John G. West

Just when I think the major media are beginning to become a little more accurate in reporting on the evolution issue, something happens to bring me back to reality. Yesterday the international newswire Reuters sent out a story making the following preposterous claim:

The new science standards would… eliminate core evolution theory as required curriculum.

This claim is absolutely false. The draft science standards endorsed by the Kansas Board of Education continue to include evolution as part of the standard required curriculum. Indeed, the proposed benchmark on evolution is all but identical to the one in the current Kansas Science Standards. See for yourself:

CNN Reporter Ed Lavendera, who two years ago fabricated part of his story about the Texas textbook battle, has now been sent to Kansas to report on the controversy there. Not surprisingly, Ed gets the basic facts about Kansas wrong as well. He even recycles an old clip from his previous story while creating impression that it came from Kansas!

Nightline ran a story on intellingent design last night, and if the inane preview article is any indication, the segment was the sort of lopsided hatchet-job one used to expect from the folks at “60 Minutes”—but not nearly as intelligent. Nightline’s main point appears to be that there really isn’t any scientific controversy over Darwinism and intelligent design. How do they know this? They checked with several Darwinists, who told them so! That’s right.

According to Nightline, because Darwinists happen to believe there is no scientific controversy over evolution, there really must be no controversy.

Hmm. Nightline could apply this logic to a lot of other issues besides intelligent design:

It’s been interesting to watch this past week as media pundits have weighed-in on the debate over intelligent design in the wake of President Bush’s pro-ID comments. Most of the pundits denouncing intelligent design have simply demonstrated how little they actually know about ID and what it proposes. A good example is Jonathan Alter’s snooty anti-ID column in this week’s Newsweek. Alter says a lot of ignorant and inaccurate things, but I will focus on just one:

Ever think that certain reporters at the so-called “mainstream” media have already determined their story before they have even interviewed anyone? In my many conversations with reporters, I sometimes get the feeling that no matter what I say, the reporter at hand will only hear what he or she wants to hear, even if it’s the exact opposite of what I’m actually saying. Some amusing evidence of this sort of bias in action is apparently on display in today’s print edition of The New York Times. In an article about President Bush’s endorsement on Monday of students learning about different views on evolution, reporter Elisabeth Bumiller completely mangles a quote by Discovery Institute’s Stephen Meyer. Here is what Steve Meyer Read More ›

Just in time for the anniversary of the Scopes trial, the folks over at Panda’s Thumb are continuing their unseemly crusade against Ohio State doctoral candidate Bryan Leonard. Even though these Darwinian fundamentalists don’t support academic freedom for teachers and scientists who are skeptical of Darwin, you’d think they might draw the line at going after students. Apparently, however, their bigotry and intolerance knows no bounds. Unhappy that Leonard’s dissertation committee has effectively refuted the misinformation spread by Panda’s Thumb and others, blogger Richard Hoppe has responded with even more smears. Here are replies to some of the new disinformation put out by Hoppe:

You’d think that after the Jayson Blair scandal, the New York Times would be exceptionally careful about questions of journalistic ethics. Why, then, is the Times allowing a reporter who regularly covers the evolution controversy on its news pages to ALSO write opinion articles on the same subject?

Cornelia Dean has written a number of news stories for the Times about the the controversy over evolution, including one about the Kansas science standards and another one last weekend about the Catholic church and evolution.

But the day after Dean’s news piece appeared about Catholics and evolution, a commentary by her promoting evolution appeared on the op-ed page of the York Daily Record in Pennsylvania! In this op-ed, Dean advised evolutionists about how they can win the public debate over evolution:

Over the past month, Darwinists have been waging a vicious campaign of defamation against Ohio State University science education doctoral candidate Bryan Leonard. (For more information about Leonard’s situation, see here.) Mr. Leonard’s doctoral dissertation defense has been put in limbo after certain Darwinist professors alleged that his research was “unethical” because it involved teaching students about scientific criticisms of Darwin’s theory, an approach called for in Ohio’s official science standards!

Darwinists have variously claimed that members of Leonard’s doctoral committee were improperly selected, that Leonard engaged in “unethical” research, or that he taught his students intelligent design. According to members of Leonard’s dissertation committee, however, all of these charges are false. Two members of the committee have just issued a detailed public statement correcting the record about Leonard’s dissertation. Discovery Institute has posted the statement on its website as a public service, here.

Science magazine has published an article about what it is calling a “mea culpa” by Eugenie Scott of the NCSE for spreading false information about California parent Larry Caldwell. (For background on Scott’s defamation of Caldwell, see here.)