend the bowlderized version of the Kansas hearings presented in the article, which clearly leaves the impression that no “scientists” testified in Kansas.
What does that make the biology professor from the University of Wisconsin who testified? Or the biochemistry professor at the University of Georgia who testified? Or the Italian geneticist who edits one of the world’s oldest still-published biology journals who testified? As I pointed out to the Times reporter, the Darwinian fundamentalists can claim all they want that there are no scientists who criticize modern Darwinian theory, but the biology professors from state universities who showed up in Kansas proved otherwise.
This New York Times article essentially imposes a news blackout on these courageous scientists and on their scientific criticisms of Darwinsm. While I talked at length with the Times reporter about the specific scientific criticisms being raised in Kansas and elsewhere, none of that made it into the article. Perhaps the Times’ needs a new motto: “All the News that Fits.”